TeleRead editor Paul Biba has been in New York at the ebook boffins conference, the O’Reilly Tools of Change. It’s a symposium for the digital publishing industry, trying to map out a path for the future of ebooks and digital content.
In case you’ve missed his coverage, here’s the cheat notes (so far). Each post is by Paul and contains a transcript of the session:
Tools of Change: Workshop – Going digital: launching a digital-first business from within a traditional publisher
Tools of Change: Workshop – Going digital: launching a digital-first business from within a traditional publisher
Tools of Change: Workship – designing iPad apps
And finally there was the keynote address…
Tools of Change: Keynote – The publishing pie: an author’s view, by Margaret Atwood
During the address, Margaret Atwood talks about how she isn’t a techy person, and would prefer to sit and write, rather than talk at tech conferences. Fair enough, she’s an author.
She goes on top say how crazy it would be to do anything to make an author’s life harder (and even less profitable) – and there’s no argument anywhere here. But then this:
Authors make less on the sale price of ebooks than they do on paper books. As ebooks increase that means that author’s slice of the pie is shrinking. Helpful industry hint: never eliminate your primary source. A dead moose maintains the food chain for at least thirty other life forms.
Wha? The? F? Margaret must be on a hellava contract, and given her popularity that is probably the case. But to generalise that “authors” make less on ebooks that their pbooks through major publishers is just whacked. Not to mention the moose references.
As a self-confessed “non-techy” person, perhaps she should focus on the page, rather than the lectern.
Margaret is right – but ONLY for major hardcover authors. Check the Authors Guild figures, which, typically for the AG, are only for hardcover sales. Trade PBs and it’s line ball depending on sales, but for Mass Market PB originals, there’s no question authors make more on e- than they do on p-. And there are way more authors as a percentage of all authors who publish in mass market original formats.
have a look at this from the US Authors’ Guild on the ‘royalty gap’: authors with print-originated contracts do seem to be missing out
‘we found that publishers do far better by selling e-books than hardcovers (realizing “e-gains” of 27% to 77%), while the authors do much worse (suffering “e-losses” of 17% to 39%).’
http://authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/the-e-book-royalty-mess-an-interim.html
Yes – fair point. Because they’re applying the same publisher-weighted paper-book contracts to ebooks.