At this year’s London Book Fair, IBS took a survey of 140 publishers to discover only 19% have systems in place to manage author royalties.

With author royalty rates low enough to force many a ’successful’ author to maintain their writing as a part-time sideline to their day-job, the need is has never been more urgent to ensure they are being paid every penny they are owed in a timely fashion.

I have to say, as someone who will likely one day have a deal in place with a publisher, this is very worrying, and smacks of little respect for the author as a business partner in the creation and selling of books.

Some additional stats from that survey:

• 79% believed they should sell directly to the consumer (as opposed to through bookstores)
• 56% said they already did
• 89% believe there is still a place for the high street bookstore (I like this one the most!)
• 83% believe consumers would soon completely accept ebooks as a valid way to consume books (despite only 35% of the respondents admitting to have used an ebook themselves)

The majority of major book publishers, including the likes of Harper Collins, Random House, Penguin, and Scholastic, have put their weight behind a proposal to offer age suitability guidance on children’s books from autumn 2008.

The plan is to include a new item near the barcode on the back of children’s books stating the recommended age range: 5+, 7+, 9+, 11+ and 13+/teen. These are to start appearing on reprints around now, with new  publications including them from the autumn.

Elaine McQuade (MD, Scholastic Children’s Books):

Potential book buyers were putting books down because they didn’t know where they stood.

It has taken almost three years of debate to make what seems a very obvious move to become reality and once more demonstrates how slow the huge publishing powers can be. I’ll bet the debates were more about power, control, and influence than doing what is best for their readers.

But the meetings and discussions are not as yet over, with the ‘pioneers’ reaching out to any and all bookselling businesses, and libraries, in the hope everyone will understand their motivation and the potential bonus of this move.

Is it really that tough to understand that people these days need a little help in determining what is best for their children’s edication and entertainment?

In a bookstore, I would suggest this was less of an issue. Trained and knowledgeable staff on hand to help guide potential purchases mean wrong choices are minimised. But this should be a boost for booksales in places such as supermarkets.

It’s all over the publishing pres - Amazon last week announced it would cough-up a not insignificant $300 million for commercial audiobook publisher Audible.

Not a particularly surprising move as Amazon have been clearly inching into the audio download market since adding mp3 downloads to its online operations. I wonder why it took them so long to get their hands on Audible as it is a much better match than the significantly more competitive music mp3 space.

Amazon’s odd little e-book reader the Kindle, will benefit from greater access to audio books, though at this time adding audio to the kindle requires a download via PC then upload again to the Kindle. I suspect we will see audiobook availability directly to the Kindle just as one can directly download e-books to the device right now. Audible also gives Amazon a direct relationship with Apple iTunes as Audible drives the content behind iTunes’ commercial audiobook store.

Audible has a nice, comfortable, traditional publishing underpinning the way it does business, which enables it to reflect the international and regional structure of the global publishing business. There are boundaries and controlled releasing of products across the world, with specific audible stores dedicated to particular countries. This fits perfectly with Amazon, of course, and provides an appropriate and familiar form of controlled distribution for the publishers.

Audible has been a great success in marketing, largely down to strategic associations such as the supply of content for iTunes. Much of Audible’s content is very poorly produced and from a producer’s viewpoint, excessive fees of up to 80% of the price point in royalties popping straight in to Audible’s pocket, could make this form of publishing a tough decision to make.

Will the new wave of new media driven independent audiobook producers be able to break the back of companies such as Audible? Perhaps not break the back, but certainly irritate their preconceptions of how the market wants to consume a product and become an increasing thorn in their side with authors discovering the online world provides them the direct power to maintain complete control and ownership of their product and still reach a global audience.