Ebook or Pbook?

[flipreads]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Or maybe print on demand (POD) will rise. I see a bright temporary future for that technology. Why have a book store, even for physical books, when a kiosk will do?

Because it's expensive, both for the end-user and the investor?

The benefits of offset printing is that it's significantly cheaper to print the book than if you do it via print-on-demand.

And print-on-demand printers are ridiculously expensive. There's no POD in my country, for example, save for the lone Espresso Book Machine from the Asian Development Bank (which makes it the only one in Southeast Asia if I'm not mistaken).

[flipreads]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Lest we forget, there is one piece of technology, capable of reading ebooks, that is fast on the rise even in developing countries: Cellphones.

I'm not saying things aren't harder in developing countries; just that technology manages to reach further into the poorest nations, becoming easier to get and maintain as it scales down and becomes less expensive. I daresay keeping a cellphone with ebooks on it would be easier than keeping an expensive POD printer running.

Oh, about the comment about print being backwards-compatible: How old is your copy of Macbeth? Print books of old stories are around because they are reprinted. And some of the oldest stories couldn't be read in their original manuscripts by the average reader today, because of the differences in old languages and letters/spellings. Digital texts are much more easily updated with changes in language, spelling and translation.

1) Mobile phones are more common in developing countries but that does not necessarily translate to using it for reading eBooks.

It's more conducive in some countries depending on the language--Japan and China's language for example uses ideograms so they require less screen space, explaining the proliferation of the cellphone novel in those territories--but doesn't automatically translate to all cultures.

2) Print is actually quite sturdy. The problem with electronic text is support of format. Most people don't have computers that can read floppy disks for example. Support for old file types will be the next problem. Neither .mobi nor .epub were the first eBook formats. That they're currently what's widely in use is contrived (Mobi due to Amazon pushing the format, ePub by the IDPF). And even then, those formats continue to evolve and change. (The Kindle 8 format for example won't necessarily be supported by non-Kindle Fire readers and there are differences between ePub 3 vs. ePub 2.)

A good print book will reasonably last a few decades. How long has .Lit supported?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I don't know what sort of music you like, but all the bands I still follow release vinyl and it's the preferred format for just about everyone I know. I don't really expect that to change until we're all dead. Same goes for books. It's not a nostalgia thing either, vinyl/paper are the better format so neither will die out until a new generation grows up without ever experiencing them. Digital versions are just a compromise between quality and convenience.

I agree that because of incredibly stupid decisions by record companies, CD sound quality isn't as good as it should be. By wanting to make the CD as 'loud' as possible, they are often causing nasty clipping and distortion.

Technical details of vinyl records prevent them from doing this, and it doesn't surprise me that in some instances the vinyl will have a better sound.

And apparently 2011 saw the strongest sales of vinyl since 1991, with about 250,000 vinyl albums sold in the UK.

Compared to 86 million CD albums and 26 million album downloads.

0.2% of the market is dead. It doesn't have to stop being produced to be dead as a mass format. There are still people who produce scrolls on parchment.

[EDIT: adding some on-topic content]
I don't expect paper books to die as quickly as vinyl, but arguing that vinyl isn't dead, and so paper books won't die either, is a non-starter.

[Justin Nemo]

Sorry, the music department is this way!

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I agree that because of incredibly stupid decisions by record companies, CD sound quality isn't as good as it should be. By wanting to make the CD as 'loud' as possible, they are often causing nasty clipping and distortion.

Technical details of vinyl records prevent them from doing this, and it doesn't surprise me that in some instances the vinyl will have a better sound.

And apparently 2011 saw the strongest sales of vinyl since 1991, with about 250,000 vinyl albums sold in the UK.

Compared to 86 million CD albums and 26 million album downloads.

0.2% of the market is dead. It doesn't have to stop being produced to be dead as a mass format. There are still people who produce scrolls on parchment.

[EDIT: adding some on-topic content]
I don't expect paper books to die as quickly as vinyl, but arguing that vinyl isn't dead, and so paper books won't die either, is a non-starter.

In your music sales, vinyl would be the hardbacks bought by people who want the best quality, CD would be paperbacks bought by the mass market, and mp3 would be ebooks bought by people who value convenience more than anything else. So for all the physical items to die out, it would take a shift in thinking towards convenience becoming more important than all other considerations. That will take a generation.

The situation with books is somewhat different to music, because the publishers aren't really pushing them as much as the music publishers pushed CD (and later mp3) to get people to re-buy their collection. If anything, delayed ebook releases and pricing them at the same level as a real book will push back mainstream adoption.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I agree that because of incredibly stupid decisions by record companies, CD sound quality isn't as good as it should be. By wanting to make the CD as 'loud' as possible, they are often causing nasty clipping and distortion.

I think you guys need to listen to better music.

[Justin Nemo]

I think you guys are

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

I think you guys are

No!

Originally Posted by flipreads

1) Mobile phones are more common in developing countries but that does not necessarily translate to using it for reading eBooks.

The fact that they are not presently being used to read ebooks doesn't mean they can't be used to read ebooks. I read ebooks on a PDA before there were smartphones, and long before there were dedicated readers. Japan already has a large segment of the public that reads ebooks on phones.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

I think you guys are

Sorry.

Going back to your original question, I think that for nearly all authors there's currently something very different in feeling between holding a printed copy of your work vs an ebook on an eReader.

So although I don't see paper remaining part of the mass book market, it may well be that there will remain a small market for high-quality very short runs, say less than 25 copies.

[Justin Nemo]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Going back to your original question, I think that for nearly all authors there's currently something very different in feeling between holding a printed copy of your work vs an ebook on an eReader.

So although I don't see paper remaining part of the mass book market, it may well be that there will remain a small market for high-quality very short runs, say less than 25 copies.

I've had this conversation with a dear friend of mine. She says she could never have a Kindle because she likes to feel the paper in her two hands as she turns the pages. (I think it's more to do with getting off on the musty smell of old books myself). Now I have a Kindle in a nice little leather case and to me that is like holding a book. It's a lot easier in many ways and my father who has arthritis found it really hard to hold paper books.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

I've had this conversation with a dear friend of mine. She says she could never have a Kindle because she likes to feel the paper in her two hands as she turns the pages. (I think it's more to do with getting off on the musty smell of old books myself). Now I have a Kindle in a nice little leather case and to me that is like holding a book. It's a lot easier in many ways and my father who has arthritis found it really hard to hold paper books.

Here you're talking about the reader experience. Nearly all those readers who say they "could never have a Kindle" because they like "to feel the paper" have never seriously used a recent eReader. I think that the vast majority (80%+) of these people will move to an eReader over the next decade, because (IMO) eReaders even now provide a better reading experience, and that will only improve with better screens over the next few years.

I was talking about authors. Current authors work on computers and with electronic text all the time. Getting a proof back as an eBook isn't really very different from the text they send off. There's little sense of actual publication with an ebook. But a printed and bound hard copy? There's a solid sign of publication. And it wouldn't surprise me if it continued to be so, even though only in very, very short runs.

[Penforhire]

Steve, my copy of MacBeth is over thirty years old (late 1970's vintage, this set -- http://www.amazon.com/The-Annotated-...917401&sr=1-18 )

That still predates ebooks significantly. I'm just seeing too much faith in a media and format that has ALREADY proven to be shifting radically over less than 20 years. Don't paint me a Luddite. I'm an early adopter. But how can such predictions carry any weight for something in its infancy?

[QuantumIguana]

I don't think that CD and Vinyl make a great analogy from e-books vs. paper books. Both CD and vinyl offer pretty much the same experience, the listener might not even know whether they are listening to a CD or a vinyl record. The reader does know if they are reading an e-book or a paper book. The difference is much more tangible than it is with CD and Vinyl. CD and MP3 might be a better analogy. You can download MP3s, but CDs stick around because it is a convenient backup. I like being able to rip the songs and put the CD on the shelf as a backup.

I think e-books will dominate the market, but paper books will still retain a significant share of the market. Paper books will remain useful when you don't want to hand everyone an e-reader. Paper books for young children will probably remain a viable market. Paper books in prisons make a lot of sense. And bibles and hymnals will probably keep the printing presses running for a long time.

[Muckraker]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

That still predates ebooks significantly. I'm just seeing too much faith in a media and format that has ALREADY proven to be shifting radically over less than 20 years. Don't paint me a Luddite. I'm an early adopter. But how can such predictions carry any weight for something in its infancy?

Are you saying that the medium/format for eBooks has changed as in floppy disks, usb sticks, etc? Or do you mean Word 98, Word XP, Word 2010, etc?

Regardless of what it's stored on and the program it was created with, digital text is not going anywhere. If I wanted to, I could use emulators and converters to access stuff I wrote on the Commodore 64.

I can see what you're saying if you have a box of floppies and that's where all your writing is stored but I don't think anyone is crazy enough to rely on a box of floppies. That's like keeping your only-copy manuscripts stacked next to the fireplace. Floppies are pretty much the only semi-complicated thing I can think of regarding digital text. But I can assure you, no sane writer today is using floppies. And even if they were, functional floppies still have accessible data.

The amazing thing about digital text is that, barring a major world catastrophe (which would probably ruin a lot of paper books too), it is going to be around as long as an entity is around to read it. The posts I'm writing right now, and Youtube videos of babies laughing at cats playing the piano, are about as close to eternity as humans can get.

My purpose as a publisher is actually to save rare works that, due to copyright entrapment, are in real danger of becoming extinct. If a book has a low print run, people forget it was ever written, and it was not written before 1923 there is a reasonable chance it will disappear when the last physical copies get recycled. Sure, you can always find a print copy of Othello. But then try your hand at finding a book nobody's ever heard of.

The long-term viability of digital data is indisputable.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

According to Gary Frost, the University of Iowa's book conservation specialist, “The pbook (the 'physical book' as opposed to the ebook) will eventually become an object of curiosity to be looked at in a glass case. “ What a sobering thought.

We've been there before. One king of France was considered wealthy because he had a large library ( some 24 Volumes) and in more recent past centuries (even with pbooks becoming cheaper due to Gutenberg's work on the printing press) a book collection was a status symbol. Just having a bookcase or five with books on it was just as impressive as having an automobile was. Never mind that often said collection wasn't read. I remember in fact hearing of someone buying a collection of books some 1 or 2 centuries old at an estate sale and finding that many of them had pages that were still uncut (they'd never been read).