Has anyone mentioned the pirating factor in ebooks? One author I know told me that her royalties have been hurt immeasurably by the pirating, once the ebook edition is released. The publishing house has been hurt as well, since they have lost so much income.
Writing takes time. Most good writers need a lot of time to devote to the craft. If you don’t have the time to write, because you have to spent 40-plus hours a week at some other work to make a living, chances are you won’t produce much in the way of quality work, plus have friends and family and exercise and life in general. So, unless you have a patron to support you, serious writers do need to make money from their work.
(Yes, I know there are exceptions. They are rare.)
Thanks to the internet, anyone who wants to see what a slush pile looks like can do so. There are sites where anyone can post their fiction. Take a read at that and you’ll recognize the difference between what anyone writes and what a professional writes.
Some of these people are good and some of them have gone on to be published. (And admittedly some good writers do not get published.) But you’ll also see works written by people who have no apparent grasp of how to write. Even down to basic things like how punctuation works.
You have to seriously wonder if these people have ever read a book. It’s one thing not to know how to plot a story or create an interesting charatcer. But how do you not know how to use a question mark?
I think it will happen like the video market already is. The good books will get on sites that have quality control, and that site will do the PR work. Traditional publishing may be declining, but that’s only a phase until other people rise up to fill the place. It’s the natural evolution. There will be differences, but those will be for the better as far as the readership is concerned, since it will be what they wanted to happen.
IN the beginning, these sites will take a small cut, and you’ll be making more money with less readership. This is where the boom is for authors. However, it won’t be good for the generation that is stuck in the old model. And, eventually, things will go back how they were, with the publisher making the bulk of the money, and everyone complaining about how stifling they are. Hopefully there will be another medium change to fix that, too.
Why do you keep saying “you rent”? I pay for all of the ebooks I buy with cold hard cash. I refuse to pay more for an e-book than I would pay for the HB if it’s only available in that format. Some of the time I may save 50cents off the price of the PB, but in general it’s the same price as the PB. If I have a PB or HB I can lend it to any number of people, not so with the E-book. The PB/HB I can take to a used book sale and get a couple of bucks in trade for it, not so the E-book. It is not the E-book users who are screwing you it is the publishers.
If you or your publisher play games by making the E-book more expensive than the HB or PB I will not buy it from you. Case closed.
Actually, your example suggests e-books are good for readers.
While some have noted that as a tangent, the main post was about publishing and writing – whether fewer-and-fewer publishers/editors is better or worse for writers hoping to get published (i.e. become authors).
Overall, I’m seeing industry insiders say quality is suffering while quantity might be increasing and processing costs are decreasing; dividends and bonuses are increasing for those in control while primary sources are compensated less for their effort. Funny, but this seems to be a typical pattern in many aspects of our modern society.
–G!
Of course it is. As the Internet opens things up, the people at the top become less successful as the people at the bottom expand a bit (but not nearly enough to be considered successful). And then the whole enterprise shrinks slightly as a) piracy becomes more prevalent, b) supply becomes greater so people become a lot pickier about what they buy and c) options to rent material become much simpler and widespread.
Also… d) it’s the economy, stupid.
As Ebooks rose, it’s natural that the same things that happened to music (and to a lesser extent, movies), would happen to books.
Yet it seems that the same people who cried bloody murder over Apple’s early domination and price control in e-music are applauding Amazon’s early domination and price control in e-books.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:88, topic:598680”]
Yet it seems that the same people who cried bloody murder over Apple’s early domination and price control in e-music are applauding Amazon’s early domination and price control in e-books.
[/QUOTE]
What domination and price control? Amazon may be the #1 Ebook seller, but they’re hardly dominating. Barnes & Noble is just as big a player.
Please note that in what you quoted I said “early domination and price control.” Amazon was as close to a monopoly in ebooks as Apple used to be in (legal) e-music. Amazon was dictating prices and sales policies to publishers to the point where some publishers refused to deal with them (a big help to B&N and Apple).
Uh, no they’re not. Just because the stuff is out there doesn’t mean people are reading it. And no one wades through slush on their own – they read a page or so and then move on.
When people read things on the Internet, its because someone pointed it out to them as being better than slush.
And getting shelf space is the most important thing, next to getting reviews in reputable places (not blogs or Amazon.com). Both of these are automatic from a mainstream publisher, leaving the author time to write more.
Every minute you spend marketing your work is a minute you’re not spending writing something new. Not only does a publisher take this off your hands – even for a midlist book – but they get it into thousands of bookstores all over the country, while your efforts will get it into 30, all within driving distance.
eBooks are fine (though you’re making the mistake of assuming that everyone thinks about them exactly the same way you do). But if the eBook comes from a major publisher, it sells far better than a self-published one.
The New York Times has an interesting new article on Amazon moving into the publishing space and how they could be potentially re-writing the rules of publishing, much more in line with what I envisioned.
Judging by what the article says and not what the headline claims, Amazon is acting just like a traditional publisher. Publishers are upset because of the issues with the fact it’s a vertical monopoly. That used to be illegal (and should be), but the Justice Department often ignores it. The potential for abuse is enormous (e.g., Amazon highlights its own books on their home page, ignoring books from other publishers).
I assume Amazon will not distribute to bookstores, and their books will only be available on Amazon? And I wonder what kind of contacts they have for reviews, in the media.
If they’re representing Tim Ferriss, then I presume the books will be available anywhere a bookrack can be crammed.
Coincidentally, I just this morning got an e-mail from a British writer friend who had previously published an excellent biography, and now is going to do another book as an ebook exclusively:
I wrote back to ask him who is going to edit and promote the book, and await his reply.
For now. Like it or not, the way books are marketed and sold are changing, and will change more. I think, a lot more. Not everybody luuuuurves traditional publishing like you do.
This weekend, I had the chance to interview David Hartwell, editor for Tor Books, about some of the issues mentioned here. Some of his points:
- It’s easier to get published today than at any time in history, but the sheer bulk of books coming out (including POD) is so large that it’s harder than ever to be noticed.
- Tor publishes ebooks, and they make a small income stream. They have not even cannibalized sales from their other books.
- On the other hand, it’s a small income stream. Other formats are far more successful for them and the trends show they will continue to be.
- Earlier this year, Publisher’s Weekly polled publishers about ebooks. About 300 ebooks had sold over 10,000 copies. Some publishers did not respond, so Hartwell estimated the actual number of ebooks that sold so well was twice that. However, during the same time period, 400,000 ebooks were published in total.
- The most successful ebook author is probably William Shakespeare. People fill up their readers with free, public domain works by well-known classic authors. He estimated that 80% of ebooks fit in that category.
- When people start paying for ebooks, they concentrate on the same books that are on the best seller lists. Midlist and other authors just don’t sell.
- The one genre that does do well in ebooks are romance novels. This is because romance readers traditionally read their books once and then gave them away. Since they are not used to having books to reread, the idea of not having a physical book does not bother them.
- Mass market paperbacks as slowly vanishing, but that trend began long before ebooks were available.
True, but the facts I just posted indicate quite clearly that the market for ebooks is not going to threaten traditional publishing.
And, OTOH, few people luuuurve ebooks the way you do. As I pointed out, people don’t pay for 80% of the ebooks they download, and the other 20% is filled with best sellers. Essentially, there is nothing in the facts to indicate that ebooks are going to change publishing, other than perhaps replacing the already dying mass market.
Heh. Hartwell says exactly the same things I do. You’d almost think…
Nah. But it would be a fun Internet rumor. 
He’s fun to hang around with at a con, isn’t he? The best are the really late night sessions, when he starts naming names.