Dinosaurs of the Future: Are Book Publishers Still Relevant?
You’re doing any of these three things right now: reading this article from your smartphone, tablet/phablet, or personal computer. I don’t have to be psychic to know—how else would you have accessed this website to read this article? There’s an e- and i- everything today. You name them: iPhones, e-commerce/e-stores, e-learning, e-assistants…, and, of course, ebooks.
Ebooks! Finally, as digital technology continues to scale at lightning speed, I can have and read my favorite books on the go. Downloaded in various formats for offline reading or accessible from the clouds saved online, all from the comfort of the same device you’re this with. Nested in the conversations about the digitization of physical utilities is the topic of self-publishing, the place of traditional book publishing methods or processes, profitability, and every satellite question revolving around it.
Banker-turned-book-writing-coach Paul Uduk had made a post analogizing the post-publishing economics of James Clear’s New York Times Bestseller “Atomic Habits” which had sold an astonishing 20 million in just 6 years of its release. 3.3 million copies on the average yearly would certainly grab attention like bees to pollen, even more so for a platform like the Uyo Book Club which attracts the most accomplished members of the literati, celebrated authors, and budding ones alike.
“How can that be achieved in a digital-first model?”, asked Theophilus Edet, a software engineer whose books on computer programming I recommend. Not a surprising first response. For a lot of authors, the pressing question, amongst others, has always been the profitability of their books, the spread, and how many copies can be and have been sold.
For Engr. Edet particularly, his concern as a digitization thought leader hinges on the profitability of marketing ebooks protected with Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. Put simplistically, “How I do sell more copies of my non-paperback books (ebooks) while protecting my intellectual property from being violated by pirates?” Valid question especially in a world where it’s increasingly more difficult to enforce copyright laws.
Mr. Uduk, a published author of several books himself, responds with perhaps the most blunt and pragmatic answer to any such question: “DRM only prevents illegal copying of your ebook but it doesn’t aid sales. You find books that sell the most in five formats: PDF, Mobi, Epub, paperback, and hardcover. So you have to decide whether to boost sales or fight illegal downloads. James Clear only managed to sell [10,000] copies of his book by himself while the others sold over 20 million copies in all. There is a sixth format: audio.”
So you have to decide whether to boost sales or fight illegal downloads.
So, is the solution to limiting the effect of book piracy outsourcing book distribution to organized channels with the reach to boost your sales? Is the format a book presented the determinant of how the target demography embraces it? Again, Engr. Edet makes a case for not comprising on IP protection. He posits book authors do not have to get punched down with the reality of someone else profiting off their intellectual property as the norm they have to live with.
“On the platform where I publish [Amazon], DRM is encouraged. It helps to secure the book file from the reader’s end I am told. That’s the book’s artifact, people pay to access it, and I kind of feel confident that if I want to sell from my website, which is currently not obtainable, I only need to point readers to that common file.
Right now every website discussing my books’ links has common content and there has never been any breach so far, but it builds traffic for content developers. I think it’s the way to cryptographically secure the copy of book’s file and sell from the cloud rather than from bookshops. If there is the possibility of a breach, I take responsibility; probably by sharing my book’s file with friends, just an exception, without the possibility of going large scale.
I will continue to retain the digital-first model, even when paperbacks are added as may soon come on stream from my 2025 campaign, it will still be derived from the digital model, as another file version will be delivered for Print on Demand (POD), so it will continue to remain a purely digital model. Readers and bookshops can order just the print runs they need (one too many), but the model remains purely digital. The distribution semantics here boils down safely to digital marketing.” Succinctly stated and, in itself, it makes a case for completely revamping book distribution processes and the cumulative effect of increased sales. Yet is this method a failsafe? Should authors ditch the physical for the virtual to stay afloat in today’s world?
Not so much so when factoring in the human tendency to outwit any system. It’s essentially encoded in humans to surmount obstacles and seeming limitations. Knowing this, it’s why we are the earth’s most dominant species. Nothing stops us – not the vague abyss of the oceans, the steep ascent to submit of Mt. Everest, or the cloudy barriers of the sky. Kingsley Mark Akpan exemplifies the loopholes that render the touted DRM protection for books insecure:
“But you seem to have missed the behavioral psychology part which is the get-around to hacking any seemingly secure system. If your encrypted ebook gains enough traction and the search volume is significant enough to draw traffic, nothing stops a buyer from purchasing your eBook for, say, #20,000, and then converting it to an unencrypted PDF, ePub, or Mobi version.
Next, he uploads it to his blog for free or for a tiny fraction of the cost. Probably uploaded it on his website with tons of ads (and malware too!). If he has Google AdSense or some other ad structure, the impressions of people Google-searching the free version of your book and then visiting his website would make him the money back. There’s a reason DRM with ebooks hasn’t caught on. Kindle versions are a better option. Or structuring pre-ordering before the ebook release date so you can at least make up for production costs and a little profit.
Digital marketing is only a part of it. How large that part is? It varies. You need a significant following – some sort of bankable social currency – to get people to pre-order your ebook. And to command that sort of social currency, for most parts, you need to be known prior as a writer of books. A Catch-22 situation. That’s if you are doing it organically. If you are going the boosted way for quick results, there has to be invested capital for ads. Most writers don’t have that lying around.
The exceptions, in my opinion, would be if the ebook’s theme has an envisaged tell-it-all. Like, maybe some lady springing out of nowhere claiming to have been a nurse in the hospital Abacha or the late singer Mohbad spent his dying minutes. Then she can structure it as a pre-order, maybe sell 1 million copies before the pirated copies go viral. The Governor has that social currency. A celebrity does. But this is an outlier which wouldn’t negate the norm.”
An earlier rejoinder by Paul Uduk about DRM-protected books not catching on because piracy, defeating as it seems, is an inevitability authors have accepted does hit hard. The Book Coach posits there is no idealism to book distribution and a pragmatic approach like authors giving out copies of their books with a fraction of the content to generate buzz and stir interest and expectation works. But the software engineer Theo, ever one to champion the complete digitization overhaul of any system insists eliminating or circumventing seeming bottlenecks of traditional book publishers to achieve rapid deploring of ideas while scaling down on production costs justifies the approach.
Did you notice something? Based on the defenses for each standpoint, everything seems to be crystallizing into a certain point: Authors have the options of different approaches; to choose what book formats work best with their target demographies. Still, are book publishers relics in today’s world? Is the traditional book publishing system a dinosaur present reality of e-everything? More importantly, can we do away with the services book publishers have to offer? Kingsley thinks they define the final product – the book:
“There lies the divergence, I suppose. You produce written compendia of digital skills/processes as a software engineer. Understandable. If I were to write a book about building e-commerce stores or search engine optimization, I probably wouldn’t be overly stuck on the traditional routes since the crux of it is getting hands-on. The target demography would hardly harp on the grammatical technicalities, pagination, etc. This is for you, this is for me. If it’s a standard book about any other subject topic, you’d still need that publishing structure for everything; well, most things. Publishers aren’t just marketers. I’d liken them to movie producers. Even if the movie is premiered on YouTube, it still has to be produced by professionals otherwise, what you would have would be akin to the cringe-invoking Nollywood-esque ( they call those kinds of films Asabawood) movies.
Not needing publishers etc is why we have so many badly-written ‘books’ in circulation. Democratizing access through ebooks and scaling from idea to finished book is great, but sacrificing quality on the altar of speed and spread isn’t worth it in the long run from a consumer standpoint. Peter Thiel, Marty Cagan, Nir Eyal, Paul Graham, and others who are some of the most influential names in Silicon Valley and Digital Tech are still putting out bestsellers using traditional publishing setups though. Yes, they have e-formats, but they haven’t abandoned the good ol’ paperback, yet.
For context, Peter Thiel authored an ebook called “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, Or How to Build the Future”. Just skimming through it would make it obvious it went through the traditional publishing route from how it’s structured – preface, acknowledgments, everything. And no one has seen it all more than Peter Thiel. He was part of the PayPal Mafia – Elon Musk used to work under him, and he has a hand in the biggest digital tech/software companies in the world. Yet he doesn’t think publishers or publishing structures are relics in today’s world.
The point is these folks who are the leaders of the digitized world you and I bank our everything on still recognize the place and value of putting out books the right way and engaging book professionals to ensure the final product – the book – is of the best quality.“
A case could be made for all the standpoints so far: Focusing more on paperback because the cost of production reduces the incentive to pirate today or going full digital while hoping the sophistication of technology secures your intellectual property and increases access to your, even in remote. Whatever aisle you are choosing to strut on, we can all agree the final product – the book – has to be of the quality as can be; from how the content is structured to the grammatical correctness of the language, and more. The book publishing process is more than printing and distribution. Embedded in the process are editing, proofreading, and other aspects that have to be done and vetted by provenly experienced professionals while ensuring they embrace digitization.
Would ebooks replace paperbacks fully? Maybe; then again, maybe not. Mass-scale book publishing has endured for 500 years for a reason. I think – and this is my personal opinion- all forms of books will continue to exist, giving readers a plethora of options to choose from – whether it’s a camper who wants solitude or the girl on a bus to her school who wants to read 20 minutes of that can’t-put-down new release by favorite author. Audiobooks haven’t rendered ebooks redundant which makes a case for paperbacks. As for piracy, while we continue to hope technology develops quickly enough to help authors protect their works and out pirates with legal consequences, Paul Uduk’s statement probably rings the loudest: “You have to decide whether to boost sales or fight illegal downloads.”
As always, virtually and physically, Uyo Book Club would continue to stir and steer thought-provoking conversations, promoting reading across age groups. We never tire of being the lighthouse to guide everyone to the vast knowledge found in books. Below are a few pictures from our events.
