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Publishers back Page's creative vision
09.12.11 | Lisa Campbell
HarperCollins and Canongate have backed Faber’s Stephen Page’s calls for a new publishing to emerge, centering on creativity with copyright.
Page said being creative with copyright will transform the nature of the industry, speaking at The Bookseller’s FutureBook Conference at London’s Queen Elizabeth II conference centre on Monday (5th December).
Publishing needs to become more thrilling, he said, which can be achieved through thinking three-dimensionally and restructuring companies to facilitate creativity.
HarperCollins c.e.o. Victoria Barnsley supported Page’s vision of new publishing, saying: “I agree wholeheartedly with my former Fourth Estate protégé.”
Jamie Byng, m.d. of Canongate, which has recently rebranded its website as Canongate TV, also backed the need for publishers to re-imagine themselves going forward.
Byng said: “We should be thinking of ourselves as broadcasters rather than simply book publishers and this means using all mediums available to connect the storytellers whose work we are responsible for nurturing, promoting and selling to the wider world. For us this means Canongate Books, Canongate TV, Canongate Radio, Canongate Music.”
Page said Faber no longer thinks of itself as a book publisher, but “a business about reading and writing”, where future opportunity lies in understanding the full extent of its footprint in the conversation between the author and the audience. “The bit between the writer and reader is called publishing. We need to think of copyright in an imaginative way,” he said. “Publishers are very creative about format for books, through covers and marketing campaigns, but we are not that creative about the product. The creativity there seems to go on before we receive the product. We can think what we might make from the copyright and from the brilliance of working with an author.”
Page said publishers had to form more partnerships with sister creative industries, communicate better with authors and other publishers, re-skill and re-train workforces to know what is coming next in digital but, above all, create value and champion and support copyright.
He said: “The baton-passing, linear nature of publishing, marching department to department towards the trade, doesn’t lend itself well to the creative process about what we might do and what copyright we might offer. We have to build the structural architecture that allows opportunity for that creativity to happen. We have to be able to interrupt and get the attention of our audience on a very wide scale.”
TheBookseller
©2012 Bookseller Media Ltd rights reserved.
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In other words, keep up!
I support the general thrust of these comments, and I do like what Canongate are trying to do with their website, but the reports from these conferences always just contain endless glib soundbites. Great proclamations about what publishers should be doing, with nothing of substance behind it. I’m sure Page and Byng must have said something of a bit more substance through the course of their entire speeches (otherwise, a ticket would be a bit of a waste of money), but none of that comes through in the report. As for Barnsley’s vomit-inducing quote…oh dear oh dear oh dear.
At last someone has realised the merely copying book content into e-reader form is a bit pointless. Real books are in many ways much nicer than a tablet. but an e-reader can do loads that a book cannot. It is exciting technology & should be viewed as such. Interactive stories, moving illustrations, talking letters and words for children, games, interviews, pictures of places in the book and much much more. E-readers ARE NOT books without the paper, but something entirely different. the book is not dead, but something to treasure, to keep, to share, to put in your pocket, read on the beach or in the bath, to have on your shelves to get down when the mood takes you. Let's celebrate the difference & look for new ways to use this marvelous technology
Is this a parody?
It's a paradigm. But not a new one.
Goodness me. I'm struggling to make sense of all that over-excited verbiage.
Publishing 'needs to become more thrilling'? I think publishing needs to hang on to the often overlooked fact that readers and writers are the life blood of the industry.
The usual nebulous codswallop that could be summarised in one sentence: publishing is about intellectual property and what you do with it.
It is also incredibly condescending to independent publishers who trailblaze while the PLCs merely pat each other on the back at junkets like this one.
I am not entirely sure why The Bookseller keeps on reporting about the workings of 4-5 publishing houses, as if they are the golden standard. There are hundreds of creative small publishers who are, for all intents and purposes, excluded from the cozy little club, but allowed nevertheless to partake through this venerable trade publication.
What a joke!!!!
As an author's advocate, I present some more food for thought. Now that books can sit on a server or be printed on demand what is the motivation for a publisher to return rights to an author? Where does the copyright holder stand when a book is out of print?
Authors make a living by selling books. If a handful of books are sitting in a ware house and a publisher is not selling copies then the rights should be returned to the author. That is how it has been handled in the past.
Recently, a case in point is Harper/Collins U.K. refusal to return rights to authors for their books where Harper/Collins are not doing anything at all to keep the books in the stores and therefore are not selling any copies other than warehousing books. The works are out of print.
So in order to keep the books in print, Harper/Collins, wants to bring out ebooks to avoid the book going out of print only they won't pay a 50/50 royalty to the author on old titles. The agreements calls for the parties to agree on a royalty. Now in order to leverage the author Harper/Collins won't return rights and won't publish an ebook because they won't pay the author a fair ebook royalty on an old title(s). Random House is paying higher royalties than Harper/Collins for back list ebook titles.
In the digital age authors have to be very careful concerning how "out of print" language is designed. If the parties cannot come to terms on a digital royalty an author should have their book(s) back. This example is when a publisher wishes to publish an ebook and royalties have to be negotiated per the agreement, which is the case with Harper/Collins, and where this language exists in older contracts. In new agreements, future language in publishing contracts needs to state that the author is free to go if the parties can't agree on an ebook royalty (if one is not agreed to at the time of the original deal). Otherwise, like Harper/Collins, publishers will employ tactics simply to hold on to rights.
With all the publishers Trident has worked with in the U.K., Harper/Collins is the first to employ this tactic to hold on to rights of an out of print work(s).
Robert Gottlieb
Chairman
Trident Media Group, LLC
www.tridentmediagroup.com
I would say that in the digital age, the out of print wording in contracts is far more specific in a way that favours the author than it has been in the past and it's older titles that cause more of an issue. In my experience it's US publishers who are the most aggressive and unreasonable about an out of print definition.
Looking at your Harper/Collins situation, I can see why they don't want to pay a 50% royalty as standard, especially if the advance remained unearned; however the way it's outlined, the rights should be easy enough to revert.
If the ebook royalty is listed as TBA they cannot produce the edition without your agreement. If the book is out of print and unavailable in the absence of an ebook edition, you can revert it as normal and there should be no issue. If they won't return the rights it's not a situation of unfair tactics, it's flat-out intentional breach of contract. Authors should certainly pay attention to poor contract wording, but an agent or freelance contracts specialist will make it an easy fix.
A bigger concern for authors should be the action being taken against the agency model for ebook selling. If it succeeds, the retailers will be demanding 60-70% discount and a ~£2.50 sales price, and publishers will have their margins squeezed further and further, something that rarely works out well for the author. Authors will be left with a choice between little to no physical publication and advance (but a good ebook royalty from Amazon), or an ebook royalty from publishers that never goes above 25% (but money for food while they're writing and sales of physical edition too). Only the biggest names will get both and the midlist majority suffers as a result.
Tom Lloyd-Williams
Contracts Manager
Atlantic Books Ltd
Tom Lloyd-Williams,
Thank you for your well well thought out response.
Harper is refusing to do any better on their ebook royalties than standard and I don't consider that a "good faith negotiation" as stated in the agreement with the author.
They claim have a handful of books in the warehouse and say that is all they need to do to keep the work in print. This is contrary to their obligations to the author to have books in circulation and available to the public in book stores.
No one is prepared to take them to court over the matter however Trident has placed Harper/Collins at the end of the line for all submissions as a result in the U.K. until further notice. Thus far Harper/Collins has missed out on two major auctions in the U.K. as a result of their refusal to return rights to an out of print book.
Robert Gottlieb
Chairman
Trident Media Group, LLC
www.tridentmediagroup.com
CORRECTED COPY
Tom Lloyd-Williams,
Thank you for your well well thought out response.
Harper is refusing to do any better on their ebook royalties than standard and I don't consider that a "good faith negotiation" as stated in the agreement with the author.
They claim to have a handful of books in the warehouse and say that is all they need to do to keep the work in print. This is contrary to their obligations to the author to have books in circulation and available to the public in book stores.
No one is prepared to take them to court over the matter however Trident has placed Harper/Collins at the end of the line for all submissions as a result in the U.K. until further notice. Thus far Harper/Collins has missed out on two major auctions in the U.K. as a result of their refusal to return rights to an out of print book.
Robert Gottlieb
Chairman
Trident Media Group, LLC
www.tridentmediagroup.com
I agree with the idea that publishing is now about a set of industries. Small independent presses have been realising this. We need to be broadcasters as well as print book and ebook producers. The crisis in bookselling is partly because so many people are wanting to listen, view and read online. We have a bigger market than ever in many ways, and people have never read as much as they do now. They're just doing it in a different way and integrating it with podcasts and vidcasts. We have to be providing all of that.
The sound of publishers complaining (in these comments) is the sound of the rate of change dragging their preconceptions along the floor. The idea of change is to change, not to keep as much the same as we can. The idea of 'change' unfortunately starts off from something to change away from - the most energetic and expansive movers/shakers in the digital market are those without the cultural inertia of 1700 years of the codex.
On Darwinian principles, can increased creativity improve traditional publishing's rate of adaptation to the new digital environment? I suspect not - sorry. Don't get me wrong, though - it's worth a try.
What about something radical as well? What about revaluing the codex-ness of the codex, the smells and subtle, glorious physicality of 'the book'? If we publish books on paper, let’s value what we make. More than that, let’s revel in their glorious physicality. Apple-style, let’s bring designers and marketing together and give them both a proper chance to show their multimodal creativity – and to shout about it.
For more along these lines, see my blog post 'Page against the machine' (and others) at http://propagandum.wordpress.com/
In other words, keep up!
I support the general thrust of these comments, and I do like what Canongate are trying to do with their website, but the reports from these conferences always just contain endless glib soundbites. Great proclamations about what publishers should be doing, with nothing of substance behind it. I’m sure Page and Byng must have said something of a bit more substance through the course of their entire speeches (otherwise, a ticket would be a bit of a waste of money), but none of that comes through in the report. As for Barnsley’s vomit-inducing quote…oh dear oh dear oh dear.
At last someone has realised the merely copying book content into e-reader form is a bit pointless. Real books are in many ways much nicer than a tablet. but an e-reader can do loads that a book cannot. It is exciting technology & should be viewed as such. Interactive stories, moving illustrations, talking letters and words for children, games, interviews, pictures of places in the book and much much more. E-readers ARE NOT books without the paper, but something entirely different. the book is not dead, but something to treasure, to keep, to share, to put in your pocket, read on the beach or in the bath, to have on your shelves to get down when the mood takes you. Let's celebrate the difference & look for new ways to use this marvelous technology
Is this a parody?
It's a paradigm. But not a new one.
Goodness me. I'm struggling to make sense of all that over-excited verbiage.
Publishing 'needs to become more thrilling'? I think publishing needs to hang on to the often overlooked fact that readers and writers are the life blood of the industry.
The usual nebulous codswallop that could be summarised in one sentence: publishing is about intellectual property and what you do with it.
It is also incredibly condescending to independent publishers who trailblaze while the PLCs merely pat each other on the back at junkets like this one.
I am not entirely sure why The Bookseller keeps on reporting about the workings of 4-5 publishing houses, as if they are the golden standard. There are hundreds of creative small publishers who are, for all intents and purposes, excluded from the cozy little club, but allowed nevertheless to partake through this venerable trade publication.
What a joke!!!!
As an author's advocate, I present some more food for thought. Now that books can sit on a server or be printed on demand what is the motivation for a publisher to return rights to an author? Where does the copyright holder stand when a book is out of print?
Authors make a living by selling books. If a handful of books are sitting in a ware house and a publisher is not selling copies then the rights should be returned to the author. That is how it has been handled in the past.
Recently, a case in point is Harper/Collins U.K. refusal to return rights to authors for their books where Harper/Collins are not doing anything at all to keep the books in the stores and therefore are not selling any copies other than warehousing books. The works are out of print.
So in order to keep the books in print, Harper/Collins, wants to bring out ebooks to avoid the book going out of print only they won't pay a 50/50 royalty to the author on old titles. The agreements calls for the parties to agree on a royalty. Now in order to leverage the author Harper/Collins won't return rights and won't publish an ebook because they won't pay the author a fair ebook royalty on an old title(s). Random House is paying higher royalties than Harper/Collins for back list ebook titles.
In the digital age authors have to be very careful concerning how "out of print" language is designed. If the parties cannot come to terms on a digital royalty an author should have their book(s) back. This example is when a publisher wishes to publish an ebook and royalties have to be negotiated per the agreement, which is the case with Harper/Collins, and where this language exists in older contracts. In new agreements, future language in publishing contracts needs to state that the author is free to go if the parties can't agree on an ebook royalty (if one is not agreed to at the time of the original deal). Otherwise, like Harper/Collins, publishers will employ tactics simply to hold on to rights.
With all the publishers Trident has worked with in the U.K., Harper/Collins is the first to employ this tactic to hold on to rights of an out of print work(s).
Robert Gottlieb
Chairman
Trident Media Group, LLC
www.tridentmediagroup.com
I would say that in the digital age, the out of print wording in contracts is far more specific in a way that favours the author than it has been in the past and it's older titles that cause more of an issue. In my experience it's US publishers who are the most aggressive and unreasonable about an out of print definition.
Looking at your Harper/Collins situation, I can see why they don't want to pay a 50% royalty as standard, especially if the advance remained unearned; however the way it's outlined, the rights should be easy enough to revert.
If the ebook royalty is listed as TBA they cannot produce the edition without your agreement. If the book is out of print and unavailable in the absence of an ebook edition, you can revert it as normal and there should be no issue. If they won't return the rights it's not a situation of unfair tactics, it's flat-out intentional breach of contract. Authors should certainly pay attention to poor contract wording, but an agent or freelance contracts specialist will make it an easy fix.
A bigger concern for authors should be the action being taken against the agency model for ebook selling. If it succeeds, the retailers will be demanding 60-70% discount and a ~£2.50 sales price, and publishers will have their margins squeezed further and further, something that rarely works out well for the author. Authors will be left with a choice between little to no physical publication and advance (but a good ebook royalty from Amazon), or an ebook royalty from publishers that never goes above 25% (but money for food while they're writing and sales of physical edition too). Only the biggest names will get both and the midlist majority suffers as a result.
Tom Lloyd-Williams
Contracts Manager
Atlantic Books Ltd
Tom Lloyd-Williams,
Thank you for your well well thought out response.
Harper is refusing to do any better on their ebook royalties than standard and I don't consider that a "good faith negotiation" as stated in the agreement with the author.
They claim have a handful of books in the warehouse and say that is all they need to do to keep the work in print. This is contrary to their obligations to the author to have books in circulation and available to the public in book stores.
No one is prepared to take them to court over the matter however Trident has placed Harper/Collins at the end of the line for all submissions as a result in the U.K. until further notice. Thus far Harper/Collins has missed out on two major auctions in the U.K. as a result of their refusal to return rights to an out of print book.
Robert Gottlieb
Chairman
Trident Media Group, LLC
www.tridentmediagroup.com
CORRECTED COPY
Tom Lloyd-Williams,
Thank you for your well well thought out response.
Harper is refusing to do any better on their ebook royalties than standard and I don't consider that a "good faith negotiation" as stated in the agreement with the author.
They claim to have a handful of books in the warehouse and say that is all they need to do to keep the work in print. This is contrary to their obligations to the author to have books in circulation and available to the public in book stores.
No one is prepared to take them to court over the matter however Trident has placed Harper/Collins at the end of the line for all submissions as a result in the U.K. until further notice. Thus far Harper/Collins has missed out on two major auctions in the U.K. as a result of their refusal to return rights to an out of print book.
Robert Gottlieb
Chairman
Trident Media Group, LLC
www.tridentmediagroup.com
I agree with the idea that publishing is now about a set of industries. Small independent presses have been realising this. We need to be broadcasters as well as print book and ebook producers. The crisis in bookselling is partly because so many people are wanting to listen, view and read online. We have a bigger market than ever in many ways, and people have never read as much as they do now. They're just doing it in a different way and integrating it with podcasts and vidcasts. We have to be providing all of that.
The sound of publishers complaining (in these comments) is the sound of the rate of change dragging their preconceptions along the floor. The idea of change is to change, not to keep as much the same as we can. The idea of 'change' unfortunately starts off from something to change away from - the most energetic and expansive movers/shakers in the digital market are those without the cultural inertia of 1700 years of the codex.
On Darwinian principles, can increased creativity improve traditional publishing's rate of adaptation to the new digital environment? I suspect not - sorry. Don't get me wrong, though - it's worth a try.
What about something radical as well? What about revaluing the codex-ness of the codex, the smells and subtle, glorious physicality of 'the book'? If we publish books on paper, let’s value what we make. More than that, let’s revel in their glorious physicality. Apple-style, let’s bring designers and marketing together and give them both a proper chance to show their multimodal creativity – and to shout about it.
For more along these lines, see my blog post 'Page against the machine' (and others) at http://propagandum.wordpress.com/