This week we got the opportunity to speak to Erin Mallory. Erin is the manager of the Cross-Media Group at House of Anansi Press and she oversees the production of eBooks.
ePugs: How did you get into the ePub industry?
EM: I started working as a book designer and typesetter. In 2007, one my colleagues in my previous job started talking about eBooks, which really interested me. So I started poking around and trying to find any information that I could. I basically started playing around at work and trying to figure out how to make eBooks… When I moved to Anansi, part of my job initially was to create eBooks when the company really didn’t start doing much with eBooks yet. Now, I’ve spent more of my time creating eBooks rather than printed books. I don’t do any typesetting and design for printed books anymore. Instead, I do eBook creations.
At Anansi, we work with a parallel workflow and we primarily design for print. Our typesetter gets the book, lays it out and does everything with “print in mind” because that’s [ultimately our] end goal. She understands [what I need to help] me make an eBook from the same file, so she keeps that in mind when she’s setting up the files. Once the books have gone to print and the proofs have been approved and we know there will not be any more changes, I take those InDesign files and create the eBook.
ePugs: Are there opportunities available for graphic designers in this industry?
EM: A lot of the skills are transferable. I don’t think a lot of people who are doing more traditional graphic design for print are being taught a lot of the skills that are necessary to quickly and easily move into eBooks. If you’re trying to get into publishing at the moment, right now as a graphic designer, you need to develop those skills… I don’t think there are as many opportunities for print-based graphic design.
ePugs: With ePublishing, there are many authors who are self-publishing. What are the publishing houses doing to compete with this technology?
EM: I don’t think most publishers are trying to compete with self-publishing authors. The industry has exploded in the last couple of years and ePublishing has become easier but there have always been people [who self-publish their work]. Traditional publishers aren’t actually trying to compete with self-publishers because it’s a different market. What some of the bigger publishers have started doing is creating their own self-publishing portals…
People are seeing that e-only publishing or digital-first publishing [have cost savings] since the manuscript isn’t following the traditional publishing route of paying for editors, copy editors, and proof readers and its not being typeset with the idea that [the eBook] will be printed and bound. But for the most part, I believe that traditional publishers are just happy to let the self-publishers do their thing and if they’re doing it digitally, it’s really not competing with them.
ePugs: As an industry professional working with eBooks, what challenges do you see most often?
EM: I think the base challenge with eBooks is standards. There are too many different devices that handle eBooks in too many different ways. There are too many different vendors that all require slightly different book metadata (such as file format). With traditional print publishing, you just create a book, you make a file, you send it to a printer and you create a product that gets sold everywhere in the exact same way. With eBooks you are consistently battling trying to find a happy medium between spending all of your resources to create a specific file for each vendor and device which is economically unfeasible or you’re deciding what are you going to give up and what are you going to compromise in terms of style, interactivity, or accessibility to reach the widest range of readers as possible. So it’s still a bit of Wild West [out there].
ePugs: Do you think e-publications within time will eliminate the traditional use of books?
EM: I don’t see it happening. eBooks are only about 6 years old and so much as happened in those 6 years but for the most part print sales haven’t declined in a great degree. Hardcover [book] sales have declined because they’re so much more expensive to produce and buy but they haven’t disappeared entirely. Print in general is still 80-85% of our revenue [at Anansi], and even the biggest ePublishers are making at most 20-25% of their revenue [from eBooks]. So print is still king.
ePugs: What about the decrease in offset printing of books?
EM: I do think offset printing has lessened a little but what’s replacing is digital printing. Companies like Webcom are investing heavily in new digital presses. Four years ago [in our company], all of our printing was done on offset presses and now I would say 60% of our printing is done on digital presses. We’re doing shorter print runs but we’re doing them more frequently. We’re not printing 5000 books [anymore] because that [run length] makes printing on an offset press economically feasible. Instead, we are printing 1500 books or 500 books and when we sell out of those, we go and print again because we can print more quickly on digital presses. [In the end], we’re still printing. So I do think offset printing is going to lessen a lot more than it already has… [However], people are still looking for printed materials but in different and more flexible ways.
ePugs: What do you think the downsides of ePublishing are?
EM: Right now, I still think quality is a downside because it links back to standards. There’s no perfect way to do an eBook. It won’t be distributed the same way [to all vendors]. The vast majority of eBooks out there are still being digitized rather than being created digitally. [In other words], they’re taking a print book that previously existed and scanning it… So there is no flexibility for the reader, there is no adaptability, and there’s no accessibility. That really limits the value of what eBooks can be and [their] quality. And I think a lot of people are just creating crappy eBooks because they don’t want to spend a lot of energy to create a really great companion to the print edition…
ePugs: What do you believe are the main benefits of ePublishing?
EM: The biggest benefit I see that it’s really accessible to a lot of users, pretty much anyone can access a computer and internet, [which] can help publish an eBook quickly… [For] people who take transit every day, instead of having one or two books with them, they can have a hundred different books with them at any given time…
We’ve [also] seen an increase in revenue. We sell a lot of eBooks but one of the challenges of eBooks is that they are undervalued. People want them for free or they want them for $2.99 or $4.99 and they don’t want to pay the [print] sticker price for an eBook… We’ve seen quite a big increase in revenue overall but not a big increase in profit.
ePugs: What challenges do you see in marketing Anansi’s ePublications?
EM: I think we do have a hard time but I’m not directly involved with any of the marketing. Last year, we launched a new digital-only imprint called Anansi Digital and we’ve only published about 20 titles so far… Other than social media, we don’t have [as many] resources behind [ePublication] marketing [as we do for] our print marketing. We’re really not sure how to quite do it yet, so the way we’re marketing ourselves now is [through] social media…
We would like to thank Erin Mallory for taking the time to chat with us. It was a pleasure doing this interview!
To find out more about the House of Anansi, visit their website.
You can also check out their awesome blog!
Until next time,
The ePugs
Publish-It 