Unfair competition?

[Author2X]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? California

My friend and I are in self-publishing (he's in music, I'm in books) and we got so tired of the rejection by all the agents and major publishing houses that we resolved to launch an employee-operated group for nothing but self-publishers. The idea is that anyone who self-publishes and joins our group would be eligible to have copies of their work offered for sale to the buying public through the group's online catalog or various indie bookstores.

With a traditional publishing and distribution house, if you're lucky you'll get 4 to 10 cents on the dollar for every copy of your work sold. Under the model my friend and I are planning, only the costs of maintaining the online catalog, booking the trade shows, etc., are deducted as percentages from all the group members' sales of their titles, and the rest is theirs to keep and declare as income. So far so good.

The problem I foresee arises from the way the contemporary copy distribution system is set up. For our titles to be available, we had to assign ISBN numbers to them. What happens if someone walks into a Borders or a Barnes & Noble store and orders a copy of one of my books or my friend's songbooks? To me this would be like walking into a Ford dealership and asking for a Chevy. No business operator wants to undermine himself by distributing his competitor's products when the competitor doesn't distribute in kind. The business model my friend and I have planned may be fine and dandy, but I think we'll get into a very ugly knock-down, drag-out legal battle with the traditional publishing houses because of the way the commercial distribution apparatus is set up.

What can my friend and I expect if we go ahead and our idea succeeds? Is there any legal precedent for this? As a music composer, my friend is all too aware of what happened between the major record labels and the indie musicians.

 

[FlyingRon]

Borders and Barnes and Noble aren't publishers nor agents of the publishing houses. Your analogy makes little sense. They are free to cover or not stock your titles. Depending on what you are doing to actually produce and distribute your book it may or not be easily available to the bookstore staff if someone wants to special order.

This isn't a legal issue. Google "self publishing" and "subsidy press" for tons of information on these subjects.

 

[Hot Topic]

It's called "vanity press." You can't get your book published because none of the publishing houses are interested in it, so you go to someone who you pay to publish it for you. You get a certain number of copies of your book, and the profit comes from getting your family and friends to buy them.

Many desperate authors fall for it and are left with a bunch of books they can't sell. Or give away.

 

[FlyingRon]

Actually, these days there are several large "print on demand" publishers. While you pay a set up fee, you don't have to commit to any particular amount of books run and the retailers can order direct.

Of course, it's entirely on you to handle the marketing.

 

[cyjeff]

And you cannot force anyone to buy your book... including a chain book store.

Trust me, if it was a book that would sell, they wouldn't care about the publisher... as they already stock several vanity house publications (I was just in a B&N yesterday and happened to notice this).

 

[Author2X]

None of you guys seem to be getting the gist of my argument. I'm talking about a group of independent outsiders coming together and potentially doing a lot of damage to an established industry's profits. There HAS to be some legal consequence any time some pipsqueak upstart comes along and slays a Goliath.

 

[Hot Topic]

In this economy, no one with any sense assumes that they're going to be David to a Goliath, and that due to their success, Goliath is going to come after them.

 

[justalayman]

None of you guys seem to be getting the gist of my argument. I'm talking about a group of independent outsiders coming together and potentially doing a lot of damage to an established industry's profits. There HAS to be some legal consequence any time some pipsqueak upstart comes along and slays a Goliath.

why would your business hurt Borders or B&N? They sell books they can acquire and do pretty well. It's not like you are preventing them from selling books they currently sell. They sell books by dozens of different publishers. In fact, you could contract to sell to B&N, if they were willing to buy your books and you were willing to sell via B&N.

What happens if someone walks into a Borders or a Barnes & Noble store and orders a copy of one of my books or my friend's songbooks?

if they don't have access to the books, they say "sorry but we do not sell that book"

No business operator wants to undermine himself by distributing his competitor's products when the competitor doesn't distribute in kind.

that makes no sense. The book sellers are not the publishers and you will be less competition to the publishers than some other large publisher, which they deal with all the time.

but I think we'll get into a very ugly knock-down, drag-out legal battle with the traditional publishing houses because of the way the commercial distribution apparatus is set up.

Why is that? You publish books, Random House publishes books, HarperCollins publishes books, and many other companies publish books. You don't see them suing each other because the other companies are also publishing books. They don't because there is nothing illegal about publishing books.

 

[FlyingRon]

None of you guys seem to be getting the gist of my argument. I'm talking about a group of independent outsiders coming together and potentially doing a lot of damage to an established industry's profits. There HAS to be some legal consequence any time some pipsqueak upstart comes along and slays a Goliath.

I caught a little of what you're saying, but you are way off base. The "established" publishing industry doesn't give a damn about any "threat" from the self-published market. Further, the retail book stores are not part of the publishing establishment. You do see occasionally subsidy and local press titles at many of the stores.

Unless you have a real legal question, rather than far fetched guesses that have nothing to do with legal issues. Marketing your book isn't a legal issue. There are writing and publishing forums elsewhere that are better venues for these sorts of questions.