4 ms·

IIRC the Gini coefficient among authors in the UK is something like 0.7. The income stratification is insane. Tim Ferris's figures match my experience. What he

by cstross 16y ago

IIRC the Gini coefficient among authors in the UK is something like 0.7. The income stratification is insane. Tim Ferris's figures match my experience. What he doesn't make explicit is that "publishing" is about fourteen different vertically integrated businesses flying in loose formation -- genre fiction publishing, for example (my stomping ground) is utterly different from business publishing or academic publishing, although the products are sometimes sold via the same retail channels -- and the prospects for a successful career vary drastically between fields. Nor does success in one field imply a track record transferable sideways into another publishing field. I'd also pick a nit: in my experience, ebook sales (and Amazon Kindle store sales in particular) are dwarfed by hardcover sales -- by a 50:1 ratio, in fact. Amazon are almost certainly cherry-picking if they can come up with books where Kindle sales outstrip hardcover. However, that's looking backwards -- it's fairly clear that ebooks are a rapidly growing sector and in another 2-5 years they'll definitively overtake hardcover sales by volume, if not by revenue. (Hardcovers net roughly $16 after discount, of which 10-15% goes to the author; Kindle store books net $7-10, of which Amazon takes a 30% cut before 5-10% of the remainder goes to the author.)

unwind 16y ago
On the happy (and perhaps naive, this being the Internet and all) assumption that you are a certain writer of awesomeness, hailing from Scotland, here's a very topical question: how about co-launching a book both in hardcover and trade paperback, at the same (high) pricepoint? For me personally, I don't want books in hardcover, ever. I always hold out for the trade paperback. It's quite annoying that, from the authors' point of view, my preference works out to me being a cheapskate who gives them less royalty. But I just don't want hardcovers, they're not at all attractive. There's been many occasions when I've been at my SF book store of choice, realizing some author I like has released a new book, and then my next thought is "okay, so in 3-6 months or whatever I can get this". :| I guess I could move to e-books, if the price/royalty/release date data is better there, but I really like physical pocket books, still.
- cstross 16y ago
  how about co-launching a book both in hardcover and trade paperback, at the same (high) pricepoint? Alas, that's not how publishing works; I create and sell the IP that goes between the covers, but how those covers are put together and marketed isn't my department (and I have no control over it). One point to note is that commercial fiction publishing runs on a reverse-auction basis: prices start high, then drop. Hardcovers (perceived as high value items) come out first, then are superseded by successively cheaper/smaller paperback editions after early-adopter demand is saturated by the high priced product. Unfortunately the pricing model is conflated with the physical product's format, and with the distribution channel (trade vs. mass market), which muddies the water enormously. (I'd love to do an ebook edition that launched at, say, $20, then dropped in price by 5% per month until hitting a floor of $4. It'd be interesting to graph sales against time ... but unfortunately the accounting procedures in place in the publishing business, and locked in via contract, seem to make this impossible without either (a) self-publishing or (b) protracted negotiations with a legal department that are not dissimilar to kicking a dead sperm whale up a beach. In high summer.)
  - unwind 16y ago
    Thanks a lot, that jives well with your blogged articles about how the publishing work flow works (or doesn't work). So I guess "that's not how it's done" was basically what I expected. And yeah, the e-book concept would be very interesting, too bad it's not possible from where you're at. We need an author that is ... successful enough to not have to depend on publishing as an income to write something that people want, and then publish it using that e-book model. I'll go and sit over there, waiting for that to happen.
  - ido 16y ago
    seem to make this impossible without either (a) self-publishing or (b) protracted negotiations with a legal department that are not dissimilar to kicking a dead sperm whale up a beach. In high summer.) That does raise the question, tho - why aren't you self-publishing[1]? You already have a dedicated fan base (I'm one of them - I think you're basically the only currently-living sci-fi author I still read), getting the word out and selling the books online is surely possible? Even tho you'd presumably get fewer sales from not being in stores, wouldn't avoiding giving 90% of your revenue to a middle-man possibly make up for it? IIRC some rock band (I think it was REM or U2) recently successfully did just that by selling their album only in digital format online. [1] I have no clue about the publishing industry, just curious as to why this isn't done more often.
jonknee 16y ago
> I'd also pick a nit: in my experience, ebook sales (and Amazon Kindle store sales in particular) are dwarfed by hardcover sales -- by a 50:1 ratio, in fact. Amazon are almost certainly cherry-picking if they can come up with books where Kindle sales outstrip hardcover. However, that's looking backwards -- it's fairly clear that ebooks are a rapidly growing sector and in another 2-5 years they'll definitively overtake hardcover sales by volume, if not by revenue. (Hardcovers net roughly $16 after discount, of which 10-15% goes to the author; Kindle store books net $7-10, of which Amazon takes a 30% cut before 5-10% of the remainder goes to the author.) As mentioned in the article, Amazon already sells more Kindle books than they do hardcover books so I fail to see why they would need to cherry pick. And no need to wait 2-5 years, the future is here.
- jseliger 16y ago
  As mentioned in the article, Amazon already sells more Kindle books than they do hardcover books so I fail to see why they would need to cherry pick. And no need to wait 2-5 years, the future is here. But Amazon has talked about how they got to that number and won't provide many specifics about Kindle sales in general. In addition, if Amazon is selling an equal number of books, then hardcover sales can still generate more revenue, which is what Stross points out: "they'll definitively overtake hardcover sales by volume, if not by revenue".
- ghshephard 16y ago
  Yeah - I didn't get that part either. I'm guessing what the OP was saying was that for "new best selling releases that come out in Hard Cover and Kindle, but not Softcover, the Hard Cover Sells 50:1" - or something like that. I find it hard to believe that 50x more Hard Covers than Kindles are selling in 2010 - I saw three kindles and One iPad on the Plane back from BWI to Phoenix last weekend (Plus my iPad). Speaking as an owner of a K1, K2, iPad, and in a week or two a K3, I'm putting the future out to Five years before eBooks become the dominant form of consuming light fiction in the United States, possibly even less. Ebook readers are going to get very cheap, very quickly. I'm expecting WiFi Kindle will be sub $99 within twelve months. And that will be a Hot, Hot Christmas Gift. But, we may see it more quickly in the TextBook Market - those new inkling textbooks are _killer_ - I'd hate to be in the business of owning a University Textbook store right now. Their days are _very_ numbered. My call is minimum 50% business lost within 3 years, and close to 100% within 7 years. The kindle made me think that there would be a long time before there was a market for electronic textbooks (The Kindle is a horrible experience for textbooks) - The iPad+Inkling (and similar tablet/e-textbook frameworks to be released soon) make me think we're going to be blown away by how fast the conversion takes place. Fall 2010 - .5% of Students get their textbooks in eBook format. Spring 2011 - 1% Fall 2011 - 3%, Spring 2012 - 8%, Fall 2012 - 15%. Spring 2013 - 25%, Fall 2013 50% of all University textbooks in eBook format. Textbooks w/Social Networking are here! (Literally - the Inkling App lets you share notes on the content with your classmates - and has a world class highlighting feature) Inkling is the Killer App for the iPad.

by cstross 16y ago

unwind 16y ago

On the happy (and perhaps naive, this being the Internet and all) assumption that you are a certain writer of awesomeness, hailing from Scotland, here's a very topical question: how about co-launching a book both in hardcover and trade paperback, at the same (high) pricepoint? For me personally, I don't want books in hardcover, ever. I always hold out for the trade paperback. It's quite annoying that, from the authors' point of view, my preference works out to me being a cheapskate who gives them less royalty. But I just don't want hardcovers, they're not at all attractive. There's been many occasions when I've been at my SF book store of choice, realizing some author I like has released a new book, and then my next thought is "okay, so in 3-6 months or whatever I can get this". :| I guess I could move to e-books, if the price/royalty/release date data is better there, but I really like physical pocket books, still.

cstross 16y ago
how about co-launching a book both in hardcover and trade paperback, at the same (high) pricepoint? Alas, that's not how publishing works; I create and sell the IP that goes between the covers, but how those covers are put together and marketed isn't my department (and I have no control over it). One point to note is that commercial fiction publishing runs on a reverse-auction basis: prices start high, then drop. Hardcovers (perceived as high value items) come out first, then are superseded by successively cheaper/smaller paperback editions after early-adopter demand is saturated by the high priced product. Unfortunately the pricing model is conflated with the physical product's format, and with the distribution channel (trade vs. mass market), which muddies the water enormously. (I'd love to do an ebook edition that launched at, say, $20, then dropped in price by 5% per month until hitting a floor of $4. It'd be interesting to graph sales against time ... but unfortunately the accounting procedures in place in the publishing business, and locked in via contract, seem to make this impossible without either (a) self-publishing or (b) protracted negotiations with a legal department that are not dissimilar to kicking a dead sperm whale up a beach. In high summer.)
- unwind 16y ago
  Thanks a lot, that jives well with your blogged articles about how the publishing work flow works (or doesn't work). So I guess "that's not how it's done" was basically what I expected. And yeah, the e-book concept would be very interesting, too bad it's not possible from where you're at. We need an author that is ... successful enough to not have to depend on publishing as an income to write something that people want, and then publish it using that e-book model. I'll go and sit over there, waiting for that to happen.
- ido 16y ago
  seem to make this impossible without either (a) self-publishing or (b) protracted negotiations with a legal department that are not dissimilar to kicking a dead sperm whale up a beach. In high summer.) That does raise the question, tho - why aren't you self-publishing[1]? You already have a dedicated fan base (I'm one of them - I think you're basically the only currently-living sci-fi author I still read), getting the word out and selling the books online is surely possible? Even tho you'd presumably get fewer sales from not being in stores, wouldn't avoiding giving 90% of your revenue to a middle-man possibly make up for it? IIRC some rock band (I think it was REM or U2) recently successfully did just that by selling their album only in digital format online. [1] I have no clue about the publishing industry, just curious as to why this isn't done more often.

jonknee 16y ago

> I'd also pick a nit: in my experience, ebook sales (and Amazon Kindle store sales in particular) are dwarfed by hardcover sales -- by a 50:1 ratio, in fact. Amazon are almost certainly cherry-picking if they can come up with books where Kindle sales outstrip hardcover. However, that's looking backwards -- it's fairly clear that ebooks are a rapidly growing sector and in another 2-5 years they'll definitively overtake hardcover sales by volume, if not by revenue. (Hardcovers net roughly $16 after discount, of which 10-15% goes to the author; Kindle store books net $7-10, of which Amazon takes a 30% cut before 5-10% of the remainder goes to the author.) As mentioned in the article, Amazon already sells more Kindle books than they do hardcover books so I fail to see why they would need to cherry pick. And no need to wait 2-5 years, the future is here.

jseliger 16y ago
As mentioned in the article, Amazon already sells more Kindle books than they do hardcover books so I fail to see why they would need to cherry pick. And no need to wait 2-5 years, the future is here. But Amazon has talked about how they got to that number and won't provide many specifics about Kindle sales in general. In addition, if Amazon is selling an equal number of books, then hardcover sales can still generate more revenue, which is what Stross points out: "they'll definitively overtake hardcover sales by volume, if not by revenue".
ghshephard 16y ago
Yeah - I didn't get that part either. I'm guessing what the OP was saying was that for "new best selling releases that come out in Hard Cover and Kindle, but not Softcover, the Hard Cover Sells 50:1" - or something like that. I find it hard to believe that 50x more Hard Covers than Kindles are selling in 2010 - I saw three kindles and One iPad on the Plane back from BWI to Phoenix last weekend (Plus my iPad). Speaking as an owner of a K1, K2, iPad, and in a week or two a K3, I'm putting the future out to Five years before eBooks become the dominant form of consuming light fiction in the United States, possibly even less. Ebook readers are going to get very cheap, very quickly. I'm expecting WiFi Kindle will be sub $99 within twelve months. And that will be a Hot, Hot Christmas Gift. But, we may see it more quickly in the TextBook Market - those new inkling textbooks are _killer_ - I'd hate to be in the business of owning a University Textbook store right now. Their days are _very_ numbered. My call is minimum 50% business lost within 3 years, and close to 100% within 7 years. The kindle made me think that there would be a long time before there was a market for electronic textbooks (The Kindle is a horrible experience for textbooks) - The iPad+Inkling (and similar tablet/e-textbook frameworks to be released soon) make me think we're going to be blown away by how fast the conversion takes place. Fall 2010 - .5% of Students get their textbooks in eBook format. Spring 2011 - 1% Fall 2011 - 3%, Spring 2012 - 8%, Fall 2012 - 15%. Spring 2013 - 25%, Fall 2013 50% of all University textbooks in eBook format. Textbooks w/Social Networking are here! (Literally - the Inkling App lets you share notes on the content with your classmates - and has a world class highlighting feature) Inkling is the Killer App for the iPad.