[HN Gopher] Biggest story in books: Penguin Random House trial r...
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Biggest story in books: Penguin Random House trial ripping lid off
publishing
Author : kesor
Score : 38 points
Date : 2022-08-26 06:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (shush.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (shush.substack.com)
| sprite wrote:
| A bit unrelated but who are the best publishers for technical
| books?
|
| For me personally it seems pragprog.com usually has consistent
| quality, apress I've read good books but they seem a lot more hit
| or miss. I think Oreilly is also considered to be pretty good?
| pottertheotter wrote:
| I think Manning has some great books.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| O'Reilly is typically able to put out a solid book on a given
| topic. Some of the smaller publishers (Manning, a press, er
| all) can knock out a great book too, but quality can vary
| dramatically. Packt is really hit or miss, it seems like they
| have a book on everything, but the editorial standard isn't as
| high so some books are harder to get through.
|
| I've taken to buying more self-published books lately, as
| they're often getting more money to the authors pocket (way
| more), and I can often refer to the authors other work (blog,
| videos, trainings, etc.) to get an idea of what I'll be getting
| from the book.
| oxfeed65261 wrote:
| It seems to me that most of the truly transformational
| technical books I've read have come from Addison-Wesley, an
| imprint of Pearson PLC.
| exolymph wrote:
| No Starch Press! https://nostarch.com/
| xphilter wrote:
| Could someone who knows more than me please share why this
| matters at all from a competition standpoint? If quality content
| is written, it can be self published online for essentially free.
| Sure, it might be harder to get a sizable advance, but why does
| that matter so long as there is a cheap, non-censored method of
| getting writings out into the ether?
| extr wrote:
| I worked in publishing for a short while on the tech side of
| things and had this same question. It turns out print is very
| similar to other forms of media, in that it's power law
| distributed, possibly even more extreme than video or audio.
| The VAST majority of books written never sell any appreciable
| number of copies. And a few books/authors sell millions. So
| there is intense competition to become the PR and distribution
| machine for those winners (or manufacturer winners based on
| guesses of what might be trendy/popular).
|
| You can self publish only up to a certain point. If your book
| is truly popular, or you want it to become so, or you want to
| make real money, there is no way to "self print" millions of
| copies and distribute them, feature them on Amazon, etc. That's
| literally why the publishing company exists. "Sharing ideas" is
| completely orthogonal to the point of large publishers.
|
| Relevant to this suit, large conglomerates like PRH actually
| operate as many independent publishing houses (most of which
| have been acquired over time). They each have their own brands
| and editorial staff and want to show good results. This leads
| to intra-company bidding for the same books, which is obviously
| good for authors but bad for the company. So this merger would
| just make that effect more extreme. Probably the DOJ scrutiny
| is warranted here.
| guelo wrote:
| How do book fans discover and boost the gems among the
| streams of books?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| One of the issues is reputational. Trad pub sees itself as a
| cultural linchpin - the gate-iest of a gatekeepers, a setter of
| major trends.
|
| From one POV this is nonsense. Trad pub throws a lot of books
| at the wall and a few of them stick.
|
| But from another it does so selectively. In fiction the big
| advances go to established or potential personalities - not so
| much to outstanding authors, but to authors who are known to
| sell well.
|
| For new authors that means trad pub looks for individuals who
| will appeal to a target demographic. (For new contemporary
| fiction that usually - but not exclusively - means
| aspirational, college-educated, female.)
|
| Which being the case, even limited PR is better than no PR. And
| the big pubs can do _effective_ PR in a way that solo self-
| pubbed authors can 't, by setting up reviews/interviews in the
| mainstream press.
|
| An interview or a review typically costs nothing, but can be a
| huge driver of sales. The author needs to be reasonably
| interesting, at least a little photogenic, and have some kind
| of personal story the demographic can identify with and maybe
| admire. (Not usually the same story as the one in the book.)
|
| So it matters who does this, because it's not just about the
| money. It's really about a monopoly on gatekeeping cultural
| status.
|
| The money takes second place.
|
| Which is why publishing is simultaneously almost comically
| amateurish but also throws big sums around. The amateurishness
| is a remnant of the days when there were tens of medium sized
| publishers run by amateurs and enthusiasts who would often
| publish books just because they liked them.
|
| The industry is much more of a corporate monoculture now. But
| clearly it's still better to hang on to some remnants of choice
| and diversity - even if the choice is between a handful of
| monoliths, each of which still has a unique culture of sorts,
| instead of tens of smaller houses.
| extr wrote:
| Thanks for the perspective. While I was in the industry,
| being on the tech side felt like it insulated me from a lot
| of the drama of the editorial world. I would share your
| sentiments about money being secondary for them, you would
| meet people that had been in "assistant editorial" style
| roles for decades! All waiting for the chance to be in charge
| and have the cultural cache that came along with
| gatekeeping/creating trends.
|
| At that level, definitely not in it for the money. At the C
| level though I got the sense that there was supreme respect
| for the cultural role of publishers - but it was a narrow
| second to business concerns, and they would make that
| tradeoff if necessary.
| ghaff wrote:
| The one experience I have with going through (a respected
| technical) publisher is that, relative to self-publishing, the
| primary benefit was that a lot of people took it as a bit of a
| Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval with respect to book
| signings, reputational enhancement, etc. But the advance was
| pretty trivial and the editorial/marketing support was very
| limited.
|
| It also imposed a lot of restrictions on pricing, length, and
| free distribution.
|
| Obviously people do well by publishers but IMO it's hard to
| make a case that they're the vitally important gatekeepers they
| once were. YMMV of course.
| bwb wrote:
| I started https://shepherd.com about a year ago, so I talk to
| a ton of authors, and what blows me away is how no publishers
| do ANY marketing. This is such a weird industry and so
| weirdly broken.
|
| If you get a huge upfront payment, they will do some
| marketing, of course, as they need to try to recoup their
| investment. But if you are not one of the top .01% of
| authors, they are just spinning a wheel to see if the
| decapitated chicken hits Yahtzee.
| medion wrote:
| Yep, and how so many publishers want your own platform
| stats. I know people with large insta followings getting
| book deals purely because they can market their own books
| and cost publishers next to nothing, with an almost
| guaranteed profit. I hope the broken publishing system is
| destroyed by these same people realising they can do it all
| themselves - then perhaps the publishers can rise from the
| ashes and actually add true value.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's what happens when you can get a huge amount of
| content for cheap. Pay a $1500 advance, do some light
| editing, publish and sit back and see what happens.
|
| But yeah, marketing is basically you're in the catalog of
| (in my case) a technical book publisher and maybe you're
| included as part of some digital subscriptions. But even
| for more popular works, you're probably mostly not going on
| book signing tours or having a bunch of review copies sent
| out. You'll have to hire a PR agency for that and pay any
| costs out of your own pocket for the most part.
|
| What I've written has been good for me but mostly because
| I'm not trying to directly make money off it. If I had been
| naive enough to think I'd be getting meaningful royalty
| checks that valued my time more than a few dollars an hour
| I expect I'd be disappointed.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Sure, it might be harder to get a sizable advance
|
| It's not hard at all, that's what crowdfunding is for. It's
| been quite successful at rewarding free and open content,
| especially for lower-cost media like books (compared to live
| action movies or AAA games).
| bwb wrote:
| From a competition standpoint?
|
| The worry is that a merger would reduce upfront payments to
| authors because there is less competition (among other things).
| Authors like upfront payments as it reduces the risk for them.
| However, it is unclear if this would reduce payments as the
| market is pretty fractured.
|
| "but why does that matter so long as there is a cheap, non-
| censored method of getting writings out into the ether?"
|
| Many authors are not technical, and for them, dealing with
| formatting, uploading it to services, and all that "tech" stuff
| is immensely hard (especially if they have an FT job and a
| family).
|
| And, to create a great book requires a great editor most of the
| time. That isn't cheap, especially if they are going deep into
| your story. Traditional publishing is still a huge stamp of
| quality that helps sell books, gets the author exposure, and
| gets you in physical bookstores.
|
| Plus, if you are a new author, you write book(s) while doing
| something FT. That is hard; if payments go down, you could lose
| entire generations of authors as they don't have the time or
| money to devote to writing. We probably already are losing
| generations of authors given how rough the market is with the
| changes over the last 20 years.
|
| Does that help?
| ghaff wrote:
| >And, to create a great book requires a great editor most of
| the time.
|
| How many publishers actually provide serious story
| development support to authors starting out? Never done
| fiction but development editing in my non-fiction case was
| mostly in molding to house style. Even all the changes I made
| in v2 were essentially all of my own doing.
| bwb wrote:
| Ya, from my conversations with authors not often, but an
| author will often pay out of contracts. But, if you are on
| book 3 of a well-selling series at Tor I bet you do (I
| don't know just guessing).
|
| Did you get any help from an editor or was that out of
| pocket?
| ghaff wrote:
| I didn't need--or at least didn't think I needed--any
| serious outside structural editing. They did do
| "developmental" (but minor) and copyediting. I write a
| lot and knew the topic pretty well. I had work colleagues
| read over for tech review as appropriate. I have been
| paid out a little above advance but we're talking very
| small numbers for someone on a decent tech salary. The
| benefit was 90% reputational.
| bwb wrote:
| Just to mention, this is all known by people in the publishing
| industry... just not known outside it as heavily.
|
| IE, nobody knows what books will be huge and which won't.
| ghaff wrote:
| See also films outside of established properties--which, of
| course, is why you end up with the Marvel and Star Wars
| universes.
| bombcar wrote:
| The cost to bet vs potential payoff seems much higher on the
| publishing size - any book could be the next Harry Potter but
| you probably won't pay Stephen King amounts for it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Pretty much any theatrical release film is going to be in
| at least the millions and many/most are in the $10s of
| millions to create. For a book, probably cut that by three
| orders of magnitude.
|
| Of course, that also means it's a lot easier to find a
| publisher than a studio. Or to self-publish vs. create and
| release your own film (where you won't even have access to
| theatrical channels for the most part).
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, closer would be acquiring the rights to a script,
| but deciding to produce a movie really means they're
| dedicating some serious cash.
|
| If a book doesn't sell, they're out the advance and some
| pulp, which they can likely recycle.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, "development hell" is basically the result of
| scripts and moving towards actually producing a film is,
| for the most part, however lengthy and painful, mostly in
| the cost noise vs. actually shooting a film.
| [deleted]
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