“We have Amazon as an example, and certainly not the only example, of someone who’s coming at this business from a completely different angle,” Napack told Publishers Lunch CEO Michael Cader. “Amazon, at its heart, is a customer relationship management company. [Book] publishers, at their heart, are author relationship management companies.

“Those two worlds could coexist nicely for awhile. The problem is, in Amazon’s search to grow and enhance its customer relationships…they are going headlong after what we think is book publishing, and what they think is an expansion of their customer relationship.

“[Publishers] have to do a great job of customer relationship management as well. [That means] we are going after [Amazon's] business…not Amazon’s e-commerce, but Amazon’s customer relationships. That’s where these two are going to clash.”

Self-publishing, part I: “There are no unrealistic expectations anymore”

Self-publishing platform Smashwords announced this week that it’s making self-publishing faster: Smashwords authors who sell e-books on Kobo and Apple will see faster “shipments” to those platforms, meaning that if they update their e-book’s price the change is reflected in near-real time. “We try to listen to people with unrealistic expectations,” CEO Mark Coker told me, “because their unrealistic expectations are the leading indicator of where we need to go.” Near-instantaneous price changes would allow an author to, say, sell an e-book “at $0.99 for the next five hours only.”

Smashwords is now working with library distributors 3M and Baker & Taylor’s Axis360 so self-published authors can get their e-books into libraries. Right now, the libraries buy Smashwords books at list price (publishers like Random House, meanwhile, charge more for the e-books they make available to libraries). Soon, Smashwords will allow its authors to set special pricing for libraries, Coker told me. “A lot of them are going to want to offer libraries lower pricing,” he said, or “will want to offer their books for free to libraries.”

Smashwords will soon let authors specify the countries where their books are distributed. Right now, authors (and the agents Smashwords works with) have the rights to sell their e-books in some territories, but not others. With the changes, for instance, an author could define that his or her e-book should be distributed “globally, except for commonwealth countries.” Smashwords will also let authors specify their prices by currency — a change from now, when authors have to price in dollars and retailers convert the currency automatically.

Also, Coker said, Smashwords will start accepting EPUB files (as opposed to Word files) later this year. With EPUB 3, that means the company could “potentially take more sophisticated books or enhanced books.”

Getting rid of DRM: This is going to take forever

Macmillan’s Fritz Foy announced at the Publishers Launch BEA conference that the company’s sci-fi/fantasy imprint Tor/Forge will launch a DRM-free digital bookstore this summer, and it may include DRM-free e-books from other publishers too. Meanwhile, distributor IPG announced that it will give client publishers the option to sell e-books DRM-free, and Kobo will give authors the option to sell DRM-free through its new self-publishing platform Writing Life. Still, publishers are moving slowly and it looks as though changes are going to happen in trickles.

Penguin global digital director Molly Barton said at Pub Launch that “Penguin is interested in methods of file security that would allow greater interoperability between platforms,” but Random House president of sales, operations and digital Madeline McIntosh called the DRM discussion “a red herring in a publishers panel at the IDPF conference, Publishers Lunch reports (paywall). She noted DRM’s not the only thing that keeps readers using a particular digital bookstore’s platform: “We have to be clear about what the goal is and commercial reason [to remove DRM].”

Self-publishing, part II: It’s getting closer

“We saw that seven percent of the units sold [on Kobo] were coming from self-published authors,” Kobo EVP of content and merchandising Michael Tamblyn told me, making those authors “collectively the size of a major publishing house,” so we “wanted to get closer” to them. Thus the launch of Kobo’s new self-publishing platform Writing Life. Authors using it get a 70 percent royalty on e-books priced between $1.99 and $12.99 and a 45 percent royalty on books below $1.99 or above $12.99. By “looking at how e-books sell in general,” Tamblyn said, “we know that after $12.99 there’s a drop…and after that it’s difficult to generate significant demand.” So the royalty structure “encourages authors to stay within that space.”

Amazon took up a lot of floor space, with separate sections for Amazon Publishing and self-publishing platforms Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace. At KDP, the company set up rows of chairs and, all day long, self-published authors gave presentations on why they use KDP. “I also sell on Nook [Barnes & Noble's self-publishing platform is PubIt],” I heard one author say, but Barnes & Noble doesn’t rent a public booth at BEA — which seems kinda dumb considering both Amazon and Kobo’s emphases on self-publishing at the show. Kobo, too, had the self-published authors participating in the beta launch of Writing Life speaking at its booth.

Startups: Maybe we’ll find a better way next year

The Javits Center’s vastness makes it tough for publishers and startups to randomly encounter each other, a lame “Digital Discovery Zone” is removed from the rest of the floor, and terrible or nonexistent WiFi prohibits quick demos or many interactions you need the Internet for. (Can I throw in one more complaint? There’s no WiFi in the press office and the woman who runs it yelled at me for “drinking all the water.”) The founder of one fairly well-known startup told me he was finding it tough to meet with the publishers who could get use out of his product. Despite a few panels that try to bring traditional publishers and newer companies together, BookExpo America remains, primarily, an event where publishers and authors pitch new books to librarians and booksellers. Maybe that’s what it should be, but since it’s also the largest book industry event in the United States, it’s not surprising that digital companies arrive with expectations about who they’ll meet and leave wanting more. It seems as if there should be a more efficient way to make these meetings happen — stay tuned on that.

Don’t hold your book party on a rowboat

OK, this one’s not digital. Author Robert Sullivan took BEA-going booksellers to the Hudson to promote his upcoming book “My American Revolution,” which is about the historical importance of New York Waterways. As the New York Times reports, “two rowboats – built at the boathouse to imitate 19th-century New York Harbor craft known as Whitehall gigs – left the pier loaded with booksellers, volunteer coxswains and local residents.” Unfortunately, one of the boats “struck a pier” and flipped, “dumping three BookExpo conventioneers, two instructors and two others into 60-degree water.” Five were able to climb onto the pier. “The other two drifted 100 yards away.” There were no fatalities.

See also

Social reading, discoverability and other unsolved problems at BEA 2012

Kobo launches e-book self-publishing platform, Writing Life

Macmillan’s Tor/Forge will launch DRM-free digital bookstore this summer

Wattpad raises $17 million to become the YouTube of writing

Photo courtesy of BEA

Three months ago, Amazon yanked over 5,000 IPG titles from the Kindle store after IPG refused to capitulate to Amazon’s demand for better terms. The titles were restored just before Memorial Day. IPG wouldn’t comment on those negotiations, but president Mark Suchomel wrote in a letter to clients at the time, “We will continue to work hard for every last sale so that all of our publishers stay healthy moving forward.”

Now, Suchomel says in a statement, “Whether or not to sell books with DRM is a decision publishers need to make. Since there was interest among our clients, we felt IPG could service them better by giving them an option.” Though Suchomel does not mention Amazon explicitly, anti-DRM advocates have argued that DRM keeps users locked to the Kindle store.

Cynthia Sherry, publisher of IPG client Chicago Review Press, says, “I do not believe that DRM prevents piracy, but simply frustrates paying customers and hinders sales. By removing DRM we are offering our customers the flexibility to read their e-books on whatever device they please.”

IPG’s announcement coincides with BookExpo America, the United States’ largest book industry event. Yesterday at the Publishers Launch BEA conference, Macmillan’s Fritz Foy announced that, in addition to removing DRM from all Tor/Forge titles, Macmillan is launching a DRM-free science-fiction digital bookstore.

See also:

“Why I break DRM on e-books”: A publishing exec speaks out 

DRM is crushing indie booksellers online

A kinder, gentler DRM?

Note to publishers: Your addiction to DRM is killing you

Will Hachette be the first big-six publisher to drop DRM on e-books?

Discoverability and the move to B2C

Publishers are realizing that to compete with Amazon they have to be able to sell directly to consumers. One way they can do that is by making their books more discoverable. Joint venture Bookish is now almost a year late and nowhere to be seen, so startups are trying to fill the gap — for instance,  Zola Books, a New-York based company that lets publishers and authors sell e-books directly, is launching at the show. Meanwhile, the always-interesting Peter Hildick-Smith argues at Publishers Launch on Monday afternoon that bookstores are still a crucial source of discovery for readers, and that SEO and social networks aren’t coming close to filling the gap. Just don’t expect the discoverability question to be answered this year.

The two elephants in the room

Those would be the Department of Justice, which is suing Apple and big publishers for allegedly colluding to set e-book prices, and Amazon, the presumed beneficiary of the DOJ suit. Nobody’s talking about DOJ loudly or on the record, but the lawsuit affects the mood in the Javits Center and makes publishers wary of throwing back too many drinks with their colleagues from other houses.

Amazon, meanwhile, is at BEA. Its booth (which is far from the big-six publishers, but happens to be right next to the Authors Guild, which should make for some awkward conversation. Last year Amazon dropped the Larry Kirshbaum announcement the night before BEA; this year it’ll be showing off the first fall books from Kirshbaum’s New York imprint.

E-books in libraries

Library e-book distributors OverDrive and 3M Cloud Library have been battling for attention this week ahead of the fair; OverDrive rolled out an HTML5-based Web reader, while newcomer 3M is announcing new partnerships — including one with self-publishing site Smashwords — that increase its collection to over 200,000 titles. (OverDrive has about 500,000 titles.) I’m still waiting for 3M to announce a bigger client, a big-six publisher — Hachette, Macmillan or Simon & Schuster — signing with the service to make its e-books available to libraries for the first time.

What’s the next “Hunger Games”?

In the BEA Young Adults’ Editors Buzz panel, Macmillan’s FSG imprint pitches “Crewel,” an upcoming dystopian trilogy from YA author Gennifer Albin: “Gifted with the ability to weave time with matter, she’s exactly what the Guild is looking for, and in the world of Arras, being chosen as a Spinster is everything a girl could want…But if controlling what people eat, where they live and how many children they have is the price of having it all, Adelice isn’t interested.” And Quirk pitches its upcoming Harry Potter-meets-Goosebumps-esque series, beginning with “Tales from Lovecraft Middle School #1: Professor Gargoyle.”

What happened to Google?

Last year Google was a big presence at BEA. This year, Google Play has a booth but none of its execs are on panels, as far as I can find (though there is an education session about using Google+, “the next big thing right now!”). It seems that Google, which ended the partnership that allowed indie bookstores to sell its e-books earlier this year, is backing away from the e-books space, and that e-book rental service the company alluded to at BEA last year has evaporated into the cloud.

Come see me at BEA! At Publishers Launch on Monday, June 4, I’m moderating a panel at 11:25AM ET: “Agents in Transition: Direct publishing, new deals and rethinking sub-rights. At IDPF Digital Book on Tuesday, I’m doing a presentation on e-singles at 9:00AM ET: What they are, why they matter and what’s next for that format. And on Wednesday at 9:00AM ET, I’m leading “Apps for Publishers: The What, Why and How Workshop.” In between, you’ll find me on the floor and on Twitter @laurahazardowen.

Plus, don’t miss GigaOM executive editor Ernie Sander at IDPF Digital Book on Monday, talking about emerging models for content monetization.

Photos courtesy of Flickr / ButterflySha

The e-book contains excerpts from over 30 fall titles across publishers and genres — including “This Is How You Lose Her” by Junot Diaz, “Live by Night” by Dennis Lehane, “Waging Heavy Peace” by Neil Young and “Flight Behavior” by Barbara Kingsolver.

The e-book is “our answer to the BEA discovery problem,” Publishers Lunch says, so “attendees can arrive at the convention having already sampled dozens of the most promoted books.” It’s also “a contribution to improving general consumer discovery” of new titles.

Publishers Lunch is releasing two editions of the e-book: one for the trade and one for consumers. The trade edition includes “detailed publisher rights, publicity and promotion information and contacts for each title, and lets you know what kind of BEA promotion and giveaways (if any) are planned for each book. Plus, nearly all of the excerpts click through to NetGalley, where registered users can either download the full digital galley or request it from the publisher.” You can download it here, in Kindle format or EPUB.

The consumer edition “omits the trade and BEA-related info that isn’t relevant to general readers but keeps all the excerpts, and adds click-throughs to pre-order from the three major stores with that capability.” Click here for download links from all e-book retailers.

In case you missed our coverage of BEA, here are our big takeaways from the week.

»  Book publishers’ greatest challenge now is discoverability in the digital age. How do they ensure that their ebooks and apps get found? How do they market directly to consumers? Brick-and-mortar bookstores that were once publishers’ main customers are disappearing and sales are moving online.”Our content has always been discovered by people either looking for it or recommending it,” said Charlie Redmayne, EVP and Chief Digital Officer of HarperCollins. “But now looking for it is through search and recommending it is through social media.” “Publishers do not know how to market e-books yet,” said Evan Schnittman, Managing Director of Group Sales and Marketing at Bloomsbury, said.

»  Oh yeah…and pricing is a pretty stiff challenge too. As book publishers have moved to the agency model–in which they set their own prices for e-books and the retailer (the Amazon Kindle Store, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iBookstore, or whoever) receives a commission–they are realizing there’s a lot they don’t know about that area. Traditionally, bookstores set their own prices and ran promotions. When Perseus Books Group set out to learn more about pricing, Joe Mangan, COO, said they realized how little they knew about it: “Online retailers were repricing books every two or four hours.”

»  Gadget gossip. It was a huge week for e-reader announcements. On Monday, there was Kobo with its $129.99 eReader Touch Edition, which incorporates the company’s Reading Life social networking technology. On Tuesday morning, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) announced its new Nook, the $139 Simple Touch Reader, whose main claim to fame is its two-month battery life. CEO William Lynch said the Nook has captured over 25 percent of the e-book market. “Based on industry data, it is our belief that Nook Color is the bestselling Android tablet in the U.S., second only to the iPad,” he said. Apparently feeling left out, Amazon announced on Tuesday evening that it’s releasing a $164 Kindle 3G with Special Offers.

Though it currently has only about 10 percent market share, Kobo might have been the winner of the week, at least in terms of good feeling: At its party on Wednesday night, it gave away an eReader Touch to every attendee.

»  Will these e-readers find buyers? The trend lines are moving in the right direction for e-reader sellers: The percentage of print book consumers who say they download e-books more than doubled between October 2010 and January 2011-from 5 percent to almost 13 percent. “Power buyers,” who buy at least one e-book a week, represent about 18 percent of the total people buying e-books today, but they buy 61 percent of all e-books purchased. Meanwhile, an eMarketer report found e-reader usage is growing much faster than previously predicted.

»  Book publishers are grappling with where to find digital talent. Many are conducting in-house training sessions, particularly in social media. tHarperCollins is building an in-house app studio. Random House recently acquired app developer Smashing Ideas. News Corp. (NSDQ: NWS), HarperCollins’ parent company, is launching an in-house marketing training program that will start out in the UK, then move abroad.

»  Traditional book publishers have so far been reluctant to experiment with new pricing models…but they may have to start soon. The Google (NSDQ: GOOG) eBookstore appears to be planning a Netfix-like e-book rental service, though no official announcement has been made. Scott Dougall, Google Books Director of Product Management, said the company also hopes to offer physical/digital book bundles, but “it’s up to the publishing industry to be more open-minded” about it.

Of course, he’s talking about the big six–smaller publishers have been much more open to experimentation in this area. Andrew Savikas, VP of Digital Initiatives at O’Reilly Media, even said, “I think we’ll move away from being a purchase-based industry. Publishing will move toward…access-based models in which case the actual price of the unit is irrelevant.” You’re not going to hear anybody from Random House saying that any time soon.

»  There’s a huge market for foreign-language e-books in the U.S. Barnes & Noble Manager of International Digital Content Patricia Arancibia said the retailer’s sales of foreign-language e-books are now growing faster than their sales of English e-books–increasing over 100 percent each month…

»  …but territorial rights for e-books are a huge issue and source of friction. Currently, a publisher may have the right to sell an e-book within one country, but not another. “The notion that we can or should enforce geographic restrictions on web and digital content is a lost cause,” said O’Reilly’s Saivkas. “I don’t believe territorial restrictions make sense with digital content. It’s not the way the web works.” Again, that’s an area where the big publishers are more conservative: “We are rigorous as a company in terms of territorial management,” said Amanda Close, Random House VP of Digital Sales & Business Development.

What are your takeaways from BEA this week? Please let us know in the comments.

Apple, which almost never appears at industry conferences unless it is doing the hosting, will exhibit participate this year in BookExpo America, the largest trade book fair in the United States. The company has a large private room booth in a prime location, next door to Scholastic and in the same area as major publishers including Random House, Disney (NYSE: DIS) Book Group and Macmillan. When you click on Apple on the BEA site, it says “Private Meeting Room: Publishers, please contact us to reserve a meeting time.”

Apple launched the iBookstore in April 2010. In March 2011, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that 100 million books had been downloaded through the iBookstore between its launch and February 2011. Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) doesn’t release its download numbers, but it is widely believed to have a sizeable lead over Apple, based in part on sales figures reported by publishers. This February, Bloomberg cited a Goldman Sachs report that said Amazon.com had 58 percent of e-book sales, followed by Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) at 27 percent, Apple at 9 percent and Borders/Kobo at 7 percent.

Thanks to Nate Hoffeider at The Digital Reader for the tip about Apple’s appearance this year. It’s not immediately clear what Apple has in store for BEA. Its attendance doesn’t appear to be linked to any device announcement or software upgrade. If Apple had any presence at BEA last year, that fact wasn’t noted on the floor plan or in the exhibitor list on BEA’s site last year, the way it is this year.

Apple, which usually lets its products and sales figures do the talking, may simply believe that it needs a public appearance at a major book industry conference to reinforce the fact that it’s a big player in this space. BEA had almost 22,000 attendees last year (and more than 8,000 exhibitors), so Apple’s booth is likely to get plenty of attention. We’ve got a call out to Apple and will update if we hear back from them about their plans.

Amazon.com, meanwhile, , too, is exhibiting at BEA this year, though it didn’t last year. As of a month ago, while Amazon was included on BEA’s official exhibitor list (PDF), Apple wasn’t, suggesting that its decision to participate exhibit happened late in the game.