41–50 of 154 posts
My guess is that it would drive authors into services like Kindle Unlimited, since they would be able to create a long-term income stream unlike physical books or non-transferrable ebooks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"* 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 fu…
I'm not the OP, but seeing as most of my favourite authors are already dead (some have been so for more than a century) I would so: "not so much". The "would someone think of the content creators" mantra kind of works (up to a point) in the music and movie industries, where Taylor Swift doesn't compete against long-time dead J.S. Bach, nor does Star Wars compete against Melies's films, while any new fiction author has to compete against long-time dead authors like Proust, Kafka, Joyce or Ray Bradbury.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The indie author isn't concerned, because indie authors get much more per Amazon sale than they do from a traditional publishing contract. The flooding already happened. There was a gold rush a few years ago when anyone who had any interest in writing slapped together an ebook and put it online. Some of those authors did incredibly well for a year or two, then the market became saturated. So there was a shake out. Au…
I remain stunned the authors don't do mailing lists. There are a handful of authors that I will purchase everything they write. Until goodreads, there was no real way for them to notify me to buy something from them. And even now goodreads isn't particularly efficient about it. I really think they would benefit from asking fans to sign up for an announcements list that is just announcements of new work. Plus it gives…
> The sales that would go to that $15.99 book are going to lower-priced books from indie authors and self-published authors, like me. > They actually proved the consumer will buy the cheaper option, but okay I find it alarming that an indie author does not seem to be concerned with cheap product flooding the market. Amazon's attempts to lower barriers to entry means more aspiring authors competing for a piece of the…
The indie author isn't concerned, because indie authors get much more per Amazon sale than they do from a traditional publishing contract. The flooding already happened. There was a gold rush a few years ago when anyone who had any interest in writing slapped together an ebook and put it online. Some of those authors did incredibly well for a year or two, then the market became saturated. So there was a shake out. Au…
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…
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…
5000 sales is larger than most first print runs, a minority of books are bestsellers and sell hundreds of thousands, the majority sell just a few thousand and make very little profit if anything, this is why publishers offer an advance set against future royalties.
There is still a vestigial authority to a printed book (someone other than the author liked this) and a stigma attached to self publishing, so there is some value still to being published on paper, because the main benefit to most authors is reputational, not monetary. It will be interesting to see if that changes with ebooks. However, like print newspapers, mass-market print books are dead, they were always on thin margins but are now unsustainable. This will take a decade or two to work out, but it will happen.
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…
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 designed nor typeset) file as input and produces tolerably-good machine typeset output. Its output is vastly better than plenty of well-regarded periodicals such as [1], which proves by construction that good-enough machine typesetting can be implemented.
[0] I'm not claiming iBooks typesetting is remotely comparable to what's found in a Random House hardcover, but rather that no hand typesetting at all takes place for most (all?) ebooks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"* 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 fu…
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…
>> "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…
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…
Congratulations, you invented the magazine.