NEW YORK – A US publishing company has created a distribution and marketing service that will allow authors to self-publish their own e-books.
The service will give authors an alternative to other self-publishing services and a favourable revenue split that is unusual in the industry: 70 per cent to the author and 30 per cent to the distributor. Traditional publishers normally provide authors a royalty of about 25 per cent for e-books.
The service, offered by the Perseus Books Group of New York, arrives as authors are increasingly looking for ways to circumvent the traditional publishing model, take advantage of the infinite shelf space of the e-book world and release their own work. That’s especially the case for reviving out-of-print books whose rights have reverted back to the author.
Bloomsbury, a publisher based in Britain, said last week it had created a new publishing arm that would release digital-only titles. Companies such as Open Road Integrated Media have successfully published digital editions of backlist books whose rights were not held by a publisher.
The new Perseus unit, called Argo Navis Author Services, and announced last weekend, will be available only to authors who are represented by an agency that has signed an agreement with Perseus. David Steinberger, the president and chief executive of the Perseus Books Group, said that the company had made an agreement with one major literary agency: Janklow Nesbit Associates, whose authors include Ann Beattie, Anne Rice and Diane Johnson.
Curtis Brown Ltd, which represents Karen Armstrong and Jim Collins, is also close to signing an agreement to make Argo Navis available to their authors. Perseus is in discussions with more than a dozen other agencies.
“Fundamentally, it comes out of a concern that we’ve been hearing from authors and agents that they’re looking for another alternative,” Mr Steinberger said.
“We’ve heard from authors that they may have a book that’s never been published, but it doesn’t fit what their existing publisher is looking for.”
He emphasised that while Argo Navis provided distribution and marketing services, the author remained the publisher. Although authors get a much higher share of the revenue under this arrangement, they’ll receive fewer services, and financial support, provided by publishers under more conventional contracts.
In an effort to solve the problem of how to help readers discover e-books without print counterparts on tables in bookstores, Argo Navis will provide basic marketing services, like placing product pages on retailer websites. It will also make more extensive marketing services available for a fee.
E-books will be distributed to retailers including Amazon, BN.com, Google, Kobo, Sony and Apple.
Jack Perry, a publishing consultant, said that the service could appeal to authors who wanted their e-books published with wide distribution. “A lot of times when people go in and work with e-books, they have to do a lot themselves,” he said. “Perseus is trying to take on a lot of that.”
Tim Knowlton, the chief executive of Curtis Brown, said the service was an appealing option for authors whose books had gone out of print or books for which the author held the electronic rights.
"The ability to select which books an author or an heir would like to put into print, and to do so relatively inexpensively, is very appealing," Mr Knowlton said. "For any book that has potential for significant sales, it's going to be a good opportunity to explore." – ( The New York Times)