October 28th, 2008
eBooks get social, pose further threat to traditional publishers
When most industry observers examine the impact of social media on traditional media industries, the focus inevitability turns to easily digitized media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, television and music.
But what about books, and more specifically eBooks? To get a sense of where eBooks are headed in the socialsphere, I checked in with Mark Coker, founder and CEO of Smashwords, an innovative eBook publishing startup I’ve been watching since their public beta launch earlier this year. In the interview, Mark comments on how the rise of social publishing, eBooks and indie authorship could spell difficultly for traditional book publishers.
Q. [Jennifer] To start, I want to make sure everyone understands exactly what Smashwords is.
A. [Mark] We help authors publish, sample and sell multi-format, DRM-free eBooks. The books are readable on e-reading devices like the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, PCs, or even printable to plain paper. Authors simply upload their finished manuscript as a Microsoft Word file and set the price and sampling privileges.
Q. Who owns the content, and how do you compensate the authors?
A. We put the author in complete control over their published works. Our publishing agreement is non-exclusive. We give them 85 percent of the net sales proceeds of their books.
Q. If you publish any book, how do you filter the good from the bad?
A. As a community publishing platform, our authors can publish anything but readers decide what’s worth reading. Readers vote with their dollars and eyeballs, and the best and most popular works bubble up to the top of our listings.
Q. What benefits if any does social publishing provide over the traditional publishing model?
A. The traditional model for print publishing is broken. The system is clogged with expensive intermediaries - literary agents, editors, publishers, printers, distributors and bookstores - that stand between the author and their prospective reader. The cost problem is further exacerbated because publishers have no way to predict demand, so they often print twice as many books as they can sell. The high costs mean that published book authors seldom earn more than their advance, and most publishers lose money on the vast majority of the titles they publish. Many authors see self-publishing as a more viable method.
Next: Indie authorship’s impact on traditional publishers –>
Jennifer Leggio, aka "Mediaphyter," writes about the "social business" side of social media - including enterprise, security and reputation issues. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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