Prices are Negotiable

For most vendors, prices are negotiable. Show them that a competitor is offering a lower price and "some" vendors will adjust their prices if it is for a "comparable" system.

How large can these adjustments be?

In the past we have seen vendors adjustment their prices by 10% to 33%.

Which firms are most likely to offer the largest price adjustments? Its new vendors that are entering the market and need references to obtain future sales or vendors that are desperate for a sale.

eBooks 103

Once you are using POD to monetize your back list and are providing digital files to DARs (Digital Asset Resellers) its time to create new products from existing intellectual property, as that is where you will maximize income.

In this area publishers are using many strategies.,

1. Some such as Harlequin are selling eBooks by subscription. Readers get access to books before their published release.

2. O'Reilly is selling whole book PDFs along with short article based PDFs.

3. Random House is experimenting with the sale of individual chapters.

The key for success is to define digital products that will maximize revenue for your products. What works for one publisher may not work for another due to differences in content, the size of their back list and the number of new titles they produce each year.

eBooks 102

Following up on my last post where I suggested that publishers signup with DARs, digital asset resellers;

1. Each DAR specializes in a specific area of the market. NetLibrary does best with professional books accessed by university students. Ingenta excels at the marketing of journal articles. Sony eBook is great for works of fiction. So target your efforts at the DARs that excel at handling your type of book.

2. How much can you expect to earn? At the time this article is being written a small publisher with sales of about $5M in New York gets 3% of their sales from digital resellers.

3. To faciliate the tracking of digital sales one should assign a new ISBN to your digital products. Some authorities recommend a seperate ISBN for each digitsal format, but for most publishers a single new ISBN for all digital formats (Sony eBook, Mobipocket, Adobe Digital Book) of the entire book is sufficient for sales analysis purposes.

eBooks 101

There is a lot of talk in the industry about digital publishing, and many publishers ask what is the best way to proceed.

First, I would start with Print on Demand for old slow moving back list titles. If you do it through Ingram's Lightning Source they will take orders you send them and pick, pack and ship the books to the customer for you within 24 hours. Once your titles are listed as being available through POD with Lightning Source they are listed as being in stock at Ingram, the largest book wholesaler in the United States.

Second, then I would contact a DAM; Digital Asset Manager, such as LibreDigital or Code Mantra to convert my existing titles to digital books (they will do this for a minimal fee). Once this is done the next step is to sign agreements with digital asset resellers so that they can start selling your titles. Who are these DARs? They include eBrary, NetLibrary, Amazon, Sony eBook, OverDrive, eBook.com and many more.

Llewellyn Selects Elan Rights & Royalties Software

"Llewellyn Worldwide, a leading publisher of New Age books and related products, has signed a contract with The Media Services Group to implement the Élan Rights and Royalties software application. Details of the agreement will see the new system implemented alongside the company’s current Oracle financials and fulfillment software."

Read the Media Services Press Release

Publishers Group UK installs Vista Hosted Solution

"January 30, 2008 —VISTA, market leader in applications to support the publishing supply chain, is proud to announce that Publishers Group UK (PGUK), a market leader in book sales and distribution representing publishers from the UK, Europe and the USA, has selected VISTA’s fulfillment and financial applications in a hosted (AHS) environment. The hosted applications require minimal maintenance from PGUK’s perspective allowing their mainly non-technical staff to focus on their business of marketing, selling and distributing books."

Read the Vista Press Release

Software Selection Options

What are your options?

Any company looking for software should look at all of their options;

1. Integrated software
2. Best of breed solutions
3. Custom designed software

and

1. Standalone vs.
2. Hosted solutions

That said, there is no one best solution. You must select the software that best meets the requirements of your organization.