e-reads
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Richard Curtis, e-reads |
Synergy in the Flesh: Agent Richard
Curtis Talks About Richard Curtis, E-Publisher Chris Allbritton 12/7/2000 16:16
Richard Curtis, the president of e-reads.com, is
the literary agent doing a cannonball into the deep end of e-publishing.
And like a mischievous kid, he hopes to soak everyone at the pool.
He wants the two-year-old e-reads to be a ''major'' publishing company
by next year, with a focus on e-books and print-on-demand paperbacks. To
do this, his literary agency, Richard Curtis Associates, has acquired
rights to more than 1,200 out-of-print books by his current clients,
including sci-fi masters Harlan Ellison and Greg Bear. He makes these
out-of-print books available as e-books to distributors like BN.com and
Amazon.com, as well as print-on-demand shops like Lightning Source.
But what distinguishes Curtis from other e-book purveyors is that he
wants to keep on working as a literary agent, too, a job he has had
since the 1970s. This has raised eyebrows in the close-knit world he
moves in, and he's come under criticism for trying to sit on both sides
of the table when dealing with authors.
It remains to be seen whether he will be successful as an e-book
merchant. E-reads isn't profitable yet, but it does have revenues
(Curtis declined to give an exact amount). When the Web site launches
with e-commerce capability early in 2001, he says, it should be
profitable within six months. Then, he says, he'll start looking at
publishing original works.
Curtis spoke with Inside at his airy Upper East Side office about
everything from conflicts of interest to his new royalty software to
science fiction.
Inside: How did you come to be an e-publisher?
Richard Curtis: In the anticipation that (e-publishing) was going to
happen, I, as the literary agent, created a strategy for my company
which was to begin acquiring back the publication rights of my clients'
books that were out of print. And we recovered hundreds and hundreds of
books. And on my advice, my clients and our agency warehoused those
rights, because we knew that body of content would be significant when a
new way of delivering text became available. And in 1998, that actually
came to pass with two major events. One was the announcement of the
RocketBook and the other was the creation of the print-on-demand press,
both of which are, of course, computer driven and digitally oriented.
And I looked at this landscape ahead of us, and I decided the old model
of simply representing those properties, as a literary agent, was not a
viable one. It didn't make sense. I felt that I had to control a body of
content and not just be a facilitator on behalf of other people. So, I
had the radical idea of publishing these myself. In any event, at the
end of 1998, I formed a new corporation called e-reads devoted to
publishing those books that my clients had reverted, but also hopefully
dedicated to publishing books by other authors besides my clients.
Inside: How many e-books have you done so far?
Richard Curtis: We have 1,200 books in our program. Not all published
yet, but our catalog consists of 1,200 books. During the mid-'90s, I
became the president of the Association of Authors' Representatives (the
trade organization for literary agents). So, I had kind of led the
charge to improve the royalty percentage that was being offered to
authors by the traditional trade group companies, which at that time was
like 10 to 15 percent. And I said, ''No, it should be 50 percent,
because there's scarcely any overhead involved in the electronic
delivery of books.'' So, when I started my own company, I designed it
along those same lines that as an agent I had advocated, namely the
50-50 split with the author on revenue received by us. And that was the
foundation of my business. Now we see that it is becoming the gold
standard -- as you know, Random House just adopted it.
Inside: Other publishing companies have been fairly lukewarm to it
Richard Curtis: They'll accept it; they have no choice. It will become,
I believe, the gold standard because you have a choice: Sell your book
to a company that pays you 50 percent or sell it to a company that pays
you 25 percent. It's a no-brainer. Some publishing companies say you
can't make money on 50 percent. The answer is you can if your company is
run, I would say, on a virtual basis. That is to say, not as a brick and
mortar company, but as a company that basically uses digital
communication as a way of delivering content with practically no
overhead. I asked myself, what is publishing? And the answer is, an
author, a reader and a server. And everything else is add-ons. Some
publishers add on steel and glass skyscrapers in Midtown, warehouses and
printing plants --
Inside: And marketing campaigns --
Richard Curtis: And marketing campaigns and overhead, and trucks and
planes and trains delivering books to stores. But it can also be done
virtually, and if it's done well, you can run a publishing operation
from a computer server under your desk, where essentially all other
functions are out-sourced for fulfillment for others.
Inside: But you still have to pay them, if you're going to contract out
those functions.
Richard Curtis: But they are paid only when a book is sold, that's the
difference. The old publishing industry is based on the model where you
have to incur expense before the book is sold. And when you incur those
expenses, you don't know if that book will be sold. But in the new
model, it is not until the book is sold that the book is created, such
as a book printed on demand is not printed until somebody buys it. Of
course, there are certain costs associated with this, as I have
discovered.
Inside: You've got this big office here.
Richard Curtis: Yeah, we have rent to pay, salaries to pay. But when you
compare our overhead to that of traditional publishing companies, you
could put our overhead in Warner's petty cash and no one would find it.
Inside: How do you plan to pay for a marketing campaign for a book to
really get it out in front of people? How do you plan to pay for
editors?
Richard Curtis: At this time, e-reads is self-financed, essentially out
of my own pocket. But it's beginning to be financed out of the revenue,
and revenue is beginning to increase. Because our books are distributed
by eight or 10 very powerful distributors, such as Ingram, Amazon,
Barnes & Noble, Gemstar and Palm Pilot, these great distributors are
capable of either creating their own marketing campaign or ...
leveraging our own promotion. So, as we move forward and become
self-sustaining -- or when an investor is smart enough to figure out
that this is going to be a very prosperous model -- then we will begin
investing seriously in a marketing campaign. And, of course, editors.
One thing you have to remember, the 1,200 books that we so far have
acquired for our program are previously published. They have already
been edited. You don't need an editor. When we begin publishing
originals, we'll need editors. And by that time, we'll be able to afford
them.
Inside: Do you ever foresee leaving your agent career behind you and
becoming a full-fledged publisher?
Richard Curtis: No, because I find that the two have simply synergized
with each other, and we still want to try to sell our books to other
publishers, so my literary agent functions must remain in place, and my
clients depend on me to do that. But in other cases, we find there are a
few books that we are not able to sell to publishers, and now I have the
wonderful option of being able to publish them myself if we've exhausted
all the sales possibilities to traditional publishing.
Inside: This brings up an interesting question. What do you do if you
take an author on, but can't place his manuscript? Do then you say,
''Well, I'd like to publish it''? Do you suggest that he go to another
agent?
Richard Curtis: Early in the creation of e-reads, I confronted the issue
of conflict of interest. And I decided on three principles. The first
was full disclosure to my clients. The second was the obvious, which is
that we would not take any commission on revenues paid by my publishing
company. And the third was to give my clients the opportunity to hire
other agents or lawyers to review our contracts and deal with me if they
felt it was necessary. And I would say, to a man and to a woman, none of
my clients took advantage of that option. They trusted me, they knew my
reputation for honesty, they knew I was way ahead of the curve in
creating e-reads and they wanted to be in on something exciting and new.
So they went along.
Inside: So they didn't see any problem with you being on one side of the
table with them, and then going over to the other side?
Richard Curtis: No. And I don't either. It has never come up.
Inside: Unlike many people who work on the Web, you're not some
25-year-old wunderkind. And you mentioned your clients in science
fiction and your interest in it. Do you think this has been the reason
you've jumped into this wholeheartedly?
Richard Curtis: I've always loved science, and I've always stayed in
touch with science by reading science or reading science fiction. And
when the time came to launch e-reads, I was notably deficient in
technical knowledge. Luckily, I engaged partners and staff who are
younger and for whom a lot of this stuff comes easily. I suppose I'm a
63-year-old wundermensch, not a wunderkind. And I had to basically learn
a new language. And although I couldn't write five words of code, I can
talk PDF, RTF and XML with the best of them.
Inside: How do you handle royalties?
Richard Curtis: I actually have invented a program, which I believe will
have major importance for the e-book publishing industry. As we got
royalties from different distributors, I recognized we would soon be
drowning in revenues and royalty statements, and unable to absorb them
and convert them into royalty information for authors. So, I contacted a
brilliant programmer who created a royalty-tracking program, which we're
now about to license to other e-book publishers.
Inside: What is your day like? How much time do you spend as an agent,
how much as an e-publisher?
Richard Curtis: Somebody else asked me that question. I said, ''I spend
100 percent of my time as a literary agent, and I spend 100 percent of
my time as a publisher.'' And almost no percent of my time sleeping. I
truly sleep very little. And, in certain cases, I delegate both of these
functions; in other cases, I take them on myself. No one has ever
complained that I'm shorting them on time except for my wife.
Inside: You don't have the resources of Barnes & Noble or Microsoft.
How do you get the publishers and authors to sign on with you for
e-publishing if you don't have the name or the resources of the big
guys?
Richard Curtis: Well, because our model of business is better than
anybody. Because of the quality of the list. Because we are beginning to
receive and pay out to authors from revenues. Because our Web page is
coming, at which point there will be dramatic growth in our business.
And because there aren't a lot of good alternatives out there, to be
frank. The iUniverse and Fatbrain experiment is a disaster. And you can
rule those two companies out as viable places for professional authors
to work, because they find themselves commingled with self-published
stuff, and they don't want to be associated with it. So the reason we're
not big guys is because we're holding to a very narrow criterion, mainly
the only books we will do for now are books that were previously
published by a major publishing company, (books) by branded authors and
reviewed by branded reviewers. And that gives us a lot of leverage. If
you're a science fiction author contemplating the landscape, you will be
very interested in casting your lot with an e-book company that
publishes some of the people who you admire, such as Harlan Ellison, Dan
Simmons and Greg Bear.
Inside: Just to clarify, e-reads splits the royalties with the author on
a 50-50 basis?
Richard Curtis: We not only, right now, split the publishing royalties,
but when our site is up, we also intend to split the retail revenue. So,
on a $10 book, an author can conceivably make $5. That's a lot of money.
Inside: How do you make deals with distributors like Barnes & Noble?
Richard Curtis: They come to us. They admire our content. They're hungry
for it. And so, we don't have to seek them out at all.
Inside: What do you do to promote e-reads.com itself? Aside from
promoting the books, how are you going to go about getting the idea that
the Web page is out there?
Richard Curtis: We won't really have to. This is a long-awaited event.
This will spread like wildfire.
Inside: When the site launches, will you have an e-commerce engine? Will
people be able to buy directly from there?
Richard Curtis: Absolutely. Eventually, you'll be able to buy one of our
books in every possible format. Just hit the button and download the
book or order a printed copy to be manufactured and shipped to you that
day.
Inside: But won't that put you into competition with your current
distributors? Are you worried that maybe they'll tell you, ''Fine, we
won't carry your stuff if you're going to sell it on your own site''?
Richard Curtis: You know what? That's fine with me. If they don't want
to carry our stuff, other people will, including ourselves. I'm not
undercutting my distributors; I'm basically selling on the same basis
that they are. I'm not in competition. E-reads will simply be another
retail site where e-books will be distributed. But right now, as I said,
even before our site is up, you can find our books all over the place.
Inside: Where do you see yourself in a year?
Richard Curtis: We will be a major player in a year.
May 16 2001 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE E-READS LAUNCHES WEB SITE, EREADS.COM
The web site for
e-reads, the publishing company founded by literary agent Richard
Curtis, launched this week with hundreds of titles for sale in fantasy
and science fiction, romance, horror, and thrillers as well as general
fiction and nonfiction. New titles from the company's list of over 1500
previously published books are in production. Unlike other online
publishers, e-reads fulfills sales off-site through a network of dozens
of "etailers". Principal among these is Fictionwise.com, a
highly dynamic and marketing-driven firm which Curtis recently praised
as the most advanced eBook delivery site he has ever seen. E-Reads
opened for business in January, 2000 after entering into distribution
agreements with a prestigious list of companies, and within a year of
its formation had built a network of a dozen major distributors in both
the eBook and conventional print book field. Curtis has formed joint
ventures for print publication and distribution with LPC, a leading
distributor for small presses, and with New World Publishers, a
Minnesota publishing technology firm. Curtis also teams with New World
to create web sites for authors. The first, worldofgor.com, displays the
work of fantasy novelist John Norman and his 25 novels set on the planet
Gor. New World also designed the ereads.com site. For more information,
contact info@ereads.com
SELECTED AUTHORS AND TITLES PUBLISHED BY E-READS
Among the featured fantasy, science fiction, and horror authors on the
e-reads list are George Zebrowski, Greg Bear, Harlan Ellison, Dave
Duncan, Fritz Leiber, James Tiptree Jr., Dan Simmons, Nancy Springer,
James Gunn, John Norman, John Grant, Bill Dietz, Stephen Goldin, W. T.
Quick, Mary Jane Engh, Morgan Llywelyn, Donald Moffitt, John Bellairs,
R. A. MacAvoy, Robert Metzger, John Jakes, Eleanor Arason, Ru Emerson,
Anne Logston, Brad Strickland, Mike Sirota, F. M. Busby, Stephen Dedman,
Robert Silverberg, Graham Masterton, Rex Miller, Ray Garton, Poppy Z.
Brite, Melanie Tem, Sean Costello, Pamela Sargent, John De Chancie,
George Alec Effinger, Carol Severance, Paul Cook, Jim Menick, Robin
Bailey, Susan Shwartz, Damien Broderick, Dennis Jones, Kathryn Lance,
Paula Downing, Carol Davis Luce, Edgar Pangborn, Elizabeth Lynn, Stephen
Gresham, Alan Dean Foster, Justin Leiber, Ian Watson, Cary James,
Michael Conner, Christopher Hinz, Michael Coney, Jeffrey Carver, Melissa
Scott, Adrian Cole, Marta Randall, and Brian Stableford. In the romance
category, e-reads boasts such leading ladies as Janet Dailey, Jennifer
Blake, Laura Kinsale, Linda Winstead Jones, Linda Ladd, Maggie Davis,
Mary Haskell Curtis, Elizabeth Lane, Gail Clark, Patricia Grasso,
Virginia Myers, Nancy Herndon, Julie Ellis, Sue Rich, Patricia Hagan,
Elizabeth Chater, Adrienne DeWolfe, Trana Mae Simmons, Jill Shalvis,
Sonja Massie, Daphne De Jong, Kay Cornelius, Frances Patton Statham,
Suzanne Elizabeth Witter, and Lillian Shelley.
E-reads also has a strong crime and mystery list headed by Jim Thompson,
Parnell Hall, Richard S. Prather, and Ted Wood.
Its general fiction and nonfiction catalogue carries such lead titles as
THE VITAMIN BIBLE by Earl Mindell, THE FAMILY VIEWING GUIDE by Leonard
Maltin, THE LUCIFER PRINCIPLE by Howard Bloom, METAL MEN by A. Craig
Copetas, LONE STAR by T. R. Fehrenbach, BODY LANGUAGE by Julius Fast,
THE INCREDIBLE VOYAGE by Tristan Jones, CALIFORNIA DREAMERS by Norman
Bogner, OVERBOARD by Hank Searls, NO HE'S NOT A MONKEY HE'S AN APE by
Hester Mundis, WHAT WOMEN NEED TO KNOW by Dr. Marianne Legato and Carol
Colman, and WAKE UP, STUPID by Mark Harris.
E-reads is also the eBook publisher for the entire list of Permanent
Press fiction and nonfiction.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
E-READS AND FICTIONWISE.COM ANNOUNCE STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIP May 9,
2001
E-reads, a leading
publisher of quality fiction and nonfiction reprints, and
Fictionwise.com, a top-selling web publisher and retailer, announced
today that the two companies have formed a strategic relationship. As
part of the agreement, Fictionwise will be the preferred distributor of
e-reads' extensive list of titles. E-reads currently boasts nearly 1,400
previously-published titles by leading authors in fantasy, science
fiction, horror, thrillers, romance, and general fiction and nonfiction.
Its authors include Harlan Ellison, Greg Bear, Robert Silverberg, Dan
Simmons, John Norman, Dave Duncan, Graham Masterton, Janet Dailey,
Jennifer Blake, Laura Kinsale, Jim Thompson, Leonard Maltin, and Earl
Mindell. Fictionwise.com, launched by founders Steve and Scott
Pendergrast in June 2000, is a highly dynamic retail eBook web site that
both authors and eBook buyers have praised. Currently, the majority of
Fictionwise's catalogue is short fiction eBooks, focusing on
award-winning science fiction and fantasy. The combination of e-reads'
high quality, full-length titles with Fictionwise's advanced retail
channel makes the strategic relationship a formidable player in the
emerging eBook industry. The core competencies of each firm generate
exciting possibilities.
Richard Curtis, founder of e-reads, holds a distinguished position in
the traditional publishing world as the head of a leading literary
agency. His reputation in the author and agent communities is a perfect
fit with the technical savvy and online marketing skills brought to the
table by the Pendergrast brothers, who come out of strong technology,
Internet, and new media backgrounds. Curtis describes Fictionwise.com as
"the most technically advanced eBook website I know of. Although
our books are distributed by numerous online retailers, Fictionwise's
skills in reaching fans and other consumers are peerless. The technology
behind the Fictionwise website, from their micropay system to the
numerous eBook formats they support, makes them a clear leader."
Scott Pendergrast, co-publisher of Fictionwise, commented, "Our
members have been asking for more variety, more authors, more categories
of both fiction and nonfiction. E-reads owns a killer list of titles
that fits right in with that demand. This relationship will benefit
customers and authors alike, as well as both of our companies. It will
allow e-reads to focus on content acquisition and Fictionwise to focus
on keeping our technology and delivery systems cutting-edge." Under
the agreement, Fictionwise.com will create a special page on its web
site for e-reads titles and information, and in turn will gain access to
e-reads' entire catalog of high-quality novels and nonfiction titles.
E-reads will designate Fictionwise.com as its preferred ebook sales
retailer. The companies are exploring other ways to work together,
including joint marketing opportunities and technology sharing.
About e-reads: In 1999 Richard Curtis, one of the publishing
industry's most prominent literary agents, founded e-reads in
anticipation of the eBook revolution he had long predicted. Focusing on
the most popular categories of fiction and nonfiction, Curtis acquired a
stellar array of titles by big-name authors. His approach to publishing
is radically simple: "It consists of an author, a reader, and a
server, and everything else is irrelevant." Thanks to the vast
economies produced by electronic text-delivery systems, he created what
he terms an "author-centric" publishing model in which the
author contributes more to the publication and promotion processes and
is rewarded with a much greater share of revenue than is paid by
conventional publishers. Besides Fictionwise.com, numerous "e-tailers"
distribute e-reads titles, generating cash flow from so many sources
that Curtis developed a special program, The Royalty Tracker, to
generate checks and reports to authors. E-reads has also created
important alliances in the print area and recently formed New World
Publishers, a joint venture that will print and distribute paperback
books.
For further information, contact info@ereads.com
About Fictionwise.com: Fictionwise.com is a leading independent eBook
publisher and distributor. The company publishes award-winning and
high-quality fiction eBooks by top authors in multiple formats,
including Palm (for Palm, Visor and Win CE), Adobe Acrobat,
Rocket/REB1100, Microsoft Reader (Pocket PC and PCs), and Franklin
eBookMan. Fictionwise authors include Larry Niven, Harlan Ellison,
Robert Silverberg, Nancy Kress, Damon Knight, Gregory Benford, Mike
Resnick, James Patrick Kelly, Pamela Sargent, and Kate Wilhelm, amongst
many others. Fictionwise also distributes eBooks by other high-quality
publishers. It is believed that Fictionwise.com has the largest eBook
collection of major award-winning and nominated science fiction stories
on the Internet. For further information, contact Scott Pendergrast at scott@fictionwise.com