'You can download some of my picture books from the google play store,' I answered. Which was a daft thing to say. A Year 6 kid isn't going to want a picture book.
'What about your horror stories?' he asked. He was referring to four books I'd written for a series called Tremors, first published by Macdonald in the late 1990s. Macdonald and its sister company, Wayland, were bought out by Hodder, in 2000 if I remember right. They discontinued Tremors but relaunched some of the titles with new covers under the Wayland imprint, aiming them at the school market. Two of my books came back into print but two didn't.
And here's my dilemma! If I wanted to, I could relaunch the two titles as ebooks. I use one of them in schools a lot and I know that kids purchase remaindered copies online. But how would my ebooks affect the sales of the paper editions still in print? Both of them still do quite well and I don't want the sales to plummet simply because children or teachers can get hold of the digital titles quicker.
I'm also not sure if it's ethical to produce something that competes directly with something else my publisher is trying to sell. I know we all have gripes about our publishers but I really like mine and get on well with them. I'm aware that when they go with one of my projects they are investing a considerable amount of money in me and the editors are putting their reputation on the line. Is it fair for me to come up with direct competition? Or am I just being a luvvy?I suspect the solution is to relaunch titles that would not hamper sales of paper books. I don't have any adventure stories in print at the moment, so I could self-publish a pirate novel I wrote for Pan/Macmillan long before Jack Sparrow made buccaneers cool again. I'd be dipping my toe in the digital market and still be able to turn off the lights at night with a clean conscience. What do you all think?
9 comments:
But will the e-books detract from sales of the paper books? Is there any evidence for that? Maybe they would actually promote sales for the other titles? Or simply supply a completely different part of the market? Do your publishers have a view?
Do you get on well enough with the publisher to talk to them about this? My instinct would be to chat to them first if you have a good relationship. I suspect that if it is going to be too expensive to reissue old titles then they will be happy for you to go ahead and self-publish them as e-books as, as Emma says, this could only serve to help promote you and thus increase sales of books currently in print.
I'm not sure if they do or don't, Emma. It could be that the kids read one ebook and then go on to buy the paper versions of the other and there is evidence to suggest that ebooks do encourage the sales of paper books. When I put free stories on my website it certainly stopped schools I visited from buying my books. Teachers would say, 'we downloaded your stories from your site.' I took the freebies down and it went back to 'we got your books.'
If you only publish the out of print books, people are likely to get hooked and want the others...
Definitely a dilemma and I'm not sure anyone has the answer to this problem. But I found what you said about the schools and the downloadable stories interesting, Saviour. As long as it IS "we got your books" not "we didn't bother to get your books at all but are keeping a bit quiet about it" as seems to happen quite often. Although probably not with your great books.
I'm with A Wilson here - If you get on well with the publishers, then talk to them - as frankly as you have here. (They may even read this - and approach you!)
Thanks for your comments and advice, everyone. I've decided to talk to my publishers about ebooking the two out of print Tremor titles. I'm also going to publish the pirate novel. I'll let you all know what happens.
Saviour - are you saying the publishers don't have the e-rights? If they don't, you don't have to ask them. Though, even if they don't, you might *prefer* them to do it, for various reasons, or to give them the option (as suggested above) - but you'll only get 25% (probably - could be more or could be less, depending on what you negotiate) whereas if you do it yourself you could get 70%. Most contracts do include e-rights, though.
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