For, um, ever… publishers have maintained this image – a faceless institution, it’s inner workings only revealed in aspirational sit-rom-coms from the US whose leads need a “serious” profession – and it’s mostly been a successful position to take. Now, though, I think it’s holding them back from evolving into the new age of publishing. In a global market in which customer loyalty is closely tied to brand, publishers have no tangible entity upon which to build a brand. Their product is branded based on the author name on the cover or the characters within, and their employees – the editors, typesetters, salesmen, marketers, designers, etc. that represent the true worth of the company – are unseen. Could you name a single editor working for one of the big six? Could someone browsing Amazon with no interest in publishing beyond the books under their mouse pointer?

Could you name a record producer?

I can name a few. They stand just behind the band when it comes to claiming responsibility for the quality of an album. Some would say they deserve more credit than that.

So why don’t book editors – their literary counterparts – command the same respect? No one, no matter how vehemently they champion the self-publishing cause – can deny the benefit of the input of a good editor. But the people working within publishing houses, specifically the big six, aren’t good editors; they’re great editors. They’re literary surgeons working at the top of their field. They can make a good book great, and a great book legendary. So who the hell are they?

As the deluge of content that self-publishing has permitted lands on eShop shelves, people are looking for curation to filter that flow. Crowd-sourced filtering will be the primary mechanism (recommendations and reviews) but there’s still a need for champions – people to identify and promote good writing. I’m not talking about tastemakers (oh, how I hate that term); I’m talking about authoritative voices. People whose opinion is established, tested and trusted. That’s the kind of value you can hang a brand on.

Yet the publishing houses still seem reluctant to open their doors – just a crack – to show us the inhabitants and workings of the chocolate factory. As marketing budgets for new books shrink, the money available to market the parent company seems tighter still.

Or is the publishing industry hiding its stars on purpose? If an editor could make an eBook a hit by offering their patronage, and a mega hit by working with a vetted, paying author directly, what’s left for a publisher to do that a freelance cover designer couldn’t?

With the need for a publisher already being questioned by many authors, what use for them would an independent, respected, branded editor with an impressive cv and an overflowing list of potential clients choose?

When Amazon released the Kindle application for the Mac last week, I downloaded and installed it, then went onto the store to see what was available. I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I found some bestsellers around the $10 mark (yes, I have to buy in dollars and stitch a commission when my credit card company performs the exchange) and a lot around the $0 mark. As in, a LOT of free eBooks. Guess which I bought?

Neither. I went to the Amazon UK store and ordered a couple of paperbacks instead. Seriously – I’m not just trying to make a point.

My thinking was this:

• $10, with an exchange commission, is about £7 on my credit card bill. That’s almost the price of a new release paperback in Waterstones. On Amazon UK, I can get the same paperback for between £4 and £5 if I don’t mind waiting a couple of days for free delivery (and bear in mind that this is a book for my reading pile, not music or a movie; I can wait). If I don’t get the physical book to keep, I’m not prepared to pay more than half of the cover price for an eBook edition, so for an £8 print book, my eLimit is £4.
• A price of $0 tells me that you don’t think your book is worth anything. I understand that writers want to build a fanbase and get “sales”, but a fanbase of people who “bought” your book for free is simply a list of people who downloaded your book. They didn’t pay for it, so there’s no compulsion to read it and extract value from it. And if you spent 2 years writing it, and don’t think it’s even worth one penny, why should they risk 10-12 hours of their time reading it when there are books to be read by authors who think their work is good enough to justify charging a fee in return for their time, writing skills and creativity? I know authors whose only goal is be as widely read as possible, and I admire that goal, but I’m not sure giving your work away for free is the way to do it. 1000 unread downloads doesn’t generate word-of-mouth. How about charging one dollar and giving the proceeds to charity (and making the charitable nature of the sale clear in the online store)? Now that would probably sell and be read.

I know that the eBook market is aimed more at customers using eReader devices, but I wanted to buy a book, and if I factor in the price of hardware, that first eBook purchase is going to cost over £200, with no guaranteed savings over the following years to cover that outlay.  And I can get the same book on Amazon UK for £4…

So, my first foray into eBooks was a non-starter. I tried, honestly I did. I looked around and read some blurbs and compared some prices, but couldn’t find a price point I was happy with for a book that interested me. I was disappointed.

So how has this affected my opinion on whether to publish Make a Move as an eBook? Find out tomorrow…

The Hurdles

Before the eBook market becomes a serious contender, I can see a series of hurdles holding back mass acceptance:

• FreeBooks. The race to the bottom has seen most books by independent or minor authors on sale for jack – $0. Trading financial remuneration for exposure, these authors/publishers have driven the market into the ground, to the point where the content has been so devalued, even if people do start charging again, it’s going to take a long time before customers are prepared to pay.
• Loss-leading. At the other end of the scale, blockbuster titles are selling at heavily discounted prices; for example, at time of writing, the Twilight novels are selling on the Kindle store for just north of $5. This means that even if customers are prepared to pay more than nothing for a book, you’re very soon going to hit a ceiling beyond which you can’t charge. There’s no market in that gap.
• Format Wars. A slew of new eBook readers arrived at the CES show this week, and with them comes an increasing number of conflicting eBook formats and DRM systems. I don’t know exactly how many formats, as I don’t care, which is my point. Customers don’t want to be restricted in what they can and can’t do with their content, and don’t want to be stuck with hundreds of pounds-worth of eBooks that only work on a dying platform. There has to be consolidation, and it has to happen quickly, otherwise the market will be dead before it’s started (look at what happened to HD DVD: people waited and waited to see which format would become the standard, to the point where they gave up waiting, and now the winner also the loser).
• Publisher Acceptance. The book publishing industry is chasing its tail trying to work out how to survive in the digital real, and they’re not, in my opinion, playing it smart. When Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, they became the gatekeepers to a way around the music piracy problem; the record companies needed Apple, and as a result they got reamed on the deal. The book industry doesn’t have a problem – at least, not to the same extent – yet they seem to be elevating Amazon to a position of power. It’s not like book pirates are scanning books in their bedrooms and uploading the pdfs to torrent sites. So why are the publishing companies letting Amazon lead them in this dance? They need to work out a deal in which everyone, and not just the technology manufacturers, benefits and books, and good writing, don’t become the innocent casualties. Then they could focus on how to market and manage this new product. Of course, if the publishers realised that by joining together for a common good, they could kill off eBooks within a month by refusing to move to a digital platform. But that would be naughty.

I’m not anti-eBooks. Not really. I think eBook textbooks for students are an amazing concept, and newspapers/magazines could flourish in the digital space. And I do know a few people who read a lot and don’t want to own the paper books, and they could be a good niche market for eBook publishers. Whatever happens, I just want it to be over. All of this wrestling to establish the market, it only really harms consumers, and it seems that, as always, the media companies are fine with that.

But this is books, not pop music, and not Hollywood movies. There’s always been a certain legitimacy associated with the book industry – an element of class. How about we keep that traditional image intact, and just get this done as quickly, and as painlessly as possible?