One day, I’d love to be able to sit down and do the research for my next MGC post and realize legacy publishers hadn’t just done something to make me want to bang my head against the wall. For one thing, my head hurts. For another, I have a very hard head and I’m getting tired of having to patch the sheetrock where I keep beating holes in it.

This week’s head-to-wall experience began by reading an article in one of our local papers about the trouble our libraries are having with legacy publishers over e-books. We’ve discussed this before, but it bears repeating. Of the big six publishers (Macmillan, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Hatchett, Random House and HarperCollins) only Random House and HarperCollins sell e-books to libraries. HarperCollins may express devotion to libraries, yet it lets an e-book be checked out only 26 times before a new “copy” must be purchased. And, oh yeah, libraries pay a hell of a lot more for their e-books than you and I do.

The understatement of the article appears when the reporter comments, “The publishers won’t come out directly and say it, but the reason may be that they believe that people who can read a book for free won’t buy it.”  I have no doubts this is exactly what the publishers think. They are scared of e-books, even as they see e-book revenue increasing. They are scared of them because e-books mean a change in their market shares and a change in their business plans and, let’s face it, no one likes change, bean counters and ivory tower sitters least of all.

But what publishers miss by taking this stance with libraries is that there is no difference between borrowing an e-book and borrowing a hard copy of that book. If people try a new author — or go back and try a new book from an author they used to read and stopped reading for whatever reason — and they like what they read, they will buy other books by that author. Libraries are a revenue driver for publishers. By hamstringing libraries regarding e-books, these same publishers are hurting themselves and this, ultimately, hurts their authors.

This takes on an even greater importance when you look at the latest survey out of this year’s BEA. There was a 100% year-over-year increase in publishers reporting that at least 10% of their annual revenue comes from e-book sales. Add to that the fact that four out of five publishers are now releasing e-books and it is clear e-books are not only here to stay. Yet, legacy publishers continue to shoot themselves in the foot by doing their best to keep a major outlet for e-books tied up and out of the hands of readers.

Okay, I know. Someone’s going to point out that Tor/Forge is going DRM-free and is even opening its own e-bookstore soon. With all the hoopla that surrounded the initial announcement, you’d think no publisher had ever gone DRM-free before. Well, this is where I call bullshit. Sorry for the language, but it’s the truth. Baen has been selling their e-books free of DRM for more than 10 years. Ten years in which all the other publishers, and more than a few authors, condemned them and told them how wrong they were. Those who are active on Baen’s Bar remember the failed experiment with Tor several years ago where Tor books were offered for a very, very, very short period of time in Webscriptions (Baen’s online store) before being pulled because upper management at Tor’s parent company got cold feet. So pardon me if I’m not exactly as thrilled about the announcement as some of the others. Nothing new, nothing groundbreaking.

Look, let’s be real. There is absolutely no reason for a publisher, big or small, not to have its own webstore. Not in today’s computer age. But, being the paranoid skeptic that I am, all I can see from the Tor store is yet more issues with keeping an accurate count of the number of e-books sold. Look, legacy publishers can’t give their authors an accurate count of hard copy books sold even though they should be able to track without any problem the number of books printed, number of books sold to bookstores, number of books returned. But they can’t handle that simple accounting issue, relying instead on a third party they pay big money for and that only estimates at the number of books sold. Of course, the fact that those estimates run in the publisher’s favor instead of the authors’ may be why.

And then there’s the response to the price fixing lawsuit the Department of Justice filed against Apple and five of the big six publishers. BN argues that the proposed settlement will not only cause prices to increase for e-books, but that it will harm just about everyone who ever considered an e-book and will void agency agreements in use in other industries. The problem with this is that the proposed settlement doesn’t void agency agreements as a whole. In fact, it is noted that agency agreements can be entered into, immediately by non-defendants in the suit and ultimately even by the named defendants. No, the problem with agency agreements in this instance is the alleged collusion that took place between the defendants. Once more, those who see Amazon as the great evil that must be destroyed, are doing their best to play smoke and mirrors, hoping beyond hope to confuse the issue.

Folks, I’m tired. I’m tired of the legacy publishers treating readers like criminals. What other reason is there for the continued use of DRM, something that doesn’t work to begin with and that only adds to the cost of an e-book?

I’m tired of legacy publishers treating their authors like dirt, and worse. The inclusion of contractual clauses that can tie an author to a house forever and never let them write for anyone else smacks of the old studio policies in film in the 30’s and 40’s. I have visions of publishers trying to be paid by other publishers to “loan” out an author, whether the author wants it or not. And let’s not forget that the author, the creator of the product, gets paid less than minimum wage for their work and will never get an accurate accounting of his sales without demanding an accounting and being willing to take the legacy publisher to court to get it. Frankly, until a group of authors band together and file a class action law suit to do just that, it’s not going to happen because of the expense of litigation these days and because so many authors still operate under the belief that they will be blacklisted if they dare question their publisher.

Folks, wake up. Authors have other avenues available to them now. Instead of authors being worried about being blacklisted by publishers, it should be the other way around. Publishers should be worrying about what’s going to happen to them when the authors they’ve relied upon for years to make them money suddenly taken control of their own publishing lives and wave goodbye to the legacy publishers. THAT is what should have the publishers shaking in their boots instead of the growing popularity of e-books. Without the mid-listers that have been consistent money-makers for them, and the best sellers who have the name to bring in sales even if the book is only mediocre (at least until word of mouth gets around), publishers can’t survive with newbies and unknowns.

I’m tired of authors acting as sock puppets for their publishers, especially with regard to the DoJ law suit and the proposed settlement. Instead of parroting what their publishers and agents tell them, they need to read the pleadings for themselves. Yes, your eyes will cross. Yes, it’s boring because it’s legal writing. But until and unless you read it, and read the responses to it, all you are doing is parroting what others tell you to say. I don’t care if you are for or against it afterwards. But for Pete’s sake, make an informed decision and quit doing the knee-jerk thing just because you want to please your publisher.

I’m tired of media and blog coverage that crows loud and long when something like the Tor announcement comes along, proclaiming it a major new development in publishing. Nope. It’s not. Not when Baen has been doing it for more than ten years. Not when other publishers, publishers that might be smaller than Tor but publishers nonetheless, have been doing it as well. Tor isn’t breaking any new ground here. All they are doing is following in the steps of others before them. And yet, to read the coverage of it, you’d think no one had ever sold a DRM-free book before, much less had their own webstore.

I’m tired of publishers treating me like a crook because I want to read my e-books across different platforms and in different formats and the only way I can do it is to either buy multiple copies of the same book in different e-formats or break DRM. I won’t tell you what I do beyond saying I have all the apps on all my devices.

Basically, it all comes down to this: there are a handful of publishers that have controlled the business for decades who are now running around like Chicken Little, scared the sky in falling. Instead of embracing the new technology and trusting their customers, they are digging in and doing their best to resist change. They are being enabled in all this by the media, which is facing much the same challenges and is even more scared than are the publishers, and authors who have their own reasons for not embracing the changes. Until these publishers either pull their heads out of the sand, tear up their current business plans and start forward-thinking instead of not thinking, and until they start treating their authors as partners in the venture, things will continue to look dark for them.

And it doesn’t have to.

Publishing will survive this upheaval called e-books. There will always be print books, but their market share will continue to fall over the upcoming years as more and more people turn to digital formats and as the price of print books continues to increase. They will become a niche market like e-books used to be. What may not survive, at least not in their current configurations, are the large publishers. They have some very hard decisions to make. It’s up to them to decide whether to make them now or to wait until it is too late and they go the way of other companies like Borders.

Until then, I’ll stick to small presses and self-publishing.