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The new economy of book publishing

You know, if I were going to compare e-books favourably to proper ones, I wouldn't use an analogy that involves ability to survive physical violence. The e-book reader would be a pile of microchips on the canvas before the book was barely more than bent. Besides, there's a reason heavyweights don't fight flyweights. :cool:
 
It all depend on the ability to creat a device more suited to old fashion readers.Once someone clever enough put his brain to it,all can change in a matter of few years.
If instead of a screen ,they manage to give it a paperlink texture,and there is already programe "touch like thing" that give the impresssion of turning pages.It would make it more sensuel.
I still think book would live their parrallele lives,whatever happens.
 
Sure. How about a Kindle like device with a leather cover that you have to hold open while reading.

All this brings back memories of being in the office with PCs were being introduced. None of the old timers wanted them, they were fine with the old way.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.
 
publishing: more than just putting a manuscript out there

ewomack said:
It will happen.

It's just too dang cheap not to.

I recall when CDs first came out. People said the vinyl iridescent LP would stick around for at least another 10 years. It barely lasted 10 months.

And yes, much hullabaloo has been made over the ebook. And it keeps getting aborted and aborted and aborted. Though Amazon's "Kindle" is by no means a masterwork of DaVincian splendor, it at least presents a somewhat viable medium for reading ebooks. Soon a really cool one will appear and the publishers will push it. They will pull something HUGE such as "NEW HARRY POTTER BOOK AVAILABLE ELECTRONICALLY ONLY!!!!" and everyone will rush to buy it. And BANG!! e-publishing will emerge from its now festering fetus like naked Venus on the half-shell.

Digitization happens in the digital age.

Just yesterday I was in a Border's. Their CD section was bare. Down to the pasties bare. It was a sad sight. The glorious section that once dominated half of the store's upper floor now huddled in a dark corner like the most jittery of dust bunnies. Sad sad sad.

The upside: ebooks may bring about a revolution in publishing. Costs to publish will plummet. A book will no longer require huge resources that require corresponding huge payoffs. Publishers may take more risks. We may see some decent stuff appearing again. Maybe maybe maybe. Cross everything you can. Maybe.

But it will happen. I will miss paper books. Enjoy them while you can.
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I hope you are right. I spent 6 years writing a book they say is good and the effort the publisher went to with editing, typesetting and cover design still seems to have cost a packet. I dont know who writes the book that is ready for e-publishing straight off the word processor.

But I would have liked the option rather than two years struggling to find someone to publish the book.

I saw that one publisher is producing little cards that sell in a bookshop with a code to allow you to download the e-book. That way the "bookshop" the distributor and the publisher make their cut but there is no stock holding - everyone gets paid when the download happens.

I wonder how the industry would function. But maybe with downloads, somehow, there will be more readers and enough money to support publishers and distribution (which will have to change its model drastically).

The other big advantage of electronic distribution will be speed. It took 8 weeks for paper books to reach Australia from the US - a huge lag and a huge problem for bookshops.
 
unitekequip said:
The internet brings freedom back into markets. Like with the music industry, it will prove that people will enjoy independent artists with unique and original perspectives slightly outside the publishing mold. These will be exciting times, and when it comes down to it, it will allow people to publish and distribute their works independently. It's a beautiful thing.
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God I hope not. I don't want to have to wade through pages and pages of ill formatted and misspelled text on some myspace equivalent for "up and coming" authors to find a gem. Isn't that why we pay publishers? Let them seperate the wheat from the chaff so we don't have to?
 
mmm

Your comment about classics is interesting Peder. At the local Barnes & Noble, there's a glut of classics and even a Barnes & Noble line of classics.

The e-book may win out but it had better happen after I die.
 
I really honestly do not see this happening. I'll be the first to eat my words on the day in the future if it does, but there's too many advances in technology that are making it profitable to KEEP printing on pulp. Besides with the emergence of books printed on plastic (resins & inorganic fillers) pages, something that can be UPcycled, and not just REcycled. There's also the advent of Print on Demand capabilities. Publishers and even books stores can answer to the order of a book online, or in store, and it can cost effectively be printed on the spot. This advance is great for self publishing, and Small Presses.
 
Before Christmas, it all sounded so hopeful. A bunch of the largest US publishers were releasing e-books specifically for the iPhone. Of course, with the heavy copy protection and each book being a separate application it would essentially mean that you'd have to buy those books again if you ever buy a new phone, but who ever does that?

Within 24 hours, it was another tune and the books were pulled from the Christmas market.
Since security and DRM are among our highest priorities, we thought it important to take immediate action.
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Huh. And here I thought it was about selling books.
 
I don't think e-books will ever truly dominate the market. Many a company has tried and sales have been poor. There is a certain joy that any person being "converted" to e-books misses. I think the main problem is that in this age less people are actually reading. It's the TV age, the digital age, the e-commerce age. People don't even shop in shops anymore!
 
Peder said:
It does seem quite the reversal -- trying to make money off something which is free. But who knows where a broader public for posting and blogging might lead?
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My first thought was that the majority of people that would be interested in reading blogs already read them so why would this be a marketable idea. I guess it will work for people that don't have rss feeds to their smart phones, are too lazy to print out the blog when they are on the go, or don't own a computer but like what they are reading. Seems like a very small market to me.
 
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