Quote:
Originally Posted by Justin Nemo
Could you clarify that for me?
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I'll preface by saying I'm a one-stop-shop and probably not representative of most independent publishers.
When I publish for print a good chunk of my time is spent on typesetting and layout. These typically play no role in eBook publishing (although I did spend a couple weeks on ebook typesetting for a book of poetry). Cover design and creation also require more work for print as you will be doing a print-quality front/back/spine.
That being said, I've also had to acquire significant coding skill to make my eBooks function the way I want--especially for Kindle. But as a former blank-slate person, self-taught in the skills required to publish a book in both eBook and print format, I can say the print side required a lot more of me than the eBook side.
eBooks will clearly replace printed material in time, though. There is absolutely no feature of a print book that an eBook cannot do better and there is no way print books can replicate the multitudes of features offered by digital content. It's no competition.
New books will eventually be a rarity but I suspect that print publishing will still always exist through Print-on-Demand offerings. The days of monster print-runs
are numbered though.