The collective insanity of the publishing industry • Hacker News Board

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#71

Post by lmm » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:24 AM UTC

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?

Division of labour tends to increase efficiency. Do you really want an author spending hours reading LaTeX tutorials, or do you want them to get on with their personal specialty and let a typesetting specialist do the typesetting? Either way the ultimate cost is going to be similar.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#72

Post by lmm » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:27 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.

Managing production and outsourcing is its own skillset. Division of labour between a specialist "producer" and the person who does the actual writing ought to make sense in terms of efficiency.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#73

Post by dilemma » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:28 AM UTC

kevinr wrote: post #54

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…

This is weird because there's great variety between books and publishers, and there are lots of hidden costs. The one most self-publishers miss is marketing and sales---at the big publishers, there are I am not a publishing industry insider, so these numbers are an educated SWAG, but let's see if they shed any light. Let's say a top editor at a big-5 genre publisher makes $100k a year. That's way high, but we'll roll…

I have some insight into the industry and while some details may be slightly off, I believe your outline is very accurate. Thank you!

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#74

Post by lmm » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:29 AM UTC

kevinr wrote: post #56

grey-area wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be a little out of date, but the breakdown is something like 40% retailer, 10% distribution, 10% print, 5-10% author, 10% editorial, 20% profit. On future print runs the publisher gets more profit of course. NB the retailer takes most of the profit. For ebooks the situation is worse in that Amazon takes 70% unless you choose to sell exclusively, but at least canny authors can bypass the publisher. You can…

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.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#75

Post by lmm » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:36 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #53

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…

The problem is that content generation for books is extremely expensive and non-repeatable. What are you going to sell, the same word over and over? Illustrations (which are expensive themselves)?

At the high level, sell commissioned side-stories for the super-fans. Below that, special limited editions, expensive bonus features, alternate endings, merchandise.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#76

Post by lmm » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:37 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 feel ripped off when buying a video game online costs more than buying the same game in a physical shop yes, or when a movie on a streaming service costs more than the same movie on disc.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#77

Post by revelation » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:47 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: […

That's a massive massive part of a $15 book, then? That's about the same proportion as the parts cost for a typical electronics product.

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#78

Post by EliRivers » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:57 AM UTC

paganel wrote: post #42

kevinr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> How much do you value your favorite authors eating or having health insurance? 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, n…

Just out of interest, would any of them still be alive if they'd had health insurance?

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#79

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 9:58 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…

[deleted]

Re: The collective insanity of the publishing industry

#80

Post by punch_rascal13 » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 10:00 AM UTC

anon4 wrote: post #67

kevinr wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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