The Lost Symbol - a symbol of a lost industry

With the release of Dan Brown's long awaited novel "The Lost Symbol" tomorrow, book stores and supermarkets are no doubt expecting a surge of interest, not to mention the ringing of tills. This is excellent news for Brown and his agent, and good news for his fans, but is it such good news for the stores? When what has been touted to become the decade's best selling novel is sold at half price (£9.49 instead of the cover price of £18.99), perhaps not. When one thinks of the beleaguered book sellers placing these books into carrier bags and smiling as they take the money, none of which will add to their company's profits, then it all looks rather farcical. A bit like the Curry's superstore which opened in Croydon at the weekend with queues a quarter of a mile long so that customers could buy half price televisions that actually cost the company money rather than earning them any.

This book is no different. Make no mistake - Brown, his publisher and his agent will be about the only ones to profit from this farce. Even with a discount that must be a minimum of 60 percent. Anyone with the slightest understanding of business (not to mention a few brain cells - one would do) can surely see that it is impossible for the book sellers to continue in this mode. Even with that high discount (which will eat heavily into the publisher's own profits, even though there are unlikely to be high returns), what small amount of money the stores do make will be swallowed up promotional costs and other overheads. The situation is such that many small independents who do not have the buying power of the chains, will find it cheaper to buy their own copies from the likes of Asda and Amazon than from their own wholesalers! How can this make sense?

Thus it is that several million pounds that could have been used to help a flagging industry will be literally poured down the drain, and all this at a time when the industry is struggling for survival. It defies all logic known to man (and certainly this woman). What a way to run a business! If people want to buy this book, then why not make them pay full price? When you ask that vital question though, the only response is that the retailers have to remain competitive. Well, how can they remain competitive when they lose money? I fail to see the point.

Selling books at these knock down prices devalues the entire industry, not to mention the worth of authors in the eyes of both readers and publishers, both of whom are struggling to make ends meet (Brown being very much the exception). This comes at a time when authors advances are being squeezed more and more, with some reporting decreases of up to 80 percent and wondering why they bother at all. Brown himself, as with most best selling authors, will make most of his money not from the book itself from the sale or rights - merchandising, film rights and so on, and of course foreign rights for other languages and territories.

For all the talk about diversity and about how the face of publishing is changing, the reality is that very little is - it remains just talk. Walk into the average supermarket and you see rows of celebrity biographies and best selling fiction paperbacks, with if you are lucky, a few heavily discounted gardening and DIY manuals. This is not diversity, but to be quite honest, boring, and I cannot understand how the supermarkets have become the leading book retailers with such a predictable stable. The chains may promote these same types of books the heaviest, but at least they make the effort to stock other types of book, and can order them in if requested. The supermarkets do not offer this level of service, and do not pretend to.

Some may argue that offering books at discount encourages more people to read, and in a way they do have a point, but at what price? In the end if simply devalues the industry and further erodes what is left. After all, logic dictates that if Dan Brown can be sold at half price, so can everything else.

I remember when I first read the Conversations with God series of books back in the mid 90's, in one of them (it may have been book 2, but I can't remember exactly), God speaking through author Neale Donald Walsch suggested that goods should have 2 sets of figures on them - the cost of buying the product and the price that it is actually sold for -perhaps it is time to introduce this system and ask the consumers, would you be prepared to work for so little?

RRP RIP

A particularly interesting article appeared on the Bookseller a couple of weeks ago regarding Waterstones, which for various reasons I have only just round to writing about, which to my mind at least serves to highlight the sheer stupidity of the discounting culture so prevalent among book selling today.

The article, which is dated May 17th states that Waterstones have begun selling selected titles online at above the recommended retail price, echoing the spoof predictions made by those wonderful people at the Big Green Bookshop for 2008 (a promotion of 50 percent on was mentioned, I seem to recall) albeit a year late. This is despite the fact that most of these titles can be purchased at lower prices at other retailers such as Borders and Amazon. Many of these items appear to be maps rather than books, which do not have RRP's actually printed on them, and allowing Waterstones to more easily get away with this. The publishers concerned claimed that Waterstones had not informed them of this move.

A spokesperson for Waterstones said "Waterstone's reviews its prices on a regular basis and we aim to offer the best range of titles on the high street, with a huge amount of them discounted or available as part of a promotion at any one time. We have changed the prices on a very limited number of products and are now looking at how customers respond to the changes within the context of wider promotional activity."

An unnamed employee (and several others have since joined in the debate) claimed that Waterstones were actually doing this to protect their profits, in the face of high discounting on faster selling products, and it was and is in fact, a form of price fixing, but that as usual, the consumer would have the final say.

The thing about RRP's is the word recommended - it means just that - a recommended price, which is not set in stone, Waterstones are then at perfect liberty to charge what they want, if the market allows them to. If you think about this for a moment, if they were not allowed to change RRP's then they would not be allowed to discount at all, this was always a good get out for me when customers used to complain about wrong price labels in my old job, although of course when you mentioned this they inevitably did ask for a discount. I then offered the product at the price they thought it should be at rather than the higher price on the actual label, meaning that everyone was a winner - not that they saw it that way ...

If this is in response to high levels of discounting, then it only serves to highlight the sheer stupidity of this system, but perhaps more importantly, it also serves to show both retailers and consumers that there is a dark side to this - that some products will need to be hiked up in order to compensate for this. Does the consumer lose out - no I don't think they do, as they get more products at lower prices than ever before - they are as always free to go elsewhere if they do not wish to pay these higher prices. It may not be convenient to do so, but it is not convenient for authors to have their royalties slashed either by discounting - we just have to put up with it. It will be good news for the independents who may suddenly find themselves in the position of being able to undercut the chains, just for a change.

Publishing in crisis

After a month long hiatus, during which time I have been preoccupied with other more pressing matters, it is high time I turned my thoughts once again to what has been happening in the publishing world. The answer to that is quite a lot!

Things may not be good on the High Street, with Waterstones closing stores and publishers making mass redundancies, but the self publishing sector continues to go from strength to strength. This week, Printweek.com reports that Newsstand claims to be the first UK company to have successfully installed the Espresso Book Machine. The article goes on to state that Newsstand are in talks with a number of book publishers to offer their books via an on-demand book printing service.

Newsstand, which describes itself as "a jack of all trades", works with newspaper and magazine publishers and offers online magazine subscription and poly wrapping services. They claim to have printed between 500 and 600 books since the Espresso Machine was installed last October. Using the Espresso Machine, Newsstand charge £10 for standard books, and £14 for enlarged print ones.

The article goes on to state that Newsstand are using the version 1.5 of the Espresso Machine, of which there are just nine in the world. Academic bookseller Blackwells, plan to trial the machine in their Charing Cross store in the autumn.

This news comes a few weeks after the announcement that Waterstones are to shed 200 jobs, following the opening of their centralised distribution hub at Burton-upon-Trent, which becomes fully operational next week. Store closures are also in the offing, with Queensgate in Peterborough, the latest casualty. The second branch in Peterborough is unaffected.

The news also comes in the wake of mass redundancies at Cambridge University Press, following the decision to move their printing operation abroad in an effort to cut costs. This is no different to banks and insurance companies opening overseas call centres, but as expected, the unions are up in arms. Chief executive Stephen Bourne said "We know that this is an incredibly difficult time for those staff that are affected, and we will be doing all we can to support them through these changes." Given my own recent experiences, I wish them well, and pray that he is right.

Unite, the UK's largest trade union (not one that I have ever heard of), expressed shock at the announcement, a few days ago. The scale of the redundancies is such that 8 out of 10 jobs at the company's printing division will go, a total of 133 jobs. A 90 day consultation period has now begun, during which time Unite will attempt to change the company's mind, thus preventing these job losses. A spokesperson for the union said "We urge management to rethink this decision. Unite will do everything in our power to fight the closure and prevent compulsory redundancies."

Cambridge University Press is not the only university press to be experiencing problems, since across the Atlantic, rival Oxford University Press are also making 60 redundancies at their two offices in New York and Cary, North Carolina, as a "cost cutting exercise" (since when has making redundancies been anything else).

Closer to home, Bertrams commercial director Graham Rand is also to lose his job at the end of January, following re-structuring.

The crisis in publishing is such that Nigel Evans, Conservative MP for the Ribble Valley in Lancashire is calling upon the Government to provide more support for small businesses, following the closure of his local independent bookseller, Kaydee Bookshop in Clitheroe. The bookseller has announced that it will be closing at the end of January after 60 years in business, with the loss of nine jobs. Figures show the number of independent bookshops in the UK has plummeted by 22 percent in the last 10 years, with 1390 remaining against 1774 in 1999. I am surprised given the pressures they face, that this many have managed to stay in business at all.

It is the same old story of rents going up, and book prices going down, as discounting continues to spiral out of control. Discounting has always been a hot topic on my blog, and perhaps my biggest bugbear, and it is the subject of the moment on The Bookseller too with those both for and against. Graham Neill and Philip Stone report that the level of discounting has been described as "crazy" by Simon Juden, Chief Executive of the Publishers Association. This comes after it was revealed that the value slashed off RRP of books during the past two years has hit almost one billion pounds.

Epitomising the sheer stupidity of the discounting culture, figures from Nielsen BookScan showed that despite falling book sales in 2008, the level of discounting increased. The value of sales in 2008 was £1.78 billion, a decline of 1.5 percent from 2007’s figure of £1.8 billion. To bring this into stark contrast, if all books sold during this time had been sold at the recommended retail price, publishers would have earned almost one billion more per year - £2.27 billion in 2008 and £2.3 billion in 2007.

Books were more heavily discounted in 2008 than ever before, with the average selling price down at £7.49 (half the cover price of my own work). This was down from £7.57 in 2007. At the same time, the level of discounting increased by 0.2 percent to £499,072,252.

Echoing my own thoughts, Juden said it was "crazy" that an industry’s most successful products were discounted the heaviest. He said: "What we sell the most of we charge the least amount for. Books are a valuable and cultural good and should be sold as such." Personally I don't see what difference it makes as to how successful a book is - it takes time and money to write these books, and much effort not to mention blood, sweat and tears, goes into that process. That time and effort needs to be valued, and at the moment that is just not happening. The wonder the industry is in such crisis.

Perhaps we should pay heed to our Bibles, as one of the regular readers from the newsletter that I edit, pointed out when he sent me a clipping from the Isle of Wight County Press.

The clipping states:

"Millions of words have been poured out about the financial crisis, with theories, recriminations, and remedies being flung a nauseum.

Had everyone paid attention to the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, all this could have been avoided.

Writing in the seventh century BC, he put it in a nutshell: "Trouble is coming", he warned, getting straight to the point, "to the man who amasses goods that are not his and loads himself with pledges. Will not your creditors suddenly arise?"

Indeed they will [and have] and I am grateful to Mr Habukkak for making everything much clearer than any of Robert Peston's witterings."

Enough said.

What goes down, must go up!

I know there is hope for the world, and in particular the book world, when I see comments such as those on the blog of Neil Denny, editor in chief of The Bookseller magazine. On his blog, Neil calls for an end to the practise of high discounting in these times of economic uncertainty, in order to protect the interests of both publishers and book sellers. He points out that the price of books, like anything else, can go up as well as down.

During the last decade, since the abolition of the net book price agreement, we have seen the prices of books plummeting, with both book sellers and publishers, not to mention of course authors, working harder and harder for what seems like less and less. When I did my own accounts yesterday, I was shocked to see that despite all my hard work, my income from book sales for 2007-8 was just over £800, which is not a lot to show at all for all that work. Of course it would have been a lot more had the book not been on sale or return for such high discount, but then again, would I have sold as many books as I did? Somehow I think not, and so in the scheme of things, I am still better off, as although I earn less now per book sale, at least I have the chance to make some sales!

Perhaps though for the book trade as a whole, it is time to have a re-think on the discounting issue and begin to charge cover prices again, or at the very least, reduce the discounts that we have in store to a more reasonable level.

Since 2001, the date at which the sales figures first became truly comprehensive, the average sale price for books in the UK has fallen from £7.81 to £7.57. This may not sound a lot, but by the time you factor in inflation, it is clear that the price of books has fallen way less than it should be. In real terms, prices have dropped by almost 20 percent.

It may seem strange to be discussing this move at a time when consumers are already struggling with higher bills and fuel costs, yet as Neil Denny points out, increases such as these are creating a climate where consumers actually expect prices to go up, across the board.

If other businesses pass on the cost of their higher bills to the consumers, then why should the book trade be any different? Books after all need to be printed and shipped around the country (if not the world) and with the way that oil keeps going up, sooner or later, these costs will have to be passed on.

Companies are under pressure, as staff push for wage increases in order to compensate for higher prices. By increasing their own prices, and thereby their profit, book sellers will be in a better position to give their staff that raise, at the same time injecting life into their business which they can use to invest in training and better facilities all round.

Books are vastly underrated in our western society, and absurdly cheap. In a climate where some paperbacks cost less than a pint of beer, a cup of coffee or a magazine, then what does that say about the value that we place upon them? Customers at the store that I work in think nothing of spending £1000 on certain items, yet baulk at the price of books. I can imagine a world without much of what we sell, but I cannot imagine a world without books. Books educate and make us think, they make us laugh and cry, they take us outside of the ordinary realms of our existence, guiding and inspiring us with their wisdom and their insights. The world would be a much poorer place without them.

Lower discounts would be good news for the industry all round, not least of all the small independents, many of whom are struggling to compete with the chains, and let's not forget, are vital to the success of the book trade as a whole.

While the cover prices of certain types of books have crept up in recent years, the cynic in me says that this is in response to high discounting. If a publisher sells to book stores at 50 percent discount, it is in their interests to set higher cover prices, as 50 percent of £8.99 is a lot more than 50 percent of £5.99.

If books were not so heavily discounted and under valued in the first place, then this would not be necessary. It would be far better to control the level if discounts, keeping this to a sensible level, and allowing new releases at least a few weeks to be sold at full price. It is increasingly common though to discount at launch.

The solution then is not to increase cover prices, but to lower the discounts offered at point of sale. Of course some would say that consumers will just buy online instead. Although online book sales are increasing year on year, the majority are still bought in stores, as nothing can replace the feel and atmosphere of a book store, browsing the shelves. If customers truly want a book, then they will find the means to buy it - we cannot hold back doing what we know is right simply through fear of the competition. Someone somewhere has to make the first move, and personally I will be straight through their doors buying all their stock when they do - as like attracts like, and if I wish to be abundant, then I have to support others. That is the way of the world.

Book sellers working harder for less money

After two days back at work it feels like I need another five days off to recover. It does not take long for the mind chatter to return with a vengeance, try as you might, and working in a shop with loud music constantly on, not to mention two excitable school boys masquerading as grown men, does not exactly help. I have never been able to understand the fascination with much of what we sell, and to me much of it is a total waste of time. I would much rather curl up with good book and a large mug of hot chocolate.

In common with other areas of the retail sector, the book trade today reports that publishers are facing increasingly tight margins, which means that they are selling more books for less money. The price of books has fallen for the fifth year in a row. According to the Publishers Association's Statistics Yearbook 2007, which is out on 23rd April, the average invoiced price (i.e the price paid by book stores rather than consumers) of books fell from £3.59 to £3.50 in 2007. The average price for home market or British books was £3.77, down from £3.85 in 2006, while export titles slid to £3.13 from £3.20. This was largely due to the weak dollar.

Despite these issues, the publishing industry saw overall growth in both volume and value during 2007. UK publishers saw an estimated 9 percent increase in volume, up from 786 million books sold in 2006, to an estimated 855 million books in 2007. The actual invoice value climbed to £3bn from £2.8bn. The export market was particularly strong, despite the weak dollar, with
sales of 357 million units worth approximately £1.1bn. This represents a jump of 14 percent and 11 percent respectively over 2006.

Children's books saw by the far the biggest growth, with unit sales shooting up by 17 percent with a total sales value of 225 million and an invoice value of £404m (£302m in 2006). Fiction saw the next highest growth, up 7 percent in volume and in terms of value 229 million. Academic and professional titles saw the least growth, with a 4 percent rise in unit sales and a 0.7 percent rise in value to £775m.

Returns also seemed to stabilise somewhat, at 9 percent of publishers' total gross unit sales and 13 percent of total gross value. This represents a 3 percent fall and 0.5 percent increase respectively, indicating that the books that are being returned seem to be those of higher value.

In the meantime, and going back to the Amazon debate, one of the world's largest publishers HarperCollins, has stated that they will not be taking on Amazon by selling direct to consumers via their own website. I can't help feeling here that that they are making a big mistake, which will ultimately prove to be rod for their own backs. They will, unlike rivals Bloomsbury and Penguin, be placing Amazon buy buttons direct on their site, so that customers go straight through to Amazon direct.

The reasoning behind this seems to be that Amazon are a global brand, and taking them on would be foolish in the extreme. Personally I beg to differ, as if they don't, as one of our largest publishers, then who will? Someone has to take a stand, and the fact they have chosen not to, signals to me that they are afraid of a fight and do not want to risk losing sales. What they don't realise is that by failing to take a stand now, they stand to lose in the future, an awful lot more.

YouWriteOn urges authors to boycott Amazon

Regular readers of this blog will know that when the whole Amazon thing kicked off, just over a week ago, one of the first things I did was email everyone on my mailing list, and also post on here, encouraging everyone to boycott Amazon and not have any further dealings with them until further notice.

I am pleased to see that I am no longer alone in this endeavour, as the managers of YouWriteOn.com, a website funded by the Arts Council and aimed at budding writers, who review others work in exchanging for having their own reviewed, for a chance of getting a critique by industry experts, including leading UK publishers, have now added their weight to the anti Amazon campaign.

A report written by Graeme Neill in today's edition of The Bookseller online reads as follows:

"YouWriteOn.com, the Arts Council initiative for new writers, has called for a boycott of Amazon after the retailer's move to push publishers into using its own print on demand service.
Last week Amazon caused anger among small and independent publishers in the US when it told them that all p.o.d. titles would have to be printed at Amazon's fulfilment centres by its POD service BookSurge. It sparked fears that Amazon was trying to squeeze competitors out of the POD market.

There are no current plans to introduce BookSurge into the UK. However, YouWriteOn.com has invited all POD authors to list books on its site with a free link to any bookseller apart from Amazon. It called this "effectively...a proactive boycott of Amazon".

"It seems that Amazon are effectively attempting to monopolise the POD industry, and monopolies are never to the benefit of individuals. This will inevitably lead to less choice, less opportunities, and less royalties for POD writers," said Edward Smith, manager of YouWriteOn.Com. "It is also a red flag to the publishing industry in terms of how Amazon may use their influence on books from mainstream commercial publishing houses in the future."

The trouble is that having gone to their site, I cannot for the life of me see exactly how POD authors are supposed to do what Edward proposes. All I have received so far is an invite to review a book. Perhaps I am meant to do this first and then I can upload my book to their site. The report in The Bookseller should really make this clear, and much as I admire their philosophy and what they are trying to do, this does smack in its own way of their own attempt to not just help POD authors, but also to increase their membership. This may of course be my well developed inner cynic talking here.

I know that this is becoming big news when I see that this is the third report on the Amazon debate to appear on The Bookseller online today. Graeme Neill also reports regarding the Authors Guild statement that I mentioned on Friday, where they surmise that Amazon are attempting to control much of what the Guild refer to as the 'long tail' of publishing. The Guild, echoing the views of so many others state that in their view "once Amazon owns the supply chain, it has effective control of much of the 'long tail' of publishing - the enormous number of titles that sell in low volumes but which, in aggregate, make a lot of money for the aggregator."

This is what we in the UK would call back list titles, those books that sell in relatively slow but steady numbers, as indeed mine does.

It is uneconomic for book stores to stock many of these titles, since they cannot get sufficient discount, and the books are also non returnable. Once Amazon has control of the supply chain for these books, via Booksurge, they will be able to dictate any terms that they want, having both authors and publishers over a proverbial barrel, or so they think.

Owning the supply chain would allow them to easily increase profit margins on these books by insisting on higher discounts and upping the prices for printing. Most publishers, the Guild state, would be able to do little but grumble and comply. If Amazon really think this, then they have an awful lot still to learn and are in for one hell of a shock.

The Guild go on to state that "We suspect this maneuver by Amazon is far more about profit margin than it is about customer service or fossil fuels. The potential big losers (other than Ingram) if Amazon does impose greater discounts on the industry, are authors - since many are paid for on-demand sales based on the publisher's gross revenues - and publishers."

The third story to appear today is regarding Amazon's attempt to control pricing as reported a few days ago in Publishing News. I am totally incredulous to see two messages of support that actually agree with this policy, by Julian Rivers and someone purporting to be a tree (if I was a dog I would cock my leg against them and see what they think of that!)

This person states that in their opinion "publishers should stick to publishing and if this action stops publishers stupidly trying to undercut retailers to make a quick few quid, then that's good news for them all from the mighty Amazon to the humble indie. Publishers should support and work with retailers, not cut corners and cut them out." What a shame this does not appear to work the other way.

Julian in the meantime states "Amazon are just like any other trader who realises that their supplier is their competitor as well . They are completely correct in assuming that the new RRP is the price that the publisher is seeking to sell the book to the public at. How else could they judge it? I personally think that all the big players should follow suit, and the small ones too for that matter. The publishers need to respect their trade customers large and small, and thank goodness that Amazon are now strong enough to take the publishers on. All the retail trade needs to follow their lead." He does not get it though - it is the retailers that cause the problem, not the publishers. Publishers would never offer to sell books at high discount unless the chains did not do this themselves. What we need is for all of them to get round the table and discuss this in a sensible and rational manner, realising that when it comes down to it, both want the same thing - to make money by selling books. There is nothing wrong with this, but not at any price, for one has to work with the competition and not against it. Competition is healthy, for it keeps us on our toes.

As I say, let's not forget that without the authors who write books there would be no Amazon, and no book industry full stop.

Amazon hits the non publishing press

There is not much to report re Amazon, as one would expect at the weekend, except for an interesting discussion on my favourite writers forum, My Writers Circle, which has dragged me back into this in some ways. It is difficult not to get too involved in this, and start getting angry all over again, but I can't help but feel that Amazon have made a big mistake that will come back to haunt them in the night.

Marion Webb de Sisto feels the same way, as she sent me an email today with a link to The Times website which she entitled Karma for Amazon. Marion, like me, is a spiritual writer, so she knows about these things. The article, which is written by reporter Dalya Alberge, the Arts correspondent is entitled Amazon furious after publishers undercut its book prices online. Personally I say tough titties - they publish these books and bore the financial risk, so they are damned well entitled to charge any price that they like. If Amazon don't like it then tough !

Dalya reports as follows:

"An online price war for books has broken out, pitching Amazon against some of Britain’s biggest publishers.

Amazon is angry that Penguin, Bloomsbury and others are discounting titles on their websites, encouraging customers to buy direct instead of using the online retailer.

Penguin’s online store has reduced a boxed set of 20 Penguin Epics from £100 to £55. Amazon sells the collection at £98.64. Bloomsbury offers a 25 per cent discount on all its books, with free postage and packing on British deliveries over £20.

There are fears that Amazon may retaliate by regarding a publisher’s online price as the recommended retail price and applying its trading terms to that. If a publisher discounts a £20 book to £15 online and Amazon has a contract for a 50 per cent discount on the full price, Amazon would pay the company £7.50 instead of £10. Publishers say that this would be unfair and could ultimately drive up prices.

Amazon also faces increased competition from high-street booksellers, including Waterstones and Borders, who are stepping up their online activities. Such is the power of Amazon that several publishers did not feel able to talk on the record yesterday. One senior executive said: “It’s very serious. I can’t believe they’d be allowed to get away with it under competition law. Forcing people to increase prices seems to me entirely wrong.”

Others accused Amazon of having become particularly aggressive lately. One source claimed that the online seller recently removed the “buy buttons” from a book on its website to prevent users from being able to purchase it. “They then went to the publisher and said, ‘Give us an extra 2 or 3 per cent or we won’t put the buy buttons back’,” the source said.

An Amazon spokesman said: “It is speculation. We never talk about discussions with suppliers.” He declined to comment further.

Discounters have brought huge price advantages to book buyers, but the discount businesses do not have to bear the risks associated with investing in new authors or new titles by established authors. Until the Net Book Agreement was scrapped in 1995, it offered some protection to publishers, by ensuring that retailers sold books at the recommended price.

Roger Tagholm, of the trade paper Publishing News, believes that Amazon sees publishers as manufacturers, who should not be setting prices.

But Simon Juden, chief executive of the Publishers Association, which represents up to 140 publishers, felt that Amazon was on shaky legal ground. He said: “Terms of trade will have been set up upfront, when contracts were signed. Neither side can unilaterally change those. In my view, Amazon would be in breach of contract if they tried to do this.”

Ursula Mackenzie, chief executive officer and publisher of Little, Brown and chair of the Trade Publishers Council, said: “Our discount to Amazon is based on a notional RRP (recommended retail price), an agreed formula that we work to. For them to suddenly decide they will take a different view of what that RRP was means that the price on the publisher’s website effectively becomes the RRP. They can’t do that unilaterally. What is going to exercise people is that we can all see the growth of Amazon, which is startling and rapid, so they will increasingly have considerable power and there is no real competition to them. That’s the concern.”

There are fears that the latest development could affect authors and independent booksellers. Mark Le Fanu, of the Society of Authors, said: “Discounts demanded by the big retailers have been rising relentlessly, squeezing authors’ royalties. We hope that publishers will resist any pressure to increase discounts still further.”

One publisher was found to be broadly supportive of Amazon, although he also preferred to speak off the record. “I can’t see that it’s a major problem. Amazon sell their books at all sorts of discounts. That’s the nature of the market. They’re free to sell them at whatever price they like.”

I still find it very interesting how this is forcing the commercial presses into the equation, so that they have to look at how their own arguably equally aggressive slant on pricing and discounting comes back to haunt them. They may not be directly involved in setting such policy, and to some extent the abolition of the net book price agreement has rendered them powerless, but they have been complicit in allowing discounts to become greater each year by stealth, and many of them as well remain hostile towards self published books issued via print on demand, while at the same using the technology for their own ends. This is a double standard. Understand that this is more of an observation than a criticism, as like I said yesterday, I have to try and remain detached from this situation and not get too emotionally involved.

Nadine Laman from My Writers Circle sent me an interesting link to the Finance pages on AOL, which keeps track of Amazon's share price. Nothing much seems to be happening at the moment, but there is also a link on that page to some comments written by former hedge fund manager, television presenter and and self publisher Timothy Sykes. Timothy says that Amazon have proved through their actions that they care little for those who helped make their billions, which let's face facts- are the readers, writers and publishers.

The article states:

"Amazon bullying raises monopoly and business concerns

In the last few days, book selling giant Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) has made a few more enemies in the publishing world by forcing the little-known group of print-on-demand (POD) publishers to either submit to using its POD subsidiary, Booksurge, or risk being prohibited from selling on its industry-leading website. No matter the cost and complications of breaking off relationships with other vendors, re-formatting books and a host of other problems, Amazon laid down the law, saying convert - and do it quickly - or face the consequences.

What's more disconcerting is that an official press release was made public only after smaller publishers like Angela Hoy of Booklocker.com started writing publicly about blackmail-type phone calls from Booksurge representatives. Fearful of losing their businesses literally overnight, many POD publishers such as iUniverse and Lulu have capitulated while strong willed publisher PublishAmerica refused to give in - and was quickly made an example of when Amazon disabled the buy buttons on their book titles!

As an author selling my own critically-acclaimed POD book An American Hedge Fund on Amazon, outrage has compelled me to write about how unethical and more importantly, monopolistic this all is.

In a short-term business sense, Amazon is right to use its massive size to gain market share for Booksurge and squeeze out the smaller players, but the problem is this goes against what made it great - offering the lowest prices and widest selection, basically like an online Wal-Mart Stores Inc (NYSE: WMT). To authors and publishers, Booksurge is known for its poor product quality and high cost structure, supremely inferior on both fronts to rival Lightning Source (LS) -- trust me, I did the research and that's why I chose LS - the POD subsidiary of Ingram Industries, the leading book wholesaler and the company on which Amazon has clearly declared war.

So, by making Booksurge the only POD option, relegating quality-loving publishers and authors to much smaller websites of Borders Group (NYSE: BGP) and Barnes & Noble Inc (NYSE: BKS), Amazon proves it no longer cares about its customers getting the widest selection at the cheapest prices - oh yes, even publishers that give into Amazon's demands will be forced to raise their prices - it cares more about its own profits.

Until this latest development, I believed Amazon was the future of book selling. It was making money, as were the publishers and customers who received the cost/quality benefits, but when a company happily alienates its suppliers whose hardships will inevitably be felt by the company's customers, I cry foul. Authors, readers, consumers and businesspeople unite! Sign THIS petition and let Amazon know what it is doing is wrong. That it is only a retail giant because we, the consumers, say so. We, not it, have the power here. While POD publishing is just a tiny niche, it's a slippery slope; if you let Amazon get away with this, it might be your business and industry it comes after next."

Amen to that.

Amazon tightens its grip - now dictating to publishers re their own prices !

Chris Work, who posted some comments on one of my earlier posts on this blog, I see from The Bookseller website, has added a form to his blog to contact the Washington State attorney with regard to the Amazon affair. This can be found here. All you have to do is simply copy the text and send it to the email address that Chris provides with any message of your own. I urge everyone involved in this affair to send this form post haste, as like Chris says on his blog, "Amazon isn't going to pay much attention to you or me... but they will listen to anti-trust lawyers of the state of Washington". I don't see that they will have an awful lot of choice in the matter, but then again, I don't know how US law operates, and anything is possible.

The Bookseller it seems though is not the only British heavyweight publishing website to be covering this story, as according to the latest edition of Publishing News, the headlines of which were waiting for me in my inbox when I got home from work today:

"AMAZON HAS THREATENED publishers who sell direct at discount on their own websites with punitive action. PN understands that it has said that if the publisher continues, Amazon will take the selling price as the RRP and apply its terms of trading to that price. In other words, if Amazon receives a 50% discount from Penguin, for example, but Penguin is selling a £20 book for £15 on its website, Amazon will only give Penguin £7.50, rather than £10. One publisher told PN: “This has been around for a while. There have been discussions going on since Frankfurt. Essentially, they're not happy when the manufacturer, as they call us, sets the price of a book. The threat is that they will apply the agreed terms of trading to our web price. But they are on very shaky legal ground. After all, they've been invoiced at an RRP less their discount, so if they refused to pay that amount, they would be in breach of contract.”

Another publisher was more forthright. “Nobody can tell somebody else what price to sell a book at. Publishers will resist this. We're talking about very few titles and we are very confident of our position.”

Although the number of titles being sold direct by publishers is very few, some observers believe Amazon sees it as the thin end of the wedge and wants to fire a warning shot. The move is being driven by Amazon's UK Head of Books, Christopher North, and comes as a blog storm has erupted over Amazon.com's announcement concerning its print-on-demand operation BookSurge. Independent publishers are angered by the US company's decision to economically favour those companies that switch their printing to BookSurge. The row forced Amazon to release an open letter clarifying its position. Amazon.com will sell titles from other POD providers it said, but the publishers would have to join Amazon's Advantage Program, which has a fee. Amazon UK said that are no plans to introduce the service here, but one publisher is taking legal advice. “They're abusing their monopoly position. Once they've got you, they'll start increasing the terms.”

In the background to the moves may be Amazon's realisation that it has effectively dominated online bookselling for some years. Its figures with publishers grow faster than any other retailer (hence publishers' reluctance to anger it), but with other players establishing their online operations - Waterstones.com and, shortly, Borders as well as increasing noise from Play.com and publishers' own sites - it realises that this might very soon change.

This is indeed the thin end of a very long wedge, and I think Clive Keeble is right when he said a few days ago that "Amazon are a dangerous predator that needs to be stopped".

I have a reading booked with my good friend Diana Summer tomorrow, my first for over a year, to discuss various issues regarding work and the book, and I plan to include this as one of the questions. I have my own theories, some of which I have mentioned in previous posts, but it will be interesting indeed to get spirit's take on this.

Angela Hoy says on her latest post, that she suspects the reason that Authorhouse, I-Universe and Lulu caved in was because there is a clause in their contracts (in Authorhouse and I-Universe's case anyway) that says that authors must pay $75 for inclusion on Amazon.com. They have therefore painted themselves into a corner with their own greed, since by failing to sign the Booksurge contract they would have left themselves wide open to being sued by disgruntled authors for breach of contract. I will have to check the Authorhouse UK website, but I believe I am right in saying that they also make a similar charge. Having had dealings with this company when I was looking for a suitable POD provider back in early 2006, I have to say that this would not surprise me, as they seem to charge for pretty much anything they can get away with, and more's the pity, they do ...

Angela goes on to say that "Lulu has third party service providers (that pay Lulu commissions) that offer Amazon listing enhancement services for a fee to Lulu authors. One Lulu author surmised on their forum, "Lulu will just have to supply Amazon with books..." So, perhaps they found themselves in the same bind as AuthorHouse.

The deadline given to some publishers was rumoured to be April 1st and AuthorHouse/ I-Universe and Lulu both announced agreements with Amazon on March 31st - the day before. This leads both Angela and myself to believe that Amazon may have had them both by the probverbial short and curlies. This is what you get though when you charge authors for something that happens automatically without you actually having to do a thing. Make no bones about it, if my publlsher leaves Lightning Source to do all the fulfilment direct with Amazon, then it is exactly the same with all these others too. They are then sitting pretty taking the authors hard earned cash for doing to put it politely, bugger all. I hear the sound of one thousand unseen chickens clucking as they come home to roost ...

Angela also confirms that there is as yet no word from Xlibris, as does my friend UK based author Marion Webb de Sisto, who because she is married to an American and has her largest market there, chose to publish with Xlibris.

I could write much more on this debate if I chose to, but I do have the questions to write for tomorrow, and it has been a long day, and so I am now going to sign off before I email Angela with the links posted on here tonight and hit the snooze button !

Cutting off their nose to spite their face

It has been such a busy week one way or another that I have not had the time to write this blog at all. It seems that everyone seems to be wanting a piece of me right now, and as a result there has not been much peace and quiet for me. Much as I enjoy my job (and I have had a very good week with some outstanding sales and a very interesting visit to trade fair on Wednesday) life was so much easier when I did not need to work. It was not so much that I did not need to anyway, for I should have returned a long time before I did, but it was a conscious choice. The choice to continue working four days a week is then as much of a choice as any other, but still it seems in many ways when I earn so little for my writing efforts, that there is no real choice at all.

I am despite this, old enough and wise enough to realise that despite my musings above, that it is a choice like any other, borne from my need to maintain a certain lifestyle, a lifestyle that involves a little more than just paying my bills and keeping a roof over my head. If I was prepared to make certain sacrifices such as not eating out, driving a lot less (difficult when you live four miles from the nearest town and there is only one bus every other hour), not enjoy holidays to Lundy, buy second hand clothes and just sit at home staring at the walls, then maybe I could afford to work three days a week instead, but this for me is not an option, as I believe, quite rightly, that I am entitled to enjoy my life, and recognise that this involves a certain degree of compromise. Unfortunately for me this has resulted in a big pile of books on the living room table, but that is par for the course and no matter how much I whitter on about this it does not change the fact that they are there.

I had hoped that the pile would start to diminish this week, as the local paper were to run a piece about me in this weeks issue, but it did not materialise. I am not too worried about this though, as I am sure it will be in this weeks one instead. After all, they did go to the trouble of sending a photographer to my home to record the evidence, and they would not have done this unless they were going to use those pictures. The reporter with whom I have been conversing rang Coran at home on Thursday after failing to get hold of me at work. He has decided that he needs to get Gardners side of the story before he goes ahead with the story and get some more background info from my website, which I suppose is fair enough. Rather than talk to Gardners direct though (I wouldn't have a clue who he needs to talk to anyway, seeing as they won't talk to me) I have referred him to Richard. If he hasn't already done so, then I expect he will give him a call next week. I buy the Advertiser every week anyway, as I need to keep in touch with what is going on in my capacity as editor of my village newsletter, so I will see it as soon as it goes in and send a copy to Richard and Paul in due course.

In the meantime my copy of the Booksellers Association Members Directory has arrived, and I have made a start by emailing at least some of their members. I tried to call some of them this morning to follow up, but most of them do not open until 10am on Saturdays. I did though get through to Wesley Owen in Aberdeen, who agreed to buy two books direct from me on a firm sale basis. It is only two copies, but it is a start, and it shows that if one branch is prepared to do this, then perhaps others would too. This is quite exciting for me, as Wesley Owen are one of the largest Christian book chains in the country, with several branches in nearby towns that I could deliver direct to perhaps, saving the cost of transportation.

I also sent a review copy out to Kindred Spirit magazine earlier in the week, to which I have subscribed now for a number of years. This is the leading new age magazine with a huge circulation, and so could do great things for me. They have only recently started to do book reviews again after a long hiatus, and a least of a quarter of those they have published have been of self published books, so I should be in with a very good chance, although it may mean waiting for a few months, since they have a bit of a backlog.

In the book world the debate re firm sale continues to rumble on. Waterstones have now decided that when their distribution warehouse opens at the end of May they will ask publishers for an extra 5 percent discount. This is not too bad actually, since they will be saving money by not having to go through wholesalers. The publishers will then end up better off, as going through a wholesaler means that they will have to sell at 55 percent discount, but Waterstones will buy direct for just 45 percent discount. I could at a push afford to supply them direct on those terms if I could buy books all the time for print cost plus 1o percent instead of the usual 25 percent.

Both Borders and Waterstones are also preparing to start selling e-books, in Borders case via their new website (must check to see if those guidelines re getting stocked by them are on the new site), and Waterstones from July in stores. The Bookseller states that Sony are preparing to launch e-readers onto the UK market sometime during 2o08, yet there were none in evidence at their trade show on Wednesday, and when I asked about them, the staff there knew nothing about it at all.

Borders I see are also changing strategy regarding how books are displayed in their stores, following the example of their American cousins, and displaying them face on rather than just showing the spines. This is a risky strategy for them to take since it will mean that less books will fit on their shelves, but I suppose if it helps to increase sales, as they seem to think it will, then it could pay dividends for both the retailer and author alike.

Julian Rivers, who was a founding director and deputy c.e.o. of the Bertram Group and now runs his own consultancy, as well as being chairman of Waterside Books and director of Meet The Author, has an interesting article re fair trade on his blog site, linked to The Bookseller, where he bemoans the abolition of the net book price agreement and what this has meant to libraries. I find this interesting at a time when I too have been writing about fair trade practises, albeit for a different purpose. It shows me though that I am not the only one to have such thoughts on my mind.

Graeme Neil reports that for the first time last year, the volume of books bought at a discount was greater than the volume bought at full price. The practise of discounting has steadily increased since 2004, when it represented 44 percent of book purchases. In 2007 the volume of discounted titles reached 51 percent of the market.

According to the survey, conducted by BML, consumers aged 12-79 years bought 6 percent more books in 2007 than the previous year, up from 322 million to 342 million. The value also increased but at a lower rate, up 4 percent to £2.454 billion. This is then both good and bad news.

The growth in consumer book purchases between 2006 and 2007 seems to have been driven mainly by supermarkets and the Internet, with both volume and value of sales in both sectors doubling since 2004. Internet sales topped £400 million last year, accounting for 17 percent of consumer spending, up from just 9 percent in 2004.

A third of book purchases still go through chain stores such as the aforementioned Borders and Waterstones, but while volume through these stores has grown year-on-year by 1%, the actual value fell by 1%. The chains however still have far greater buying power than the supermarkets and the Internet combined.

Sales of adult books grew 13 percent in volume in the years 2004-2007, with sales of children's books increasing by 18 percent in volume and 29 percent in value over the same period (perhaps I will become a children's writer then). The lower growth in value compared with volume reflects the decrease in average selling price paid by consumers, and shows to me just how much this agressive attitude impacts on the industry. It seems to me that they are cutting off their noses to spite their face in an effort to be what they think is competitive. During that same four year period, the survey found that average book prices paid for adult books fell by 5 percent with a 3 percent decrease in 2007 alone. One cannot help but wonder where this will all end.

Would I better off self publishing ?

March 27

I received another rejection this morning - this time from Floris - no specific reason given, just a note to say they cannot make an offer for publication. I am still waiting on Watkins/Duncan Baird, plus Capall Bann and Hay House. I will probably try and send my proposal to the next one on the list this afternoon.

At this stage I am beginning to think about whether I should consider self publishing. I will have to pay for this myself, but the turnaround is so much quicker. The publication process via the traditional route can be agonizingly slow, with no guarantee that they will even publish the book at all even after the contract has been signed. It can take anything up to 2 years before the book reaches print even when it is published, with no publicity or marketing unless your name is Beckham or Rowling.

It seems to me that at this stage I may be better off doing it myself. There are 2 ways of doing this - short print run and print on demand (POD). With short print run, you oversee the whole process, sourcing printers and registered the book for ISBN's, legal library deposits etc yourself. Once the copies are printed, you have to distribute them all yourself, via talks etc, and if you are lucky independent, book stores.

Getting into book stores is problematic for most self publishers mostly because of the heavy discounts that book stores and even Amazon buy the book for. In the case of book stores, this is typically around 40 percent, but with Amazon Advantage 60 percent. This means that they buy the books from the wholesaler for that percentage of the actual cover price. So if for example your book is retailing at £10, they will buy it for £4. By the time print costs are taken off, there is not much left over. This is the main reason why the publishing industry is in the state it is in and why it is so hard for an unknown author to get a deal. Budgets are tight and resources limited, so publishers need to be certain that they will recoup their investment. Unless you have a good track record of past sales, or a captive specialized market, then you will be very lucky to get anything at all. Gone are the days of large advances and mega publicity, most books get nothing, and the author finds that they have to do all the hard work themselves in organizing talks, book signings etc.

What then is the incentive of publishing via the traditional route? None, other than the fact that you do not have to bank roll it. On the other hand, with self publishing YOU are totally in control. It can though be expensive. The first quote I have got, from a company called Upfront Publishing is for nearly £2500. This includes proof reading and editing (I may be able to do some of this myself, typesetting (more complicated to do yourself), writing of back cover blurb, bespoke cover design, ISBN registration, legal library deposits, uploading to the distribution network, plus marketing package (posters, postcards, business cards etc that you can give out to people). The first 25 copies of the book would be free, after that you have to buy them for around £7.79 a piece (minimum order of 25 copies). This is based on a paperback selling price of £12.99 for a book of up to 400 pages with no colour illustrations or photographs. For copies that you manage to sell yourself in this way you get to keep the full balance between print costs and selling price (i.e. £5.20 a book). Otherwise, for sales through the distribution network (Amazon, book stores etc) you get a royalty of 12.5 % of net receipts. This is the amount left over after the booksellers discount and print costs are taken off. In most cases this will leave you with literally pennies.

This though is the first quote I have received. There are plenty of other POD companies out there, who according to their websites and catalogues can do it for a lot less. One thing I have decided is that I want to work with a UK based company rather than one based in the US. The reasons for this are simple - time difference, ease of communication, freight costs to get the books shipped to the UK and currency conversions. I do not wish to pay hefty bank charges for converting my hard earned royalties from dollars to pounds.

I should maybe explain a little more about what POD is. It basically means what it suggests, that books are stored as a digital file and printed on demand, as and when they are ordered. The company will normally take care of all the ordering and delivering for you, paying you royalties typically every 3 months (as opposed to every 6 which is the norm with traditional publishers).

This is not to say that the books will be available on the shelves in book stores, as most stores would not want to pay upfront, but be invoiced later, after the books have sold. What it does mean is that anyone can walk into a book store and ask them to order a copy, the same with libraries. It is in the authors interest to sell as many books as possible themselves, as that way they earn more royalties and are more likely to make a profit. Shipping costs to the author have to be considered, plus the cost of generating publicity. After all, the book will not sell if no one knows about it. That is where my own website, Internet forums and places like our local church come in, as they are all potential ways of selling more books by letting people know that it exists. The next thing to consider then will be getting a website of my own; with my own name as opposed to the one Telewest have given us. I will keep plugging away.