A client of mine recently started using a hashtag on Twitter to express his feelings about book publishers who do or say things that are questionable at best, and hyperbole at worst: #wtfpub
Here’s his latest #wtfpub tweet.
WTF, indeed.
What’s the problem? Let me lay it out for you:
- Perseus is a legacy publisher that has created a “new service” called Argo Navis Author Services that offers to “handle digital distribution and marketing for authors who want to self-publish titles and who are represented by established agents.” And yet they still call it self-publishing. WTF?
- In the post that was tweeted using #wtfpub, Perseus CEO David Steinberger explains that the partnership Argo Navis is offering is a viable business strategy by saying “It’s critical to us [to] have agents serve as aggregators and to interact with us in the publishing process.” Isn’t this how agents and publisher normally do business? WTF?
- Argo Navis will give the author 70% of the revenue (which is not the same as royalties…which is whole ‘nuther can of worms) under a three year contract to take care of metadata and earnings remittance and basic marketing services, like placing product pages on retailer websites. Argo Navis will also distribute ebooks to retailers such as Amazon, BN.com, Google, Kobo, Sony and Apple. (No word yet if Argo Navis is taking 30% on top of the 30-65% cut that Amazon and B&N require for ebooks to be in their digital catalogs.) But when an author can get their ebook in the database of these same retailers for FREE by uploading their book to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, Barnes & Noble’s PubIt! and SmashWords…with no contract required. I’m at a loss as to how exactly Argo Navis solves a problem that needs solving. WTF?
Look, I get that there’s a market for these services. Heck, I Heart Media handles “digital distribution and marketing for authors” as well. But Perseus is claiming that “Argo Navis is adding a new facet to the e-book distribution world that offers authors an appealing alternative in making their works available to readers,” which simply isn’t true. This is exactly the kind of bullshit rhetoric that reinforces my belief that it’s time for authors to understand the many options that “the moment of Sputnik” has given them and to learn how to exploit their role in the publishing revolution.
Yours in provocation,
