On December 8th, Simon & Schuster announced a new strategy that would place ebooks between hardcover and paperback in their sequencing of book releases, delaying ebook availability by 4 months. Yesterday, in an email exchange with eBookNewser, Simon & Schuster vice president of corporate communications Adam Rothberg indicated that this was not necessarily a done deal, saying, “It is certainly a possibility that we will move to this as policy. We will know more after we have had a chance to study data and evaluate the effect of the sequencing.” eBookNewser included a further clarification which was attributed to Rothberg: "We believe this publishing sequence will benefit the performance of all the different formats in which these titles are published, and in the long term will contribute to a healthier retail environment for the greater book buying public."

This has to be one of the most ridiculous corporate moves I have seen in a while, and there have been many (remember the corporate jet hoo-ha in the auto industry congressional hearings? Well, maybe this isn’t quite that bad … but still.).

The publishing industry took forever to grasp the concept of print on demand as part of the book life cycle, but now, due to the efforts of companies such as Lightning Source and others, publishers are realizing the value of print on demand and understanding where it fits in the book life cycle. In the conventional book publishing process, there is 40% waste in the supply chain. That is untenable in today’s world. Print on demand certainly helps eliminate a great deal of that waste. There is NO waste in the ebook cycle. Publishers seem to be looking at the top line, not the bottom line. Once an ebook is set up for publication, each additional copy sold carries little overhead. There is no shipping, no cost of returns, no remaindering. Sure, on the surface, selling a book for $9.99 versus the hardcopy price of $27.95 or more seems like a dramatic drop, but let’s get a grip here. With 40% waste in the conventional supply chain, you have already taken more than $11 off of the top line if you look at the supply chain holistically. Add to that the cost of printing and shipping the books, and $9.99 for an ebook sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

But more importantly, where is the consumer in this decision process? I love my Kindle and read just about everything on it now. There will always be others that prefer the printed version, whether hardcopy or paperback, and the printing industry thanks them. Me, I’m just going to preorder that next Jodi Picoult book for my Kindle and wait. The world will not end if I don’t read it right away. And what has Simon & Schuster accomplished? They have delayed cash flow and annoyed a lot of readers.

Another blogger pointed out that especially for nonfiction books, ebook first should be an option. It takes a MINIMUM of 6 months to get a printed book into the supply chain, and those rush publications carry a heavy cost. Six months is a long time in today’s world. There are many nonfiction books—and their readers—that could benefit from an ebook first strategy. For example, I was able to get Bob Garfield’s The Chaos Scenario for my Kindle more than a week prior to it being available in print. And he has been a genius with his marketing strategy. Take a look at the book’s site. My bet is he will sell a lot more paper books through this strategy than he would have using the conventional process, and this is an important book!

Simon & Schuster, I wish you luck with this strategy. It won’t work in the end and is likely to cost you a lot of good will. Be sure to include the readers in your market research. After all, without them, you have nothing. Perhaps an analysis of what happened in the music industry would be another good add to the research process. Oh, and don’t forget about newspapers and magazines. They didn’t pay enough attention to marketplace trends, and look where they are now. Seems to me that the whole sequencing strategy is old world and should be abandoned anyway. But that’s just me.