...I approached the director of the Melbourne Writers Festival to discuss Australia Council support for the Digital Publishing Program. With the commercial success of the Kindle in the US and publishers in Britain already squabbling over royalty rates for e-books, it is essential for Australian publishers to be ready to go when this technology arrives in our stores.
The period of transition from book to e-book will be particularly hard for our smaller publishing houses. Setting a manuscript in user-friendly digital format is not simply a matter of pressing a few buttons.
[Snip]
Paradoxically, I believe that those who have already gone to an all digital output, investing in skills and technology rather than paper, have more chance of keeping pace with their more powerful rivals. It's the cost of putting out simultaneous online and paper versions of a book that will put some companies out of business.
It is equally important for writers to stay in touch with the complex field of digital rights management and subsequent royalty payments. Random House UK is in trouble for setting digital royalty rates below other publishers. Random is quoting 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent as a norm, while the original rate had been set at 25 per cent.
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