Samhain Publishing is winding down and will close

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I'm not comparing BAEN to Samhain but I do think that most smaller publishers of romance and SF will be at ever increasing risk moving forward because readers in both those genres are heavily into ebooks and Indies are taking an ever-increasing share of the market. BAEN has a strong brand name and lots of customer loyalty but the long term trends in those genres are not tradpub-friendly.

(Did you hear about Larry Coreia's... vent... over his books getting 1-star reviews for their pricing? BAEN's ebook prices are far from obscene but they *are* taking flack in that area. That is new for them.)

My impression is that with changing algorithms (especially Amazon returning to favoring larger publishers in the last couple of years when they redid contracts and got more money from the publishers for better placement) smaller publishers have had a very hard time with visibility. Samhain was well-known in writer circles and in some reader circles (mostly romance). I knew they were struggling because I've seen a few bits and pieces here and there over the last couple of years. It's sad news. They were consistent when it came to series, books, quality/copy editing/stories.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I noticed they still price their titles generally between $6.99 - $9.99. That's a difficult price point.

Indie SF&F tends to run a bit higher than romance, into the $4.99-6.99 range which puts BAEN's floor at the Indie ceiling. It's not an issue to those familiar with BAEN authors but to the uninitiated it puts them at a disadvantage in the general ebookstores. So far they seem to be doing okay but still... I worry.

Smaller publishers don't have as much margin for error.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Smaller publishers don't have as much margin for error.

That's true. They can't afford to wait for the long tail.

[Josieb1]

I started looking yesterday at the series I need to complete. The other small publishers seem to be quite good at taking homeless books but it does take a while for them to be back in circulation. Not every author wants to self pub their back list.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

I started looking yesterday at the series I need to complete. The other small publishers seem to be quite good at taking homeless books but it does take a while for them to be back in circulation. Not every author wants to self pub their back list.

And the rights will not be available for quite some time. Samhain will be keeping them for the foreseeable future to help pay bills. The authors do not have their rights back so those books will be in limbo for a while.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Fbone

That's true. They can't afford to wait for the long tail.

I don't follow the Baen boards like I used to, but I suspect that Baen will be gobbled up by a larger publisher within a couple of years. This is based on general work I've done in finance and the industry in general.

I don't think Baen's prices are too high--they were below average for a long time. Visibility is the problem for them, small publishers in general and indies. Yes, some indies do very well, but it's a numbers game with any product and a visibility issue. It's much harder to get visibility now than a few years ago. Adverts help, but even the adverts companies are going under, changing their name, revamping requirements. There's been extreme pressure the last couple of years to have at least one book in a series free (part of the time or all of the time). That puts pressure on authors and companies to make up the loss in other books, which pushes prices higher. And make no mistake--a free book is a loss. Even if it leads to other sales, the amount of time put into it by the author and the small pub cannot easily be made up by adding a dollar to the price of the subsequent book in the series. Writing, editing and advertising two books is generally a two to three year endeavor for many authors/companies.

I did a post on my blog a while back discussing how books were going to get shorter overall (word count). I already see it in my editing business. Even indies need to write faster (or perhaps especially indies). Knowing they have to put a first book free often means a novella to introduce characters. And this doesn't work as well as a full novel to attract readers to a series. But even to get attention on a full book or novella, the indie is losing money advertising it exists. The time lost is quite large. Authors writing for small companies don't get paid any royalties until acceptance and then sales. They need to have a huge backlist to generate even a modest income (this is for the average author, not necessarily the few best sellers out there.)

Baen and other small publishers are in the same boat with indies. How to get the word out when Amazon's algos don't help much (if at all. I don't know if Baen has any kind of agreement with Amazon. I know that Samhain apparently tried to get better placement and efforts failed. The erotica publisher that went under last year had the same problem.)

People have become jaded by reviews so fewer people review books. That hurts visibility too.

It's a very tough business environment right now. I'd be very surprised if Baen can stand alone in it--I'd be happier if they did, but I think they may get bought up.

I also expect to see some consolidation in the companies that do distribution (smashwords and d2d and other companies in that line).

It will be interesting...

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Baen and other small publishers are in the same boat with indies. How to get the word out when Amazon's algos don't help much (if at all. I don't know if Baen has any kind of agreement with Amazon. I know that Samhain apparently tried to get better placement and efforts failed. The erotica publisher that went under last year had the same problem.)

People have become jaded by reviews so fewer people review books. That hurts visibility too.

It's a very tough business environment right now. I'd be very surprised if Baen can stand alone in it--I'd be happier if they did, but I think they may get bought up.

I also expect to see some consolidation in the companies that do distribution (smashwords and d2d and other companies in that line).

It will be interesting...

Also working against BAEN is that they are as author-friendly as they are reader-friendly. Contract terms vary and are confidential but the bits that filter out are that their rates are closer to Amazon terms than "industry standard" terms. Not being based in NYC helps their finances but it is a tough environment. And getting tougher.

As for the distributors, I suspect Smashwords.
Coker spends way too much time bashing Amazon. Not a good sign.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Fbone

That's true. They can't afford to wait for the long tail.

Uh-huh.
The numbers favor the extremes: BAEN puts out maybe sixty new titles a year and their entire 30 year active catalog is maybe 2000 titles. The randy penguin pops out 14-15,000 in one year. They can afford to throw darts all over and, like a stop clocked, be right at least sometimes. BAEN can't afford many misses so they have to really know their market and where it is headed. Their backlist alone probably won't cover their overhead.

On the flip side, Indies don't have the ongoing costs of a traditional publisher; most of their expenses are one-time up-front costs. Whatever long tail sales deliver is almost pure profit (after taxes). And Indies don't need a deep fanbase to survive. No need to be the idol of millions to make a decent middle class income if they build up a catalog of a dozen or so good titles over a few years and acquire a few hundred followers.

Getting noticed is always going to be a challenge (always has been) but with the way the market is fragmenting there is going to be a lot of opportunity in the niches for those that can survive on low volumes. There will be room for "cottage industry" players and a couple giant "carpet bombers" but everybody in the middle is at long term risk.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Uh-huh.
The numbers favor the extremes: BAEN puts out maybe sixty new titles a year and their entire 30 year active catalog is maybe 2000 titles. The randy penguin pops out 14-15,000 in one year. They can afford to throw darts all over and, like a stop clocked, be right at least sometimes. BAEN can't afford many misses so they have to really know their market and where it is headed. Their backlist alone probably won't cover their overhead.

On the flip side, Indies don't have the ongoing costs of a traditional publisher; most of their expenses are one-time up-front costs. Whatever long tail sales deliver is almost pure profit (after taxes). And Indies don't need a deep fanbase to survive. No need to be the idol of millions to make a decent middle class income if they build up a catalog of a dozen or so good titles over a few years and acquire a few hundred followers.

Getting noticed is always going to be a challenge (always has been) but with the way the market is fragmenting there is going to be a lot of opportunity in the niches for those that can survive on low volumes. There will be room for "cottage industry" players and a couple giant "carpet bombers" but everybody in the middle is at long term risk.

Indies need more than a few hundred to make a living--it's more like a few thousand. And they need at least ONE series to fall into a best selling category on a regular basis. I know several indies who have a popular series and can't get traction on their other series. Fans don't always (perhaps even usually) check out an author's entire backlist. It's becoming even less common for readers to cross over (I don't know why this is, but I hear it all the time). I suspect that Baen and other publishers have this problem as well.

I think we're going to see the big guys have issues as well and either another merger or two or some kind of change. They can throw titles at the wall, and many have "ebook" only lines to cap costs, but the bulk of cost is editing and marketing (placement in bookstores and at Amazon). While they can turn'em and churn'em they still need a lot of sales--right now "growth" is stalled and they need growth for their shareholders. Indies and small guys can get by on anything that isn't a downtrend if they manage to get high enough in sales in the first place.

Since I happen to think we are headed into a recession in the US, it's only going to get worse before it gets better (IMO).

[BearMountainBooks]

Also, these days we (indies) have much higher ongoing costs in the form of advertising or in putting out a free book. These costs have really skyrocketed in the last two years and become more and more necessary. The upfront cost of getting a book edited has also gone up. Artwork has gone up too, but there's still some leeway with shopping around.

With ads, one of the problems is that they are a moving target. A site that is moving books today may not move a thing two months from now. ALL the ad sites have gone up in price, some more than double (many about double) and almost all of the sites move about half of what they used to move.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

And Indies don't need a deep fanbase to survive. No need to be the idol of millions to make a decent middle class income if they build up a catalog of a dozen or so good titles over a few years and acquire a few hundred followers.

You got figures and links for that?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I noticed they still price their titles generally between $6.99 - $9.99. That's a difficult price point.

That happened when Tony went for the traditional (W/middleman) channels for (e)book distribution. Prior to that, you only could get Baen ebooks at Baen.com. Another fallout of that move, was the Baen Free-Library size dropped many titles.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rizla

You got figures and links for that?

It's common sense. If you have 10 books that you make $5000 a year each from, that's an income of $50,000. Price your book at $5 at Amazon, and you'll get $3.50 a sale, so to make $5000 you need to sell about 1400 copies. That's certainly not bestseller territory.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's common sense. If you have 10 books that you make $5000 a year each from, that's an income of $50,000. Price your book at $5 at Amazon, and you'll get $3.50 a sale, so to make $5000 you need to sell about 1400 copies. That's certainly not bestseller territory.

That's all based on an "if" and is supposition. I asked f j torres if he had actual data to back up his statement.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rizla

That's all based on an "if" and is supposition. I asked f j torres if he had actual data to back up his statement.

No, it's not supposition, it's maths. You don't need bestseller sales levels to make a decent income, as my calculation demonstrated. You can argue about what a decent income is, but whether it's $50k or $80k, you can achieve it with at most a couple of thousand sales each from a dozen books, which supports what fjtorres stated.