[reading and publishing books] not straightforward

The Dead Tree Press

Tom Christenson, of Blog.rightreading.com has a piece today, entitled "Have the past twenty years been an aberration in the history of book publishing?"

I have described previously the corporate consolidation that has caused the largest book publishers in this country to be subsidiaries of foreign-based conglomerates. For about as long as I have worked in publishing that has been a pretty steady trend, and not a beneficial one to either writers or readers.

The same thinking led the conglomerates to hone in on publishing. Top-heavy, centralized bureaucracies know how to work with a B&N better than with a Cody’s or a Spring Street Books. And they applied their generic corporate management to a ragtag crew of book nerds, most of whom wouldn’t—and shouldn’t—know a balance sheet if their lives depended on it. Finally, unable to grow as fast as their debt structures demanded, these corporations have resorted to slashing expenses.

Tom quotes Douglas Rushov who believes that the corporate hold is declining but it still has a stranglehold as of now. L'Ombre [Francis] talks about a NY Bestseller royalty statement and this one talking about how little of the cover price of a book ends up in the author's pocket:

Of that new author's paperback... of the cover price _94.9%_ goes to someone else. But like the cotton-pickers we're wholly dependent on the plantation owners.

A specific example was quoted:

So the book sold 65,000 out of a possible 73,000 which gives a sell through rate of almost 90% which is incredibly good and explains the bestsellerdom. However despite all these wonderful thing:

My net earnings on this statement was $27,721.31, which was deducted from my advance. My actual earnings from this statement was $0.

To be fair to the publisher, he adds:

However I do not think it is worth complaining too much about the publisher's profit on this book. The publisher, like the agent, will have a few best sellers like this and a lot of dross.

Ebooks

Personalizing the issue, I was feeling out of sorts last evening, thought I'd retire and watch a DVD. Halfway through, it was too hard on the eyes and the necessity to look across at the screen was also tiring. What I needed there and then was a dead tree novel to rest on the bed covers and go through. Something which could sit beside the bed and could be picked up and put down.

E-books have not crossed that bridge yet. Francis mentions other problems with the technology too:

When I make posts estimating costs, revenues and so on I'm guessing. I have no idea whether a particular ebook sells 100 copies or 100,000. I can guess as advances and royalty rates but I don't know for sure. I can guess at publishing costs and printing costs. I can guess what the marketing budget might be. But I don't know. This means that when I read a post like this (or some of its predecessors) or one like this it is hard for me to grasp the precise implications to the author.

Gearlog puts it like this:

If I am going to carry around a digital device, I want to do everything--play music, download videos, surf the Web, send and receive e-mail--not just read books. The printed book is best for presenting lengthy text to the reader, so why try to reinvent a technology that has been around for thousands of years? Invent something new instead.

To be sure, e-book readers have some advantages over paperbound editions. First of all, you can store hundreds of books in a single device, whereas paper is pretty much limited to one copy per, well, copy. You can adjust the size of text on the fly. (For those of us with failing eyesight, this alone could justify the purchase of an -e-book reader.)

They are also much greener than traditional books. After all, it takes a lot more gasoline to ship a book across the country than it does to download it. Of course, e-books cost less, too, but don't expect publishers to pass much of the savings on to you anytime soon. Fundamentally, these latest e-book readers are digital devices acting like dead trees.

E-book readers primarily give you access to limited reading material. The Sony Reader takes you to its Connect service, where you can buy books. The Kindle takes you to the Amazon store. Both services let you upload unrestricted PDFs, but they don't make it easy.

Lord T touches on this with not only the control exerted by houses like Amazon but the errors too, e.g. Amazon deleting Orwell's 1984 from e-readers. The quoted article said:

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

Lord T commented:

The publishers etc. all insist on having absolute control and will insist that it is built into any platform their media is on. The Music and Film guys have exactly the same issue and it just goes on. You see I’m happy to buy a film, some music or a book but I get a bit miffed if it is cancelled or deleted even if I do get a refund from the publishers. Bearing in mind some people have bought DRM protected music and lost it all when the store closed down so getting a refund is a big step forward.

They need to accept that the world has moved on and people are looking at different things. I don’t want to buy a CD and not be able to play it in my car or on my computer because some rich music executive thinks I’m going to copy and sell it. Hell, I can get a free copy myself that will play anywhere if I want to. Thank you Mr Hacker.

Publishing online

I've had feedback about my own books, accessible from the sidebar and if that feedback had said, "Your books are cr-p, James," I'd have quoted it here. Doesn't bother me. But one correspondent made me think. She said that though they're presented nicely, who's going to sit at a computer screen for hours reading small text? She was going to eventually print it out and read it.

Speaking for myself, I come to your blog for a blogpost. I see your book, click into it and read the first two paragraphs, then skim down. I might read a bit more. If it looks good, I think I'll come back later. But I never do because I have a busy schedule and so it never happens. If your book was on my e-reader or in dead tree form, I might give it a go. But I wouldn't pay money for soimethig not recommended.

The ideal would be to transfer it across to my reading device and then curl up in bed and start reading your book properly.

So, if that's what I'd do, then that's possibly what you'd do and hence my books, firstly, will remain unread and secondly, are sure not going to make any money, which was never a real hope anyway.

Solution?

Who knows? E-books look closest but there's a large upfront cost and it drags you into that online publishing house interface. Dead tree books are nicer from a library or bookshop but there's a cost factor. Buy and return schemes have a hygiene aspect to it, as do libraries.