E-Books as a Means to Revolution

In the past I've written about the E-Book Revolution as well as some of my thoughts on owning digital vs physical books. I'm still doing a lot of thinking on the subject and I think I may have come up with a pro for the Revolution.

The publishing industry, like most big businesses these days, is corrupt. There's no doubt about it. You have publishers swindling authors by paying them much less than they deserve, only to turn it around and charge way more than they should, then, on top of that, you have book sellers--both the so called "brick and mortar" as well as online retailers--upping the price again for profit. Of course, the publishing industry is not nearly as far gone as the music industry, or even that of the movie industry, but I feel like it's effects are far more devastating, both to the consumer as well as the author.

I am not an author myself, but working in a bookstore as well as reading author's blogs I feel like I have enough information to make a reasonable opinion of the situation. Authors spend months or years in a creative fever trying to write a book. They have to deal with their own criticisms, writers block, plot holes, and a whole host of other mentally challenging obstacles before the next step. Revision. They revise, revise, and revise again; tweaking, changing, adding before they have finally come up with something they're proud of, I've heard it likened to a child even. So they package it up and send it out to the world and wait, and wait, and wait before.. Rejection. As far as I can tell many authors to hit it big first off, but even if they pass that big hurtle, they're still stuck with "We at *insert publishing company here* are very interested in your book. We'll take a chance on you for $xxx.xx and a publishing run of xxxx copies..." and so on. Now sometimes the author will get the price they were expecting, but many times they're shortchanged, cheated, and robbed. I mean after they have spent so much time, money, and emotional well being on their work and yet the publishing company wants to offer you that much? This is where it can get shitty, if indeed they have put out a written a damn good book, they have been paid x amount of money to get it going, and only get x% of the profits as well, but because the author decided to settle for the publishing companies numbers they'll be getting all the profit. Now generally if the author hit it big they'll offer more for next book and so on, but this is where the major snag comes in because if the author does indeed keep writing those best sellers, publishers expect more books out of them. More than likely the author has to sign a contract stating that they'll write x number of books per year for x amount of money and this kills the creativity. Deadlines, stress, and nagging editors harass them at every turn, and generally the first book they wrote was with all their heart, now they just get things out on paper so they can meet the deadlines.

I've seen it happen, great authors like Nora Roberts, James Patterson, Danielle Steele, and Nelson DeMille just to name a few. Their first books were amazing, fantastic, one of a kind; the publishing company they signed up with saw this potential and dragged them into a binding contract. Now look at them, Patterson and Roberts alone put out 5-6 books a year and guess what? They are what I like to call "cookie cutter plots". Change the city, change the character names, and use the twist you had in your fourth book, and make this character fall in love with this one, and generally leave the plot as is. The reason these books continue to be popular is because consumers want to believe that because these authors were great at one time, then they must have it in them to be so again. Another reason is that once a publishing company finds something that "works" they do not want you to move away from it, the author may put in something more original, but instead of taking that chance again they edit it to look just like your last 8 books. Profit, profit, profit.

Naturally those authors I mentioned are successful and probably have a good deal of money, but do they have as much as they deserve? I don't think so honestly. It's all well and good that the publishing world is a business like any other, but I never have felt that businesses should screw over their employees. Books are especially touchy I think because, after all, none of the people who actually work at the publishing company can actually write worth a damn. So it would make sense to me that the author would be treated like a god, but no. Instead big wigs at the company make tons of money off authors' intellectual creativity and merely toss a sliver of that profit back to the author. They then decide pretty much everything about the book that isn't actual writing, they pick the cover artist, they pick what size to publish it in, they pick how many and how long to publish it, and then they merely ask what the author thinks--usually not so much. I believe that authors can escape this rat race with e-books.

As much as it pains me to see paper books are on their way out. Sure it won't be for a while, it might not even completely happen, but working at a bookstore I've noticed how much our sales have declined yet how much amazons e-book sales have jumped. There is a silver lining here, though, and that is for the authors which in turn will lead to the readers as well. Right now we have the Kindle, the Sony E-Reader, and the Nook out on the market with 50+ more already in development. Now is the time when authors can break away from the greed and the corruption of the publishing companies! So far Sony, Amazon, and B&N are arguing over prices of an e-book, they're also arguing with the publishers about those prices. If you haven't heard already, our dear friends over at Amazon want to monopolize e-books and e-book prices so much so that they pulled all of their books from the major publisher Macmillan over such a dispute. Check out the article over here. This whole incident has other publishers getting a little nervous; as well they should, because why exactly does an author even need a publisher for e-books? Amazons trying to market it so that authors sell their books directly to them, this is a baaaad idea though. What authors should realize from this little dispute is that the power is now in their hands again. Instead of going through a publisher or even an online retail like Amazon, Sony, or Borders, authors now have the chance to sell their own books! This may not seem like much right now, but shit, think about it! James Patterson is an international bestseller, if he were to say hey *insert publisher here* go fuck yourselves I'm going to sell my own books, what could they actually do? They'll probably beg and plead for him to stay, but anyone with business sense would realize that he'd make a much bigger profit from selling them on his own. I mean really, he could hire a freelance editor, and then when he finishes his book why even bother with taking only x amount of the profit when he could put it up on his website and make 100% of the profit. It wouldn't be hard, he'd still sell a ton of books because he could price them as low as he wants and still make a hearty profit, and because he is already a huge international author he wouldn't even need the advertising from the publishing companies--which I believe is their only real use these days.

I know the appeal of a solid book, but I can't help but see the possibility of completely changing the publishing world. Unfortunately, because in print books still make up the largest portion of sales for an author, one or two authors wouldn't be able to accomplish this it has to be a group effort, it has to a bunch of the big name authors coming together and sticking it to the man. You get James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Clive Cussler, Dan Brown, Orson Scott Card, Stephanie Meyer, Stephen King, and a few other big names and the publishing industry would be crippled! Now with that many big names going independent it wouldn't take long for younger more green authors to follow suit, and soon publishing companies will have two options: Completely gut and reorganize their industry or loose buckets and buckets of money, if not go out of business all together. Sure they might fight, but they would have no real cards in their hand, sure they might have the rights to certain books for a certain amount of time, but that won't be enough. People want new books by these authors not the same thing they've already read. How would the new publishing world look? Well for one authors would have complete rights to their books, no "we'll take a chance on you and buy your book from you for x number of years", the publishers get the privilege of putting their name on the book, that way authors can sell paper books in major retailers as well as put their e-books up on their own website for their pure profit. Next authors should get at least 50% of the profits, I know that publishing paper books is not cheap, but it is not so expensive that you can get away with an 80% : 20% publisher : author ratio. This in turn will mean that publishers will have to restructure their prices to be more reasonable in terms of what it costs them to print the book and what they charge for it. Somehow I don't think it costs even $20 a book for hardcovers and yet publishers list the price at $25+ per book. Sadly I can't seem to find any accurate information on how much publishers actually make because of this, but I feel like they can lower the prices of all of the books. This will also mean that instead of keeping a book under hardcover for a full year (or more) will fade away. Most books do not last a full year in hardcover with even decent sales, what they should do is put books up for 3 months, if sales are good, up it to a maximum of 6 months and then send the book to paperback.

The next thing this restructure will do is stop the rampant corruption that has filled the publishing world. Most people don't know, but the New York Times Bestseller List is a load of shit. Yes that's right, a load of shit. Why you ask? Because publishers contact Borders or Barnes and Nobel and say "hey for $xxxx I want you to get everyone in your company to market this book" this is all under the table by the way. I've seen it done. Just looking at the NYT Bestseller list this week 4 of the top 10 are best sellers because of Borders, which may not seem like a lot, but you have to take into account that 4 others are on the list because of their movies. That leaves 2 books that made the top ten because of being well written. 2% that's wretched. Of course it's not always through bookstores that they do this, many publishers send their books to Oprah, hmm I wonder why? Every Single One of her "recommendations" has been number one on the best seller list. Why is this important? Because many, many, many people only buy books if they have a NYT Bestseller stamps on them. They won't look at books that have won actual awards--which you might notice are hardly ever on the NYT list--they won't touch anything but these books because they think that if everyone else is buying it, it must be good. Nope, actually employees at Borders and B&N are told you have to sell this many of this book, and if they don't their hours get cut, which means the store loses money, which means that everyone working at these retailers has become sharks because without hours, no money, no money, no food, no food, death. Furthermore employees actually get in trouble with their management if they don't sell these books. It doesn't matter if the books actually suck, it doesn't matter who the customer is, you have to try your hardest to sell these books even if it's not something even related to what the customers purchase. You could be a big buff biker who only reads hunting books we will still recommend things like Twilight to you. You have to note as well that we booksellers and even the management do not know where the corporate offices pull these books out of their ass, and when we ask they say "oh we just liked it". Right. If they had actually even read the back of these books we're forced to sell they would know that they are not very good, nor do they actually appeal to a wide variety of people, this and the fact that they all hit the NYT list makes me believe publishers have money that isn't accounted for. If the structure was reset, though, publishing companies would have to consult with authors before they do anything with that author's book. Now sure, there are going to be some greedy authors out there, but generally I think authors want to make the List off their own skills, not because a thousand borders around the country are forcing it on hapless customers. Even if it's just a foolish fairytale that's what I believe.

I don't know if it will ever happen, but I think now is the time for something to happen if it will. Authors have to strike against the publishers before they all fall in line together and it becomes practically suicide to market your own books. You wrote the book. You put in the time for it. You sweat blood and tears for your books, take a stand, and take back what is actually yours! Publishers nor book retailers have no write to set the price of your e-book, they aren't doing anything with it in terms of supplies, they may market it a bit, but most authors have a huge following already on their website! It wouldn't even be hard; e-books are merely a text document that you can put up on your website with hardly any cost to yourself. Lastly, you don't want your fans to be screwed do you? We're your life blood, we only put up with publishing companies because of the huge monopoly they have over your works. Now is the time to take matters into your own hands!