Comments on: Pass the Gestalt, Please

By: Musique Arabe

Musique Arabe — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 16:59:23 +0000

It’s commendable that you want to save not only on paper, but also on the fuel it takes to ship physical books.

The electronic version from M-H, NOT Amazon’s Kindle version, is identical in content to the printed version.

On the other hand, I was brought up on physical books, I enjoy the tactile quality of them, it’s much faster to browse with a physical book, and you can’t accidentally delete them

Cheers

By: Copyright, Ebooks and the Unpredictable Future | Digital Book World

[...] are now strenuously making the argument that ebooks are like paperbacks, a primary right, and they cannot create a publishing strategy for [...]

By: David Henry Sterry

David Henry Sterry — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:08:42 +0000

Very interesting POV, been studying this for a while, thru the lens of a working writer, hungry for more of the pie. But gestalting made me see it from a macrocosm, & I am rethinking the whole thing. Gracias, the Book Doctor

By: Martin Edic

Martin Edic — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:01:02 +0000

This entire discussion, though interesting, is based on trying to wedge an existing model onto an out-moded one. The real change here is not the means by which books are delivered- it is the fact that publishers now have to market directly to readers, something they have never done well and are very uncomfortable with. We don’t buy books based on who published them- just as music labels are not the reason we choose artists. We buy either because we have heard good things or because the title contains information we need and, in both cases, that referral comes from social networks. If an author understands this, there is no reason why they need a traditional publisher. Instead they could compensate a social marketer with a revenue share.
This entire conversation leaves out the costs of print, storage, delivery, returns and remaindering of print titles. Authors are compensated after these costs are factored in so they are not really getting the numbers you put out there. With a pure eBook strategy we need to rethink the relationship as a pure partnership between author and marketer (which is the only function of what used to be known as ‘publishers’). They pair up because the marketer believes the work is marketable and the author believes the marketer can promote their work.
Look around you- everyone I know has bought a reader or an iPad in the last few months or plan to. Books are toast, an anachronism like vinyl albums. This is the truth that the publishing world doesn’t want to acknowledge.

By: Howard

Howard — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 17:20:34 +0000

Cory I am just surmising from my own personal experience I know three people with Kindles. My work colleague who has had his for six months and I know he has only read one book on it because last month he got an iPad and has already read about 8 books on it. My elderly neighbour who enjoys it but has only bought three books, one of which I organised for her. Lastly my own mother – my sister bought it for her and she hasn’t even turned it on yet…. LOL

Not a scientific survey but imho demonstration that we can’t really surmise anything until we have some evidence.

By: Cory

Cory — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:10:09 +0000

Can’t we deduce what kind of people they are, though? Why would you buy a technology made solely for reading unless you were a keen reader? And if you bought a book on it, why would you then also buy the printed version of that book? I have a Sony e-reader and would not buy an e-book and the same book in printed form, except in rare circumstances (if it won the Booker and I wanted a 1st edition, for example.) I’m curious to know what you base your own conjecture about this market on?

By: Howard

Howard — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:10:08 +0000

Firstly we don’t have any idea what kind of people Kindle customers are or what their purchasing behaviour is. Secondly there is no evidence that eBook sales are cannibalising hard copy sales. What we do have is a lot of conjecture and lack of imagination among Publishers.

By: Cory

Cory — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:15:19 +0000

Aren’t most Kindle users traditional heavy book buyers, including many women in their forties and fifties – ie not a new market at all? For them surely e-books are replacing print books. it seems disingenuous to argue otherwise. What can a specialist e-book publisher possibly do better than a conventional publisher in creating an e-book for reading on the Kindle? How many of the e-books Amazon sells for Kindle have any special features at all? For every copy of an enhanced ebook sold to a young early adopter for his iphone, there are thousands of books being sold by Amazon for a reading experience identical to that of a conventional book. The Rosetta vs Random House judgement was in 2001, pre-Kindle, a lifetime ago in e-book terms. The judgement stated: ‘ In development is the ability to incorporate within the ebook audio, graphics, full-motion video, and internet hyperlinks related to the electronic text.’ and ‘Rosetta’s ebooks can only be read after they are downloaded into a computer that contains either Microsoft Reader, Adobe Acrobat Reader, or Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader software.’ The court foresaw e-books as becoming more and more complex and multimedia. They did not foresee a reader that mimicked the experience of reading a printed book so directly, and that cannibalised sales so directly. Wouldn’t the judgement have been in Random House’s favour if they had?

By: Alfons

Alfons — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:27:57 +0000

…and there we get to the crux of the issue: who has equity in the realization of profit potential? The publisher as risk taker, the author as the originator, or somewhere in between?

By: Evan

Evan — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:45:49 +0000

If book publishing agreements were set up as profit-sharing arrangements – yes, this would be an equitable approach… but they are not.

The publisher plays the role of the bank, R & D, promotions, distribution, warehousing (repository and platform development), and accounting. This arrangement has worked for some time as authors need guaranteed funding to be able to write books and publishers agree to the risk in order to be able to profit from that risk.

Somewhere along the line the debate has taken for granted that this is not about equality – if it was, we would be talking about zero advances and profit-sharing schemes.