The collective insanity of the publishing industry • Hacker News Board

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#21

Post by ghaff » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 4:12 AM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #19

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…

> Most of the cost of a book is the highly-skilled labor involved (writing, editing, copyediting, proofreading, designing, typesetting, marketing, selling) and these critically don't go away or even get much cheaper in an electronic world. Even ebooks need specialized design and typesetting, and I have some examples which did not get that love which will make your eyes bleed if you don't believe me. The costs of mode…

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.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#22

Post by muddi900 » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 4:18 AM UTC

The publishing industry did this before by colluding with Apple. Had to settle out of court with DoJ over it.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#23

Post by StephenConnell » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 4:23 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #21

true_religion wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the cost of a book is the highly-skilled labor involved (writing, editing, copyediting, proofreading, designing, typesetting, marketing, selling) and these critically don't go away or even get much cheaper in an electronic world. Even ebooks need specialized design and typesetting, and I have some examples which did not get that love which will make your eyes bleed if you don't believe me. The costs of mode…

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.

Why can't one deal with typos, without help?

It seems to me that a combination of technology and time should be sufficient.

I know I have read books that seem to have missed spell check... Really annoying.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#24

Post by kevinr » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 4:37 AM UTC

StephenConnell wrote: post #23

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.

Why can't one deal with typos, without help? It seems to me that a combination of technology and time should be sufficient. I know I have read books that seem to have missed spell check... Really annoying.

Speaking as an occasional author, by the time I've finished the however-many drafts and several rounds of edits, I'm completely blind to the manuscript's mechanical flaws, and need someone else to point out to me the Spoonerisms, unfortunately euphemistic word choices, or even just that I've dedicated my book to "My parents, Ayn Rand and God."

Also, I say again: copyeditors and proofreaders are cheap. Doing that work myself makes about as much sense as doing anything else I could outsource cheaply.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#25

Post by kevinr » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 4:40 AM UTC

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.

Leaving aside the secondary markets for a moment---which yes, I agree with you on---do you feel ripped off buying video games online? They are, after all, just really large files.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#26

Post by tzs » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 4:41 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

Yup. For a typical hardback, the physical costs (printing, shipping, and storing) are about $3.25. Here's an article from a few years ago that looked at the money side of paper books and ebooks: [1]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/business/media/01ebooks.ht...

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#27

Post by kevinr » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 4:46 AM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #19

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…

> Most of the cost of a book is the highly-skilled labor involved (writing, editing, copyediting, proofreading, designing, typesetting, marketing, selling) and these critically don't go away or even get much cheaper in an electronic world. Even ebooks need specialized design and typesetting, and I have some examples which did not get that love which will make your eyes bleed if you don't believe me. The costs of mode…

Actually, most of my experience is from the science fiction/fantasy genre. Genre buyers are willing to tolerate sub-par production---and let's be honest, the pulp paperbacks of yesteryear were not exactly going to give Edward Tufte a designgasm, so this isn't a new trend, just an old trend which has found new life in a new medium.

That said, the market for freelance book production people is actually much better than it was a few years ago, for precisely the reason that there's just more money in the market now.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#28

Post by kevinr » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 4:57 AM UTC

pgrote wrote: post #18

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…

"* Price is an important signalling mechanism, and so---given the costs of book production---it's important to the publishers not to drive the perceived fair cost of books down below, no matter whether Amazon is currently subsidizing that or not." I think this is the number one reason. The issue is that the prices are too high for perceived value. I buy a fair number of non-fiction books and loved when ebooks emerged…

> 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 full-time in publishing might have health insurance but are working for well below market (by outside of tech standards, which are pretty embarrassing) in some of the most expensive cities on earth. And they can't just move, because then they'd get converted to contract and lose their health insurance.

This is not to shame you for buying used books---that's fine, there's no way I'd have the library I do without them, and I grew up groveling the library and used bookstores because that was all we could afford. Readers are readers. But---and I encounter this again and again---readers' perception of value in books is fundamentally misaligned with the actual economics of the book trade, to the detriment of both.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#29

Post by ghaff » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 5:07 AM UTC

StephenConnell wrote: post #23

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.

Why can't one deal with typos, without help? It seems to me that a combination of technology and time should be sufficient. I know I have read books that seem to have missed spell check... Really annoying.

What kevinr says. At some point, you start reading what you expect to read rather than what is actually on the page--including typos with red lines under them. You basically cannot publish something significant without having another set of eyes on it at a minimum. A decent copy editor will also help fix up some things (in my case excessive wordiness). Tools like spellcheck help but only to a degree. Also as kevinr says, basic copyediting is pretty cheap. I paid about $400 for my last book.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#30

Post by GabrielF00 » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 5:14 AM UTC

kevinr wrote: post #25

GabrielF00 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Leaving aside the secondary markets for a moment---which yes, I agree with you on---do you feel ripped off buying video games online? They are, after all, just really large files.

I don't buy enough video games to really answer that - usually I buy a couple of games a year during Steam sales and that's about it. I usually buy a couple of books a month (print and ebooks).