Why a St. John's publisher is embracing e-books

Flanker Press covers the gamut of Newfoundland and Labrador topics, with a publishing history that is unabashedly focused on the province's authors and subjects. While many of its titles have a historical bent, the company's business plan has a decidedly digital component.

To grow its enterprise, St. John's-based Flanker has invested substantially in e-publishing, and already has 53 entries in its back catalogue available in at least one of the major digital formats.

Flanker is not giving up traditional book publishing, but as the market for Kindles, Kobos, iPads and other electronic tablets grows substantially, Flanker is concentrating heavily on the electronic market.

To learn more about the company's plans, CBC caught up with president Garry Cranford at Flanker's offices in St. John's. Following is an edited version of our conversation.

Q: What are the stakes for a publisher like yourself in the electronic market?

We decided two years ago that it was coming, and we had to decide either to buy into it or ignore it. We bought into it. The [goal] for us was to reach an audience that we can't distribute into, so we have [electronic books] now being bought in Great Britain, in the United States, Australia.

 

Q. Tell me about the digital market, and how it compares to traditional publishing. The numbers are growing. 

They're not huge, but I can say from last year to this year, it's more than quadrupled. It's good for authors. They get a decent royalty. The only drawback is that with digital books is that people don't want to pay what they normally pay for paper versions and hardcovers.

Q. What are the advantages and disadvantages of selling an electronic book?

The disadvantage is the capital investment that's required up front. It will take quite a while [to recover the cost] because your capital is tied up in both salaries and the outsourcing of conversion. It's going to take a while, a good while down the road, to break even. The key for us is to build a critical mass of books. For instance, one sale for us was through the local library system, and they bought 30 titles. That was a nice sale.

Q. How important are libraries in terms of electronic sales?

They are buying them, and they're very aggressive. I went to a meeting with librarians, and I met with librarians from the Toronto, Vancouver and Hamilton systems, and they were saying that their e-book [use] is about 11 per cent. However, their wait lists for paper versions have not shrunk. The demand for music, movies and what we call mass market pocketbooks — the demand for that has dropped, so the money they would spend on that they're now moving into e-books.

Q. That would seem to be good news for you.

Absolutely. One advantage of having an e-book is that where we can't get a catalogue out there, and if someone is perusing e-retailers, they may come across a book and they look for the paper copy. One of the arguments given for wanting the low retail price is that the retailer says, "We're doing you a service. Not only are we selling your books, but we're helping to promote them."

Q. I've noticed a real growth in low-cost titles that are basically created just for the electronic market. Is that something you're looking at?

It'll be a couple of years away before we turn to that. We really want to get our backlist done of our titles. I guess if you're a name and people are aware of your work, you can bundle small collections or articles, and we do see that a lot of writers are self-publishing with, basically, just a digital file. Some have been very successful, but again, if you're out there, you have to get noticed. I think a lot of these smaller publications, the $1.99 ones, are on specific topics or are there to get people's attention.

Q. How many titles do you do per year? 

We do approximately 20. The last number of years it would be between 18 and 23. With the infrastructure that we have within Flanker Press, in terms of marketing, publicity, distribution, design, production, support [and] business management, we need to publish about 18 or 19 books per year. Some books are spreading the risk. Some books we know will sell about 1,500, and some books will sell 3,000 and up. But there are some that I as a publisher really want to do, even though I know they won't be a commercial success. We do some of those.

Q. Are your authors interested in the electronic opportunities?

Yes, I think so. Some authors will ask us, do you publish in electronic form? They're pretty savvy. What we're trying to do with our writers is that as we do a new book, we try to make sure that we digitize their backlist. With Paul Butler, we just did Titanic Ashes. So his book is showing some interest electronically outside Newfoundland and the Atlantic provinces, so we're hoping that people will start looking for his other materials. Some of them are [available] and we have three or four in the works, especially his novels.

Q. You wouldn't be doing this if you didn't think it was worth the risk. Tell me about that.

It's a long-term investment. As more people turn to electronic devices for reading, we will have a strong, deep catalogue of books. All of this is evolving, but we want to be there, and to be ready.

Q. I would presume that much of the demand for your books is here, in the province. How much of your market is domestic?

I would say 85 per cent, and probably another 10-12 per cent in the Maritime provinces. Beyond that it would be Canadian, and some international.

Q. Where do you think your market split will be in five years?

'As more people turn to electronic devices for reading, we will have a strong, deep catalogue of books' —Garry Cranford

It will still be very strongly in Newfoundland and Atlantic Canada, simply because of the types of books we select. It's very interesting that with Kobo, half of our sales are in Newfoundland and Labrador, so in this province, people are really buying into electronic books. I think Kobo, because we have Chapters and Coles in the province, they've been really promoting the Kobo format.

Q. What does it take to make a bestseller?

Based on economics, I want to be comfortable that we can do a 2,000 print run, and sell 2,000 in, say, a year and a half. That would take in a fall and your Christmas bump and then the following year. Other books we've started with three [thousand], some we've started with 5,000, and some with seven [thousand]. With those, I instinctively know what we'll need for the fall period. With The Badger Riot [by J.A. Ricketts], I think we had a print run of 5,000 or 7,000, and we sold out. I had a gut feeling about that one.

Q. What share will electronic books have of your sales by the end of the year?

Probably four or five per cent. It's still small, but the good news is that it won't hurt the paper versions.

Q. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were more local books available electronically through the local library than I would have thought.

There's only one other publisher, besides Flanker, that has e-books right now. We currently have 30 [available through the library system]. What's really encouraging is that with one of those books, Mattie Mitchell by Gary Collins, there's a wait list of 13 people. If each reader holds that file for two weeks, we're looking at it being a long time before that person at the end gets it. I know that in Toronto, Vancouver [or] Hamilton, the libraries like to have a copy of a paper book for every six people on the wait list, and with electronic books, it's ideally three to one. In the electronic world, people are a little more impatient with waiting. They may not want to wait 20 weeks and will just go buy one.

Q. There's also a lot of evidence to show that e-readers read a lot, period.

Yes. They're avid readers, and a lot of them are travellers. When I travel, I see airports and airplanes filled with people reading e-books.

Q. How important is it to tap into markets outside the border?

It is. One of the books that shows up in every electronic book report is Nellie Strowbridge's Newfoundland Tongue. Then they become aware of Nellie, and they also discover that Nellie has three or four e-books available. So that's how we can build a new audience for that writer.

Q. Are you an e-reader yourself?

(Cranford heaves a long sigh and chuckles.) I read manuscripts. I don't get to read a lot for pleasure. I have the manuscripts on my laptop, but I don't transfer them to a tablet. We do have a tablet here, in-house. Personally, I like to read manuscripts in the paper form. I still like that tactile experience.