Authors responsible for high cost of books

"In his forthcoming book [...] the American author Robert Levine has an excellent chapter on publishing in which he interrogates the forces driving the pricing of books, in both their paper and digital forms. And some of the explanations he gives are (to me at least) surprising. For example, it turns out that "publishers only spend $3.50 to print and distribute a hardback". (Let's say it's £3 in Britain.) So when, this autumn, you go into your local bookshop and spend £30 [...] you really are just putting a large amount of profit into the hands of [...] publisher, with some knocked off for the retailer. Right?

Well, yes and no. If you think of books primarily as physical objects, then off course they'll seem a rip-off, because printing and distributing them is cheap. But as Levine points out, what you're really paying for when you buy a book is something different. You are buying the "text itself". And why is that so expensive? Because the publisher will, in many cases, have paid the author a considerable sum for the right to sell it.".

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/aug/04/price-publishing-ebooks

Ha.

Ha.

That "considerable sum", dear reader, amounts to somewhere between 4-8%.



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A Digital Book is never finished

"Once digitized, a page of words loses its fixity. It can change every time it's refreshed on a screen. A book page turns into something like a Web page, able to be revised endlessly after its initial uploading. There's no technological constraint on perpetual editing, and the cost of altering digital text is basically zero. As electronic books push paper ones aside, movable type seems fated to be replaced by movable text. 

But as is often the case with digitization, the boon carries a bane. The ability to alter the contents of a book will be easy to abuse. School boards may come to exert even greater influence over what students read. They'll be able to edit textbooks that don't fit with local biases. Authoritarian governments will be able to tweak books to suit their political interests. And the edits can ripple backward. Because e-readers connect to the Internet, the works they contain can be revised remotely, just as software programs are updated today."

More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203893404577098343417771160.html



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How do you discover ebooks?

Survey from: http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/how-ebook-buyers-discover-ebooks/

Watching and listening to books

From embedded video, to sound effects, the future of the book has less and less to do with reading:

"[...] publishers are now producing the first “enhanced e-books”, where soundtracks are provided along with the text. The first one, The Adventures of the Speckled Band, a Sherlock Holmes story, came out last week, complete with driving rain, thunderclaps and blood-curdling screams.

Perhaps the most powerful advantage a book has over any other medium is in sparking and expanding the imagination. When you read, you fill in the gaps – your own internal soundtrack, how things look, how the emotions feel. Soundtracks are that much more prescriptive and precise, with little room left for your brain to improvise. Your own inner version of a scream may be that much more blood-curdling than the one laid down in the sound studio."

From: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/harrymount/100055724/god-save-us-from-books-with-soundtracks/

Makes me glad that my ereader has volume control that goes all the way down to 0.

Platform vs Reputation

Readers might not be aware of the crude reality faced by writers: To succeed in the publishing world, or even to score a chance at publishing a book, a writer had to build a "platform" (in short: build a following and become an expert in his / her field). Now it's all about "Reputation" (which, in the older days, would, basically, eliminate the chance of becoming published by the likes of Louis-Ferdinand Celine or William Burroughs: some publishers include a clause in contracts, whereby a publishing agreement may be cancelled if a writer is found to behave "disreputably"). Apparently "reputation" is important even if a writer forgoes the old publishing model, and skips publishers by releasing his / her books directly to readers:

"As the growing eBook market for fiction overtakes the print sector, traditionally-published and self-published authors face a new marketing issue: reputation.

Not just a specific book's reputation, which historically was set by book reviewers, readers and librarians, but also the author's individual reputation. From authors who go on the attack to dispute negative reviews to a single, wildly-popular book reviewer's thrashing of a self-published novel that triggered readers to give it one-star reviews on Amazon while openly admitting they had not read the novel, all it takes is one bad comment to go viral and in an instant, years of work goes down the Internet rabbit hole.

For publishers (self and corporate) bemoaning a lack of time, effort, or interest in reputation management, you can choose to disengage. Just keep in mind that readers, and bloggers, won't. Once you put that book out there, you have exercised your freedom of expression. Be prepared for others to do the same."

More: http://technorati.com/business/advertising/article/authors-and-publishers-ignore-online-reputation/

Oops! I better go back to Facebook, and be nice and charming to all my friends...

Enhancing ebooks

"Enhanced books are truly amazing. It seems like everyday a new kind of enhancement is announced or shown off. Videos and images can be embedded or made to pop up, text can be hyperlinked, music can be played, table of contents and indexes can be reinvented and repurposed. But while it’s fascinating to see what can be done, we need to ask ourselves should it be done. Developers can build just about anything, because they’re such a talented bunch, but that doesn’t mean the reader wants it in their e-book."

More: http://www.booknetcanada.ca/index.php?option=com_wordpress&p=2514&Itemid=319

I suggest that the only enhancement in ebooks should be spelchecking...

E-book buyers expect discounts, buy more

"UK e-book buyers are expecting digital titles to be discounted heavier than their counterparts across the Atlantic, a new survey has found.

The survey, undertaken in April by consultants Simon-Kucher and Partners among 250 book buyers from the US, UK and Germany, concluded an e-book without additional features should cost around 65% to 70% of the print price, though admitted there was "no simple formula" in hitting the pricing sweet spot. The survey also found current e-book users spend more on books than book buyers in general. According to the survey, 48% of book buyers in the US used e-books as well as audio and print, 45% in the UK, but just 15% in Germany."

More: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/e-book-buyers-expect-discounts-do-buy-more.html

What do Pimps and Literary Agents have in common?

According to this Nobel Prize recipient: "Agents have strong nerves and stamina. To them the term  'sensitive soul of an artist' means the same as DAB beer, and any attempt at serious conversation with them about art and artists would be a waste of time. They well know that even an artist without a conscience has a thousand times more of it than the hardest working agent. Their weapon lies in understanding that an artist cannot do anything but create, whether paint pictures, perform, sing songs, or carve in stone, or granite. An artist resembles a woman who cannot do anything else but love and falls with every kind of male donkey that falls in her ​​sight. Artists and women are particularly well suited to be exploited, and each agent is ninety-nine per cent a pimp."
Heinrich Böll

Like pimps, literary agents are on the way out. The Internet has changed everything:

"the use of the Internet for prostitution as well as other changes in the sex industry have resulted in the disintermediation of prostitution, allowing prostitutes to deal with clients directly. This has rendered pimps largely superfluous, at least in the United States." Source: WikiPedia

The use of the Internet has allowed writers to bypass the pimps literary agents and reach readers directly, via e-books...

Death of a Publisher

Had a chat with my cousin who only just found out that my publisher went bankrupt and closed its doors last year. The cousin is concerned about the future of my unpublished novels. She need not be. Death of a publisher is not nearly as lethal as that of a bookseller (though these days even the lack of a bookseller does not mean the end of a book and reading).

We are living in different times from those when my first novel was published. Writers and readers have access to channels and technologies that did not exist only few years ago. An e-book reading device, and an espresso book machine take the place of a traditional publisher. Death of a publisher does not spell the end of a book and reading. The two core pillars are still there: authors and readers. As long as there are writers who write books, and readers who want to read them, books will be with us. Publishers, on the other hand, will be buried, just as George Bernard Shaw wished:

"I object to publishers: the one service they have done me is to teach me to do without them. They combine commercial rascality with artistic touchiness and pettishness, without being either good business men or fine judges of literature. All that is necessary in the production of a book is an author and a bookseller, without the intermediate parasite." George Bernard Shaw

From 500 rejections to bestsellers

"I'm just a guy trying to make a living. It took me 12 years and over 500 rejections before I was published, and once I landed my first print deal I was determined to learn all I could about the business in order to succeed.

I learned--as most authors have learned--that the publishing industry is fatally flawed. A small number of top-brand authors get the overwhelming majority of the marketing dollars, making it nearly impossible for a midlister to succeed. The practice of returns and remainders is archaic and ridiculous. Books are successful based on the amount of coop they get, and there is little a writer can do to improve their station.

I beleive my goal is one that many writers share: to earn money doing something we love. Prior to my first novel, WHISKEY SOUR, selling to Hyperion in 2002, I'd written nine other novels that failed to find a publisher. In 2009, some fans emailed me, asking if I could make my early, unpublisher work available on Kindle. I went to http://dtp.amazon.com and uploaded my ebooks, which is free.

Now, 14 months later, I've sold 55,000 ebooks, and I'll make over $100,000 this year on books NY publishing rejected." JA Konrath

Geez, and I thought I held a record with the number of rejections to publication ratio.

READ FULL INTERVIEW

HOW TO PUBLISH A BOOK

HOW TO PUBLISH A BOOK

The mind of a pirate

"Just as naval piracy is something more complex than "robbing people using a ship" information piracy is not just simply theft, as some opponents commonly claim. The key difference is that while copyright infringement may cause an economic loss it does not appropriate the object or deprive the copyright holder of the use of the copyright. Information is a non-rival good, and its value can change in nontrivial ways by becoming more accessible (e.g. widespread software piracy  has probably helped expensive software such as Photoshop and Windows to become standard even in poorer countries).

The concept of ownership is deeply ingrained in all humans, perhaps evolved from territoriality. It can be clearly observed when playing with children, who at an early age become aware that certain toys are theirs and become upset if others play with them. This innate "intuitive ownership" works well with material objects, which tend to be rival goods. It makes sense to have a right to exclude others from the property (since their use is rival) and control how it is used. On a more adult level, we tend to add principles such as the  right to benefit from the property and a right to transfer or sell it. If somebody handles our property without our permission we tend to become upset on an emotional level, regardless of any tangible loss. This is also why communal property is hard to maintain: it is non-intuitive, if people have no ties to it they will tend to undervalue/undermaintain it, and if they have strong ties there is a risk of jealousy." READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE

eBook revolution benefits readers AND writers

Quill and Quire points out to the oncoming revolution that e-books are about to bring to what we read and write.

With the growing onslaught of e-readers and e-books, will readers see a shift in the average length of new books? Might we see longer books, because publishers are no longer constrained by the costs and sheer weight of a War and Peace-sized tome? Or will there be a deluge of novellas by authors freed from the pressure of writing a book of a certain length?

As a writer you cannot look at it without your heart beating stronger. Do you smell it? Yes, that's what creative freedom smells like, it's the lack of constraints. Today, if your write and want to publish in North America (particularly when you write genre fiction), you have to ensure that your novel fulfills certain requirements. Unfamiliar with the North American publishing model? Think of it as a chain store, for instance HomeDepot -- big box, but in reality very limited choice. Call it uniformity. It comprises several points: broadly, if vaguely defined quality, book length, title, characters, even setting. These are all part of the scheme that you have to employ if you want to be considered for publication. At least one of those may be waved now and become irrelevant as far as production costs vs profit are concerned: book length. You may be able to forget the 100,000 word requirement, forget about filling blanks with scenery descriptions and pronouns. You can let your creativity reign, and pour out of you, even if it works out to "only" 70,000 words.

From a reader's standpoint, this is just as important. Were you putting away all seven volumes of Marcel Proust's classic, or that bulky War and Peace, afraid that they won't fit into your holiday suitcase, or on the subway? This all becomes irrelevant now. You can fit thousands more into your pocket, and it won't break your back. Do you like to read several books simultaneously, few pages here, few pages there? Good news: now you can carry your entire library with you, and dive into it anytime, wherever you are.

Welcome revolution. Welcome Che... I mean: eReader!

eBook revolution fails foreign writers

All this talk about the Internet being a great democratizer of ideas, access, and reach proves meaningless for writers who create in languages other than English:

“Translations from Estonian are published mostly either by universities or by small publishing houses, and that brings fame and glory, but hardly any money.

E-books aren’t changing this much: the distribution opportunities change only in theory, because the language barrier doesn’t just disappear. On the contrary: The Internet is actually bolstering the role of English.

The chances that anyone apart from a couple of Estonians living in exile will read an Estonian-language book are next to zero. MORE

Why proprietary e-Readers must die

The British Library will offer tens of thousands of public domain books for download. You can read them too... if you have a Kindle.

MORE than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the British Library’s collection are to be made available for free downloads by the public from this spring.

Owners of the Amazon Kindle, an ebook reader device, will be able to view well known works by writers such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as works by thousands of less famous authors.

The library’s ebook publishing project, funded by Microsoft, the computer giant, is the latest move in the mounting online battle over the future of books.

While some other services, such as Google Books, offer out-of-copyright works to be downloaded for free, users of the British Library service will be able to read from pages in the original books in the library’s collection. MORE

And that's why we do not need or want any proprietary technology. Give us the books without any conditions!

Jane Austen

e-Reader owners like their gizmos

Market research survey results:

E-Reader satisfaction is high among owners, according to a new report e-Reader Owners: Attitudes and Usage from leading market research company The NPD Group.  Almost all owners (93 percent) said they were “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with their device.  Only 2 percent of owners expressed any level of dissatisfaction.

Features are important to e-Reader owners.  According to the report, 60 percent of owners said wireless access was their favorite feature on their e-Reader; touch was mentioned by 23 percent of owners. [...]

Even with great features, e-Reader owners are still looking for more in these relatively new and still evolving devices. Some recommended improvements from owners include more book title availability, longer battery life, and color screens at 42 percent, 39 percent, and 34 percent respectively.  Content is important, and while almost half (46 percent) of owners said they were mostly satisfied with the selection of titles for their e-Reader devices, only 39 percent said they could find every title they were looking for.

But it seems that e-Reader owners aren’t married to their e-Readers to do their reading.  About three-in-ten owners say they use at least one another device for reading e-books, such as a PC or a smartphone. MORE HERE

Good movie adaptation

I read Babylon Revisited, by F. S. Fitzgerald. This autobiographical (alcoholism, Paris) short story was later turned into a movie The Last Time I Saw Paris, with Elizabeth Taylor. The movie is loosely based on the story, expands the wife character, and, for all the psychedelic colors, does a surprisingly good job at portraying a novelist, with all the ups and downs and uncertainties that go with the job.

Short story is available from Gutenberg (public domain in Australia; check the laws of your country), or from your local library. More about the movie on wikipedia.

R.I.P. hardcover books?

Ever since I started reading eBooks, I can no longer handle the hardback "traditional" book. Not just because of the price, but chiefly because of how uncomfortable they are. My eReader is just so much easier to handle, in all situations, and especially in bed.

Do eReaders have a future?

“For all the Kindle’s success, it remains in many ways a niche product, aimed at consumers who fit a certain narrow profile, namely avid readers. In 2007, the Associated Press reported that a quarter of Americans hadn’t read a single book in the prior year. And among those who did read that year, the average number of books read was seven. Even considering that you can get some non-book content on the Kindle, these numbers alone suggest that the market for the Kindle is limited.” From The Millions.

Visit Metapedia for some additional predictions and more on different eReaders.

Publish your book in minutes

Expresso Book Machine (EBM) is a combination of a photocopier, a printing press and a vending machine. It prints and binds books while you wait. According to manufacturer EBM can print and bind a 300 page book in under 4 minutes, at a cost of about $3.

Imagine this: a reader downloads an eBook, and likes it enough to want to place it on her bookshelf, so she heads to the closest supermarket (as she does already to print pictures from her digital camera), attaches the USB stick that holds the text, and a few minutes later walks out with a book.

According to the latest news, the manufacturer, On Demand Books signed a deal with Xerox to market and distribute the EBMs.

The Best eBook eReader

We hear a lot lately about electronic products developed with only one purpose: to read eBooks. Blogs and Newspapers outdo each other in presentations of different (but all very similar) devices. One of the most popular is the Kindle, owned by Amazon com. As an author I am delighted that people want to read books, in spite of pessimistic predictions from publishers and literary agents who see their profits fall as more writers skip the "traditional" way to reach readers, and publish directly in electronic format.

As a reader I must admit that the currently available eReaders do not quite match my needs. The ability to download eBooks at any time is their best feature, but it ends there. Being an active traveler I am excited to be able to carry dozens, hundreds, and thousands of reading material without breaking my back, as happened to Blaise Cendrars who dragged crates of books everywhere he went. Books that filled my backpack when I was younger, are now replaced by all kinds of electronic equipment, such cameras and corresponding chargers. A dedicated eReader, therefore, has no room in my suitcase, unless it is multifunctional. This is why I use the Nokia N800 tablet (not a phone!).

At one time this mini-PC received some unflattering reviews, but for me it has become indispensable. It is always in my pocket. I use it as an FM radio, Internet radio, MP3 player and recorder, video player, GPS, organizer, e-mail client, web browser, Skype (also to call landlines and cellphones), texting, Twitter, Facebook, etc. It's got unlimited expandable memory, and does multitasking. But, what is most important to me, is that it works as an excellent eBook reader.

I recall a time when I was not convinced that eBooks would ever replace "traditional" books on my shelves. Now, for every 10 books I purchase 8 are eBooks. I became so accustomed to using my tablet for eBook reading that I find "traditional" books, particularly the large hardcover format, to be very uncomfortable to handle, especially in bed. They are just too bulky and heavy.

In contrast to all available eReaders the Nokia screen sports excellent quality, brilliant color, and allows all the adjustments to colors, fonts, etc, which is extremely important in the evening when, after a long day of sitting in front of a laptop, my eyes are very tired.

N800 reads all popular eBook formats (through a variety of free applications), including those secured by DRM (albeit unofficially), and fits in my pocket. There appears to be a trend among eReader manufacturers to build ever larger devices. I see future in them, but only for stationary eBook reading, at home. I am waiting for news about Apple's latest product, perhaps will use it to read ebooks at home, but I do not foresee any replacement for my mobile Nokia N800.

Kindle:


Nokia N800: