Bilbary - united e-book store for big publishers?

[Doug Pardee]

Over at Publishers Weekly there's an article about former Waterstone's boss Tim Coates's new venture: an e-book store called Bilbary (http://bilbary.com/).

Reading between the lines, this sounds like an Orbitz for the big publishers. Bilbary gives them a common sales point that is extremely big-publisher-friendly, which (ideally) will sell e-books from all of the big publishers from around the world.

Some of the ways that Bilbary plans to be friendly to the big publishers:

• Self-published titles will be restricted
• Public-domain titles won't be carried
• Free e-books won't be carried
• Publisher sets the prices (Agency Model)
• Publisher gets 80% of the sales price (vs. 70% on current Agency Model)
• Publisher sets territorial restrictions
• Publisher can rent e-books if they wish, and sets the terms of the rental
• Publisher can rent e-book chapters (reference works, mainly) and sets the terms
• Publisher can rent e-books to libraries with different terms
• Publisher can blog
• Publisher has a promotional area
• Publisher gets sales data (how detailed, I wonder?)

Bilbary intends to service publishers from all over the world, and to sell to readers all over the world, but respecting territorial restrictions. For its launch — scheduled for early 2012 — it's concentrating on English-language books from US and UK publishers. Bilbary claims to have three of the "Big 6" US trade publishers on-board so far. Pricing currently is in USD, UK £, and Euros.

Bilbary says that it intends to support as many e-book formats as possible, but it appears that Adobe EPUB and Adobe PDF are the only formats supported at the moment... aside from reading online. Here's a short promo/demo video, aimed more at publishers than at readers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?edit=ev&fe ... vLGWsYCBl8

Edited in response to Tim Coates's comment below.

[Mira]

This is so interesting. I have some reactions.

First, it sounds like this guy is trying to corner the European market. Is his plan to lock in publishers, and limit self-publishing in order to force authors in Europe to publish through legacy publishers?

Because that's evil. I don't understand why people don't see that limiting someone else's freedom in order to make money off of them is evil. It's not just a game, it's evil. Evil.

Hope I'm not sugar-coating it.

On the other hand, competition for Amazon is a good thing. And I'm okay with publishers trying to save themselves. Just not in a way that hurts authors.

[Skellie]

80% for the publisher - yikes! After Bilbury's cut, what's left for the author? 10%?

[TimCoates]

May I amswer these points about Bilbary. There is no restriction on self- published work on the site. I may have answered the question wrongly when asked by PW... we welcome all work, as long as it is properly prepared and 'published' in the sense that it is readable.

The same is true of work 'in the public domain' - by which I understand is meant that it is out of copyright. Of course we will carry work which is out of copyright, but we prefer it to be properly copied and presented, and not just scanned and diffifcult to read.

When I said that we will pay 80% to publishers - that is the money to be shared by publisher and author - as they agree between them. The point is that is a greater share of the income than is normally given and the reason for doing that is both reflect the reality of the costs in the creation of the books and the supply to readers and to encourage more ebooks to be converted

We would be delighted to answer any other questions. Either through our holding page at www.bilbary.com or by email to tim.coates@bilbary.com

[Doug Pardee]

Thanks for the update. I've edited my original posting to reflect this new information.

[Mira]

Oh wow. I didn't expect Tim Coates to read this. I'm so sorry, I would have chosen my words abit more carefully, I didn't mean to be so harsh to another person.

Tim Coates, if you're still reading this thread, I think it's truly wonderful that you came here to clarify your goals. Thank you.

I'm so glad to hear that you're not restricting self-published works. That's wonderful news!

This is important to me because I feel that it is essential that the author be able to make a choice. I believe this is a partly an issue of ethics and social responsiblity, as I mentioned above, but it is also one of economic and creative growth. I believe that any monopoly will ultimately block progress. Just like your competition with Amazon is a healthy thing, I believe that self-publishing options are healthy competition for publishers. They may also be lucrative for the bookseller, especially as self-publishing strengthens.

I wish you luck in your new venture!