Urging Authors to be Entrepreneurs: iUniverse CEO Kevin Weiss (Part 7)
SM: What should I have asked you that I didn’t?
KW: We have not talked about our overseas facility yet. I recently did a press conference with the governor of Indiana where I announced the closure of our Shanghai facility. We are moving that work to Bloomington. I know we can be more cost-effective having those folks here. We can also do a much better job working with authors one-on-one. The authors never talk directly to anyone in Shanghai. Now they will have the ability to talk directly with our team. Finally, it is critical that our entire team works together. I want galley design to talk to the publishing services associate who works with customers on a day-to-day basis.
We did the same thing back in January when we moved the iUniverse brand from Lincoln to Bloomington. We have had no issues whatsoever hiring college-educated, talented people. This year we have hired 130 people in Bloomington alone. We are just a tad shy of 400 employees in the company.
SM: When you shut down Shanghai and move that workforce to Bloomington, how many people are you talking about?
KW: We are going to hire approximately 30 people. We continue to expand, not just because we have done consolidations but because we have the ability to grow organically.
SM: What is your take on Amazon’s announcement about their print on demand publisher network, where the printing is done organically?
KW: Amazon is doing what is best for their business. They are extracting a fair amount of profit from the supply chain. They are going to be able to print everything they need to print when they need to print it. The thing that is lost on everybody is that what they are really doing is cutting out Ingram. I don’t know how many print-on-demand books they sell at Amazon every year, but when you look at what happens at University Press of America, it is fairly substantial. I don’t know what it truly meant to them, but it could have represented $10 million-$15 million of margins.
SM: The opportunity Amazon has by doing this kind of vertical integration is actually quite substantial.
KW: I keep telling the mainstream publishing industry they need to wake up. It is not a big deal for me because I do not sell all of my titles through distribution, and I never will. I have a lot of authors who are talented speakers and who sell their books at their presentations. With the mainstream publishers, some major author is going to say they are going direct with Amazon. What is it, Amazon keeps 65% and the author keeps 35%? Amazon will make more and the author will definitely make more.
SM: All these agents, publishers, and intermediaries are going to get cut. Authors have not been able to make any money and that will change.
KW: A handful make a lot of money and the rest make hardly any. Take the Harry Potter effect out of the industry and it is really not all that an attractive one to be involved with. I think Amazon must be careful, too. Choice is an important thing. If they eventually freeze the market to the point where there is no choice for people, the results will be negative. I am all for making money; I think it is very important. But if they start to change the industry to the point where nobody else can be in publishing or people do not feel comfortable getting involved writing books because they do not like the experience, then I think that would be very bad.
SM: I don’t think that will happen. The dynamics of the industry will change, at least that is my hypothesis. The market will tip, and the market will get better for authors.
KW: It should, at least I hope so. I think mainstream authors also need to think through the model they have followed in the past. There are lots of people like you who are sharp, talented people who have something to say. If we can find a cost-effective way for authors to do that, perhaps it will make more people read.
This segment is part 7 in the series : Urging Authors to be Entrepreneurs: iUniverse CEO Kevin Weiss
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Thanks for this informative and comprehensive overview of AMazon.
You bring real excitement and imaginative approaches to publishing. I am an AuthorHouse author (I have also been published by Random House and a university press). I am trying to get my AuthorHouse book placed on an e-book reader, such as Kindle or Sony; apparently AuthorHouse has had negotiations with Amazon that did not work out; from an author’s perspective, it would be simple: just provide me (for a fee)with a PDF version of my book and I’ll transfer it to Sony or Amazon to be made into an e-book reader. Since I have the copyright to the book, this would seem to be appropriate. So, what is the problem?
By the way, my book is dedicated to Ted Levitt, my cousin, who CREATED, at the Harvard Business School, marketing as a respectable academic field. You are surely one of the most creative marketing persons. Can you help solve the e-book problem? Yes, my AuthorHouse book already has an e-book version; but it can only be read on a computer. And not many people are going to download a book on their computer.
Lots of good stuff of which I don’t understand, but I do understand the marketing problem. I used Iuniverse to publish a book titled “Keep the Change,” sub title, “Money is Canceled.” It took me 22 years to finally get the thing published in August of 2009. I was ecstatic with the timing. The monetary mess and my book ironically happened at the same time and I waited for it to be announced as a best seller. I complained to Iuniverse. I realize today that I was the only one who knew or cared about the timing. I do not give up and thanks to the internet I do a daily mailing… somewhere. An old saying, ” throw enough pie at the wall and some will stick.” Looking forward to your marketing plan.
My novel, "Driving on the Left" was published by iUniverse in July, 2010. I was pleased with the finished product, both softback and hardback versions, the latter marketed initially at $27.95 and the former $10.00 cheaper. I have a great many email contacts worldwide and notified them of its availability. More purchased it through Amazon or Barnes and Noble than iUniverse. I signed the necessary authorization for direct deposit by iUniverse into my own bank account. To date, I have received no such deposits and just one initial check from iUniverse, whereas I know most purchases have been made as above, worldwide. The genre under which iUniverse classified the book was "Historical Fiction" whereas it is a novel based on the true love story of two young people living in England in the 1940's–WWII providing the historical faction–but not the entire book; it received some negative critique in book reviews as "being disappointing to those expecting history"–all due to the incorrect genre, about which I was never consulted.