They say it’s just around the corner - the “iPod moment”. Books are about to go digital at last, according to many publishing pundits, and the publishers are pre-emptily crying poverty.

On the heels of the recent WGA writer’s strike, book publishers are already showing authors their empty pocket linings stating that the swing to digital publishing and distribution is a long term, low-profit investment for them.

It will be years before we are even close to making money from this and I think we should see a little bit of latitude from authors.

Large publishing houses are stating that although there are lower physical production costs for an electronic distribution, titles still require editorial, sales, marketing, promotion and publicity. Add to this list the new costs of converting files into multiple formats [eh?],  digital warehousing, anti-piracy protection,  and content and metadata tracking.  Random House have suggested this additional investment will mean they will not turn a profit until beyond 2013.

The argument about royalties centres around a proposed 15% royalty on net receipts from digital sales. It is higher than the standard 10% for hardback sales, but significantly lower than the current 25% rate for ebook sales in the US.

Ebook makeup is still extremely low, however with less than 1% of the entire US book market. At such a rate, it is not surprising that the costs per unit sold seem pretty high right now.

The question for me is whether the publishers are not forward thinking enough to appreciate that aggregate costs will drop significantly as the market grows, or whether they are merely looking to engineer inflated profits when that time comes.

It is a difficult space to predict, but I feel that publishers need to break away from seeing the digital market as simply a non-paper version of the printed market. As the music industry has been forced to learn over the past year or two, the it is the millions of digital consumers who will ultimately dictate how the digital space is exploited.

We currently see top name artists pushing their content out for free (Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead), and new artists doing the same to build reputation and audience. I suspect we will see the same for the publishing world. Who might be the first big-name author to distribute a brand new book in electronic form, completely free of charge?

UK Tv’s Richard & Judy’s Book Club has become a significant force in delivering a surge of sales to any book appearing on their recommended reading list. Although not experiencing the sales boost of Oprah’s influence, the numbers from UK sales are impressive.

With Richard & Judy’s recent announcement of their retirement, can the book list still function as a sales tool, or will it leave a large hole in the promotion opportunities available for authors and publishers?

It seems, in fact, that their retirement from daytime TV might be motivated by an increased interest in the publishing industry. Amanda Ross, Richard & Judy’s producer, has announced a continuation of the Book Club through new a new television presence running on Channel 4 in the UK. There is some question as to whether the lack of visible presence of Richard and Judy themselves on television screens, will reduce the selling and promotion power of their Book Club. Such clubs provide new scope for a handful of authors to reach a broader audience, but most importantly, they encourage readers to try something new and discover writing they would perhaps not have previously taken the risk of reading.

Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan themselves are wanting to spend more time on their personal writing projects, and so there is some motivation to retain the viability of their Book Club as a brand and platform for selling books, it will certainly increase their personal sales.

Ross feels the brand can be retained despite some difficult television scheduling of the ongoing programmes. Perhaps timing will be the key. Next year looks to be the UK’s National Year of Reading, which Ross has committed to support, and so there is opportunity to maintain the momentum already established by the Book Club.