Anybody with the slightest interest in this topic should read Charlie Stross’ (cstross on HN) series of essays on the publishing industry: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-m...
The collective insanity of the publishing industry
101–110 of 154 posts
Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why spend $12 at a bar for a cheeseburger when a Big Mac is $4 or ramen is $0.25 ?
Because you're an idiot? Alternatively, because you want to socialise with rich people. In all cases, the better alternative is to buy fish and vegetables for 6$ and cook them yourself for a healthy and nutritious meal.
>Because you're an idiot?
You know this adds nothing to the discussion, and only encourages people to disregard everything you're saying, right?
I'm a good cook, but my favorite burger place charges around 12eur for a burger and I'm happy to pay it because I can't easily recreate the same at home, and it's freaking delicious.
"Because I want to socialize with rich people" is beyond absurd.
Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or could, oh, horrors, the authors, editors, and proofreaders learn to use LaTeX themselves so the typesetter could just check the final document for errors?
Division of labour tends to increase efficiency. Do you really want an author spending hours reading LaTeX tutorials, or do you want them to get on with their personal specialty and let a typesetting specialist do the typesetting? Either way the ultimate cost is going to be similar.
But the problem is that their personal specialty is not valued much, so if they want bread on their table they better augment it with a complementary specialty.
Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. But if they're choosing to be an author in full knowledge of the economics of it, "working well below market" as the grandparent said, then they shouldn't complain about not earning much money.
I don't think that's something we can settle with "they knew about working below market so they shouldn't complaint". Knowing about something and considering it fair and acceptable are two different things. A logical argument would be: "they knew about working well below market so they shouldn't act surprised" (because knowing in advance and acting surprised are contradictory). But being hurt and complaining? There's…
As with many things, there's a widespread and not entirely erroneous perception that working below market for a while is a necessary precondition to later doing well.
Also what's considered "market rate" and what's in 2016 a living wage have relatively little in common. Seven cents a word is the minimum 'professional' rate for short fiction, which very few people in 2016 can actually live solely on.
Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry
#105> That sounds thoroughly reasonable, and it sort of is, but please let me explain because the crazy is in the details. What was happening was that Amazon was discounting the price of the ebooks, and it may seem like this is something the Big 5 would want to stop, except the markdown was coming off of Amazon’s end. In other words, if Hachette wanted to charge $15.99 for an ebook, and Amazon marked it down to $9.99, Ha…
Everyone keeps saying that Amazon has a secret evil plan to become THE source for everything and then jack up the prices, but no actual evidence of this ever happening.
Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious answer: I think there is a huge oversupply of authors at the moment. The world would probably be better off if half of all authors (selected at random) were to quit and go find something more productive/lucrative to do. (I think everyone, even people who simply don't want to work, should be able to eat and receive reasonable medical care. Authors not having healthcare is terrible, but no more terrible than un…
> Serious answer: I think there is a huge oversupply of authors at the moment. The world would probably be better off if half of all authors (selected at random) were to quit and go find something more productive/lucrative to do. Or you know, let them do whatever they want, and price THEIR work however they want, and then either buy it or don't buy it.
The number of books in the world is monotonically increasing.
The number of hours a person has available in their life to enjoy reading books is constant, or at least capped pretty close to where it's at now.
There are already too many books for anyone to read everything that might interest them in their lifetime.
So what's the use of new fiction books? Haven't enough already been written to serve everyone's needs? I agree that we need fewer fiction authors and the market is showing that with their low compensation.
Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The issue is that the prices are too high for perceived value. How much do you value your favorite authors eating or having health insurance? This is a serious question: just a few days ago I was suggesting that a friend, twenty published books over the last thirty years, books you may have read or heard of, start a Patreon so that he might, for the first time in his life, afford health insurance. People working fu…
>How much do you value your favorite authors eating or having health insurance? // Thing is with ebooks the author should make more money, there's a wider accessible market, lower production cost. But publishers moved to close the market and to increase the selling price whilst at the same time accruing the added profit from the reduction in production cost. The blame here shouldn't be on those buying the books who r…
> Thing is with ebooks the author should make more money, there's a wider accessible market, lower production cost.
The market is... different. Wider in some ways, narrower in others. Young adult fiction is largely nonexistent in ebook, still, because young adults' access to e-reading devices is still more limited than adults', and they are less likely to discover fiction online than through more traditional channels.
The production costs are, again, not significantly lower in ebook than print.
> Thing is with ebooks the author should make more money
While that's been the going theory in some parts for a while, in practice it hasn't turned out that way.
Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> "Even ebooks need specialized design and typesetting" I must confess to being baffled by all this talk of typesetting, for the following reasons: 1) My ebook readers (Calibre and iBooks, mostly) algorithmically render and reflow the text to arbitrary typefaces, sizes, columnar layouts, etc. Isn't this "typesetting?" And isn't it taking place entirely in software? [0] 2) Latex consumes a plain-text (aka neither des…
Your ebook readers get a lot of hints from the ebook file about how to present the material---I am light on details, but I believe them to be significant. It's true that there's no human there checking the typeblocks for rivers and orphans, but I can tell the difference between an ebook file produced by Calibre and one which a human has had a hand in, I happily pay my $13 for the latter, and woe betide the publisher…
That's nice for a perfectionist. But how many readers care at all or could tell the difference if they tried? Do you struggle to read stories on the web because they're not hand typeset? I personally find that the content of a book completely dominates my experience over any of the superficial details. Well, I do use an annoying e-book reader that keeps accidentally turning pages for me and I lose my place. No amount of carefully placed hyphens will overcome that though, but a bit of software could.
Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Serious answer: I think there is a huge oversupply of authors at the moment. The world would probably be better off if half of all authors (selected at random) were to quit and go find something more productive/lucrative to do. Or you know, let them do whatever they want, and price THEIR work however they want, and then either buy it or don't buy it.
The number of books in the world is monotonically increasing. The number of hours a person has available in their life to enjoy reading books is constant, or at least capped pretty close to where it's at now. There are already too many books for anyone to read everything that might interest them in their lifetime. So what's the use of new fiction books? Haven't enough already been written to serve everyone's needs? I…
Also true for music, film, games and massively amplified by digital storage and distribution. I really don't care about the price of a book as the increasingly astronomical cost to me as I age is the time to read it.
Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry
#110I can see the rationale of the publishers - they don't want Amazon to become a monopoly. Their counter-strategy will fail, but that is besides the point.
What is really puzzling is the many authors who thought the publishers are fighting for them and stated public support for their publishers. Especially since the publishers blockade apparently cost them a lot of sales.