Since the Borg have invaded publishing via eBooks, what hope does mankind have?

That’s about the state of knowledge and speculation in publishing right now according to many.  Anyone who pretends to truly know where things are going is bound to be partly wrong.  And partly right.

I recently presented at the New Jersey Romance Writers’ Conference.  I did a three-hourWarrior Writer pre-conference workshop and then a one-hour talk on the future of publishing.  It made me really focus on everything I’ve been reading, hearing, and experiencing this past year as both as an author and a publisher.  Over the next few Write It Forward posts, I’ll postulate the future of publishing, Jean-Luc Picard and the Borg, while throwing in a Starbuck or two.

First.  Publishing has been a consignment business for a long time.  Any retail expert can tell you consignment is inefficient.  Let’s not get into how this came about.  It did.  However, that’s for physical books.  You can ‘return’ an eBook but our experience has been less than 1% of our eBooks sold have been returned and we believe those were because the person realized they had already read the book in print form.  So, already, eBooks are a more efficient business model.  Plus, no trees chopped, no shipping costs and minimal carbon footprint.   Borg win.

Publishers lived with a 50% sell-through for a long time.  That can’t cut it any more.  The expectation now is 80%.  For bookstores to achieve this, they simply order less. Therefore they sell a higher percentage.  But a lower amount.  Hmm.  So what’s filling that shelf space?  Candy.  Toys.  Things other than books.  Take a good gander around your localB&N at what’s on the shelves.  Might be good for the store, no so good for authors and publishers.  Also notice what’s the first thing you walk into now in a B&N?  Used to be the discounted hardcover bestseller table.  Now it’s the Nook.  Is it me, or does Catch-22 come to mind?  Borg win.

In the mid-to-late 90s the mass-market paperback market experienced what I call The Crunch.  My early books in the Area 51 series (Borg driven) hit the Target and Wal-Mart bestseller lists.  By the time we got around to the 9^th book, they weren’t even being racked in those outlets.  The large retailers with their single-point buyers went in favor of a few brand authors rather than a large selection.  Humans win.  The brand names.  The rest, the mid-list.  Lose.

One would think a publisher such as Dorchester (focusing on mass market) would have seen the Borg approaching better than most.  As we’ve seen, they did not.  In a panic this year, they suddenly abandoned their basic business model and announced they would become ePublishers.  This despite having watched entities like Ellora’s Cave and other ePublishers, come into existence and succeed over the past decade.  As a small ePublisher, with a much smaller inventory (and not already in debt and not having authors who are owed monies) I can tell you their attempt will be like fighting the Borg while at the same time trying to become the Borg.  Without Jean-Luc to lead the way.

I submit that traditional publishers will not have 10-15 years to adapt from print to eBook.  The Borg are impatient.  I give it five at the outside and more like THREE as the magic number because . . .

At the beginning of this year, it was widely reported that eBooks made up 3% of the market.   The Borg were somewhere out there in the universe, but not close enough to Earth for any reason for concern. (Read some posts from Digital Book World in January—ah, the good old days).  Now, it’s being reported they are 10%.   First, if true, that’s over a 300% increase in less than a year, which means they’ve found the solar system at least.  Project that out.

Second, watch The Wire.  Besides being some of the best TV of the past decade, it covers a little thing called “Juking The Stats”.  I’m reading all these reports of 10%, yet every major author I talk to tells me their royalty statements from mid-year say 40-60% of their sales were eBooks opposed to hardcovers.  Should we believe ‘reports’ issued by those who desire to protect their stats and old business model, or the numbers they have to put out to legally fulfill their contracts?  The Borg are here, despite what those who prefer their heads in the sand say.

My point?  Become Jean Luc Picard, a leader, and embrace the future and the future is eBooks.  So how do authors, publishers, and bookstores do this?  Assimilate both ways.  Become Borg, but also welcome what the Borg bring.  Because, remember; the Borg are both human and machine.  I don’t know any machine right now that is writing a book.  Humans write the books.   The goal here at Write It Forward is to discuss how to successfully move into the future of publishing at all levels:  authors, publishers and retailers. So discuss away. We want to know what you, human, machine or borg have to say.

Our next post later this week will discuss bookstores.  Because where goes Starbucks, there goes the plan.

Make it so.

Write It Forward!