Starting and running publishing business
Posted: 23 Nov 2015, 12:16
PART ONE.
Hello everyone.
Here I will describe in short how to start and run your publishing business, from my experience, you might have another. Please share your ideas!
I will answer to tisimst questions from our private correspondence:
- How long have you been doing this?
For about 4,5 years.
- Have you had good success?
I can't directly answer to this question, since the purpose of my edition is to publish mostly my music and some other stuff that I like and can afford. It is extremely limited and niched. The fact is that I have mostly sold rights to perform music, herewith including the performance material. Thus the income is mostly by hiring the material, and less by selling just one score to a customer, but it happens of course.
I have developed channels for printing and distribution. I just get an order and submit to the printer, that prints and posts. That I see as a success (it took years to figure out everything). Contact me privately to obtain more direct info.
- What kind of demand do you see?
As far as my music is performed I see demand.
Concerning other music (other composers, arrangements, old music) - it is possible to awake demand IF some conditions are met:
* music must be very well engraved and HiQ printed
* channels for promotion/selling must be established (musicroom, di-arezzo and other places where people search for the most)
* music must be delineated, thus lifting demands for buyers.
Example: publishing Bach's Violin Solo-Sonatas is not good - it takes enormous time to engrave it, and it will be paid back only in the case you sell in 2000 examples, because reprinting costs of Edition Peters are so small. Question is if you will ever succeed.
But if you publish the same piece with well-renomed violinist's fingerings and bowing, than it could be a chance to sell it better. Also, there must be a niche: new exciting arrangements, focus on ensemble or instrument, badly printed music that is re-published correctly, music for schools, theory books.
Once the publishing company is "on the legs", it is important to do networking: finding indie composers, arrangers, teachers who possess extremely good music and material but they couldn't manage to publish somewhere else.
- Where do you see the industry going?
This is the most difficult question but I will reply what I believe is the way. Personally I am not interested in this domain, since I am mostly composer.
1. I believe that the big publishing companies will dissolve in the flowing 20 years. They will probably be transformed partly to some artistic companies, keeping some unique composers on the list of copyrights (Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Messiaen...), and partly they will continue with popular music. They simply don't have solution for digital world of Internet accessibility, business equality, artistic quality, IMSLP, free software and so on.
In 70's B&H director said: "you are not in business because of music, you are in music because of business". The big publishing houses must create demands (living composers), because they need to sell. Unfortunately, publishers don't have capacity for artistic decisions, that is the most problematic for them.
The problem they face:
- the old plate-engraving hi-niche-work is removed, and digital engraving, digital publishing, digital selling creates new possibilities open for everyone. Anyone can establish publishing company, make extremely beautiful scores, print it and sell it with small budget. It will be more pressure on this side. Artists are getting more independent.
- their newly signed composers must create additional new demands, thus for the old (died) ones the chances are not given anymore.
2. I believe therefore that the publishing industry will be granulated. Many small publishing companies will be established (1-5 men company). These new companies must work for and with composers, must have extremely good quality (LilyPond engravers here?) and must have low costs. Cross-over with other companies must be established (like printing, posting, registering rights...). And above all, these small companies must establish new music demands (new exciting music of Indian composers <idea!>, new arrangements etc..), far from this nonsense printing of everything.
3. I believe that printing non-digital sheet will remain as is (to print something like on paper). This is because music is not for one-term use. People want to store their scores, they can be used for decades (will today's PDF-file be compatible with some computer in 20+ years, will your hard-disk be compatible too?). Paper scores can be used and stored at any place.
Therefore I think that publishing business must focus on printed material, rather than selling just digital copies. Now it is to much hype of PDF selling; but I believe that people don't understand what is digital in the whole chain: digital is the business-flow and analog is the product. If you sell not demanded PDF - you will loose money, nobody buys it. If you sell demanded PDF - you will loose money, it will be illegally spread. The only way you can go around it is to create a hardware like Amazon Kindle and sell it only to that hardware. But that can barely do Amazon.
Hello everyone.
Here I will describe in short how to start and run your publishing business, from my experience, you might have another. Please share your ideas!
I will answer to tisimst questions from our private correspondence:
- How long have you been doing this?
For about 4,5 years.
- Have you had good success?
I can't directly answer to this question, since the purpose of my edition is to publish mostly my music and some other stuff that I like and can afford. It is extremely limited and niched. The fact is that I have mostly sold rights to perform music, herewith including the performance material. Thus the income is mostly by hiring the material, and less by selling just one score to a customer, but it happens of course.
I have developed channels for printing and distribution. I just get an order and submit to the printer, that prints and posts. That I see as a success (it took years to figure out everything). Contact me privately to obtain more direct info.
- What kind of demand do you see?
As far as my music is performed I see demand.
Concerning other music (other composers, arrangements, old music) - it is possible to awake demand IF some conditions are met:
* music must be very well engraved and HiQ printed
* channels for promotion/selling must be established (musicroom, di-arezzo and other places where people search for the most)
* music must be delineated, thus lifting demands for buyers.
Example: publishing Bach's Violin Solo-Sonatas is not good - it takes enormous time to engrave it, and it will be paid back only in the case you sell in 2000 examples, because reprinting costs of Edition Peters are so small. Question is if you will ever succeed.
But if you publish the same piece with well-renomed violinist's fingerings and bowing, than it could be a chance to sell it better. Also, there must be a niche: new exciting arrangements, focus on ensemble or instrument, badly printed music that is re-published correctly, music for schools, theory books.
Once the publishing company is "on the legs", it is important to do networking: finding indie composers, arrangers, teachers who possess extremely good music and material but they couldn't manage to publish somewhere else.
- Where do you see the industry going?
This is the most difficult question but I will reply what I believe is the way. Personally I am not interested in this domain, since I am mostly composer.
1. I believe that the big publishing companies will dissolve in the flowing 20 years. They will probably be transformed partly to some artistic companies, keeping some unique composers on the list of copyrights (Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Messiaen...), and partly they will continue with popular music. They simply don't have solution for digital world of Internet accessibility, business equality, artistic quality, IMSLP, free software and so on.
In 70's B&H director said: "you are not in business because of music, you are in music because of business". The big publishing houses must create demands (living composers), because they need to sell. Unfortunately, publishers don't have capacity for artistic decisions, that is the most problematic for them.
The problem they face:
- the old plate-engraving hi-niche-work is removed, and digital engraving, digital publishing, digital selling creates new possibilities open for everyone. Anyone can establish publishing company, make extremely beautiful scores, print it and sell it with small budget. It will be more pressure on this side. Artists are getting more independent.
- their newly signed composers must create additional new demands, thus for the old (died) ones the chances are not given anymore.
2. I believe therefore that the publishing industry will be granulated. Many small publishing companies will be established (1-5 men company). These new companies must work for and with composers, must have extremely good quality (LilyPond engravers here?) and must have low costs. Cross-over with other companies must be established (like printing, posting, registering rights...). And above all, these small companies must establish new music demands (new exciting music of Indian composers <idea!>, new arrangements etc..), far from this nonsense printing of everything.
3. I believe that printing non-digital sheet will remain as is (to print something like on paper). This is because music is not for one-term use. People want to store their scores, they can be used for decades (will today's PDF-file be compatible with some computer in 20+ years, will your hard-disk be compatible too?). Paper scores can be used and stored at any place.
Therefore I think that publishing business must focus on printed material, rather than selling just digital copies. Now it is to much hype of PDF selling; but I believe that people don't understand what is digital in the whole chain: digital is the business-flow and analog is the product. If you sell not demanded PDF - you will loose money, nobody buys it. If you sell demanded PDF - you will loose money, it will be illegally spread. The only way you can go around it is to create a hardware like Amazon Kindle and sell it only to that hardware. But that can barely do Amazon.