More Publishing Lunacy

I came across an internet discussion the other day on the "problem" of used books sales and how to combat this evil menace: change the law to require payment of royalties on books less than two years old.

Um, hello? Again, they're missing the actual problem: books are two expensive. Yeah, I know, I've said it before, but come on, this new proposal deserves a swift shotgun blast to the head.

The problem is NOT that two many people buy used books. The problem is that they can't afford to buy as many new ones as they'd like. I say "they" but I'm the poster child for this group. I buy new hardcovers from James Lee Burke and Dick Francis because I know I will like their books (I'm a die hard fan anyway; hopefully the books deliver). But with mass market paperbacks costing ten bucks (print obscenity here) and me not knowing whether I'll like Scott Phillips or not, I buy used copies from the internet. The practical alternative is that I really may not buy him at all. Books have simply grown too expensive to gamble on these days.

The music industry is an imperfect example in many ways but their mistakes can also prove instructive. Piracy, or what the industry defines as such, didn't make much of a popular splash until CDs crept up to the twenty dollar range. Guess what? I quit buying them before that but once it hit that milestone I declared that I WOULD NOT EVER pay twenty bucks for a CD. Welcome to the party, Blackbeard.

Unauthorized reproduction and distribution is a problem if the reproducer is doing so for money and/or if the recipient would otherwise be an actual buyer. In other words, if a copy represents an actual lost sale. Not all do. When I was in college ny friends didn't listen to the same kind of music I did. Several times I was asked to make tapes of albums that there wasn't a snowball's chance in Tahiti that they'd ever buy. What does this mean? Like the radio, the artist and the songs were promoted with play they would otherwise not receive. I made no money, no sales were lost, and the artist was "discovered" by someone new. Realistically there's a chance that this would lead to future sales. I think this situation is actually good for the music industry.

Used and remaindered books let me try an author at a lower entry price than publishers currently demand. If I become a Scott Phillips fan from his used books, there's an excellent chance I'll buy new copies of his later work. There are writers like Micheal Connelly that I'm only marginally a fan of, and I only buy his books when I stumble upon remaindered copies. If I don't stumble, I don't miss him.

Someone who really loses out is John Sandford. I'm enough of a Sandford fan to read all his books but not enough of one to buy them at their hardcover prices. His publisher has made the ridiculous decision to publish all of his mass market books in their new, "easier to read" we'll-screw-you-any-way-we-can inch-taller versions for $9.99. Like twenty dollar CDs, I will NEVER (I hope) buy a mass market paperback for ten bucks, especially not when there wasn't anything wrong with the inch-shorter eight dollar (and still too expensive) versions. And Sandford's so popular that it can be difficult to buy cheap used hardcovers because there are so many book club editions out there and the sellers often don't differentiate (I don't want those, either).

So this idea of royalties on used books is almost as screwy as the one about making poor quality hardcovers (so they'll fall apart and not have resale value) but it all seems to point me back to the same idea: if change is going to come to the publishing world (and there are a number of arguably good ways, i.e. losing the consignment system), as long as it will be perpetrated by the folks in charge now, the consumer will take it in the shorts. Ultimately this would just add fuel to the fire. Just ask the recording industry.