authors | Nostalgia City Mysteries

7:02 pm - August 21, 2013 - mbaconauthor

E-Book update

Best-seller lists expand to encompass electronic titles; romance popular

One thinks big name authors live and die by the best-seller list rankings. Those of us toiling in the lower levels of the literary landscape admire the sales figures and scour the lists looking for our next book to read. E-book publishing, once the techy stepchild of the publishing business, is the fastest growing market segment and the subject of dedicated best-seller lists. E-books also contribute significantly to sales in a new list for self-published books.

Publisher’s Weekly (PW) the trade journal for the book publishing/distributing business, has started a new list, recording the best-selling books self-published through the Smashwords platform. The top-25 list is dominated by romance titles with three authors appearing three times each. Each of those authors, Katie Ashely, Abbi Glines, and Shayne Parkinson, publish in e-book and paperback formats, as do many if not all in the top 25.

A list of the most popular e-books in 2012 was also published by PW and it’s comprehensive. The list includes hundreds of e-books in graduated categories from 15 million in sales to 50,000. Makes interesting reading. There’s no indication as to which publishers PW queried, but it probably omitted very small houses and self publishers. The first comment the online PW article generated was by someone suggesting they publish a list of the top selling self-published e-books. A good suggestion, though the list might be quite similar to the above-mentioned self-publishing list. With Amazon’s Create Space program, it’s simple for an author to create a paper book and e-book simultaneously; often the e-book is priced lower.

Other e-book best-seller lists are, if not plentiful, easily accessible. In the latest Digital Book World list, for the week ending Aug. 18, an e-book from a small publisher beat out the big New York names. As noted in the listing, the top selling e-book, The Boy in the Suitcase, was priced significantly below the e-books from larger publishers. Price has an effect on e-book sales, as discussed in this blog before, and the best-seller lists are good places for book buyers, authors and others to keep up with market trends.

The venerable New York Times also has e-book best seller lists for fiction and nonfiction and Amazon lists the top-selling Kindle books this year to date.

Also worth reading is Jeremy Greenfield’s article on top selling e-books from Forbes last month. Hachette, one of the Big Five US publishers, has recorded 153 e-book best-sellers this year, Greenfield reports.

Hyperlinks–

Publishers Weekly: Self-published best sellers

Publishers Weekly: Best-selling e-books of 2012

Digital Book World: Best-selling e-books

NYT: Best-selling e-book nonfiction

NYT: Best-selling e-book fiction

Best-selling Kindle e-books in 2013

Forbes: Who is getting the big piece of the e-book pie

1:12 pm - August 14, 2013 - mbaconauthor

News update:

Future of e-books muddled

Everyone’s jockeying for the best position in the complex, brave new world of e-book marketing. And it appears that future book buying details, including the prices readers pay for books and the amount authors get paid, will be determined by corporate lawyers and judges.

Last month a federal judge ruled that Apple conspired with five of the leading publishers to raise the going price of e-books.

Reuters reported that U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan found “compelling evidence” that Apple violated federal antitrust law by playing a “central role” in a conspiracy with the publishers to eliminate retail price competition and raise e-book prices.

Apple was accused of trying to erode Amazon’s dominant position in e-book sales causing some e-book prices to rise by $3 to $5 each.

The U.S. Justice Department hailed the verdict as a victory for book buyers.

At issue are “agency model agreements” where publishers set the price of books, rather than retailers.

In the “wholesale” model, publishers offer books to booksellers at roughly half the price the publishers set as the recommended retail price of a book. Then the retailer is free to sell the book at any price, even below the wholesale price paid for the book.

Graham Spencer, writing in Macstories.net, explains that Amazon decided to sell some e-books below wholesale to gain a larger percentage of the market and to speed the sales of Kindles. When Apple launched its online bookstore, Spencer says, it contracted with publishers using the “agency” model that authorizes publishers to set retail prices.

(This is an oversimplification of a complex process and Spencer has a detailed explanation of the e-book sales models in his article. )

The recent court decision overturned Apple’s agreements as a conspiracy with publishers to drive up prices. The five publishers involved in the suit, HarperCollins, Hachette, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and MacMillan settled prior to the Apple verdict and were told by the court they would have to wait two years before entering into agency model agreements.

Presently the court is considering what form of penalty to impose on Apple. Suggestions include forcing Apple’s bookstore to provide links to competitors. A final resolution is in the works and Apple promises an appeal.

“Used” e-book sales

Although fraught with possibilities for the future of books and e-books, the Apple case is just a bump in the road compared with the likelihood that a market for “used” e-books will materialize.

According to Publishers Weekly magazine, a German district court recently ruled that digital books can’t be resold by purchasers. The authoritative trade journal said the court ruled that books are not subject to “exhaustion of the rights of the author.” Apparently the ruling means that e-books can only be resold with the permission of the author.

Earlier this year a U.S. federal judge ruled that ReDigi, a Massachusetts company, infringed on the rights of Capitol Records by facilitating the resale of digital music. Regardless, according to Boston Magazine, Redigi is reportedly moving forward with plans to sell previously owned e-books in the U.S.

Reports Boston Magazine, “Legal issues aside, many analysts feel these markets are almost inevitable.”

Hyperlinks:

Reuters: Ruling says Apple violated antitrust law

Graham Spencer in Macstories.net

Publisher’s Weekly

Boston Magazine

Category: book publishers Tags: agency agreements, Apple, authors, books, e-books

7:38 am - June 25, 2013 - mbaconauthor

Catching up on e-book fine print

Writer’s note: Normally when I have a computer problem, I first assume it’s operator error. Often, I’m correct. Therefore I’m reluctant to blame anything other than forgetfulness on the absence of the following article from this blog. I wrote it and intended it to be published two weeks ago. Yesterday while approving a comment someone sent in for my previous post I noticed that this article was only listed in draft, rather than “published” form. And as it was not available in the archive, and two readers report they did not receive it, I have to assume it did not appear. As the saying goes, the editors regret the error.

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The corporate and legal wrangling over e-books would make a good mystery plot. In fact, many aspects of the burgeoning e-book business are simply mysterious. As the future of mystery fiction and flash fiction are tied to the advance of digital reading, this site has been making note of e-book developments.

In the past weeks, two events have hastened the broad availability of free, digitized literature: The last of the big six U.S. publishers joined the other five in agreeing to make their e-books available to public libraries and, a consortium of libraries and other organizations have launched a national digital public library.

Hachette joined Harper Collins, Macmillan, Penguin Group, Random House and Simon and Schuster in making their e-books available to public libraries. These companies publish about two-thirds of the books in the U.S. Many details remain to be resolved and, according to Anthony Marx, writing in The New York Times, each publisher has different requirements for selling or licensing library e-books.

It’s logical to assume that the ease of checking out e-books at your local library and the availability of many titles will cut into the sale of e-books. Just how soon the majority of popular books will be widely available in libraries is anyone’s guess. It may take months or years. For example, Spokane, Wash., Spokesman Review writer Adrian Rogers recently wrote that few of the current best-selling books are available in e-book format at the Spokane Public Library.

According to Marx, president of the New York Public Library, the Great Recession caused a nationwide surge in library use, yet many Americans don’t even know that libraries offer e-books, limited as the selection might be.

DPLA launched

The other recent development is the creation of the Digital Public Library of America, a modern-day Alexandria, that seeks to use resources from libraries across the country, digitize them and make them available free to the public.

Executive director of the DPLA, Dan Cohen, told Atlantic Monthly recently that the library was a “large-scale attempt, to knit together America’s archives, libraries, and museums, which have a tremendous amount of content–all forms of human expression, from images and photographs, to artwork, to published material and unpublished material, like archival and special collections.”

One of the goals, according to Cohen, is to make it easier for researchers–or anyone–to find material that they might otherwise have to discover by visiting hundreds or thousands of websites. In addition, third-party users will be able to create apps based on DPLA content.

Cohen told the Atlantic that they would be looking for “alternative licensing” that will help them make more e-book material available.

Robert Darnton, director of Harvard University’s library system, addressed the copyright challenges to making e-books free for all in this new national library, calling the project “utopian.” In a lengthy article in the New York Review of Books, he noted a March 2011 court decision that effectively derailed Google’s massive book digitizing project but said the DPLA hopes, “to win Google over as an ally in working for the public good.” In any case, he said they would not wait for the courts to “untangle the legalities” before establishing the framework for the DPLA.

Apple accused of inflating prices

In an unrelated development, the Wall Street Journal reported Apple is defending itself in a Manhattan antitrust trial regarding the price of e-books. The U.S, Justice Department is accusing the giant corporation of trying to eliminate price competition. The detailed case revolves around the use of two different pricing models in which either retailers or publishers establish prices.

As has been clear almost since e-book popularity started to skyrocket–and noted in this space before–no one can really predict the future of digital media. Publishers, retailers, libraries and other stake holders will be hashing this out for some time to come. Authors and other artists may have a say in the process, but their role will be small.

For a discouraging look at the future of “original” digital material–dire for everyone except the top 1 percent earners–read Jaron Lanier’s article in the New York Times last Sunday called Fixing the Digital Economy.

Internet making us stupid?

Some months ago I wrote about studies showing that constant use of the Internet can shorten our attention spans. Now comes a report that the Internet is also affecting how we remember things.

According to a video program on the Academic Earth website, the use of Google is changing how our brains operate, favoring short-term memory over the longer term because, well, we can always “Google” something, we don’t have to remember it. We have conditioned ourselves to forget is the program’s provocative message.

See the links below to find the website. While you’re there, check out some of the other short programs including a two-minute-forty-second summary of Atlas Shrugged, an examination of Internet anonymity and an explanation of how you may be born a Democrat or Republican. Some of the programs sound like miniature TED talks.

Hyperlinks

NY Times on e-books and democracy

Interview with DPLA excutive director

Best-sellers scarce in Spokane

Robert Darnton in the NY Review of Books

Digital Public Library of America

Wall Street Journal report on Apple antitrust suit

Lanier on the future of the digital economy

Academia Earth