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Publishing continues to be cautious about adopting digital and physical subscription models, with many unconvinced about the options on offer. Puffin’s move into picture book subscription boxes this month, sending out three curated titles for three to five-year-olds quarterly, was a rare foray by a big firm into a world some indies have been exploring for several years.
For agents, there is particular hostility towards the idea of dominant, Spotify-style e-book services and the seemingly inevitable squeeze on author and publisher earnings that would ensue should one rise to prominence. Lizzy Kremer, president of the Association of Authors’ Agents, warned: "It is possible to set up a ‘test’ scenario whereby a book which isn’t selling is placed into an underpopulated e-book subscription platform and sells a lot more than it did before. But this is a false experiment.
"We need to envisage a time in which almost everyone’s e-books are in the subscription platform, when the platform has the power to dictate terms and when the consumer has been re-educated to expect product for free. Now, most authors have lost a lot of sales to ‘loans’ or ‘downloads’, and neither author nor publisher has control over their e-book royalty income. In the audio business, the ever-increasing dominance of the subscription model, and the current relative lack of competition among platforms, means that per-unit income is inevitably going to tumble, even if audio unit download numbers continue to rise for a while longer."
Gordon Wise (pictured right) at Curtis Brown said he couldn’t see how it made economic sense to have an "all you can eat" reading platform. Unlike audio, he pointed out, an e-book isn’t something you can dip into while doing the ironing. "With e-books, I think it’s sort of a bit pointless," he said. "Reading a book is a full- time commitment, so what’s the advantage of having access to everything? The audio thing has come into popularity because it’s something that people can multitask around. You’d have to be a very heavy reader to get the most out of an e-book subscription."
Current audiobook subscription terms, where authors and publishers can be paid the same amount for streaming as a full download, were more welcome, Wise said. But he warned any move to music-style micropayments must be resisted as, like supermarket discounting, it would be hard to reverse.
He said: "The enormous concern would be if it was flipped around to the Spotify model, which doesn’t pay enough for new work to be created. I don’t see why we need to move on to that sort of model. It’s not benefiting the publisher or the authors. It’s not benefiting the consumer either, because the money isn’t being invested in creation."
However, Jasper Joffe, who runs e-book firm Joffe Books, is a huge fan of Kindle Unlimited, describing it as "the best-kept secret in publishing". During one day alone this week, two million of Joffe’s pages were read through the service, with around 1.3bn consumed since it joined. The platform now provides around half the firm’s revenue. He said: "Roughly speaking, a whole book read in Kindle Unlimited gives around the same royalties [as a bought e-book]. If the books are good, there are readers who just love them and some get through two or three a week. Mystery readers are particularly voracious."
A physical approach
A ploy for bigger firms might be subscriptions for physical books, with Penguin saying it may explore boxes for older children in the future following the Puffin launch. Hilary Murray Hill, c.e.o. of Hachette Children’s Books, described subscription boxes as "a brilliant idea". She told The Bookseller: "There are some excellent examples in other industries—particularly the beauty business—and we can learn a lot from them. We already work successfully with a number of subscription companies, in terms of both established and new authors. A curated list of books, accompanied by other appealing content, is a compelling premise for time-poor consumers looking for recommendations from trusted places. We are always looking at new ways to reach readers, and subscription boxes are just one way of doing this."
An example box from Reading in Heels
For the most part, though, big firms have not launched their own services. Alice Revel isn’t surprised. Revel set up Reading in Heels, a service that sends out books and a selection of luxury products, which was followed by two similar operations. Now despatching to 5,000 customers a month, she said some publishers had been slow to understand the idea or its potential. Revel said: "They don’t seem to realise, with the subscription box, that we’re part marketing, part sales. We get fantastic engagement across social media, we’re putting books into the hands of a large number of people who are probably your target audience, which is pretty incredible. Initially, I was surprised at the reception from publishers. I imagined they would want to partner with us, talk to customers, get some data and numbers, even run some events and hear from people directly. That’s not really the case."
She went on to warn: "It seems there is still this idea that people buy the book and then that’s it. That’s not really enough to engage people. How do we reach beyond the retail experience? How do we create an experience that starts to rival being on your phone, or Netflix?"
Small victories
For indie presses such as Galley Beggar, with its Buddies scheme—which sends out limited editions of its new titles to around 250 people—the subscription idea offers a chance to build communities of loyal customers around their brand. Co-founder Sam Jordison said: "It makes a big difference to us if we have money coming in before the rent bill goes out. Also it’s great because it guarantees readers for our authors. We can’t offer people coming to us that much in terms of advances, but where we are super competitive is having dedicated readers."
Nathan Connolly, whose Dead Ink Books launched its Advanced Readers Club in March, said the idea’s lack of take-up by big presses was "completely bizarre". He said: "For indies, subscriptions work really well. I don’t know why bigger publishers haven’t done more on them. Maybe they think it will affect their trade sales, but I don’t know why they don’t engage more on this.”