The collective insanity of the publishing industry • Hacker News Board

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#61

Post by kevinr » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 8:28 AM UTC

avn2109 wrote: post #46

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…

>> "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 when I discover that I paid $13 for an automated conversion. (The most egregious was a math book which OCR'd the formulas---from a book which was evidently set for print in LaTeX.)

When I'm translating plain text (Markdown-ish) input to LaTeX, I spend a bit of time going through by hand making sure all my formatting has converted correctly, any accents or non-roman characters are correct, the single- and double-quotes are correct, I haven't accidentally copy-pasted any ligatures, I have included hyphenation for nonstandard words, I've included any relevant non-breaking spaces, figures and headings and captions are flowing correctly, etc. etc. And all of these are still necessary when producing an ebook.

It's maddeningly detail-oriented, but the results are really noticeably much better, and in many cases make the difference between the text being readable and not. It's a bit like the cue dots at the movie theater---if you're not looking for them, you don't notice your uninterrupted experience unless the projectionist screws something up.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#62

Post by dragandj » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 8:42 AM UTC

kevinr wrote: post #35

eru wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If readers value books, but not enough to make writing pay, isn't the economic thing to stop being a professional writer?

Or to try to convince readers to value books more.

Good luck with that.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#63

Post by kevinr » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 8:43 AM UTC

elthran wrote: post #59

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have $30 to spend on books each month, is it better to spend on one book so one author can eat well, or spend it on two books so two authors can simply eat?

Or why not 4 books so I can maximize my personal enjoyment and cultural enrichment?

Why spend $12 at a bar for a cheeseburger when a Big Mac is $4 or ramen is $0.25 ?

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#64

Post by dragandj » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 8:47 AM UTC

dietrichepp wrote: post #48

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…

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?

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#65

Post by philfrasty » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 8:53 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #26

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: […

Given that you print a vast amount of copies and it is all black-and-white on thin paper. Go color (e.g. cookbooks) with 200g+ paper and you can easily double or triple that price.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#66

Post by iamben » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 8:57 AM UTC

kevinr wrote: post #28

pgrote wrote: post #18

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…

Right, so as the parent suggested, the comparison to the music industry is pretty apt. A handful of popular superstars live very well. In the middle you make enough to live, but not to live well or from forever, but you do get to do what you love. At the bottom you have people who do it because they love it - either terribly, or in a very specialist niche that takes a lot of skill/creativity and will be extremely valued but by only a few.

I try to buy records/merch from (some of) my favourite bands. I value them greatly. They'll never make a decent living from it.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#67

Post by anon4 » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:14 AM UTC

kevinr wrote: post #63

elthran wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or why not 4 books so I can maximize my personal enjoyment and cultural enrichment?

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.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#68

Post by anon4 » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:19 AM UTC

kevinr wrote: post #24

StephenConnell wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> My parents, Ayn Rand and God

That's the proper way to write it. If you want the other meaning, it's "My parents - Ayn Rand and God". You English people really should learn proper punctuation - most of the world has been using these things called dashes, colons, etc. for quite a while now. They help immensely to disambiguate.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#69

Post by dilemma » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:19 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #52

kevinr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But i think the point is that you have to outsource it. There is no space for you "outsourcing the outsourcing" to publishers, because there is not enough fat in the market for them to survive anymore (or so they say). Authors will increasingly have to take charge of managing their creations, like it happened with musicians.

I used to think so, but in industries where supply is abundant, publishers provide not only "post-production", but distribution and more importantly marketing and branding - social proof. The biggest benefit may be setting oneself apart from the fray.

Source: I'm a smalltime author and publisher.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#70

Post by lmm » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:22 AM UTC

kevinr wrote: post #28

pgrote wrote: post #18

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…

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 unemployed people not having healthcare; the problem there is the crazy American healthcare system)