E-Publishers Are Growing—But Are Authors Ready?

By Bob Hughes - Sep 03 , 2009

When Jane Friedman was fired from her job as chief executive of HarperCollins a year-and-a-half ago, many wondered what kind of publishing gig she might take after helping Harper grow substantially in the 90s and early 2000s.

Well, she’s gone the way of many readers: into electronic books.

According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Friedman has raised $3 million for OpenRoad Integrated Media, which is putting together a company for e-book publishing and marketing.

The news broke during August, a traditionally quiet time in publishing (and news cycles), and, because of that SEC filing that a reporter uncovered, Friedman didn’t have a chance to publicize her launch in a big way. Observers in publishing were less surprised at the venture – electronic publishing is, after all, a growth area – than at the $3 million in funding, which isn’t much to start a company with these days.

That $3 million may not be a lot of money to someone used to running a company that printed thousands of book and employed a similar number of people in graphic design, publicity, sales, printing, and other areas, but it does show that a new publishing venture can spring up without much fanfare, with professionals who have solid, stellar backgrounds, and with the potential to become a player in a business landscape that is shifting faster than sands in a desert storm.

When you don’t have to pay for paper, for book design, for office space, for a host of other brick-and-mortar expenses, you can be lean. You can have an impact.

Consider the rapid growth of e-books—–Electronic publishing is expected to represent more than 2% of the $40.3 billion U.S. publishing business by next year, according to a report by the Book Industry Study Group. Now $80 million might not seem much, but with growth of more than 5% a year, it’s one of the more rapidly expanding sectors in a relatively stagnant business. And a $3 million company within that segment looks pretty significant.

One publisher I know believes that in about a decade, e-books will account for about 80% of the market.

He questions, though, what authors might think about this.

Authors tend to be old-fashioned, even the progressive ones who’ve embraced new ways of marketing themselves and their books. And authors like to have a hard copy of their work. I myself would prefer that my next novel be published in hardcover as well as electronic versions, so that I have a physical record of my efforts, plus one I can display and show off, even though I realize that the physical book is only a very small part of what I should be thinking of as I market myself as an author.

Perhaps the time is near when authors will release special hardcover editions, much as rock groups such as U2 put out limited-run vinyl LPs alongside the electronic and CD versions of their new albums. Not everyone who buys such an artifact (for that’s what these releases are) will play it. And maybe not everyone who buys a special-edition hardcover will read it in this digital age.

But it sure looks nice on a shelf.
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Robert J. Hughes, a longtime reporter for The Wall Street Journal, writes on the arts, based in New York.