Publishers support authors in fight for digital download royalties.
IBS has carried out another survey of publishers at the 2008 London Book Fair. More than 140 publishers took part in the survey and the results are good news for authors and book shops!
88% of publishers believe that authors should receive royalties on downloaded material. However, with only 19% of publishers claiming to have a system in place to manage the payment of royalties, there is clearly some work to be done to make this happen.
Mike Irving, VP Publishing for IBS, comments, “With the right software implemented, payments of royalties on standard and on-line purchases can be managed very easily. Royalties Management is a standard module within IBS Bookmaster and is an application that is proving very popular with many of our customers.”
Further questions looked at the issue of publishers selling directly to consumers. 79% of publishers believe they should be allowed to sell directly to consumers, while 56% claimed they already do! Of those that don’t only 43% have the systems in place that will enable them to do so.
Good news for the book shop though. A full 89% of publishers believe there is still very much a place for the book shop on the high street, with the personal touch, salesperson knowledge, signings and the ability to browse at leisure quoted as the main reasons why the retailers are here to stay.
It is also good news for eBook reader manufacturers. 83% of publishers believe that consumers will soon fully accept this technology even though only 35% had said they had used one. Unsurprisingly, academic and non-fiction titles were considered to be the most likely areas where eBooks will be used with a further 40% of publishers believing that travel books will soon find their way to the eBook.
Despite teenagers being the most technology friendly demographic, only 17% of publishers believe teenage fiction will succeed in the eBook format and only 21% saying the same for adult fiction.
Mike Irving concludes, “This survey has shown that publishers are very much moving towards the modern digital world. It shows that more than half have a system in place to handle some form of ecommerce via the web, with sales to consumers leading the way.
"However, there are still plenty that do not have any systems in place at all for online sales and these publishers need to rapidly re-think their strategy if they are to succeed in the modern high-tech future of the publishing industry.”