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The collective insanity of the publishing industry

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Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#111

Post by kevinr »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #36

I'm often laughed at when I suggest it, but I think the publishing world needs to look at what's happening with free to play games. You remove the barrier to entry so that as many people as possible will try your product (free). You identify those people who really enjoy your book and want to consume more of the same. You provide them with so much content that they can spend as must as they like. It's not unreasonabl…

Folks are experimenting with models like this around Kickstarter, Patreon, Serial Box, etc.

The jury's still out on how successful it will be, for what kinds of projects, but I think it's clear that the world in which $15 retail packages are the only form factor prose fiction is ever sold in is basically gone, and that's probably for the better.

My favorite early example of this was Shadow Unit (http://shadowunit.org/), an entirely donation-supported serial.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#112

Post by chrisseaton »

GabrielF00 wrote: post #20
kevinr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also that's often comparing the discounted price of a print edition to the full price of the ebook. Print books being still sold under the old wholesale model, Amazon can still discount them, whereas ebooks being sold under the new model, Amazon can't discount them.

When I'm looking at prices at an online bookstore, I don't care what the list price is, I care what the price I have to pay is. When a physical object that has to be manufactured and shipped costs more than a text file, I feel ripped off. Especially since I can lend a physical book to someone or sell it to a local used book store, neither of which I can do with an ebook.

> When a physical object that has to be manufactured and shipped costs more than a text file, I feel ripped off

But this is highly irrational.

If the physical book is a better deal for you, then go for it. If the eBook deal is better, then go for that. If you still decided that the eBook deal is better than I can't fathom how it can be a 'rip off' because another deal that you turned down is cheaper. What effort went into making the product is entirely irrelevant. All that matters is the price and value to you.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#113

Post by lmm »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #96
lmm wrote: post #88

Earlier 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.

You can choose something bad but still not have better choices available. If it's their best option are they allowed to complain then?

Yes. My understanding of "working well below market" is that it by definition means there are much better-paying jobs available to them, no?

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#114

Post by joshvm »

kriro wrote: post #91
kevinr wrote: post #16

I have a small pile of friends in publishing, so I'll take this from the other side. The reasons for the publishers' apparent insanity are: * Contrary to popular belief, physical production is NOT the single largest part of a book's cost. In fact, even before ebooks, the cost of paper and ink and shipping was actually a pretty negligible part of the final cost. Most of the cost of a book is the highly-skilled labor i…

My counterpoint would be that marketing and selling are often done rather wrong by the big publishing houses. People care about the story behind the book and the authors, I rarely see these emphasized in the typical publisher campaigns. Much easier for a modern author to forge these relationships naturally. The other things you mentioned can also be automated to some extend (typesetting and layout for sure).

You might be interested in this Japenese bookshop - it was on HN a while ago. The proprietor only stocks one title at a time and treats the shop more like an exhibition.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/23/japanese-booksh...

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#115

Post by stevewillows »

lmm wrote: post #74
kevinr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh hey, someone better-informed than me. There's also a sizeable fraction of the reading public of all ages who still prefer print books for a host of reasons both sentimental and practical. (The one I've just discovered: I can't read ebooks before bed because the blue light from the iPad screen keeps me up. Whoops.) Ebooks have mostly killed the mass-market paperback, though---more's the pity for beach-reading and o…

I don't know about the iOS walled garden, but more generally there are tools to adjust screen colour temperature to something appropriate to the time of day.

IOS 9.3.4b also has automatic temp control built in. I was sideloading f.lux -- but this works just as well.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#116

Post by pbhjpbhj »

kevinr wrote: post #107
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. //

But the prices have been / are often higher.

I see that good ebooks have some extra typesetting and such, but that should be largely automated with the production of print ready copy.

How can they not save on paper, presses, covers, delivery, distribution?

Yes editing, proofing, marketing, cover design, etc., still costs.

Devices don't seem that discounted that there should be an extra load per book to post for them.

Do you have a source for eBook production costs, would be interested to look at financials vs. traditional publishing.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#117

Post by kevinr »

Nutmog wrote: post #108
kevinr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most of those issues I mention are exactly the kinds of issues which pull the reader out of the text, even though he may not be able to pinpoint exactly why. Certainly often when I use Instapaper to read a web page or Calibre to convert ebooks I can read through the issues if I try hard enough, but it takes more effort than reading a well-produced book, and I somewhat regularly give up on automatically-converted texts because the issues are just too dire.

(Some of my other favorite conversion errors: Endnotes or references not hyperlinked. Chapters and other headings not correctly marked-up. Page numbers or other irrelevant header/footer material not stripped. Footnotes, margin notes, or other relevant header/footer material stripped. ...As you can tell, I'm great fun at cocktail parties.)

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#118

Post by daemin »

kevinr wrote: post #61
avn2109 wrote: post #46

Earlier 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 also applies to code, I've seen some ebooks that have blocks of code formatted like they exist on a blog instead of in a printed environment. It made reading them a pain because code snippets were word wrapped badly, split over multiple pages, and you'd get pages and pages of code.

Given that ebooks are electronic, perhaps they could use some sort of pop out window for larger code snippets, so that they could be scrolled rather than in page format.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#119

Post by toyg »

dilemma wrote: post #93
toyg wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If publishers die, such social proof will simply come from other venues, be it dedicated marketing outfits or some sort of community (goodreads etc). In music, major labels are increasingly irrelevant.

And then successful dedicated marketing outfits starts vertically integrate to beat out competition, offering editorial services, distribution, etc.... becoming a publisher. What will happen is that some publishers fail to adapt to a digital economy and are replaced by upcomers who are perfectly adjusted to it. Publishing companies will not disappear because they fill a function in the industry.

A "publisher" in the digital world will be a very different beast and it will be hard to call it such. Most of it will likely be automated. Their core-competency might not even be book-publishing.

Are Amazon and Netflix "studios"? No, but they do produce high-quality video content. Is Louis CK a "studio"? No, but he's producing a TV series.

Publishers' functions (content editing, packaging, distribution, marketing and merchandising) are being split and reorganized in different ways. Verticals built on the new production chain will look very different from current publishers.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#120

Post by pbhjpbhj »

lmm wrote: post #113
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can choose something bad but still not have better choices available. If it's their best option are they allowed to complain then?

Yes. My understanding of "working well below market" is that it by definition means there are much better-paying jobs available to them, no?

Ah my understanding was along the lines of "market [rate]" for a person being the "rate they could get in their first choice occupation assuming a job was available to them".

Or market rate of a field being the mean rate for workers of that occupation.

If it's work below market or gut chickens for a living people will tend to accept less than they feel they're worth.

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