Publishers on the web

I think the misguided focus of most publishers' websites is due to people still, even 15 years after the rise of web commerce, not really understanding how to use the internet. It doesn't fit neatly into the business models that people are used to, which means that the web becomes the problem of someone who's mostly worried about other things. I imagine the general train of thought is essentially that the web is probably not the responsibility of editing, or acquisitions, or even design, and it's surely not accounting's problem, and since it deals with communication and ads and things, we might as well just make it marketing's problem. Marketing grudgingly accepts this responsibility, shrugs, and move on, doing the same sorts of things online that they do offline: trying to sell books. They look around and see that pretty much everyone else is doing the same type of thing, and they look at Amazon and see how much potential for profit there is in connecting directly to readers, and they think "Well, that must be what we need to do." So they carry on trying to sell books online.

The problem, of course, is that people don't go to publisher's websites to buy books. I have never bought a book from a publisher's website, and as a student getting a master's degree in publishing I'm probably far more likely to do so than a member of the general public. Before I started the publishing program here at PSU, the only reason I had been to any publishers' websites was to look at submission guidelines. Since then, with one exception, it has been to evaluate the websites of other publishing companies. That one exception? Tor.com, which I visit frequently for their articles. Nevermind that that's not Tor's actual website--the point is, it's the closest thing to a publisher's website that I visit on anything resembling a regular basis. And while a lot of the site could be construed as advertising, since it mentions lots of books, and in particular Tor books, it's not actually too common to find links to places where you can buy those books.

To me, this illustrates that direct-to-consumer sales are not likely to work out for publishers. People just don't go to publisher websites to buy books, and it's doubtful that they ever will. Perhaps if a consortium of publishers banded together and built a website that would distribute orders from customers to the appropriate publisher, it would work--but setting up that sort of thing would take a massive outlay of capital, something that is in disturbingly short supply right now. In addition, it may not work out to be worth it. In order to attract customers, after all, such a website would have to offer prices at or below those of Amazon and Barnes & Noble (and Borders, for however much longer they're around), and Amazon has the available funds and the willingness to operate at a loss for years--something that most publishers probably can't manage.

Ebooks are a slightly different matter, in that there's no appreciable distribution cost, and no reason to not sell them through the website. That being said, people are still going to go to a wider distribution center when they try to buy things. That's why malls work--people want to go one place where they can get a huge variety of things, not one tiny little store that sells one or two types of things.

The way for publishers to get readers to order from them directly is to offer something that they can't get through a retailer--some facet of production that the retailer can't offer or do anything about. Customizable POD books might do the trick--you order a book to certain specifications, and it gets printed up and shipped off to you. Maybe you want a certain weight of paper, or your eyes are going so you want to order the whole thing set in 14 point, or you want it in hardcover, in a slipcase, bound in purple silk (Which reminds me, I did actually visit a publisher's website once; it was to pick out a Christmas present. Sadly, the company in question appears to no longer be, or at least to no longer have a web site. So perhaps the deluxe edition business isn't all it's cracked up to be).