Wow!! What a great interview and from SETH himself. Great information.

Brilliant! As usual, Seth is spot on and opens our thinking. His ideas are gifts from the future —of publishing.

Great Blog post.

Seth is always so lucid and insightful. Here’s what I translate him as saying:

Books are a small part of publishing in this day and age. Publishers should publish a lot more and be open to the new model of “selling souvenirs” as well. There’s a reason authors like Suze Ordman can giveaway their book and still have it be their biggest seller when the hardcover version comes out.

It’s also about building community. The drip of the book launch should not overshadow the work and communications that before, during and after launch.

People talk a lot and a launch date is only a small part of the conversation.

Cheap ebooks are a lovely thought, but if a publisher wants to sell their books through the major book venues like Fictionwise and Amazon/Kindle, they must price the book with that in mind.

The vast majority of buyers only buy through the big venues instead of through the publisher website so most publishers can’t break even if they don’t have their books at places like Fictionwise.

I know that for every book I sell through one of my publishers’ sites, I sell 100 or more at the big venues.

Here’s why books have to be priced more expensively if they are to be sold through the big venues.

FictionWise makes 50% on each ebook sold so even if the publisher prices the book near cost, he would have to increase the price by 50% just to break even. Amazon/Kindle takes 66% of the cover price. The same problem.

What’s left is usually divided evenly between the publisher and the writer if it’s an epublisher, 15% for the author for major publishers.

And if the publisher doesn’t put the book’s price high enough, the middleman venues where a majority of ebooks are sold aren’t interested in the product because they can’t come out even after they do their usual price markdown.

If the publisher wishes to keep his books at the big venues, he can’t undersell the books at his own site.

In the best of all possible worlds, the reader would pay a few bucks, but readers want the simplicity of buying at one site, not many, so the prices go up. Sad, but true.

I may very well be getting my first Kindle shortly, stay tuned. There so many things on the internet about hacking those things, it’ll be interesting to see what else I can do with it once I get it. I was trying to decide between a Kindle and a Sony EReader (since Sony is so much prettier) but the convenience of downloading through the air won over. Also, I think Sony should offer a device that you attach that will pretty much do the same thing.

Maybe I’m being a dinosaur, but I don’t see that this model for the future is very different for the author from the present. As it is at the moment, only 10% of writers can make a living writing nothing but what they want to write – the rest of us already make up the difference with ‘bespoke’ writing , or teaching, or editing, or working in a shop. The only difference in this model is that we will no longer be paid at all for the work which is the creative lifeblood of the arts in the future.

I don’t see anyone saying that editors and publishers and printers and e-book designers and booksellers should do it all for free: it seems only writers are supposed to do it for the joy of it. And in the nature of things, there will be some of us who will then no longer be able to afford to write at all, because it’s next to impossible to write consistently well, and productively, over the years, while doing a full time job, and that’s before you’ve added children to the equation. This model – which sounds so egalitarian, with its cry of ‘May the most desirable writers win’ – is actually deeply, poisonously elitist. It restricts creative practice to those who inherit or marry an independent source of income. Guess who won’t be able to start and keep writing, if the market refuses to pay them anything at all? All the kinds of writer we need most, if writing is to go on being at the centre of cultural life and change: the new voices from hitherto silenced communities, the odd, the old and wise, the unpredictable, the erudite, the unfashionable, the un-pitchable, the un-sound-bite-able.

Besides, they haven’t come up with an e-reader yet that works in the bath or in bright sunlight, so they’re not much use in my two favourite reading places.

I also agree with what Emma is saying. It’s all fine and good to start building a platform with free content, but at some point, someone has to cough up some money.

Giving things away or practically giving them away just for the sake of it, doesn’t put money in writers’ pockets.

I’m a huge Seth fan and this interview is spot on. Giving away your knowledge for free is actually a brilliant way for people to find you. I found Seth first through The Ideavirus which was given away free everywhere. Then I bought his books. Publishers may not be able to make money by giving information away for free, but authors definitely can. You can build relationships and build a back-end model of products on top of your books that bring in cashflow, as opposed to only having your book. People are also used to finding information for free on the net, so if you don’t offer it they will get it elsewhere.
I also agree that digitalisation will enable more creativity, and more power to authors, not less. People in big corporations will make less money, but the people who create the content will have more opportunity to reap the rewards.

The great lie that under girds this interview is that the music industry is now fiscally solvent. That’s absurd. The music industry is in an incredibly perilous place right now, and it is so because of illegal downloading. The idea that the publishing industry should follow the lessons of the music industry is absurd– follow them into bankruptcy?

Like Emma, but without as much pessimism, I do wonder why writers aren’t at the dead center of this question. If publishing is to learn from music, it should learn not only that consumers won’t pirate so much if they’re able to conveniently get the high-quality content they want at the price they want, but that the current state of technology allows the producers of content to distribute it themselves in ways they couldn’t even five years ago. Because now not only are there self-publishing services that offer higher quality products both digital and print, but there are ubiquitous tools for promotion that allow a savvy user to market herself and her work to a massive audience. I don’t mean to imply it would be easy, but I do mean to imply that it’s entirely possible.

I’m not saying that publishers have become obsolete, but I am saying that the music industry hurt from its own stubbornness to a great extent because musicians worked around them entirely. Seth isn’t really correct when he says there’s more music now. It’s just that we (consumers) *know about* more music now because instead of it sitting in discarded demo tapes, it’s circulating (sometimes widely) because musicians decided to publish it themselves. Similarly, I disagree with Warren. There aren’t more ideas now, it’s just that we’re able to read more of them because more thinkers are able to publish.

Something that writers have that musicians don’t is the means to inexpensively produce our work. We don’t need expensive software, even, let alone instruments, microphones, or, for the most ambitious of us, recording studios.

Perhaps soon writers will do what musicians started doing, which is to ask the following:

What can a publisher provide me that I can’t provide for myself? What can a publisher do better? How much money is that worth?

“Something that writers have that musicians don’t is the means to inexpensively produce our work. We don’t need expensive software, even, let alone instruments, microphones, or, for the most ambitious of us, recording studios.”

Something that musicians have that writers don’t is an easy way to make money from their art that is independent of the evolution of recording technology — concerts. A band could give away all its recordings for free and people would still pay to see them perform. A writer gives away all his work for free and people will still pay to see — what, exactly? There are, to be sure, writers gifted with rich, melodious speaking voices and a ready wit — but they’re pretty damn far from the rule, since being a good writer and being an entertaining public speaker are entirely different skills. Perhaps a business writer who has supplementary products related to their book to sell — seminars, videos, etc — can afford to give away their books. But for most writers, any value they’re generating is there on the page. If technology evolves to the point where the page becomes free it is difficult to see how writers can make a living, unless they become the subjects of patronage, charity, and advertising.

I am a book illustrator and I don’t have a single colleague who doesn’t concern themselves with units sold. That’s how we make a living.

Seth is spot on, but much of the commentary is way off.

A Book is one static form of content, nothing more. This static piece of content is used to meet some of the needs of the authors readers/fans. A book is almost never the end all and be all for the reader. The book is one way for the author to develop a relationship with his/her audience.

What’s interesting to note is that most publishers are having a hard time making money. Why? Because their model is broken.

If Publishers and authors intend to make money in the future the entire industry should be flipped on its head.

Publishing in the future, to be successful, should take on a venture capital role.

Publishers should stop investing in 1 piece of content (where they have small profit margins and very small margins) and start investing in the “Though Leader” themselves.

Authors typically don’t make money from the sale of a book, they make money from what the book does for them and their business personally.

Publishers should be helping “Thought leaders” develop content, build their Though Leadership business and making revenue not just from the sale of the book, but from the other back end products and services they help to generate.

This would require a bigger investment by both Authors and Publishers but, would have a far better net for all parties involved.

Michael R. Drew
Promote A Book Inc.
512-586-6073

The publishing industry HAS learned from the music business.

Publishers will offer e-books and the market will decide to buy them or not. The price will be adjusted accordingly, but as Seth says, it will be somewhere between one dollar and fifteen dollars – it won’t be free.

The market may not care if you make money from it (though the market is happy enough to give money to computer manufacturers, e-readers and internet providors) but if no one does it’s not a market anymore.

You’re absolutely right: the marketplace doesn’t care if I make money. On the other hand, I care. If I don’t make money, I have to find another line of work, which means my ideas (which I’m currently turning into books and stories) will wind up amusing only me in my head, while I go out and dig ditches (or whatever) to keep food on the table and roof over head.

I love the idealism you express here (sounds a lot like Cory Doctorow’s continuing refrain about anonymity versus income), but why is it that the examples cited are always the creators who’ve been doing it for a long time and already have a huge customer/fan base and lots of income coming in? Because those just starting out can’t afford to be so altruistic for long enough to develop the following.

Obviously, we may be at an awkward cusp between the current “create something and get paid” economy and the “create something, but don’t worry about getting paid, because your needs are provided for anyway” economy. I’d very much enjoy moving into the latter one, but at the moment, I’m too new, and must firmly plant myself in the former.

And as to your specific comment: “Authors don’t care about units sold. They care about ideas spread.” Again, that’s the post-needs future, when we can get from “start” to “enough people know and love us to pay money to hear us speak” or however else we’ll make our financial living.

Ian Randal Strock
Author, The Presidential Book of Lists
Editor, SFScope.com

Awesome interview with incredible information. thank you

Just came across your blog on Google. Interesting post, you bring up a few good things to think about. Good luck with the blog.