Question for Neil Nyren

[Jon Loomis]

As Senior vice president, publisher and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam's Sons, how would you describe the current state of the publishing industry? The news all seems pretty grim from where some of us sit--book sales down, advances drying up, booksellers disappearing, industry layoffs, etc. In your view, where are we now, and where are we likely to be in five years, say?

[Daniel Hatadi]

It's definitely up there, but still needs a little work. We need more people without jobs to comment.

[Bob]

Does retired count? Are books sales actually down? At my stores, book sales have actually increased. That may be regional.

I present the fact that as liquidity diminishes, the average person still thirsts for entertainment. Dinners out, the opera, the play, the lavish parties are stricken from the to do list. These are replaced by lower cost entertainment items...the television, movies and yes...books.

A bigger concern for me, (this is a huge thread at another site) is electronic books. Once a book is sold in electronic format, there is no way to stop that book from being copied and sold/presented free on the internet or via CD/DVD copies. The writer, agent and publisher possess the electronic versions. If these are kept away from the public domain, piracy of books is too expensive and will not occur in volume. Make it electronic and with the click of a button and 15 minutes in my PC and I can provide the world a free new bestseller from a server set up with an alias, so there is no-one to chase. Shut that site down and for $10 and 10 minutes, I can have another two sites providing free books.

It is easy to count revenues from book sales and e-book sales. It is not easy to count revenues lost from e-book piracy. I am sure, currently, that e-book sales dollars are less than lost revenue from e-book piracy. And we are just seeing E-book piracy immerging, wait until the flood gates open.

Why are the publisher in bed with Scribd? EG: Dean Koontz - Your Heart Belongs To Me December 2008 copyright all 257 pages for free.

Smiles
Bob

[I. J. Parker]

Wait a minute, libraries lock into an e-book provider (the name escapes me at the moment), and the libraries' patrons download books free. What is to keep them from sharing? And in this country, libraries do not kick back user fees to authors and publishers.

Also, authors have usually lost their electronic rights to a print publisher, so Kindle, for example, deals directly with the publisher. I have no idea how much oversight the publisher practices in the case of Amazon's distribution plans.

I do not believe that authors and agents are to be blamed for giving away copies.

[Bob]

I so agree...the author and agent have created the crack in the dam.

My point is ... make it electronic, theft is simple, fast, and profitable. Keep it paper, theft is just too much effort. Yes the book readers are pricy, in 2 years you will be buying them for $50 or less, just like the $8,000 plasma tv that sells now for $699. When the 64k PC was released at $8.000 from IBM, Commodore came out with a $1,500 version one year later. All electronics nose dives in price...like the price of books will nose drive when electronics supporting them take off.

The long and short...writing will no longer be a career path, since you can't really make a living from writing today and in five years you might be able to fill your gas tank once a month from book revenues. Electronics and piracy will make writing a hobbyist activity. The quality will suffer and the future contributions will gradually fade. I guess we always have what has already been written.

[Dana King]

You're a cheery bastard, I'll give you that.

It's also possible that the inexpensive cost of e-book production will increase sales, making the total revenue relatively flat, but with a higher percentage for authors. People may be willing to try more new authors, since their financial investment will be less per book. Either of those will be good things.

Piracy will always be an issue, but remember, it's not killing music; it's killing the traditional recorded music industry. Groups with established profiles can go direct to their audience, thus increasing their percentage even more. Lesser known groups can take advantage of niches and the lower per-song pricing to find new audiences. Dick Dale (King of the Surf Guitar) has done all his own recording and distribution for years. Copyright laws and anti-copy protection on the media will always race with the pirates, sometimes moving ahead, sometimes falling back.

I'm not saying that's what's going to happen. No one knows. The only thing it's safe to say is that the current industry model is likely to change in some way, possibly drastically, over the next several years and decades, in large part because of electronic distribution possibilities. Given how the current model treats authors, I don't think we should be too worried about change. Our energies would be better spent thinking of ways to get ahead of the curve.

[Bob]

So sorry, I am usually upbeat....but...I am very good at what I do...that is advise industry executives on the future of their industry (Management Consultant)...and the book industry has put blinders on in seeing revenues from a new product line-up ... E-books.
Unfortunately, they have not considered with understanding the downstream effect of this new niche.

By the way, people will not and usually cannot read more if more free books are available. Unlike music and movies which are done in minutes or hours, books take a lot more time. The volume individual consumers cosume will not increase...but the revenue will decrease.

[Bob]

This is like playing russian roulette with a Glock...

[John McFetridge]

Has writing fiction ever been a career path? Will the percentage of writers who can make a living solely from writing fiction realy change?

[Bob]

Bang on...Being a novelist should be a viable career path. It isn't today and I think it will only get worse. Hopefully we will continue to find new and wonderful hobbyist writers.

[John McFetridge]

Looking over my bookshelf now my guess is that almost every writer on there was a "hobbyist" writer for most of their careers. I've got a lot of books by Elmore Leonard, who didn't leave his day job until after all his westerns had been published an a number of his crime novels. Peter Robinson finally gave up his teaching job a couple of years ago.

The idea of writing novels as a sole form of income is quite new and probably only emerged with the addition of creative writing programs in universities. Didn't someone once say the first thing you needed to do in order to write a novel is turn 40 ;) - you'll probably have to make some kind of income before then.

All fiction writers are hobbyist writers. A tiny percentage win the lottery. The distribution methods will change, the technology will change but that will remain - only a small percentage will win the lottery.

[Andrew Kent]

Agree. The examples of hobbyists are legion and stretch back through history, and not just for fiction writers but for artists from many domains. Having commercial aspirations is completely rational and reasonable, but don't quit your day job!

[Bob]

Does this imply that the $$$$ spent on creative writing coarses is throwing your money down the drain.