Posts by David Haywood
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Mike Dickison wrote:
Winners: readers, authors. Losers: publishers, bookshops. For a sneak preview, see the music industry.
I've spent a lot of time doing the numbers on this, and that about sums it up perfectly. Strangely, however, the people in publishing/retail seem to be in denial. It's a bit like talking to a bunch of neolithic flint-knappers: "that bronze stuff will never catch on, son... stick to stone, that's my advice."
And the systems used by the major NZ publishers -- from a manufacturing-engineering point of view -- are still running on 1950s technology (albeit that they've replaced their pneumatic tubes with email).
It's very weird... almost as if Taiichi Ohno had never been born (or Henry Ford for that matter). At any rate, I'm all in favour of using technology to make things better for authors and readers. Though, of course, I'd like to see writers seize the initiative to boost their income, rather than for new technology to simply deliver cheaper books for readers.
Incidentally, for those interested in learning to play the marvellous ukulele (or to further develop their existing skills), I can recommend Dr Dickinson's book as the best one that I've ever seen.
-
And to continue:
And to be honest you want to be selling lots of books, right, which is going to put a lot of pressure on authors to send out books and send them correctly and be engaged in "customer services" type operations, not to mention take into account cost of shipping and packaging (you won't get many books shipped for $2.50 sorry, even at cheapest NZ Post rates)
The sheer labour in posting 2000 separate items, at a minimum average cost of $5 in my experience...
I've personally posted out more than twice that amount of books at a cost of $2.00 per book (that includes packaging and my labour in handling). My computer reads in my emails from Paypal -- and then prints off the day's receipts and address labels at the press of a button. I pick up a book, put it in a bag, put the bag in an envelope, slap the address sticker on the envelope, and bung on the stamps. Takes about a minute.
And frankly, it's worth spending that minute when it increases your income from that book by 600 per cent. I suspect other writers may also appreciate that sort of income boost -- but I may be wrong...
Then there's the cost of the servers, security, server administration, account management. And a big issue is chargebacks. If someone complains that their credit card was used fraudulently, you've lost the item itself, you have to refund the purchase, and there can be an extra payment to the gateway provider for performing the refund as well..
I've priced the cost of hosting such a site at US$84.00 per YEAR. If you run all the transactions via Paypal then the fraudulent credit cards, etc. are their problem.
Print on Demand seems the only logical approach for such a concept. Why print in advance, hoping to sell them all and tying up capital in the meantime?
I agree that print-on-demand is the only logical option for literature in New Zealand. But, as I hope I've explained, the idea behind the website is only to act as a sort of aggregator for NZ writers -- the printing method is up to them or their publishers.
-
Just to quickly respond to some of the points raised:
And if it was successful, I can imagine that established authors might self-publish new titles and have control over the whole process. (or is that a daft idea?) They could offer exclusive editions, only available online, with special features such as their own introduction, or background notes on the book.
That strikes me as a nice idea. I think a writer is a writer regardless of whether they self-publish (like Jane Austen and Lewis Carroll originally did) -- the idea of the website would be to make life better for any New Zealand writer.
David once you go down this road you need to integrate your website with the Publisher's systems to get the inventory levels right. Otherwise you end up displaying books on your website as available when in reality they're not = pissed off customers.
The idea is that the website is effectively an aggregator -- the authors would maintain their own stock of books, i.e. they would act as a 'capacitor' between the publisher and the customer. And if the author uses Paypal for the transactions then this automatically keeps track of your stock, sends reminders when stock is low, etc.
To put it another way: the authors are, in reality, each operating their own individual retail organization -- the website just provide a common selling (and possibly purchasing interface) with extensive automation to provide as much labour-saving as possible for the author.
I've never had a contract that says I can buy copies of my own book/s at trade rates
As I said up-thread the way around that is for the purchases to go through the online bookshop. To expand upon this:
1. The author would use the administration section of the website to 'buy' copies of their own book (paying via Paypal).
2. The system would automatically raise a purchase order with the publisher for the books at the normal trade discount -- with the online bookshop as the purchaser but the author as the delivery address.
3. The authors' payments would be summed and paid to the publisher at the end of the month in the normal way. This would have to be a manual transaction by the website administrator, but given that there are only a handful of publishers in New Zealand this would not exactly be onerous.
Does this make sense now?
-
Given that it's for a single book, I'd be inclined to think that it would amount to actual money.
Sorry, didn't explain myself properly. Should have added: and given that the majority of book sales with be through chains rather than independent bookshops.
But yes, point taken about independent bookshops.
-
Just a quick reply, as the Bob-the-boy is in the depths of the horrors of toilet-training:
1. RE: "Synergy". Yes, you're quite right, Judi, mea culpa! The presentation was originally for the business dudes at Foo Camp and it somehow got stuck there.
2. RE: Independent bookshops. Yes, I love them, too! But not sure how much of their income comes from NZ books (that $21,740 gets pretty small when it's divided between all the bookshops in the country, [EDIT] and given that the majority of book sales with be through chains rather than independent bookshops.). But yeah, I'd feel bad if the concept hurt these guys.
3. RE:
... is there anything in the standard author's contract that would prevent them re-selling copies they buy from the publisher for a profit?
Yes, this is a possible problem. The way round this is to have the organization (as a single buyer) deal directly with the publishers via an automatic email ordering system, but then to have the books delivered to the authors, i.e. similar to the way that chain bookshops work. It's an added layer of complexity, but quite doable.
4. RE:
I would also have the Commerce Commission on speed-dial as I foresee collusion by other players in the market to thwart this kind of thing.
Yes, wouldn't that be wonderful! Think of all the fantastic free publicity, with bookshops cast as villains, and writers as the noble victims. It'd be the best thing that could happen!
5. RE:
Perhaps another hidden assumption here is that patrons just like New Zealand writers generically. The special sauce is supposed to be the blog, and yet I'm not inclined to read something merely because it is written by a local person.
I'd have thought that blogs written by published authors would be pretty compelling and appealing -- but I may be wrong. And, for myself, one of the reasons I do read NZ authors is to read about NZ. But these are good points, and as I say, I may be wrong about this.
Anyway, keep up the discussion, I'd be reading it (in between mopping-up pools of urine), if not replying until this evening.
-
Another lovely post, Jolisa -- thank you!
As far as I know, Riccarton House is OK, although I'm guessing it may have lost its chimneys.
Yes, Bob and I went to check and it seems to be okay. It does have at least one chimney down (maybe two?) as you suspected.
-
Yes, best of luck, Joe and Kris V -- very sorry not to see you on Saturday.
Oh, and I'm guessing Bob's mother or grandmother signed him up to PA -- it's a complete surprise to me!
Have just been to a meeting here (Avonside) where some residents were rather heated-up over the (lack of) communication from the council.
Everyone knows that the council is doing their best, but it is *really* frustrating, e.g. neighbours on both sides of me are able to use the sewerage system, but we're still not allowed to (despite the fact that we had no problems with it during the few days when we were able to use it).
I've been unable to ascertain whether this is just a bureaucratic error or whether we're somehow on a different sewerage circuit from our neighbours. It would be quite annoying if we've spent weeks needlessly living like inhabitants of the third-world.
-
Cecelia wrote:
The suspected dissing was a comparison of yours and Sally's writing styles?
No, on the contrary, I'm very happy to be compared to Sally (although I don't know about the reverse)! It was the learned to write at a "community night school creative non-fiction writing workshop" bit that I misunderstood (possibly a relection on my own ill-informed thoughts RE: community night school writing courses). Anyway, that's all sorted now.
Sally: rumour (from a mutual acquaintance) has it that you toured the UK as a ballerina in the Australian Ballet. Any chance of hearing the inside dirt on the ballet industry as a follow-up? Have your toes ever recovered?
-
Oh dear, Robyn -- my sincere apologies for misunderstanding the nature of your comment.
What with earthquakes, no sewerage, Tower Insurance, the Christchurch City Council (No) Help Line, various medical issues, and the fact that members of the band Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich have been spying on me via miniature cameras inserted in vegetables, I seem to be getting a little paranoid. Particularly with respect to possible dissing of guest writers on Public Address.
Again, Robyn, I send forth a gigantic "sorry" in your direction. And furthermore, I shall issue you with a big platonic hug as recompense when I next see you. Or, rather, I shall get my people to whom I subcontract my platonic hugging (namely Russell Brown and Emma Hart) to do so.
To sum up: Sally, I hope you now see my deliberate mistake, and the problems that can be caused by breaking our rules of engagement. As a wise man once said (at about 10:30 this morning):
I've occasionally departed from these rules and have had plenty of time to regret that I did, and wished that I hadn't.
Well done on not falling for our cunningly-contrived trap! You've passed with flying colours.
-
Did Sally take the same community night school creative non-fiction writing workshop as David?
Russell, Sally, and I have been emailing this morning and -- funnily enough -- I just sent the following message:
Probably some of the comments will be quite annoying, but we're only going to allow you two types of response:
1. Ignore them.
2. Reply in a manner so polite and reasonable that it makes the person who wrote the comment look even worse.
I've occasionally departed from these rules (as, I'm sure, so has Russell) and have had plenty of time to regret that I did, and wished that I hadn't (as, I'm sure, so has Russell).
So "No comment", Robyn.