Update 11:15 PST: Tim Holman, Publisher of Orbit, responds to questions similar to those I proposed on a post at John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever. I’ve copied his answers at the bottom of this post for those following along here.
Yesterday Orbit, the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Hachette Book Group, announced a digital short short fiction program for their authors that would begin later this year. To quote from the press release…
Orbit (US) has offered to publish digital editions of all original short fiction written by its authors. The digital editions will be distributed widely through major retail channels, for reading on a variety of devices. Authors will be paid a royalty for each story sold, rather than the flat fee more common in the short story market.
Tim Holman, Orbit VP & Publisher, said: “We know that writing short fiction is important for many of our authors. By offering to publish their short fiction – and to publish it quickly – we will be providing a new way for them to connect with readers. The initial response from our authors has been great, and we are looking forward to launching the first stories later this year.”
I’m a big fan of Orbit. They publish some of my favorite writers – Lilith Saintcrow, Mike Carey, Kate Griffin, Charlie Huston – and always produce first rate books. But I have to say that I can’t sing the program’s praises yet.
Don’t get me wrong – I think it is terrific that they’re trying to find new ways to put writers and readers together and that they’re using a digital medium to do it. But the announcement left a lot of unanswered questions rolling around in my head and I guess I’m a bit too jaded to believe that the answers to those questions will end up falling on the writer’s side of the equation.
For starters, the press release states that authors will be paid a royalty for each story sold, rather than the flat fee that is the current norm in the short fiction arena. In other words, the writers will be providing content without being paid for it – the promise of potential payment is not fair exchange for the work involved in writing the story. Yes, long term the writer might make more from a royalty based approach, but at the same time there should be some payment for the time and effort spent in producing the story. If Orbit were to offer some kind of advance on that royalty, I would feel much better about their proposed approach.
And speaking of royalties, how much will it be? 75%? 50%? 25%? How will it compare to the royalty percentages offered by other digital retailers, such as Amazon.com? Will it be paid on a monthly, quarterly or semi-annual basis?
For that matter, what kind of support will the authors participating in the program receive from Orbit? Will the stories go through some editorial process? Will Orbit accept all stories offered by its writers or will there be some kind of selection process in place to assure the quality of the content being offered to consumers?
As you can see, a lot of questions still need to be answered. Since I’m not an Orbit author (though I’d like to be!) it doesn’t impact me directly today, but it has the potential to do so in the future as more publishers follow suit and create such programs. Getting the details right from the beginning will help prevent precedents from being set, precedents that are not mutually beneficial to both the author and the publisher.
So, kudos to Orbit for stepping out and trying something new, but there is still a long way to go in ironing out some of the details it seems. I’ll reserve my judgment (and hopeful praise) until more information comes to light.
Tim Holman’s response:
The program is likely to be royalty-only. This might not be attractive to some, but I believe it may well be beneficial to authors. Again, perhaps not all authors, but that’s what can happen in a marketplace. I like the principle of creating a direct relationship between the popularity of a story and the revenues received by author and publisher. I also like the idea of giving readers the opportunity to pay for short fiction if they are prepared to do so, and think that doing so adds an interesting dimension to the short fiction market.
Orbit will be handling editorial and marketing for the stories. We like to work with our authors on some aspects of marketing, but there will be no onus on any author to provide any service related to this publishing program.
DRM-free is unlikely.
Matters relating to royalty rates and accounting, and the grant of rights, have been outlined to our authors and their agents, but before we make any final decisions we are giving ourselves the opportunity to process feedback from them. If this publishing venture doesn’t make good sense to enough of our authors, it won’t make good publishing sense for us.
It wasn’t asked, but I can also say that we’re expecting individual stories to be priced at $1.99.
Tim Holman
