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The collective insanity of the publishing industry

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Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#121

Post by daemin »

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.

Yes you can lend physical books to other people, but you also have to pack them when moving, and a decent physical book collection is surprisingly very heavy.

Also when lending books to people you have to know them well, and then follow up if you ever want the book returned.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#122

Post by lmm »

coldtea wrote: post #97
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.

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…

I don't think a claim like "the pay for job X is unfairly/unacceptably low" makes sense on its own (or at least, it's not a claim that people would be sympathetic to in general). It tends to contain an implicit argument that either a) job X is representative of the most lucrative (reasonable) jobs available to people in particular circumstances or b) job X is somehow socially valuable. No-one complains that e.g. surfers are underpaid, and few would be sympathetic to "How much do you value your favorite surfers eating or having health insurance?" I took kevinr to be implicitly claiming that authors are socially valuable, that I would prefer for people like his friend to write instead of working at their market rates.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#123

Post by ghaff »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #116
kevinr wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This was noted in another comment. A print book is about $3 more in cost (printing, distribution, returns, etc.) than an ebook. i.e. not nearly as much as most people assume.

(I note that I can order quantity one of the book I have on Amazon Createspace for $3.75 plus shipping.)

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#124

Post by gunnihinn »

dragandj wrote: post #64
dietrichepp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LaTeX can only do typesetting when a human operator makes it happen. Human operators for LaTeX tend to be fairly expensive, I dare you to try and hire one.

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?

Hi, LaTeX copyeditor and typesetter here. The bane of my existence are authors who know just enough LaTeX to be dangerous. First, almost all of their formatting work is the first thing to be thrown out. Second, authors are strongly incentivized to learn the bare minimum of LaTeX to do what they need, and to copy-paste furiously whatever stuff they find on the net. You have to remember that (La)TeX is both a markup and a programming language. Can you imagine spending your time reading code written by a copy-paste monkey? I can, and don't wish you the pleasure.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#125

Post by ghaff »

spacecowboy_lon wrote: post #89
ghaff wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably need at least a copy editor. (Typos are really annoying and you just can't deal with those without help.) But, yeah,for some genres, people with at least a niche following may do better with cutting out a lot of expensive "middlemen" who provide incremental improvement.

But As Charlie Stoss says he doesn't want to do that middle mans work as it takes time from writing.

Which, for someone who can establish a good relationship with a good publisher, is a perfectly reasonable position to take. Publishers are like any other service. If they provide good value, authors should use use them and otherwise not use them.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#126

Post by nowprovision »

gunnihinn wrote: post #124
dragandj wrote: post #64

Earlier 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?

Hi, LaTeX copyeditor and typesetter here. The bane of my existence are authors who know just enough LaTeX to be dangerous. First, almost all of their formatting work is the first thing to be thrown out. Second, authors are strongly incentivized to learn the bare minimum of LaTeX to do what they need, and to copy-paste furiously whatever stuff they find on the net. You have to remember that (La)TeX is both a markup an…

This comment could so easily be PHP about instead of LaTeX, your pain is shared.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#127

Post by ghaff »

toyg wrote: post #119
dilemma wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

>Are Amazon and Netflix "studios"?

They pretty much are in today's sense of "studio." The days of MGM having a bunch of actors under contract and cranking out movies on their backlots and sound stages is pretty much ancient history. Studios are mostly the moneymen for independent production companies--which is the case whether the studio's name is Fox or Netflix.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#128

Post by dilemma »

toyg wrote: post #119
dilemma wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

A computer can process text, it cannot read and it cannot write because it cant think. There is no automating taste.

Publishers' function will be close to exactly the same, just built on top of a digital infrastructure and organization.

Netflix and Amazon are studios when they do the same work as a studio.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#129

Post by coldtea »

AlgorithmicTime wrote: post #105
coldtea wrote: post #81

> 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.

"Secret evil plan"? That's the very open and natural thing for any monopoly to do. It has been done by monopolies time and again.

Amazon just haven't reached that status in most areas yet.

And where it has, e.g. books, it already used its power to manipulate producers and the market in its favor. Siphoning millions for selling books below what you pay for them is not some kind of marketing trick, it's anti-competitive behavior meant to kill less loaded rivals...

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#130

Post by ylem »

akie wrote: post #39
StefanKarpinski wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legitimate question: what is the total cost of labor to publish a book, aside from writing it and physical production? It's hard to imagine it being more than $25k – a quarter-person's salary at $100k/year for editing, typesetting and design. At $5 per book, that's covered by 5000 sales. With ebooks, the rest is pure profit – or could go directly to the author if authors hired publishers to do that work instead of th…

I'm involved in an open access book publisher that will publish their first (academic) books this summer. Everything digital & print on demand, and the reviewing and copy editing is mostly done for free by other academics. Professional typesetting though, and I do think they pay someone for helping with editing. All in all, this brings us to a cost of €3000 to €5000 per book.

Is that the fixed cost/book? What field(s) are you publishing in?
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