Friday, July 23, 2010

Konrath on Wylie

Quite a few people have asked me what I think about the Andrew Wylie situation.

In a nutshell, here's an agent who is taking some of his star clients' books, which were sold prior to ebook clauses existing in contracts, and publishing these ebooks himself.

I predicted something similar to this would happen, last October.

There are a few potential problems with this scenario.

First, Wylie is an agent. His job is to sell his clients' work. If he is also the publisher of his clients, there is a HUGE conflict of interest there, as well as some ethical considerations. After all, why bother to try to sell any rights at all when he can make money publishing them himself? Is that truly in his clients' best interest? Does he deserve a commission off of this sale? Is he taking a publisher's cut of the profits?

Second, a lot of folks are annoyed that he made this deal exclusively with Amazon, cutting out other retailers and platforms. Personally, I have no problem with this at all, as I've done basically the same thing with SHAKEN. If Wylie can make more money for his clients by signing with one platform, he should be able to do that without everyone whining.

The publishers, in response to Wylie, have declared they will no longer make deals with Wylie.

Now, I don't really care about the outcome of this little tiff. It doesn't effect me either way. From a purely intellectual standpoint, this is yet another mistake big publishers are making, and they're shooting themselves in the foot once again. If they want the erights, frickin' BUY them.

Publishers are punishing their customers with high ebook prices. Now they're punishing their authors. This is a big sign of an industry flushing itself down the tubes.

A smart publisher would be kissing author ass and offering them big ebook royalties, because if they don't, they're going to get cut out of the equation completely.

As for Wylie, I believe agents are set up to be great estributors, as long as the rules and guidelines are ironed out. It's a complicated issue, and could easily be abused, sort of like making your lawyer the primary beneficiary in your will. But it also gives agents a chance to do something they all really want to do; get their clients' books in front of readers.

So as the digital revolution marches forward, it looks like the writers, and maybe the agents, will be able to survive, and even thrive.

The publishers? I haven't seen any evidence yet they'll make it. But I have seen a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Since I'm a generous guy, and people often ask me for advice, I'll offer it to these three groups.

For the Writers - If you have an out-of-print backlist, or books your agent couldn't sell, or books in print that have no ebook clauses in the contract, I suggest self-publishing them as ebooks. For all other writers, first decide what your goals are, and learn as much as you can about ebooks and traditional publishing before making any hasty decisions. And, of course, make sure you're writing damn good books.

For the Agents - Wylie is taking a lot of heat, perhaps justifiably so. But remember that your clients are your authors, not the publishers who buy you lunch. If you can serve your clients by helping them epublish, you should learn how to do so. And fast, before someone else does.

For the Publishers - Stop trying to stave off the inevitable. If you want to survive, you need to start embracing ebooks, even if they cannibalize your bread-and-butter print sales. If that means downsizing and restructuring your business, do it. And you'd better start treating your authors fairly, starting with bigger ebook royalties, because the authors, and their agents, are going to figure out that once ebooks reach a tipping point, they won't need you anymore.

205 comments:

«Oldest   ‹Older   201 – 205 of 205
Jude Hardin said...

I don't know if you've noticed the record stores closing down Jude, but its the same principal.

Damn! Who is this principal, and why does s/he keep closing all the cool stores????

JA Konrath said...

Damn! Who is this principal, and why does s/he keep closing all the cool stores????

ROFL

Thomas Brookside said...

Why would anyone want to publish piles of crap? That's my next card. Why?

Because people buy them, of course. Enough of them do.

Besides, you miss the point entirely. There is a lot of cultural machinery out there designed to exalt traditional publishing by repeating over and over that everyone not anointed by it sucks. And there are a lot of people who can be shamed into silence and inactivity by self-doubt if you just tell them loudly enough that they suck.

The way you defeat that is by not caring. You can't successfully heckle someone who doesn't give a damn.

Maybe I suck, maybe I don't suck. But to show you that I don't care what you think, I am happy to stipulate that I suck. So what?

And knock people I don't even know and collectively denigrate them for their chosen profession and insinuate they suck at what they do.

I did no such thing. I just demoted them to "people", which is what you agree they are.

If anything less than being put on a pedestal and enshrined as the arbiter of elegance constitutes "denigration", then I guess I have denigrated a lot of people. But I really don't think that's the right standard to use.

When and if he realizes what those liberal arts majors are really doing in those classes, his writing may improve.

Based on my experience in poli sci and philosophy classes, I predict that what they were doing was pulling each other's pud.

I find no reason to assume that "Read Jane Austen and we'll get together and a bunch of bored 20 year old kids will talk about it, and then you'll write a paper about it" would be any better at producing Literary Authorities than "Read Robert Nozick and we'll get together and a bunch of bored 20 year old kids will talk about it, and then you'll write a paper about it" is at producing Titans of Political Philosophy.

All because they won't publish my work?

I would never even ask. It strikes me as insane that anyone would.

I have made this analogy before, and no one has ever rebutted it to my satisfaction:

If I was getting ready to sell my house, and I was told that the new way the real estate industry worked was that you were supposed to write a letter to a real estate agent describing yourself and your house, and then wait six weeks to a year while they decided if they wanted to answer your letter, I would laugh. And if I was further told that if that agent sent you back a letter telling you that your house wasn't good enough to sell, you were supposed to burn it down and build a new one, I would say, "Go bleep yourselves!" There's no way I'd participate in that.

Anyone who would throw away an asset because some "authority" somewhere told them it wasn't good enough is nuts. The asset has a value. Sell it yourself if no one will assist you in selling it. Maybe it made sense to just stick the asset in a trunk somewhere before, because there was no way for you to monetize it. But that's not the case any more.

Anonymous said...

@Thomas Good for you!

bowerbird said...

joe said:
> Please point me to your old
> blog posts and predictions.
> I'd love to be enlightened.

oh joe, you nailed it there.

because, you see, son, in the
olden dayes, we had no blogs.

no sir, we walked to school,
uphill, both ways, in snow.

we had listserves, and i was a
prolific poster. you don't have
the time to read all my posts...
no sir, you have books to write.


> As for me being a prophet,
> I'm anything but.

yeah, that's what i was saying.

that i don't understand why so
many people call you a prophet.

what happened was that life
came up and is kissing you on
the mouth, hard, and you're
telling us that it feels good.
that's not being "a prophet";
more like a reporter, at best.


> I'm simply one of the
> only people looking hard
> at what's happening and
> realizing the potential
> to make a lot of money.

well, again, there are lots of us
who are "looking hard", so you
are not "one of the only people".

and some of us have already
been "looking hard" for signs
of profitability for a long time.

while you just stumbled upon it.
(because bezos flipped a switch.)

but you seem to want to keep
doing confrontation with me.

whereas i am just really, really,
really overjoyed that you _did_
stumble across profitability...

and i'm even _more_ happy that
you're willing to _preach_ on it
-- and speak loudly and often --
so other authors learn it as well.

now i can change my tune from
"it's gonna happen, _really_" to
"it's already started to happen".

i'm pointing many people to you,
saying "you see, i _told_ you so."


> Are you making
> a lot of money?
> Since you predicted this
> so long ago?

joe, i don't care about money.
angels are taking care of me...

my mission is to grow creativity,
because it's the only thing that'll
save us humans from extinction.

what good will it do you to pay
your mortgage if we all die off?

-bowerbird

«Oldest ‹Older   201 – 205 of 205   Newer› Newest»