Mommy Porn and eBooks

I have some vague notion of what E.L. James novel “Fifty Shades of Grey” is about although I did not know until today that this was actually a trilogy (you know, like “Lord of the Rings”). I was not surprised to learn that the books have sold 19.4 million copies in the U.S.  and 31 million worldwide. What does surprise me is that in the U.S., the sales are evenly divided between traditional books and e-books.

As the child of book store owners, this distressed me. As a lawyer trying to watch the trends, I find this fascinating. The book industry has apparently now caught up with the music industry in its transformation into the digital realm. We many not like it but its happening.

The Wall Street Journal offered some anecdotal evidence as to why the digital sales of the so- called “mommy porn” might be so high but the fact that nearly ten million people willingly downloaded an ephemeral copy of this classic cannot be ignored. This has got to make retailers nervous. However at the same time these facts offer significant encouragement to both book publishers and those exploring self-publishing.

books v. ebooks round two

It is always interesting when you think a legal issue has been settled, only to see someone take another run at it. Such is the case with ebooks and the digital rights to certain author’s back catalogues. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Harper Collins has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Open Road Integrated Media, a leading digital publishing firm (and a company whose business model I find fascinating). Most people thought that the issue of digital distribution rights had been settled by a 2001 case in which Random House lost a battle to keep Kurt Vonnegut, Robert B. Parker and others from entering into agreements with Rosetta Books, one of the first ebook publishers.

The reason, of course, is that older publishing contracts were silent on the issue of digital rights much like the fact that many old recording agreements were silent on the issues of royalties for digital distribution. Apparently, Harper Collins is now trying to expand the traditional contractual definition of books to include ebooks. If this case goes to trial, the court is going to have to carefully examine the exclusive rights of the copyright holder (i.e. the author) under Section 106 of the Copyright Act and determine whether Harper Collins actually acquired rights that might not have been imagined at the time of the original agreement. I am not really sure how this case will be resolved but I think that some of the digital publishers I have talked to have some intriguing ideas and I would hate to see such innovation stifled and while I am still a pretty traditional reader myself, I see real exciting possibilities for authors whose back catalogs are either out of print or nearly so.

Read on.

The Book Business

There was an interesting article in Monday's Wall Street Journal, "The Book Business, a Rewrite" which pointed out the obvious; to quote directly “the economics of the book business are changing so rapidly, the industry barely looks like it did just six months ago". That's putting it mildly. Those of us who watched the slow ugly death of the traditional music business should not be surprised by the speed of the evolution of the book business. Still it is shocking to realize that there is not a legitimate new retail book business within the city limits of Nashville (unless you count Books-a-Million, which I just can't). I often reflect on this fact while driving to Franklin to buy a magazine (we have no newsstands either). To be fair, Nashville has a booming used book business (thanks Rhino, McKay’s and Bookman/Book Woman)and has two new bookstores slated to open soon, Anne Patchett’s much anticipated Parnassus Books and the Barnes and Noble/Vanderbilt University joint venture slated to open in the old Borders location on West End.

From a lawyer's perspective this is intriguing. As a reader who grew up in the book business, I am sort of repelled by Kindle and the whole concept of digital literature but I see the potential for many author's backlists and the few deals I have done in this area have been fascinating. More significantly, I know of some authors with devoted cult followings whose work would benefit significantly from a personal, immediate digital relationship with their audience.

The bottom line is that the book business is transforming itself like the music business, but apparently at a much faster rate. As practitioners and readers, we need to be ready.

Book Publishing in the Digital Age

As someone who advises authors from time to time and grew up in the retail book business, I was happy to have the opportunity to attend a panel called The New Age of Book Publishing: A Digital Revolution” at the Americana Music Association convention yesterday. The panelists, including attorney Randy Smith and my friend renaissance man Tommy Womack, were uniformly informed and excellent. I confirmed my hunch that the book publishing world is like the music world was about six or seven years ago and if anything the atmosphere is even more like the wild, wild west than the music business.

We know that brick and mortar stores are probably going away; we know that sales of traditional media (i.e. BOOKS) are diminishing while sales of electronic media and their delivery devices are increasing. I learned that there is a huge debate over the aesthetic and quality elements of books on demand and that, not surprisingly, most authors still want to be published in nice hard bound books.

The most interesting question for the future is whether a writer wants to go the self published route, which is as open today as the DIY route in the music business, or whether they want to go the traditional route of finding an agent, who can hopefully place the book with a reputable publishing house. I suspect that this is still the goal of most authors even in the face of evidence that it may not matter economically in terms of overall sales potential. It still comes down to what type of book you are writing, what your potential market is for that book and what your platform is for accessing that market.
Strange days indeed.