On Ebooks

[valarltd]

A phrase I see over an over on publishers' sites, as a reason why they don't do print, is "Ebooks are the future."

Ebooks are not the future.

Ebooks are the here and now.

And they are damnably hard to sell to a newly converted fan who is standing an your dealer's table and really, really wants to read your stuff. Like right NOW, instead of when they get home from the convention, look you up, plow through your publisher's site and manage to download it.

Ebooks are terrific for online sales, shoppers who are already savvy in the ways of the market. But someone like my mother, who doesn't even have a computer? Good luck.

A lot of houses are never going or stopping their print production because the recession gave themn such a shellacking. I understand this. But say it. Don't wibble about "ebooks are the future." Yeah, flying cars were the future too and I can't think of any invention I would less want to see!

Print is the past, present and future of reading. It will never truly go out of style. It's easy to sell. It's easy to skim and check out before you buy. The format never changes. I can read stuff printed 600 years ago as easily as I can read stuff printed yesterday. Try reading a computer file from 20 years ago, if you can find a machine to read your 5 1/2" floppy.

Ebooks are a nicely portable addition to the way we read, just as paperbacks were. But they are not the be-all and end-all of future reading. They aren't even a significant fraction of it after 10 years.

Comments

My Opinion...

[moonstone-fae.livejournal.com]

Personally I love ebooks & audio books. I like the ease with which one can purchase the book, download, and begin reading. I love that all of my 500 or so books fits on my hard drive and I'm not scrambling to make room for them in my small home.

However, there is a magic to a book. The smell of an old book. The feel of a new book. The magic of cracking a spine for the first time.

To me, they are different entities entirely. While I will likely continue to get most of my day to day reading material in ebook or audio book format, I will never give up on the paper book.

All of my magical books are paper and will likely remain as such. Anything I refer to on a regular basis - herbalism books, arts/crafts books, self help or art books - will remain on paper.

I said all of this just to let you know that I feel each has it's place in the world of reading. Both have good & bad aspects.

Re: My Opinion...

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I love e-books.

I just get very annoyed with "oh, we don't DO print because e-books are the future." No, you don't do print because it's expensive.

[cbpotts.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[stormsdotter.livejournal.com]

As a slight side-note, if we all had flying cars, a la Luke's Landspeeder, we could un-pave the roads, plant grass, and the water absorbed from the grass would help the drought and flooding problems many cities and towns have. Floating cars would be a great help to the environment.

I am not a fan of eBooks. I have a library, I love my hardcopies, and I would not want an eBook reader unless I found a job requiring a lot of travel.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Except for the fact the average driver can't navigate in two dimensions. Adding the Z axis would raise the accident rate exponentially.

But I'm biased.

[(Anonymous)]

The D-Man Checks In: Actually, I have seen the prototype for the flying car. It's patented. The technology is here today. The production capacity (not to mention the huge liability & laws governing in-town low-level aviation) is not. Agreed... Most people have fully enough trouble managing driving in 2-dimensions, let alone 3.

The Luke Skywalker landspeeder idea though does have merit. It would make roads much less costly to maintain, and icy road conditions would cease to be a problem.

[luckynumbah7.livejournal.com]

Icy road conditions would not cease to be a problem. Lets not forget the pedestrians and cyclists who have to use those roads, too, especially where no sidewalks are available. Not everyone drives.

[moons-storm.livejournal.com]

As much as I enjoy e-books, I love my print books more. It's a simple fact. I'd rather curl up in bed with my print book than an e-book on a device.

From a publisher's standpoint, I can understand why many e-publishers refuse to do print editions. It's expensive, even for POD. Offset printing requires a large amount of cash up front, as well as warehousing space, in order to offer a MMPB price to consumers. POD requires litter up front cash, but it jacks the cost of the book up by three to four times the cost of a MMPB. Not many micro or small presses have the money to do either (since doing a print edition also eats one of your ISBNs and barcodes). I understand why they choose to not issue print editions, but there is a whole market not being catered to... which is why I chose to offer print editions of anything over 60,000 words.

Yes, e-books are now, but they're a mutating breed of books. There is no universal format, no universal DRM (if there even should be, but that's a whole other rant), no universal method of formatting the content, nothing. It changes from house to house and device to device. I think that's why I refuse, at present, to buy an e-ink device. I won't until there is more standardization so that a format I buy today won't be obsolete in six months.

>.> Umm. All that was to say I fully agree. Conventions were a driving force in our choice to offer print editions of books. I really should drink my tea before commenting in other people's journals. XD

[air_n_darkness]

I think that e-books are an excellent way for more new writers to reach a larger audience.

That said, I very, very seldom buy e-books. It is hard for me to sit at a computer screen and read a large work. With fanfic, I often have to read a chapter, stop and do something else, then go back to reading. Crossed Genres has an amazing novel serialized for subscriber right now; but I'm woefully behind in it, because reading it on the computer makes me twitch. Most likely, I will just buy a hard copy when they publish it at the end of the year.

I can't see print every being completely abandoned, not in my lifetime, anyway. Yeah, you save space, and ebooks are cheaper. But for me- aside from my problems reading on the computer- the choice of print over ebook is the same as my choice of of CD over iTunes download.

Hard drives fail. If I buy something, I want it to be my choice to give it up. I am still upset over having spent money on several vintage White Wolf e-book downloads, and then losing them to a computer crash before I could get them printed out.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I'm iffy on how good ebooks are at reaching new readers.

Honestly, every new author I've tried lately, I've gotten as print. The e-books come from people I've been in anthologies with and whose work I like.

[thunderpigeon.livejournal.com]

I've got to agree.


Softly, because my publisher does mostly e-books. But to this day I haven't read most of the stories in the e-anthologies I'm in. And after a year and a half on the market, I still don't have a book I can sell and sign at conventions. For a while I was selling e-books on CD-ROM. I may try that again when the Traffic/Magic antho comes out, but mostly as a measure to get enough sales to get it to press.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I like e-books, never think I don't.
I just like a print edition too.

I finally got around to reading a bunch of the anthos I did some years ago. Some are good. Some are not.

[heraldofdarknes.livejournal.com]

*grumbles about the previously discussed issue of price on e-books*

Come on, people. It's all profit. If I can buy the book in a 99 cent bin at Wal-mart, I shouldn't have to pay you 7 frickin dollars for my reader to get it.

/end rant

Go, OP! Equality in marketing for the win.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Pricing is always weird. I can buy a print book in the 99c WalMart remainder bin, and it's still selling on Amazon for $12. It has to do with local sell-through, shelf time limits, returns and other arcanities of book buying, book selling, the phase of the moon and whether R'yleh is rising or setting.

And I find most e-books (that I buy) to be reasonbly priced next to paperbacks. It's not all profit.

The writer gets 35-40% royalties. We get no advances on e-books. The editor gets another 35-40. Some of the remaining 20-30 goes to pay for the cover art, the copy editor, the web hosting, the isbn and any office staff salaries.

[kaethe.livejournal.com]

This is basically why I haven't converted to an e-book library even though the space would be awesome. I don't trust e-books to still be readable in ten years, nor do I trust my computer (or any form of electronic storage) to still be working and accessible in ten years. I'm pretty confident that my bound books will still be around, barring a major catastrophe.

[(Anonymous)]

The D-Man Checks In: I've also heard horror stories of ebooks being banned or having some copyright problem, so the things literally vanish off your computer right while you're reading it! You get a refund, but the book is gone!

Can't do that with hard-copy.

I likewise do not trust electronic media. Far too vulnerable to hacking, power outages, censorship, viruses, magnetic fields, or any number of other technical difficulties a good ol' regular book is just simply not subject to.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

That's just the Kindle with direct download by Whispernet.

Downloading a .pdf to your computer makes it your property. Intrusion by a publisher onto your computer is data trespassing. .pdfs have been around for 15 years and more. It's a standard, well-supported format.

With the Kindle, however, you are not buying the book. You are leasing a license to read it at the pleasure of Amazon.com. Should they decide to no longer carry the book, should they lose the rights or stop hosting the Kindle altogether, you are stuck.