Rewriting The Book Business

On May 23, 2000, Microsoft and three top U.S. publishers — Time Warner Trade Publishing, Simon & Schuster and Random House — all announced they were launching online publishing ventures. They were encouraged no doubt by the success of Stephen King's novella "Riding the Bullet," which sold 400,000 copies online in two days in March. The idea that people would download books to computers or portable electronic devices rather than simply curling up in bed with them seemed like it would take some getting used to, but the American Publishers Association estimates e-books will be a $1 to $3 billion business in five years, according to a Reuters report.

Big companies are by no means the only ones diving into e-publishing, an area that holds the potential for leveling the playing field between big and small publishers and authors. Because e-books are distributed over the Internet, the costs of paper, printing, warehousing, shipping and returns are all eliminated. This means, at least theoretically, that anyone with Internet access can be a publisher or published author. (Though this begs the ubiquitous new-media question: Is it the democratization of literature or its destruction when there is no longer any bar to becoming a published author?)

E-books should be cheaper for readers, publishers should reap greater profits, and royalty rates for authors should increase. But as with other new media, the power in publishing, whether new-style or traditional, falls to those who have the money to promote their books. Marquee writers will sell well in any medium, and those who are part of huge media enterprises have a huge leg up on the unconnected, which raises questions about ethics. For example, what happens when Disney-owned ABC reviews a book by Disney-owned Hyperion?

For unknown writers and those who don't write in English — which is, of course, most writers — the problems are compounded. One profound change in book selling in the last decade, at least in the United States, has been the rise of chain stores and conglomerate publishers, which have all but buried most small bookstores and publishers, leading to an increasingly commercial and narrow range of "marketable" books. Literary works are losing out to best sellers, TV tie-ins, celebrity and software titles and so on.

Outside of the United States and Western Europe, small publishers, e-publishers and online book sellers see as many opportunities as obstacles. Particularly in developing countries, they hope that previously inaccessible literature will become more available since the reduced costs of printing and distributing should make the book industry more accessible. And as Eastern Europe moves away from state-controlled publishing to freer markets, the debate over how best to disseminate ideas accelerates.

- Elinor Nauen, Editor

RECENT MEDIA BOOKS

•The Business of Journalism, edited by William Serrin
•Capitalism and the Information Age, edited by Robert McChesney, Ellen Woods and John Foster
•The Information Bomb, Paul Virilio
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•Rising from the Ashes? Labor in the Age of "Global" Capitalism, edited by Ellen Meiksins Wood, Peter Meiksins, and Michael Yates
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INDEPENDENTS ONLINE

From "In the Shadow of the Giants" at Utne.com

• A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books
• Booksmith
• Cody's
• Davis-Kidd
• Hawley-Cooke
• Kepler's
• Liberties Fine Books, Music & Café
• Midnight Special
• Powell's
• Elliot Bay Books