Publishing Shake-up?

We writers often bemoan our problems, but pity the poor publishers. Bookselling is the only business in which the retailer can ship back to the supplier all unsold stock for credit. Book stores order huge quantities of books from publishers, who incur all the costs of printing and shipping them, and when they don't sell, the stores send them back for credit. The publisher takes the hit. (With paperbacks booksellers just rip off the covers, send them back for credit, then trash the naked books. I know; I used to own a bookstore.) Can you imagine dress stores, luggage stores, florists, sending back to the supplier over half of what they've ordered and expecting credit? It's unheard of, except in the weird world of publishing.

Well, here's an interesting shakeup. HarperCollins Publishers (U.S.) has started a book publishing group that intends to eliminate the return process and share any savings with authors. They also want to reduce the high advances they pay authors and instead offer a profit sharing plan in which publisher and author would split the net profits. They plan other innovations too, regarding electronic books (which every publisher salivates over, since it eliminates the costly middleman of bookseller, but which the reading public has not yet warmed to) and digital audio books. Big changes are coming. Read the New York Times article.