10 reasons e-books might not eat the world

[djf881]

The idea that e-books are going to largely replace regular books is quickly becoming conventional wisdom, and the market has grown quickly in two years. But I wonder if the e-book audience won't soon reach saturation instead of continuing to grow. Maybe I am like the people who thought music lovers would never give up their shelves of music for iPods, but I think there are some real structural reasons why e-book sales might not continue to grow as fast as predicted:

I was an early-adopter of the Kindle (I have the first-gen model) and I've read a number of books on the device. For me, the novelty has worn off, and many people will likely come to this conclusion in the next year or two. If my experience is common, I think sales will plateau sooner than many analysts expect.

Here's why:

10. Conventional books can't really be improved on. A book is text on a page. You can't make a book better by making it a digital file; there's no way technology can alter or improve the experience of reading text on a page. A book cannot be remastered in high-definition. You can't make it faster. The best an e-book can possibly do is match the experience of reading a conventional book.


9. Switching to e-books doesn't improve your life. Imagine it's 2002 and you're switching from music on CDs to an iPod. By adopting this format, you've gained access to a lot of new functionality and a lot of convenient features. You can now carry all your music with you, which is something people want to do. You no longer need to have a huge multidisc changer in the trunk of your car, or a multi-disk carousel in your home stereo. You no longer need to commit to listening to one artist or mixtape when you go for a run, and the physical device you will carry is much smaller than a CD player. You can construct playlists for various purposes, or you can shuffle all the songs on the device.

By contrast, consider how your life improves when you switch to the Kindle. You can carry a bunch of books, but do you really need to? Most people only read one book at a time. There's no playlist or shuffle-type features that you can utilize with your book library. The device is smaller than a hardcover, which is convenient if you're carrying it around in a handbag, but it's about the same size as a trade paperback.

Instant delivery of e-books is nice, but it's not compelling. I buy several books at a time, and I rarely run out of stuff to read, so I never need a new book immediately.

E-readers really offer no features that make the format or the device indispensable. There's no killer app here that makes an e-reader better than a book.

8. The price differential is disappearing. Theoretically, e-books should wipe out conventional books because of efficiency. A conventional book must be printed and bound and shipped and warehoused and often shelved and sold in a bookstore. Each of those things costs money. An e-book is an electronic file and distributing it is as trivial as sending an e-mail.

When Amazon first started selling e-books, it paid the same wholesale price for an e-book that it paid for a hardcover book, but it sold them at a loss, for $9.99. Hardcovers were selling for $17 a couple of years ago, so an e-book cost about half as much as a hardcover. Now, though, publishers have pushed back on Amazon's $9.99 pricing, and many e-books cost more. Meanwhile, hardcover pricing has been pushed down to about $15. So an $8 price difference has shrunk to around $2-3. And for titles published in trade or mass-market paperback, the e-book price is often the same as the conventional-book price.

Some authors will take advantage of the costs cut by e-distribution to make money by selling e-books for very low prices. But readers aren't indifferent among books. Assuming that major publishers continue to distribute the content most people are interested in buying, they will probably hold the line on their interpretation of what a book is worth. This means that you won't save much money buying e-books if you want big publishers' content.

It's possible that some readers will skip major publishers' titles to buy $3 self-published e-books, but many readers will not be interested in exploring that territory. I think a lot of people who own e-readers are likely to do what I've done lately; buy conventional books when the price difference is less than a couple of dollars. This is because...

7. E-book formats have significant disadvantages. E-books are distributed on proprietary formats. You cannot read Apple books on a Kindle. You cannot read Kindle books on a Nook. You can read all kinds of books on iPads or PCs or phones, but you need a special app for each format. If you break your reader or decide to upgrade to a newer device, you must buy a new one from the same vendor or your old books will be incompatible with the new device. If your vendor goes out of business, your software may no longer be supported. You cannot sell or lend or give away an e-book when you finish reading it.

These are things people like to do with their books, so, to that extent, e-books are less convenient than conventional books. This inconvenience is tolerable when the e-book costs half as much as the same title in hardcover, but that may not be true if the difference is only a dollar or two.

6. Books never run out of batteries. The iPad lasts ten hours on a battery charge, and, as anyone who uses electronics knows, those batteries degrade over time, so the battery becomes less efficient. Batteries also tend to lose a charge if the device is left unplugged in standby mode. Best case scenario: an iPad battery ill last long enough to read a novel and-a-half. That kind of sucks if you want to take it on a weekend camping trip.

Dedicated e-readers do a much better job as far as power consumption. They only use power when they draw a new page on the e-ink screen, so they're off most of the time you are reading. The batteries can last weeks depending on how much you read. But there's still a chance you might pick the thing up and find it's out of juice when you want to read without being plugged in.

You never have to remember to charge a conventional book.

5. Requiring hardware limits the audience. Despite apps that make e-book content available on PC or cell-phones, most e-books are sold to people who have e-readers. The subset of people who have e-readers is a small fraction of the total number of people. Even if this number grows exponentially in the next few years as devices get better and cheaper, it will still be far smaller than the total number of potential readers.

If e-sales begin taking a big bite out of print sales bookstores become an endangered species. There's no way publishers can achieve sales growth by focusing on the smaller audience of e-readers if bookstores are closing en-masse. I think that the relationship between publishers and bookstores is symbiotic, and publishers likely need many people who are becoming e-book buyers to patronize bookstores, to keep the stores solvent to provide a forum to sell to more causal readers who will probably never purchase dedicated reader devices.

There have already been discussions of delayed e-releases of frontlist titles, and publisher pushback on low e-book pricing. It's possible that e-books will become a genie nobody can stuff back into the bottle, but for now, the growth and spread of these devices is heavily contingent on support from major publishers. There have been fights between publishers and e-vendors in the past, and there are big new feuds on the horizon. Uninterrupted geometric sales growth of e-books seems unlikely if publishers push against it, and Amazon may not be as willing to go to the mattresses as the market becomes more segmented and its share of e-book sales shrinks.

4. Multipurpose devices aren't good for reading books. An LCD screen like the one on the iPad is back-lit. It displays an image by shining light through the screen. A lot of people don't like doing close reading on these kinds of screens for hours at a time. E-distribution of books has been possible for years, but there was never a market before e-readers came out because people didn't want to read books on computer screens. Now many analysts believe e-books will conquer the market by piggybacking on devices like cell phones and iPads. But these devices use the same kinds of lit screens as laptops (and the screens on smartphones are very small).

These screens can also be difficult to view from certain angles, they're hard to read in sunlight, and they drain batteries pretty quickly. The experience of reading a book on an iPad is significantly worse than reading on paper. Even if these devices become ubiquitous, I think most users will continue to buy conventional books.

On the other hand, if you are reading this, you are probably reading on a backlit screen. And screens have replaced a lot of paper in many office uses; e-mail has displaced a lot of fax printouts and photocopies.

Some people think advancing technology will fix all these problems; Shatzkin predicts an iPad that folds or collapses into an iPhone. On a long enough timeline, anything is possible, but, for books, these fanciful gadgets seem like a solution to something that's not really a problem in the first place.

3. E-readers aren't good for anything but books, and are worse than books at being books. Dedicated reading devices like the Kindle use a screen technology called e-ink that "prints" the page onto a non-lit screen. These screens come close to simulating the appearance of paper; they look good in direct light and consume very little power.

The screen contrast isn't great; instead of black ink on white paper, you get dark-gray text on a light-gray background. But the screens are improving, and the delay when a page "turns" and the device draws in a new one is likely to shorten as well.

These devices bring some nice features; you can change the font size, and a text-to-speech robot voice can read books to you. But you can't flip back and forth as easily as you can with paper. And it's a technology device. If you drop it, you break it. If you sit on it or step on it, you break it. If you fall asleep in bed with it and roll on top of it, you break it. If it gets wet or if sand gets in its guts at the beach, it probably breaks. And if you leave it someplace you're out a lot of money. A book can survive most of these stresses, and if you lose or destroy it, you're out $16 bucks at the high end.

E-distribution of books has some obvious potential business efficiencies, but from an everyday-use perspective, an e-reader is a flawed solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Obvious exceptions to this rule: literary agents and editors who have to schlep a lot of manuscripts around, and students who have to carry lots of textbooks. E-readers can make such cumbersome tasks much easier.

2. Author autographs. Go ask Cormac McCarthy to sign your iPad and see what happens.

Actually, that would be hilarious. If I ever meet him, I am going to do that.

1. Piracy. Because books are an analog format, they have a sort of built-in copy protection. You can't "rip" a book the way you can copy a music CD. To upload a book for file-sharing, somebody must either scan every page or transcribe the text into a computer file. Because of this structural difficulty, books have been largely spared the piracy troubles that music has struggled with over the last decade.

However, with e-books, if somebody manages to crack the encryption on one of these e-book file formats, then everyone's content will be available for free in clean, publisher-formated digital versions.

It seems likely somebody will eventually crack one of these formats. What will happen when that occurs? How will publishers and vendors react? We know Amazon can remove files from Kindles; they've done it before. Maybe vendors will wipe all the devices to prevent books from getting ripped. I think that would deal a serious blow to consumer confidence in e-books. On the other hand if they don't take an extreme response, widespread piracy could quickly devastate legitimate sales.

By the way, I originally wrote this essay for my blog (http://somethingpersuasive.blogspot.com), where you can read it with various embedded links and funny pictures.

[Sheryl Nantus]

I'd think the most obvious one would be that most of the world is still not online.

There are still countries in which the literacy rate is in single digits. And when charities set up clinics to help them learn or build schools, the priority isn't to install computer keyboards and ereaders.

The call is for books. Solid, in-your-hand books that the children and adults can see, touch and read.

We often forget that our technological achievements aren't the norm for the majority of the world's population. And that for many having even a single book is the height of their educational experience.

:(

[djf881]

Well, e-readers connect via cell-phone and cell networks are actually pretty widespread in the developing world. But since publication rights are divided by territory, your e-reader will be region-locked. You should be able to read the books saved on its memory, but you won't be able to buy books abroad.

[Amadan]

10. Conventional books can't really be improved on. A book is text on a page. You can't make a book better by making it a digital file; there's no way technology can alter or improve the experience of reading text on a page. A book cannot be remastered in high-definition. You can't make it faster. The best an e-book can possibly do is match the experience of reading a conventional book.

I'd say being able to carry 500 books in your pocket is an improvement. So are search, bookmarking, and annotation features.

By contrast, consider how your life improves when you switch to the Kindle. You can carry a bunch of books, but do you really need to? Most people only read one book at a time. There's no playlist or shuffle-type features that you can utilize with your book library. The device is smaller than a hardcover, which is convenient if you're carrying it around in a handbag, but it's about the same size as a trade paperback.

I own about 30 boxes of books. It makes moving suck, let me tell you. Not having to carry 30 boxes of books if I want to keep my entire library would definitely improve my life.

8. The price differential is disappearing. Theoretically, e-books should wipe out conventional books because of efficiency. A conventional book must be printed and bound and shipped and warehoused and often shelved and sold in a bookstore. Each of those things costs money. An e-book is an electronic file and distributing it is as trivial as sending an e-mail.

The fallacy in assigning a disproportionate share of book prices to the physical printing cost has been covered before. Ebook prices will probably stabilize around the price of a paperback, with the current model trending towards hardcover prices at release time, going down as the print copies become available in trade and/or paperback.


7. E-book formats have significant disadvantages. E-books are distributed on proprietary formats. You cannot read Apple books on a Kindle. You cannot read Kindle books on a Nook. You can read all kinds of books on iPads or PCs or phones, but you need a special app for each format. If you break your reader or decide to upgrade to a newer device, you must buy a new one from the same vendor or your old books will be incompatible with the new device. If your vendor goes out of business, your software may no longer be supported. You cannot sell or lend or give away an e-book when you finish reading it.


This is somewhat true, but the format problem is exaggerated. Most apps can read most formats. Basically, you can buy from Amazon and only read on a Kindle, or you can buy from anyone but Amazon and read on anything but a Kindle. Most distributors are gravitating towards epub.

Also, there are models in place now to allow loaning of ebooks, and they will improve.



6. Books never run out of batteries. The iPad lasts ten hours on a battery charge, and, as anyone who uses electronics knows, those batteries degrade over time, so the battery becomes less efficient. Batteries also tend to lose a charge if the device is left unplugged in standby mode. Best case scenario: an iPad battery ill last long enough to read a novel and-a-half. That kind of sucks if you want to take it on a weekend camping trip.

Dedicated e-readers do a much better job as far as power consumption. They only use power when they draw a new page on the e-ink screen, so they're off most of the time you are reading. The batteries can last weeks depending on how much you read. But there's still a chance you might pick the thing up and find it's out of juice when you want to read without being plugged in.

You never have to remember to charge a conventional book.


This is like saying people will prefer straight razors over electric shavers because razors never run out of batteries. It's true, but rarely a real concern.


5. Requiring hardware limits the audience. Despite apps that make e-book content available on PC or cell-phones, most e-books are sold to people who have e-readers. The subset of people who have e-readers is a small fraction of the total number of people. Even if this number grows exponentially in the next few years as devices get better and cheaper, it will still be far smaller than the total number of potential readers.

True, but as ereaders go down in price like all consumer electronics, the number of people using them will grow exponentially.


4. Multipurpose devices aren't good for reading books. An LCD screen like the one on the iPad is back-lit. It displays an image by shining light through the screen. A lot of people don't like doing close reading on these kinds of screens for hours at a time. E-distribution of books has been possible for years, but there was never a market before e-readers came out. Now many analysts believe e-books will conquer the market by piggybacking on devices like cell phones and iPads. But these devices use the same kinds of lit screens as laptops (and the screens on smartphones are very small).

Color e-ink screens are coming. I expect eventually you'll even see color e-ink screens for phones and laptops.


3. E-readers aren't good for anything but books, and are worse than books at being books. Dedicated reading devices like the Kindle use a screen technology called e-ink that "prints" the page onto a non-lit screen. These screens come close to simulating the appearance of paper; they look good in direct light and consume very little power.

Ereaders do have a few other features besides reading books (depending on the model), but books aren't good for anything but books either. "Ereaders are worse than books" is your opinion.


2. Author autographs. Go ask Cormac McCarthy to sign your iPad and see what happens.


True, but how much does this actually impact book-buying decisions?


1. Piracy. Because books are an analog format, they have a sort of built-in copy protection. You can't "rip" a book the way you can copy a music CD. To upload a book for file-sharing, somebody must either scan every page or transcribe the text into a computer file. Because of this structural difficulty, books have been largely spared the piracy troubles that music has struggled with over the last decade.

However, with e-books, if somebody manages to crack the encryption on one of these e-book file formats, then everyone's content will be available for free in clean, publisher-formated digital versions.

It seems likely somebody will eventually crack one of these formats. What will happen when that occurs? How will publishers and vendors react? We know Amazon can remove files from Kindles; they've done it before. Maybe vendors will wipe all the devices to prevent books from getting ripped. I think that would deal a serious blow to consumer confidence in e-books. On the other hand if they don't take an extreme response, widespread piracy could quickly devastate legitimate sales.

Yes, that's why iTunes has become a total failure after going DRM-free and the music industry is dead.

[thehairymob]

The ereaders really have to come down in price a lot or they will be passed over for mobile phones, after all you can read an ebook on them. Yes they don't have the same screen size but many are already using them to surf the net and others even use them for reading ebooks. We are after all already educated to use them for reading texts. Maybe in the next fifty years we will see a major change in language, written at least.

[KTC]

I'd think the most obvious one would be that most of the world is still not online.

There are still countries in which the literacy rate is in single digits. And when charities set up clinics to help them learn or build schools, the priority isn't to install computer keyboards and ereaders.

The call is for books. Solid, in-your-hand books that the children and adults can see, touch and read.

We often forget that our technological achievements aren't the norm for the majority of the world's population. And that for many having even a single book is the height of their educational experience.

:(


i was on a tiny tiny miniscule island off the coast of kenya last winter. they had internet cafes everywhere. Masai were pulling cellphones out from under their colorful robes...after that experience, i can't imagine a place in the world that isn't 'connected'.

[KTC]

The ereaders really have to come down in price a lot or they will be passed over for mobile phones, after all you can read an ebook on them. Yes they don't have the same screen size but many are already using them to surf the net and others even use them for reading ebooks. We are after all already educated to use them for reading texts. Maybe in the next fifty years we will see a major change in language, written at least.

free e-reader apps.

[Amadan]

i was on a tiny tiny miniscule island off the coast of kenya last winter. they had internet cafes everywhere. Masai were pulling cellphones out from under their colorful robes...after that experience, i can't imagine a place in the world that isn't 'connected'.

And those places that aren't, people are probably too busy trying to survive to read books.

[KTC]

And those places that aren't, people are probably too busy trying to survive to read books.

word

[Maxinquaye]

People in subsaharan Africa are just as clever as anywhere else. So, you don't have a distributed banking system, a power grid, an infrastructure for technology - what do you do? You make mobile phones the bank transfer system of choice.

You send your kid over to the blacksmith because the plough's got a bit wonky, and the smith comes over and has a look and beats on the plough a bit. And since you have to be hospitable, or suffer the shame of the whole community, you eat a fine meal from your local garden. And then it's time to pay the smith, and you both get out your mobile phones from under your robes and the farmer with the plough sends money to the mobile phone of the smith.

And when the smith comes home, he surfs to iTunes with his new cash on the phone.

A robust, easy to use system that doesn't require oodles of layers of technology and safety precautions (with new levels of technology in the background). And it's something we don't have. Imagine how easy it would be to walk down the street, see a nice book in a shop window, and just go in and send a text to the owner to pay for it? The safety precaution? You're sending the text, and the owner sees it coming in. Everyone's happy.

[djf881]

The fallacy in assigning a disproportionate share of book prices to the physical printing cost has been covered before. Ebook prices will probably stabilize around the price of a paperback, with the current model trending towards hardcover prices at release time, going down as the print copies become available in trade and/or paperback.


Printing and shipping are a couple of bucks per book. But when you go electronic, you don't need sales because e-books don't have to be sold to accounts. And e-vendors can operate on a much smaller mark-up than bookstores. Dorchester just went e-only because they couldn't afford their printing, warehousing and sales operation.


This is somewhat true, but the format problem is exaggerated. Most apps can read most formats. Basically, you can buy from Amazon and only read on a Kindle, or you can buy from anyone but Amazon and read on anything but a Kindle. Most distributors are gravitating towards epub.


You can read kindle books on a phone or an iPad, but you can't read them on competing e-ink devices.


Also, there are models in place now to allow loaning of ebooks, and they will improve.


There may be mechanisms put in place to allow lendable e-licences for libraries, but I don't believe e-books will ever be something you can freely lend your friends or sell used. Libraries are good for publishers because libraries can be counted on to buy books. But publishers don't care about you lending to your friends and they'd be perfectly happy to be rid of used bookstores. Lending models are at publishers' discretion. Don't hold your breath.



This is like saying people will prefer straight razors over electric shavers because razors never run out of batteries. It's true, but rarely a real concern.


It's not a big concern on dedicated devices. It's a real issue on the iPad.


True, but as ereaders go down in price like all consumer electronics, the number of people using them will grow exponentially.


There are a lot of consumer electronics that don't enjoy exponential growth. The number of people who you can sell an e-book to will always be smaller than the number of people you can sell a regular book to.


Color e-ink screens are coming. I expect eventually you'll even see color e-ink screens for phones and laptops.


Why would they put a special book-reading screen on a laptop? E-ink may be able to show color at some point, but it will never show video or animation. It will never scroll. It's not an LCD. It's a technology designed for displaying a static image or text.


Ereaders do have a few other features besides reading books (depending on the model), but books aren't good for anything but books either. "Ereaders are worse than books" is your opinion.


My question is, what do books not do that you need them to do? What do e-readers do that books don't?


Yes, that's why iTunes has become a total failure after going DRM-free and the music industry is dead.

iTunes has been good for Apple, but not for the recording industry. Music had to go DRM-free because it was competing with widespread piracy; the paid files could not be inferior to the illegal downloads. And the music industry isn't quitedead, but it's shrunk considerably. Album sales are way down because of piracy, which is a good reason for publishing to stick to its analog formats.

[KTC]

People in subsaharan Africa are just as clever as anywhere else. So, you don't have a distributed banking system, a power grid, an infrastructure for technology - what do you do? You make mobile phones the bank transfer system of choice.

You send your kid over to the blacksmith because the plough's got a bit wonky, and the smith comes over and has a look and beats on the plough a bit. And since you have to be hospitable, or suffer the shame of the whole community, you eat a fine meal from your local garden. And then it's time to pay the smith, and you both get out your mobile phones from under your robes and the farmer with the plough sends money to the mobile phone of the smith.

And when the smith comes home, he surfs to iTunes with his new cash on the phone.


pretty much.

it was a bit unsettling at first, though, when the Masai i was drinking with started to buzz with rock music...and he reached into his robe to answer the phone. i think at that point the whole illusion was gone.

[Medievalist]

10. Conventional books can't really be improved on. A book is text on a page.

That's a bit too sweeping a statement; it might apply for you, and to fiction, but it doesn't apply to everyone.

Think about a book that's a hypertext scholarly edition of Macbeth. Every line is linked to a video performance by the RSC. You can show and hide glosses and notes with a click. You have scholarly essays about the play and performance, clips from other performances, maps that are tied to the text, images of various stage productions, detailed scholarly apparatus like casting charts and texutal notes, and the ability to copy and paste short quotations that come with a citation, and to make notes that you can export and share with people who have the same edition.

Think about an edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, with complete Middle English audio, linked to the text, and the text linked to high quality digital images of the manuscripts. Think about maps, scholarly notes, glossaries, detailed commentary about the sources, an annotated bibliography that lets you create printed subset.

And the ebook edition of the AHD, with synonyms, antonyms, and cross-references linked, with the ability to hear each word pronounced by a human voice, with the images, and the appendices of Semitic and I.E. roots, also linked, and the ability to copy and paste with a full citation--that's pretty useful to me.

9. Switching to e-books doesn't improve your life. You can carry a bunch of books, but do you really need to? Most people only read one book at a time.

Again, that may be true of you, but I am in several ways a professional reader. Not only do I have several novels going at a time, I need a variety of scholarly books for purposes of writing, research, and publication.

Many of those books are huge--like the OED, or the American Heritage Dictionary. Many are huge with tiny print, like the GPC, or the Old Irish Dictionary.

Instant delivery of e-books is nice, but it's not compelling. I buy several books at a time, and I rarely run out of stuff to read, so I never need a new book immediately.

I can't drive. Instant delivery is worth a lot to me.

E-readers really offer no features that make the format or the device indispensable. There's no killer app here that makes an e-reader better than a book.

I don't care much about the device, or the container--what I care about is function. For me, ebooks on my laptop, or my iPad are very much better in certain ways, and contexts.

8. The price differential is disappearing. Theoretically, e-books should wipe out conventional books because of efficiency.

It really doesn't cost that much less to professionally produce an ebook than it does to produce a printed codex book. Right now, ebooks are being artificially subsidized.

When you buy a book, you are not paying most of the money for the container, the codex, but for the contents. The contents of an ebook are generally the same; why pay less for the contents?

7. E-book formats have significant disadvantages. E-books are distributed on proprietary formats. You cannot read Apple books on a Kindle. You cannot read Kindle books on a Nook. You can read all kinds of books on iPads or PCs or phones, but you need a special app for each format.

This is still an issue, but file format is much less of an issue than it used to be; I can read my eReader.com/Barnes and Noble/Fictionwise books on my Palm PDA, on Windows or Mac computers, on my iphone, and on my iPad.

If you break your reader or decide to upgrade to a newer device, you must buy a new one from the same vendor or your old books will be incompatible with the new device.

If your vendor goes out of business, your software may no longer be supported. You cannot sell or lend or give away an e-book when you finish reading it.

I can still read, on all those devices, books I bought from ereader.com in 2000.

The real issue is DRM.

4. Multipurpose devices aren't good for reading books. [/b] An LCD screen like the one on the iPad is back-lit. It displays an image by shining light through the screen. A lot of people don't like doing close reading on these kinds of screens for hours at a time.

But a lot of us do. Like me. I can't use eInk. I also like that I can read without an external light source, using an LCD screen.

distribution of books has been possible for years, but there was never a market before e-readers came out because people didn't want to read books on computer screens.

Just because you didn't buy and read them doesn't mean there wasn't a market. There's been a market, and an industry, and professional organizations for more than twenty years.

I note as well, that it's quite possible to share iBook books with DRM with up to five people; you can also share Nook B and N books.

The experience of reading a book on an iPad is significantly worse than reading on paper.

Again, for you; for me, with my visual problems, it's often better.

2. Author autographs. Go ask Cormac McCarthy to sign your iPad and see what happens.

There are technological solutions to this--one of them being a digital signed bookplate that uses wifi or bluetooth to send data to a book.

I have signed ebooks from Michael Crichton, Douglas Adams, William Ware Gibson, Martin Gardner, . . . a bunch of people. In some cases, they signed the "cover" we produced for the media; in some cases, they inscribed and digitally signed a bookplate.

However, with e-books, if somebody manages to crack the encryption on one of these e-book file formats, then everyone's content will be available for free in clean, publisher-formated digital versions.

There is currently no ebook format that has not been cracked; this is why DRM is a failure. DRM hurts honest readers, but doesn't stop pirates at all.

What bothers me about this style of ebook versus codex printed book is that it's always presented as an either-or situation.

I don't think printed books are going away.

I don't think ebooks are a threat to printed books.

I think rather, we should look at the introduction of the paperback book. It didn't stop hardcovers being made, sold, and purchased. But it did mean that there were fewer cheaply made hardcovers.

I think both digital containers, and fiber containers for books will continue to be thrive--if DRM can be removed, or at least made much less hostile.

[djf881]

I was referring to trade sales. Academic and scholarly texts may very well be making a transition to e-formats.

Annotated editions where the commentary and footnotes are of primary interest may be one case where a digital format could be very useful. And reference texts have been largely supplanted by databases and websites.

But the kinds of uses that make these things better than paper is not a shared feature with e-books. Footnotes and references in Kindle books are kind of clunky.

[Shadow_Ferret]

I own about 30 boxes of books. It makes moving suck, let me tell you. Not having to carry 30 boxes of books if I want to keep my entire library would definitely improve my life.


I collect my books. Each one is a special friend.

Hire a mover.

[Medievalist]

I was referring to trade sales.

You didn't say that however.


Annotated editions where the commentary and footnotes are of primary interest may be one case where a digital format could be very useful. And reference texts have been largely supplanted by databases and websites.

Those books already exist; I worked several of them.

But the kinds of uses that make these things better than paper is not a shared feature with e-books. Footnotes and references in Kindle books are kind of clunky.

You seem a little vague on the defintion of "ebook."

That's because of the crappy technology that people are using to produce ebooks.

The Macbeth edition I talked about? It's from 1995.

[Maxinquaye]

I collect my books. Each one is a special friend.

Hire a mover.

Yup. This.

I nearly cried when had to get my 1000 books or so out of my former flat in Epsom.

Hiring a mover was the best idea ever. Of course, I would never dream of letting the movers pack the things though.

Though, they've been standing in a storage centre for months now. I hope they are all right :(

[Medievalist]

I collect my books. Each one is a special friend.

Hire a mover.

I find that I'm far more likely to replace cheap paperbacks--those that will not withstand time or multiple readings--with an ebook edition, if there isn't a quality hard cover.

I am quite willing to pay more for a better made book.

I read a lot, and fairly rapidly. I really started using ebooks a lot more when I was flying hundreds of thousands of a miles regularly.

[Amadan]

My question is, what do books not do that you need them to do? What do e-readers do that books don't?

So many things. They are infinitely more convenient. I can buy any book that catches my eye and it's with me wherever I go, whenever I feel like getting around to it. I can carry dozens of books with me and read whichever one I like at any given time. While I do enjoy browsing bookshelves, I also enjoy browsing books online (which I can do in a faster and more targeted fashion). I can read a book rec and instantly go download it, not wait until the next time I go to the bookstore and (if I remember) find out whether they have it in stock. I also find ereaders are physically more convenient for reading. I don't need a bookmark or to put it facedown to hold my place (librarians are shuddering, I know); it automatically opens to the last place I was reading. If I'm reading three or four books at a time, it keeps my place on all of them. I can bookmark instantly. I have an entire library in my pocket! And that's just with current technology. DRM is going to die, ereaders are going to become better and cheaper, cloud computing is going to take off. The ereading experience in ten years will have erased almost every one of your objections.

[Medievalist]

Yup. This.

I nearly cried when had to get my 1000 books or so out of my former flat in Epsom.

Hiring a mover was the best idea ever. Of course, I would never dream of letting the movers pack the things though.

Though, they've been standing in a storage centre for months now. I hope they are all right :(

If you do this again, you can buy those little packets of silicon crystals to put in the boxes with the books, and you can put a plastic liner down first.

It's a good idea to let a packed box of books air for a day or two before you seal it, as well.

[Amadan]

I collect my books. Each one is a special friend.

Hire a mover.

A few books I have a sentimental attachment to. Most, it's the writing I care about, not the wood pulp I read it on.

[Maxinquaye]

A few books I have a sentimental attachment to. Most, it's the writing I care about, not the wood pulp I read it on.

For me, if I like a book particularly much, I buy the hardback because they are more sturdy and can stand the test of time.

Paperback-books are transient things that get shifted in or out, depending.

Though, to bring back this derail to OT, when I get the ereader I will probably use that like I use my paperbacks, culling the inventory mercilessly when needed, and buy the hardbacks for the books I really like and want to keep.

[FOTSGreg]

Reading an ebbok on my iPad is a very natural and comfortable experience - much more so than reading an ebook on my Acer net book. The movement to turn a page is essentially the same one I use to turn the page of a physical book.

Yeah, I have to charge the battery every 10 hours or so, but then I have to sleep every now and then too and the two operations seem to go well together.

The real drawback is this aching pain in my elbow and forearm from reading so damned much lately and holding the darned iPad (I finished Charles Stross's The Jennifer Morgue, The Fuller Memorandum, Down On The Farm, and Overtime in just the last 2 or 3 weeks reading them all on my iPad).

I curse you, Steve Jobs. Damn you and your cursed addictive device to the deepest regions of the underworld. I've almost abandoned my netbook because of my iPad. It sits there in its bag calling me, calling me over and over.

Curse you.

[FOTSGreg]

PS: I really, really want to someday be able to carry my entire Analog SF magazine collection (which dates from 1960) in my pocket or on my iPad. That would be awesome, especially if it was a searchable database.

[Shadow_Ferret]

I find that I'm far more likely to replace cheap paperbacks--

The majority of my books are "cheap paperbacks" as you call them. Most from the 70s. Still in good condition. I've never really been a hard cover reader. Too big. Not as portable.

[efkelley]

Random points as they occur:

1- An eReader is a specialized device with very limited function. Now that tablet computers have emerged, specialized eReaders will no longer dominate the market as the only way to read your eBooks.

2- On that note, DRM. As a consumer, DRM concerns me. It's annoying, intrusive, and little more than a placebo to hand-wringing publishers and authors who believe that it protects them in any way from pirates. A pirate wouldn't have paid for the book in the first place. So, no money lost.

As a money-grubbing author, I love me some DRM. If you want to switch devices, you have to buy another copy of my book.

That said, if I'm ever in a position to decide between DRM and DRM-free, everything I sell will be DRM-free.

3- It is not the readers that will choose to explore the 2.99 price model, it's the authors who will enjoy getting hardback dollars for every sale. There are many other advantages to the author for the lower price and self-published nature of the model, but there's hard data that demonstrates a lower price sees a significant boost in sales figures. Not just in numbers sold but in gross capital input. I point to a video game to make the point: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/02/left-4-dead-sees-3000-jump-in-sales-on-steam.ars

4- On the whole 'hire movers' argument, that's a completely personal decision. There are some books that I would prefer to have in paper form. Just try to take my Aubrey/Maturin hardbacks away from me. I'll loose the cats on you. But for most of my reading, I just want the data.

And in that vein when a friend says 'Hey you should check out X book', if I'm even marginal on whether or not I'd like the book, I go to the price:

$15.99 trade paper. Hmm. Well, I'd rather not.

$8.99 eBook. Hmmm. Well, how do the samples read? Eh, they're okay, but not 9 bucks okay.

$2.99. Samples were acceptable if not phenomenal. Yeah, sure, why not? The low price lets me take a chance. Publishers / sellers / (most importantly) authors get a sale. With the other two, no sale.

Anyway, the big point seems to be that eBooks will never replace paper. I don't know about never, but I'd be really surprised to see paper vanish this century. I do expect to see eBooks continue to rise. And significantly. But, I don't think of ePublishing as a 100% substitute for print by any means for many many of the reasons listed by the OP.

[Soccer Mom]

I really don't believe that multi-use devices will replace the e-reader. I mean, my cell phone takes photos, pretty darn good ones, but I still own a Nikon camera. With kids playing sports, I take enough photos for it to be worth my while to pay for a good camera. I also read enough to make a dedicated ereader worth my while. My Kindle is small enough to fit in my purse and much lighter than even a netbook. It's also more than $300 cheaper than an iPad. That makes it a useful tool for me and I know I'm not alone.

[Medievalist]

The majority of my books are "cheap paperbacks" as you call them. Most from the 70s.

I'm a careful reader; the sort who has archival quality cover protectors on hardbacks, and even on a fair number of paperbacks.

I have DAW, Penguin, and Ace paperbacks from 1976 to 1990 that have dark brown pages, and brittle paper.

Penguin and Oxford U. Press, and Norton Critical editions from 1985 to 2000 that have cracked bindings because the glue dried and shrank, stressing the binding, and cracking; these too have yellowed and yellowing pages.

It's because they were printed on acidic paper, using latex based glues.

After about 2005, when paper recycling became much more common, publishers could actually save money using recycled paper--which, incidentally, was low-acid (though still not acid-free) and that's going to make a huge difference for the durability of paperback books.

[Medievalist]

PS: I really, really want to someday be able to carry my entire Analog SF magazine collection (which dates from 1960) in my pocket or on my iPad. That would be awesome, especially if it was a searchable database.

This is actually exceedingly likely; you know Analog has had digital subscriptions for a while, right?

In the early 2000s, they did produce a CD-ROM of back issues.

I think that it's exceedingly likely that they will do something like National Geographic and Scientific American have done.

I think it will take a while to be something that fits on a handheld and has a decent UI, but I think in a few years, this is quite likely.

[FOTSGreg]

I've been an Analog forum member for a number of years and have q copy of their online index, but niching has ever been mentioned about possibility of an online library of the magazine itself.

I would pay damned good money for something like you mention.

[Maxinquaye]

2- On that note, DRM. As a consumer, DRM concerns me. It's annoying, intrusive, and little more than a placebo to hand-wringing publishers and authors who believe that it protects them in any way from pirates. A pirate wouldn't have paid for the book in the first place. So, no money lost.


I'm against piracy on principle, of course, since my line of art doesn't enable me secondary income. I can't have conserts and tv-shows to pay my income, and if people pirate my books, I don't get anything.

Still, a friend of mine has an interesting theory, and he claims that what made Microsoft dominant was piracy. If Windows had not been thoroughly and extensively pirated, it would not have been the dominant operating system on the PC platform, is his theory.

If Windows had been impossible to copy, it would not have disseminated so widely on the platform and would not have pushed out all other attempts - like OS/2. Maybe 20 to 30 percent of the windows boxes would be Microsoft's true market, and not 95% as it was when Microsoft built its dominance. I actually think there is some truth in this.

I don't know if that theory will fit anything else, though. The dominance and brand recognition that Microsoft got, if my mate's theory is true, won't be easily transferred to books and writers. But the lesson for all the pirates out there is... if you don't like the dominance of a market like the one Microsoft has had, don't create the behemoth in the first place by piracy.

[thothguard51]

I have a comment that may be off base - or not. The majority of average readers I know, don't care a damn thing about all of the positives of e-publishing or reading devices anymore than they know or care who published of Stephen King's latest novel.

The problem I see right now with e-publishing is that there is such a glut of it on the Internet that searching for new authors to discover is very time consuming compared to going into a book store and browsing the isles. This experience of browsing has been part of the readers experience for years and years. Sitting on the floor of the bookstore and skimming through a book you found makes the whole experience memorable. Or so I feel...

I don't get the same feeling when I search the net, or Amazon for a new e-read. If anything, I get frustrated by the slush I have to wade through to find something that might interest me. And while there are a lot of poorly written printed books, there are even more e-books that are poorly written. A lot, and I mean, a lot, of my friends feel the same way. So are we the minority or just out of step?

I am not against e-books and believe e-publishing presents authors with new opportunities we did not have 10-20 years ago. But I also believe the glut of poorly written books hurts e-publishing more so than poorly written books hurt the printed book industry. Am I wrong on this? I don't know as a friend of mine says the cream will always rise to the top, in any market...

[valeriec80]

I'm not going to lie. I have downloaded a pirated ebook or two in my time. (The lure of having every book that Stephen King ever wrote on my computer to read whenever I wanted was just too much.)

So...yes, pirating will be what gets people to read ebooks, I think. Most people are not aware of the sheer amount of books that are available to be had by downloading a torrent. (This sort of sucks, of course, but I always got all my books from libraries, anyway, which isn't all that much different.)

Unlike what the OP thinks, it's extraordinarily easy to pirate a book. Stripping DRM is a breeze. (I wanted to read my Kindle books on my ereader, so I downloaded the Python script. It takes, um, ten seconds.) From there, a program like Calibre (freeware) turns any ebook into any format you'd like in another ten seconds. I can upload the darned thing to 4shared in a few more minutes.

The reason that piracy hasn't made much of an impact on the book market is that I don't think the people who are pirating books were ever buying them in the first place. But I do think that the current young generation, a generation who devoured Harry Potter and Twilight, are going to read ebooks. And I think they're going to pirate ebooks. And maybe, if we can sell enough people on reading books on a screen for free, then the people who can't figure out how to pirate ebooks or don't want to waste the time doing it, will actually buy ebooks.

Personally, I think free is the future, anyway. :)

[Medievalist]

I
Personally, I think free is the future, anyway. :)

As opposed as I am to DRM, I'm even more opposed to authors, producers, editors, designers, typesetters, and artists not being paid.

[scarletpeaches]

Most people are not aware of the sheer amount of books that are available to be had by downloading a torrent. (This sort of sucks, of course, but I always got all my books from libraries, anyway, which isn't all that much different.)It doesn't suck enough to stop you stealing and yes, it is that much different.

At least in this country, authors get paid when their books are borrowed from libraries.Personally, I think free is the future, anyway. :)Yes, and I think my hairdresser should colour my hair for free. I also think I should have the right to shoplift. The techie geek in my computer store should fix my laptop for nothing. Oh, and my optician should give me contact lenses and new glasses whenever I want for no charge at all.

[Medievalist]

I have a comment that may be off base - or not. The majority of average readers I know, don't care a damn thing about all of the positives of e-publishing or reading devices anymore than they know or care who published of Stephen King's latest novel.

I think that's absolutely true.

I don't get the same feeling when I search the net, or Amazon for a new e-read. If anything, I get frustrated by the slush I have to wade through to find something that might interest me. And while there are a lot of poorly written printed books, there are even more e-books that are poorly written. A lot, and I mean, a lot, of my friends feel the same way. So are we the minority or just out of step?

No; that's a reflection of reality. I am reminded of the mid 1980s, c. 1985, when Macs and laser printers were new.

People making a flyer, or a newsletter, overjoyed at the variety of fonts, would use six or seven on a single page.

It was hideous. But people learned, and you rarely see that now.

I'm hoping that there will be similar quality control forced by the market.

I want agents and editors and "gate keepers," just as I want spam prevention email filters running on my ISPs server, my mail account, and my local system.

And there's a lot of really bad writing out there--so much so that the really good stuff is being obscured.

I very much appreciate the way AW members alert each other to good books, particularly good ebooks.

I am also infuriated by the poor production quality of books I know are good books.

[KTC]

I am dead against THEFT. Stealing books--not paying for them--is theft. It's bad enough when readers do it. When WRITERS think it's okay. Wow. Disgusting.

[KTC]

Yes, and I think my hairdresser should colour my hair for free. I also think I should have the right to shoplift. The techie geek in my computer store should fix my laptop for nothing. Oh, and my optician should give me contact lenses and new glasses whenever I want for no charge at all.

i no. right. i mean, jesus...why didn't we think of this before. yes. free is the way to go.

holy fuck.

[Medievalist]

OK

Here's an interesting question then:

Should purchasing an ebook give you the right to have a copy of the ebook on more than one of your own personal devices? (I know that many ebook producers--Kindle, iBooks, Barnes and Noble already allow this--but I'm interested in what people think is fair.)

Should buying an ebook that is in format 1.11 entitle you to a new copy when the reader/device changes to only support format 2.0?

Should buying an ebook with lots of obvious errors in formatting and text qualify you for a corrected version at no charge?

[KTC]

OK



Should buying an ebook with lots of obvious errors in formatting and text qualify you for a corrected version at no charge?

I can answer the second one. I bought a Dave Eggers book once and there were pages missing. This is a print book. I was reading along, and then there was this huge chunk missing. And when I went to the bookstore and checked all the others...they were the same. It seemed a whole print-run was done in error. (I can't imagine the cost this was to the publisher!) Anyway...I took it back and took a credit and got the book replaced in time.

Why would I be charged more to get a corrected copy of a book??? Of course I would expect to get the corrected e-book at no additional charge to me.

[Paul]

my two cents

If you're like me, with a tendency to lose stuff,
if you lose a book, meh 20 dollars lost. but lose a kindle...ouch. :)

[KTC]

Actually...for me, that's another bonus with the Kobo. If I tell someone about a book I just read and they ask if they can borrow it, I just say, "Sorry...it's on my Kobo."

I'm passionate about the books I love. Hence, I talk about them and share them. You'd be surprised by how many people NEVER return a book you lent them. And I can never remember who I lent what...because I'm ALWAYS lending books out. So now...that door is closed.

[Paul]

and with it al those friends...

[scarletpeaches]

Me too, Kevlar. If someone asks to borrow a book, I say no. They think I'm mean. I don't care. Sometimes now I can say, "No, it's on my ereader," which takes the pressure off.

But I've reached the point of saying, regarding print books, "No; I never get them back, or they're returned damaged." - "Oh, but you know I'm different, though." - "Yeah, so different I'm saying no."

And if a person says, "Oh but it's only a book!" they can buy their own. Accidents happen. I don't want a book back with a broken spine, dogeared pages or coffee rings on the cover.

[Shadow_Ferret]

The day I'll start buying eBooks is the day I can buy and sell them at Half Price Books.

This is actually exceedingly likely; you know Analog has had digital subscriptions for a while, right?


I must be really old-fashioned. To me, there's nothing like getting the latest one in the mail. Real mail. Not email. And to me, there's nothing like having a shelf or three lined with old copies of my magazines, pulling them out, admiring the covers (not a teeny tiny thumbnail), flipping through pages.


You'd be surprised by how many people NEVER return a book you lent them. And I can never remember who I lent what...because I'm ALWAYS lending books out. So now...that door is closed.
Not surprised. I lent 5 or 6 books to my SIL on Christmas. Books I hadn't even read yet. Haven't heard back from her on them yet.

[Medievalist]

But I've reached the point of saying, regarding print books, "No; I never get them back, or they're returned damaged." - "Oh, but you know I'm different, though." - "Yeah, so different I'm saying no."

Probably because of teaching, I tend to buy multiple copies of some books, especially if I see them at a used book store; these are copies I mean to giveaway loan to people, without an expectation of getting them back.

I've had all but a few books in storage now since September of 2008. It's been a little odd being without the books for my academic field, but it has made me decide to sell/give away an awful lot of the fiction.

Just packing them was interesting; books that I loved that were being self-destructed by the acid in their paper. The realization that I had five copies of Northanger Abbey, each a slightly different edition, that I'd used to teach with because the previous one was unavailable.

[scarletpeaches]

I'm too tight to do that. I just tell 'em to go buy their own. :D

[Amadan]

I'm not going to lie. I have downloaded a pirated ebook or two in my time. (The lure of having every book that Stephen King ever wrote on my computer to read whenever I wanted was just too much.)

+1 point for honesty.
-10,000 points for screwing over authors and your enormous sense of entitlement.

Should purchasing an ebook give you the right to have a copy of the ebook on more than one of your own personal devices? (I know that many ebook producers--Kindle, iBooks, Barnes and Noble already allow this--but I'm interested in what people think is fair.)

I think so. As you say, most publishers are already going that way. I have an Audible subscription, and they allow me to download my audiobooks to multiple devices, as well as burning one copy to CD.

Should buying an ebook that is in format 1.11 entitle you to a new copy when the reader/device changes to only support format 2.0?

I think it would be wise for publishers to make this an expectation when you buy an ebook; it will remove a lot of the worry people express about "losing" an ebook purchase due to future incompatibilities.

Should buying an ebook with lots of obvious errors in formatting and text qualify you for a corrected version at no charge?

This would be an excellent benefit to tout as a reason for buying ebooks.

[Maxinquaye]

OK

Here's an interesting question then:

[QUOTE=Medievalist;5238931]Should purchasing an ebook give you the right to have a copy of the ebook on more than one of your own personal devices? (I know that many ebook producers--Kindle, iBooks, Barnes and Noble already allow this--but I'm interested in what people think is fair.)

I think that since these devices are in its infancy still, even though the e-book market is 20 years old, that we should try and set a behavioural model for consumers where the prime directive - on part of the publishing industry - is "don't be a jerk".

Seems to work well for this site. And I think it would work well for an e-book-model.

As we are in the device-infancy here I think we could set such a behavioural model by how we structure the business model, and in how we behave towards readers, and in how we describe the parts of the business model.

So, my view is that we should look at a copy of an ebook that have been purchased legally in as much of the same way as we look at a paperback. Are we going to protest if a person throws the paperback to a spouse/child/parent when s/he is finished reading? Are we going to protest if a person sends the ebook file to the spouse/child/parent?

I know there's a difference in that with a paperback, in that if you pass along the paperback you lose your own copy, but if you pass along a file you retain your copy. I would think though that since an ebook is a media that requires a lot of time investment to consume, as opposed to an mp3 that is 3 minutes ling, the benefit should be with the reader in this.

So, that's the long answer to your question; yes, i think it probably should be allowed.

Should buying an ebook that is in format 1.11 entitle you to a new copy when the reader/device changes to only support format 2.0?

As I said above, let's not be jerks, and allow that.

Should buying an ebook with lots of obvious errors in formatting and text qualify you for a corrected version at no charge?

Yes.

[thehairymob]

How would you stop people copying a ebook? DRM upset the user and has already proved unpopular in music downloads. Movies look like they may go the same way, if the heads of the film companies wake up. So why should we writers make the same mistakes the other industries have done. Another thing we need to learn though is that we can't set too high a price. I've seen ebook at $8.99 and more. This is madness if we are to reach more people. Cheaper prices will bring greater sales or we encourage the pirates as the other industries have done, and has taken a long time for them to start turning the tide. Let's learn from what has already gone before or we hurt ourselves.

[Medievalist]

Another thing we need to learn though is that we can't set too high a price. I've seen ebook at $8.99 and more. This is madness if we are to reach more people. Cheaper prices will bring greater sales or we encourage the pirates as the other industries have done, and has taken a long time for them to start turning the tide. Let's learn from what has already gone before or we hurt ourselves.

Most of the cost of a printed book is in the text, not the container.

The costs to professionally produce a printed book and to professionally produce a digital book are within a few dollars for a hardcover, and even closer for a mass market paperback.

I see no reason to make an ebook substantially less in cost than a printed book; you save a few dollars on printing and warehousing, you have higher costs for licensing, and you still have distribution costs, and user support costs.

[thothguard51]

Hairymob,

So you want to see e-books at lower prices because you fear pirates? Problem is if you lower the price, so will the pirates and pretty soon we are caught in a never ending cycle until we are giving our work away, for free, just to beat the pirates...

My belief, when you have quality product, you price it accordingly. Pricing below what the product is worth only devalues the product. In this case...the author.

As writers, I truly believe we need to look at what our value is worth. What is our time worth? I believe low prices is setting a very dangerous precedent...

[valeriec80]

Why libraries and pirating are similar: Yes, the author gets paid by a library. For one copy. In a piracy situation (or sharing, if you want to stroke your conscience, right? ;) the author also got paid. For one copy. Read by many other people.

Now, of course, people don't get to keep books from libraries and one library only serves a community, meaning more copies are purchased, and also not everyone can read the same copy of the book at the same time. So, sure libraries netting more money for authors.

Free is the future? This isn't the time or the place for this discussion, and it's only tangentially connected to ebooks anyway, but, yeah, more and more people are giving their software, their music, their art, their wordpress themes, their books, etc. away for free. I happen to think it's awesome, which is why I do it myself.

As a final thought, my google alerts let me know the other day that there's a torrent on demonoid of three of my books. What did I do about this? Nothing. I grinned. "I've arrived," I thought.

[scarletpeaches]

Why libraries and pirating are similar: Yes, the author gets paid by a library. For one copy. In a piracy situation (or sharing, if you want to stroke your conscience, right? ;) the author also got paid. For one copy. Read by many other people.Incorrect. The author gets paid a nominal fee each time the book is borrowed.Free is the future? This isn't the time or the place for this discussion, and it's only tangentially connected to ebooks anyway, but, yeah, more and more people are giving their software, their music, their art, their wordpress themes, their books, etc. away for free. I happen to think it's awesome, which is why I do it myself.If I give you a copy of my book, fine. If I find out you stole one, I will come down on you so hard your head will spin. I am so sincere.As a final thought, my google alerts let me know the other day that there's a torrent on demonoid of three of my books. What did I do about this? Nothing. I grinned. "I've arrived," I thought.I would have thought the legal requirement was to email your editor and let them know - that's certainly the case with both of my publishers.

I judge whether or not I've 'arrived' by the response from paying readers, not thieves.

[Medievalist]

Why libraries and pirating are similar: Yes, the author gets paid by a library. For one copy. In a piracy situation (or sharing, if you want to stroke your conscience, right? ;) the author also got paid. For one copy. Read by many other people.

Well, no; that depends on the country involved. In places other than the U.S. libraries contribute to a royalty fund for authors, and authors do get paid.

I note as well that "library bound" books cost more; the author gets a higher royalty.

Furthermore a pirated ebook is quite often of inferior quality because it was scanned, or because in cracking the DRM the formatting is lost.

[Medievalist]

I would have thought the legal requirement was to email your editor and let them know - that's certainly the case with both of my publishers.

In order to assert copyright, you have to be able to prove that it is yours legally, and that you do in fact defend it--that the work is not an orphaned work.

[KTC]

Incorrect. The author gets paid a nominal fee each time the book is borrowed.If I give you a copy of my book, fine. If I find out you stole one, I will come down on you so hard your head will spin. I am so sincere.I would have thought the legal requirement was to email your editor and let them know - that's certainly the case with both of my publishers.

I judge whether or not I've 'arrived' by the response from paying readers, not thieves.

i think i love you.

[scarletpeaches]

i think i love you.Ugh. I feel all dirty inside.

[KTC]

Ugh. I feel all dirty inside.

how do you think I feel! I'm heading for the Silkwood shower right now.

[scarletpeaches]

I'm going to jump into a bath full of razor blades just to cut the dirty out.

[KTC]

I'm going to jump into a bath full of razor blades just to cut the dirty out.

don't forget to rinse in iodine.

[efkelley]

The costs to professionally produce a printed book and to professionally produce a digital book are within a few dollars for a hardcover, and even closer for a mass market paperback.

Well that's the big monkey, innit? It's all over publisher's backs. In fact, it's installed comfortable seats and handrails.

Covers cost about $300 if you go with a freelance graphic designer. The editing can be between $500 and $2000 (or more, if you go with a Big Name Editor). And what's after that? Marketing, but do most midlisters get commercials on the 11pm news and full-color ads in Time Magazine? No. You get a press release, advance copies sent to reviewers, maybe a signing tour.

Everyone knows the secret to selling books: Write Good Books. Your readers will find you through social networks, cross-sale linking, and positive reviews.

[Medievalist]

Covers cost about $300 if you go with a freelance graphic designer. The editing can be between $500 and $2000 (or more, if you go with a Big Name Editor).

You're talking about self-publishing. And you get what you pay for there.

And what's after that? Marketing, but do most midlisters get commercials on the 11pm news and full-color ads in Time Magazine? No. You get a press release, advance copies sent to reviewers, maybe a signing tour.

Actually, no, you're not really seeing a lot of the marketing because it's not marketing to consumers. A lot of the marketing, most of it, is directed towards book stores and distributors. You get sales people with catalogs, and arcs and flats who go to the indie stores, and the big distributors, and the chains. You get paid placement on end-caps and table displays and stands.

You get full color ads in the special catalogs that go to book buyers. You get represented at the ALA and ABE and Frankfurt book fairs.

All the marketing for a mass market print book carries over to ebook sales as well; people see an ad, or hear about a book on the tv, and check to see if it's available in the digital format of their choice.

Everyone knows the secret to selling books: Write Good Books. Your readers will find you through social networks, cross-sale linking, and positive reviews.

I hope it works for you.

[efkelley]

You're talking about self-publishing. And you get what you pay for there.

You sure do. Where do print publishers get most of their art? Outsource. Where do they do a lot of copyediting? Outsource! There's no reason not to go straight to the source and get all that for yourself.

Actually, no, you're not really seeing a lot of the marketing because it's not marketing to consumers.

Think about that! Consider that sentence. Does that not seem off? You have to market yourself to the guys that sell books for a living. You have to pay extra cash for placement. Just to get your book out there for sale, you've got to grease the wheels. And don't think that it's the publisher paying them. No, that royalty of yours is at 8% for a reason.

At a recent workshop, Big Name Editor explained a lot of the fundamentals to us Aspiring sorts. The example was Dan Brown. Now, this guy is going to sell a million copies in pre-orders alone. His publisher wants to get him in the windows of all Barnes & Nobles everywhere. So, his publisher has to pay B&N $100 grand straight up. Just for placement. That hundred grand isn't like an advance. It doesn't earn out. It's just to buy the space. Those of us unfamiliar with this practice were surprised. I mean, the books are going to sell. B&N will make a LOT of money. And they want $100 grand just cuz?

It's terrible. Everyone agreed. The professionals in the room nodded in agreement. I mean, the guys selling the books are also selling shelf space. And they're selling it to the highest bidder. Good on them! Yay free market, but damn if it doesn't crush the people who produce the crops.

Then he described the Death Spiral. It was not a fun afternoon. Educational, but not fun, just as many life lessons are.

I hope it works for you.

Now, why is my snark alarm going off? ;)

[Medievalist]

You sure do. Where do print publishers get most of their art? Outsource. Where do they do a lot of copyediting? Outsource! There's no reason not to go straight to the source and get all that for yourself.

I don't even do a tech edit of a book for 2000.00.

In terms of the cover art, I've only seen one particular author's book with professionally produced color covers. The color separation alone cost more than $400.00.


You have to market yourself to the guys that sell books for a living. You have to pay extra cash for placement. Just to get your book out there for sale, you've got to grease the wheels. And don't think that it's the publisher paying them. No, that royalty of yours is at 8% for a reason.

I don't do that, my publisher does. And I've never gotten less than 15% royalty on a print book in my life. My lowest royalty for an ebook was 25%; mostly they're 40% to 50%, depending on the publisher. When I was licensing ebooks for a publisher, our standard royalty was 40%.

Mainstream ebook royalties tend to be around 25%, and rarely go as high as 40%, but I know of several digital only, or digital primarily publishers who do 50/50 splits, with no advance.

His publisher wants to get him in the windows of all Barnes & Nobles everywhere. So, his publisher has to pay B&N $100 grand straight up. Just for placement. That hundred grand isn't like an advance. It doesn't earn out. It's just to buy the space. Those of us unfamiliar with this practice were surprised. I mean, the books are going to sell. B&N will make a LOT of money. And they want $100 grand just cuz?

A publisher is asking them to devote space in over 700 stores in the U.S., plus another 600 college bookstores, to their book. They devote primary selling space in all those stores, to a single book.

I think it's perfectly legitimate to pay for that.

I note that my publisher routinely does deals with B and N in terms of fronting, special sales, and end-caps for all new releases.

The publisher pays for that; not me. It's not taken out of my advance, or my royalties, nor are the ads in magazines charged to me.

[PortableHal]

Free is the future? This isn't the time or the place for this discussion, and it's only tangentially connected to ebooks anyway, but, yeah, more and more people are giving their software, their music, their art, their wordpress themes, their books, etc. away for free. I happen to think it's awesome, which is why I do it myself.

As a final thought, my google alerts let me know the other day that there's a torrent on demonoid of three of my books. What did I do about this? Nothing. I grinned. "I've arrived," I thought.

Valerie didn't have any legal requirement to contact her publisher following her Google alert because she publishes her own work. She can charge $100 a copy or $1 a copy or give her words away for free. It's her call.

From this post, I'm guessing she's more interested in building an audience for her writing than she is in collecting royalties on the copies sold. Most of the peer-to-peer sites completely ignore the small self-pubs so, when VJ Chambers became a person of interest, she was pleased. I understand that.

You might think she's a sucker, I think she's enlarging her fan base.

[Medievalist]

You might think she's a sucker, I think she's enlarging her fan base.

I note that giving away books hasn't hurt Cory Doctorow, or Charlie Stross. Baen books' seems to have thrived in part because of giving away free ebooks.

What I am really intrigued by is the notion that good data pushes out bad--that providing a quality affordable (or free) multi-format ebook without DRM may actually reduce illegal/unsanctioned ebooks.

I'm only going on anecdotal evidence here--but it is an intriguing idea. I want it to be true.

I do think most people are willing to pay; I think what they're willing to pay is still a bit at question, as is what they should get for that money.

[efkelley]

Color Separation is part of the printing process. Doesn't apply to eBooks. But, you're right, I'm going on more about self-ePublishing than simple ePublishing. I'll get back on topic.

I'm glad you're getting 15%! No snark. Most midlisters get 10. Me, being new, will probably get 8. Where is the money going? The editing won't take more time. The covers won't take more time. The printing won't take more time. Marketing? Ah ha! They're trying to get my name out there. Oh and he's new? Hmm sounds risky. Accounting sees to it that those costs come out of what the book earns. The surest way to do that is to not hand out money once it's in-hand. Thus: 8%.

That 50/50 split with no advance sounds brilliant. In all honesty, my hope for the future of digital distribution is that publishers take on more authors with this kind of deal. They put you up in a digital format, see how the sales pan out, then decide if it's worth going to print. Some have already done this. Baen, most notably.

On the placement costs, the free market side of my brain loves the idea of getting money for a commodity. Let's face it, shelf space IS a commodity.

The other side of my brain that wants to make a living writing books hates it. Phenomenons like the DaVinci Code occur for obscure reasons. No one ever knows precisely how or why they happen. All marketing dollars are a gamble, and practices like selling shelf space are a gamble for the publisher. And, ultimately, I think ePublishing will help reduce that gamble considerably. I wonder if a time might not come when books are ePublished first in 90% of cases.

[efkelley]

I note that giving away books hasn't hurt Cory Doctorow, or Charlie Stross. Baen books' seems to have thrived in part because of giving away free ebooks.

What I am really intrigued by is the notion that good data pushes out bad--that providing a quality affordable (or free) multi-format ebook without DRM may actually reduce illegal/unsanctioned ebooks.

I'm only going on anecdotal evidence here--but it is an intriguing idea. I want it to be true.

I do think most people are willing to pay; I think what they're willing to pay is still a bit at question, as is what they should get for that money.

Yes! Exactly!

Amazon, unfortunately, fiddles their figures a lot. But Smashwords tends to give us solid raw data.

Sadly, these trends take years to figure out, but the data is solidifying.

[BenPanced]

i think i love you.

Ugh. I feel all dirty inside.

I'm going to jump into a bath full of razor blades just to cut the dirty out.

don't forget to rinse in iodine.
Jeez. Just announce the date already and be done with it. I'll send flowers and a bottle of strychnine.

[Amadan]

People usually compare ebooks to music, and the path that industry has taken with the advent of filesharing, music downloading, iTunes (now DRM-free), etc. But there's another, smaller market that's similar in nature: people who build models and props for 3D graphics programs like Poser and 3dSMax and Blender, etc. Also various scripts and brushes and filters and other add-ons for Photoshop and other graphics programs. There are several large communities devoted to this industry, mostly consisting of hobbyists, but they have big marketplaces. Nearly everyone who sells props and brushes and scripts makes a bunch of free stuff available, but they charge for their premium products.

Piracy is a problem for them; there's no real protection to prevent people from redistributing their files, and just about everything is available for free on a torrent. Nonetheless, the marketplaces still thrive, and some popular artists actually make a living at designing and selling props and other extras, because there are enough people who are willing to buy them.

Note that this is very far from valerie's attitude, which seems to be, "Everthing should be free just because."

[Medievalist]

I'm glad you're getting 15%! No snark. Most midlisters get 10.

I don't know any midlister who's getting less than print royalties for an ebook. I would absolutely not take less than 15%. That's odd. Generally speaking for fiction in North America, you get at least the same rate as you do for print royalties, and usually, a little more.

Mainstream publishers have started trying to lock in a royalty rate of 25%; I personally think that's going to turn out to be a lowball figure in the future, so I would hesitate to agree too fast, especially for fiction.

I'd at least have a renegotiation clause or a clause that increases the royalty after x number of sales.

[roseangel]

One very important reason I won't be buying an e-reader anytime soon, a bath would kill it.
I read alot in the bath, books can survive a dip in the water, and usually I have a 'bath copy' and regular copy, but if an e-reader took a dip in the tub?
Yea.
I don't have that type of money.

[Medievalist]

One very important reason I won't be buying an e-reader anytime soon, a bath would kill it.

That's one of the reasons I don't see printed books going away in the next hundred years.

Another is that the printed book is an extraordinarily reliable UI. People know how they work; they work pretty much the same all over the world, with allowances made for things like text on spines, and the direction of specific writing systems.

They are portable. With reasonable care, they are archivable for years. With a little more care in manufacturing and use, they can last centuries.

And they are works of art. Ebooks can be works of art but there are tactile pleasures that are missing.

There's something to be said for a truly beautiful printing, book design, and binding.

[efkelley]

I don't know any midlister who's getting less than print royalties for an ebook. I would absolutely not take less than 15%. That's odd. Generally speaking for fiction in North America, you get at least the same rate as you do for print royalties, and usually, a little more.

I was referring to your 15% for print. It's true, I'm afraid. 8% is what I'm facing for print. My most recent workshop had several published authors in attendance. 10% was the common number, with one at 12% due to a renegotiation after exceptional sales.

I've never heard of less than 25% for eBooks either, and I also believe that minimum number will increase.

[Alitriona]

I'm have pre-publish jitters where I'm afraid my book is rubbish.

I'm already worried that my book won't sell and the publishers won't see their money back. If they don't get their money back on my first, how do I ever sell my second?

Add to that, the idea people will be reading it and never paying... that's just scary.

[thothguard51]

I know piracy has a place in this thread, but lets not deviate from the topic. What affects will e-publishing have on the publishing industry?

My opinion still stands, the ease and proliferation of e-publishing is diluting the market.

But who am I to say what should and should not be published? Well, a guy who buys what is published, that's who; and it's getting very tedious searching the net for new authors and books to read without worrying if the version I buy today will be readable on new devices I buy next year or the year after. Very tedious...

[Maxinquaye]

Like Medievalist said, it's bloody hard arguing agoing DRM when there's self-rightous pricks like we've seen in this thread that have an egoistical entitlement the size of the moon. I'm starting to thing things like RIAA and those are right. Maybe it's good that they haul pirates to court and make them pay millions for downloading a few songs. I don't really care about them.

I've always been against DRM because it fucks up good behaviour, it fucks up legitimate use - but maybe it's a good price to pay to bring down to earth the people that have a sense of egoism that says 'I don't give a flying fuck that it takes people six months or a year to write a book and that most will earn less than minimum wage to do it - i want it now, for free'.

[Shadow_Ferret]

My opinion still stands, the ease and proliferation of e-publishing is diluting the market.


ePublishing doesn't equal Vanity Publishing.

If a novel is published by a quality publisher how does ePublishing it make it somehow an inferior product to the print version?

[CaoPaux]

FYI - I split out the piracy discussion to its own thread, here (http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=188969).

[Soccer Mom]

This blog post cracked me up. The ebook article drinking game. (http://bookavore.tumblr.com/post/871178080/e-books-article-drinking-game)