the blog of author, illustrator and designer Kris Waldherr » Publishing Monday: alternative publishing models

01.26

Publishing Monday: alternative publishing models

To be fair, my recent posts on book advances (read them here and here) offered only one way authors can make money from their books. (Yes, there’s also self publishing and print on demand, but that’s an entirely different ball of wax.) Someone recently commented that his small-sized publisher did not offer him an advance; instead, he was given a bigger royalty rate in liu of. Well, turns out that big publishers are trying on this alternative publishing model for size.

HarperCollins recently started a new imprint, Harper Studio. Their mission statement:

HarperStudio is committed to partnering with authors to publish books in a way that is effective, creative, and sustainable. We believe books are a vital part of our culture. We believe traditional publishing models are broken and are experimenting with new ones. We believe in embracing technology. We believe the future is now.”

Sounds good, right? But what does this really mean? Here’s an explanation, courtesy of Publisher’s Weekly: Harper Studio offers low advances in exchange for profit sharing (ie, higher royalties). They also hope to achieve greater profits through lower book returns from retailers, preferably by selling through with a nonreturnable policy. (Bear in mind that by “low advances”, Harper Studio means no more than $100,000 per book, which is still a fairly healthy chunk o’ change.)

At Harper Studio, they’ve been able to achieve the first part of that equation, by convincing authors to accept their alternate financial structure. However, many of the authors they signed are already established or have celebrity cred, such as Emeril Lagasse and Toni Morrison. Clearly, there’s an advantage for Emeril and Co. to accept a bigger slice of the pie in exchange for a smaller amuse bouche (to belabor the metaphor). With their already built in platform, folks will buy their books, so there’s little risk involved. As for the second part of their strategy, Harper Studio is struggling with establishing a nonreturnable book policy. In compromise, they plan to offer retailers a choice of going returnable or nonreturnable, with steeper wholesale discounts offered to those who choose nonreturnable.

Harper Studio’s business model is still an anomaly. It will be interesting to see if other big houses follow suit in 2009. What do you think? Is this the shape of things to come? Or an experiment doomed to go south?

As we wait to find out, here’s a road map of the current publishing industry, courtesy of Soybits.* This graphic representation features publishing trends of 2008 to show how publishers, authors, booksellers, readers, bloggers, and new platforms like the Kindle and iPhone shook things up.

Fascinating stuff. Plus I’m a sucker for anything which references a London Underground map.

—————
* Though the map is in English and Spanish, it’s easy to follow. Thanks to HarperStudio’s 26th Floor blog for the link. BTW, it’s a great blog for anyone interested in publishing and books.

comments

Lisa Hunt wrote on January 26, 2009 at 7:37 am:

Interesting! I’m wary of this experimentation mentality, but see the necessity of implementing changes that will help publishers ride through the turbulence. I think earlier publishing models had more cooperative arrangements of this nature–(I’m thinking pre-WWII…back to the Golden Age of Illustration when volume was significantly less) although I think agreements varied. But in a way, I think you’re touching on the good faith model (although I’m not at all an authority on this–just seeing it from my limited perspective). Didn’t Danny Devito and or Jack Nicholson make similar arrangements when they negotiatated their involvement in the Batman movie/s? Less up front, more pieces of the pie later–they knew a good thing when they saw it (merchandising etc.–subject for a future blog?). But of course one could argue that if less money is invested from the getgo, where is the incentive to really push the product? I’m a big believer in a royalty-based system because I think it works. And perhaps like anything, reducing the advance is a necessary adjustment to help keep publishers robust and the industry healthy as a whole. Everyone must come to terms with the fact that we are past a peak in traditional publishing–and downsizing was inevitable, esp. given the media competition that has certainly impacted tangible book sales.

Christina Rodriguez wrote on January 26, 2009 at 9:23 am:

I think when an industry is hit hard by economic depression, it’s imperative to look for alternative methods of survival. If they end up putting fewer people out onto the street this way, then it’s pretty hard to argue with it.

Jane Kennedy Sutton wrote on January 26, 2009 at 4:38 pm:

As an author published through a small publishing house and advance was not an option. I’m all for creative ways for both author and publisher to make ends meet. And I really did think that was a map of London’s underground!

Jane Kennedy Sutton
http://janekennedysutton.blogspot.com/

Sorry, comments are closed.

Publishing Monday: alternative publishing models

comments

Just Published

Kris's Recent Updates

Archives

Categories

Links