Another Viewpoint

Okay, we talked last week about the book price war going on between Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target. This week we kick off with another viewpoint. This one from Marion Maneker, who writes for a website called The Big Money who provides articles for The Washington Post and other newspapers.

Maneker believes

Book people are easily spooked. And their first line of defense is to hyperventilate.

He then goes on to lay out a twisted tale of how publishers should be operating, something he calls “a Dutch auction on a distribution fee.” Then he concludes by asking himself if he thinks publishers will embrace this new business model. His answer is: “No. They're too greedy.”

Here’s his formula:

If the publisher is going to sell the book to Amazon for $9, it should offer to take $3 per book as a distribution and marketing fee. A fat hardcover book costs $2 in paper, printing and binding. The author would keep $4, which is basically what he would earn in royalties on a $27.95 book. But since this is a competitive situation, the publisher might bid lower -- say, $2 per book and a pass-through on the marketing costs.

If the book succeeds, the author makes a boatload of money: $5 million on a million copies sold. If it fails, the publisher isn't crushed by the unearned advance.

To do that, he recommends publishers drastically cut their overhead and develop new authors via e-books.

I don’t see anything offered to those in-between the mega sellers and new e-authors. New authors apparently will work, as always, to establish themselves, although they’ll be rowing in e-form rather than the print book boat, and the mega authors will sail away on their boatload of money.