Simon & Schuster UK Commits to Society of Authors Special-Sales Rules

Good news from London for authors: the UK arm of Simon & Schuster has formally signed on to the Society of Authors’ protocol for protecting writers’ revenues from what are called special sales.

Special-sale prices on books are deeply discounted; copies are distributed in high numbers to non-bookstore retail outlets, such as big-box stores and online retailers. A recent example: pre-orders for Philip Pullman’s new La Belle Sauvage, which an independent bookshop would price at the recommended £20 (US$26), were being offered at £10 by retailers including Tesco, WHSmith, Waterstones, Foyles, and Amazon.

Special sales can be a problem for several reasons, as argued by Society of Authors chief executive Nicola Solomon. On Amazon in the US, the default edition listed for a book can be a discounted or secondhand copy, meaning a third-party seller’s offer of a book acquired through special sales can preempt a higher-royalty sale. In the US and UK, books intended for export or book clubs have been leaked onto Amazon, and sales of these editions also result in low or no royalties for authors. In addition, publisher contracts often base royalties on what retailers pay for a book, rather than its cover price, so royalties decrease when books are sold through special-sales deals. Finally, Nielsen BookScan doesn’t track books sold via special sales, so an author’s sales figures can appear lower than they are when special sales are involved.

The always vocal British bookseller community vehemently protested the special-sales deals for Pullman’s book, leading Pullman—who’s the current Society of Authors president—to call for the UK to return to fixed pricing on books to protect both sellers and authors. (Book prices currently are fixed in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain. Belgium is considering fixed prices.)

While the Publishers Association rejected the idea of going back to fixed pricing (which ended in the UK in 1997), the ongoing debate led Solomon to write an open letter to publishers, asking for a seven-point reform plan: 

1. Give authors the right to approve or disapprove every special-sales deal.
2. In contract negotiations, inform authors how royalty clauses will play into sales.
3. Ensure royalty rates don’t fall when a discount increases.
4. Use separate ISBNs to track special-sales editions, and keep discounted copies from reaching Amazon and other full-price outlets.
5. Distinguish special-sales editions from full-price editions. (“The quality should not be as high.”)
6. Stop selling special-sales editions to “purchasers who leak books” to such outlets as Amazon.
7. Lobby Nielsen BookScan to record special sales along with regular ones.

Ian Chapman, CEO and publisher at S&S UK, is something of a hero, having told Solomon on Aug. 3, “We’ve taken on board the seven steps you outline” (paywall). This is a powerful endorsement that should prompt other publishers to fall in line.

Bottom line: The UK’s Society of Authors continues to hammer out tangible advances for writers in traditional publishing, as does the Authors Guild in the US. In fact, Hachette UK had agreed already to the society’s fourth point about using separate ISBNs in special-sales editions to track exactly where they’re turning up for sale. Deep-discounting has taken advantage of authors in trade contracts for far too long, and the recent change to Amazon’s buy-box policy (we reported on this in our May 17 edition) has made it possible for a cut-rate book to be the default option for consumers. It’s good to see publishers stepping forward to support both authors and booksellers.