Cheaper e-books will kill us, says publisher

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

I did leave a comment for Dana Stabenow at her blog, and was fortunate to receive an almost immediate reply. Her answer to my question about when digital becomes paper was this:
"2.Dana
Posted February 2, 2009 at 10:55 am | Permalink
I don’t know. No, I’m not being cute, I really don’t know. I send the book in as a Word .doc attached to an email and a year later a physical book shows up on my doorstep courtesy of UPS."

I invited her to check out this discussion.

There is work involved from going to a Word document to making it published. It's not as simple as going to the "File Menu" and then executing the "Convert to PDF" or "Convert to Mobi" command. Not that way. Anyone who has done page layout design or printing of any kind would tell you it's not that automatic and simple.

Typesetting (both for digital versions and print versions) need to occur. Then there are pagination issues, layout, formatting, indexing, etc. And then, issues with footnotes or endnotes. A lot more complicated than one may sometimes think.

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by starrigger

And yeah, I think the multiple formats are part of the problem. Newcomers to ebooks don't want to worry about formats, they want to read books. And they certainly don't want to have to think about converting formats. It's just one more stupid obstacle to people adopting the technology.

As a newcomer to ebooks, I would agree. I find the skills necessary to navigate the ebook world rather cumbersome and a bit of a turn off. I simply want to read and get on with it rather than tinker around endlessly in the world of ebook and ebook devices. That's where paper books outshine ebooks. With ebooks, I have to worry about:
• which reader can read what format,
• converting one format to the other if my reader doesn't read that format,
• how to circumvent DRM if I want to read my ebook on another device (I have two laptops, one iPod touch, and a digital reader on its way)

In a word, this is a whole bunch of, excuse me to say but "CRAP" that a reader shouldn't have to deal with. If I enjoyed tinkering with technology like so, I'd be a computer programmer or whatnot.

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by tompe

If the non-fiction book is properly marked up in for example LaTeX is should be relatively easy to have programs that automatically produce the different versions.

I suspect that the difference in work between paper and ebooks is because nobody has abstracted the tasks so they become common and can be automatically translated to the specific output format.

I mean SGML was invented to solve this problem and it is surprising that SGML or similar approaches are not used. Or it is not surprising since if you only produce one format (paper) there are no profit in introducing a more complex system. But with the demand for many different versions the situation is different.

Not every author uses LaTeX. I'm an anthropologist and I don't use it though I generally know what it is. Sorry to say but for my scholarly needs, I use Word and Endnotes. Endnotes is a citation reference program. From the scholar's/author's point of view, when we're writing we're not interested in thinking about what additional technology we can use to make the work of the book publisher easier. We're dealing with the content of the matter (the reason for the text) which by itself is difficult enough as it is.

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

I don't really agree.
If you already need to do this for a P book, it also needs to be done for an ebook.
Even with a pbook there exists an electronic version, that in itself is (supposed to be) complete.
Creating an ebook from there only is a matter of 30-60 minutes.
My record stays at creating 5 ebooks per hour in LRF.

Since LRF is very limited in possibilities (Title,subtitle, Italic, and Bold text, optional picture here or there), it won't take lots of time to create a conversion.
Most of the time one has a standard set of settings one uses to create a book anyways.

We're forgetting the medium matters. Paper medium and digital medium differ. And within digital medium there are differences too!

Put it this way: do you remember when the internet became popular? This was around the late-1990s. At that time, websites were pretty ugly and designed inefficiently. In fact, some websites were merely one long page of text. At that time, designers (or maybe they weren't designers) of webpages were learning how to deal with the medium but with no experience yet, treated webpages as if they were just like paper documents. Nope, doesn't work that way. Yes you get the text on the website but it's inefficiently designed and ends up being a turn off for most people and inconvenient to navigate.

Paper medium has its intricacies (and conventions) that needs to be dealt with if you want the reader to read and not be hassled by inefficient design. Likewise, the same goes for digital or ebook device reader medium. Just because it's electronic does not mean it has no materiality. Electronic medium has its material limits because we are reading the electronic things on physical devices.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern

Not every author uses LaTeX. I'm an anthropologist and I don't use it though I generally know what it is. Sorry to say but for my scholarly needs, I use Word and Endnotes. Endnotes is a citation reference program. From the scholar's/author's point of view, when we're writing we're not interested in thinking about what additional technology we can use to make the work of the book publisher easier. We're dealing with the content of the matter (the reason for the text) which by itself is difficult enough as it is.

This is kind of funny since the argument for LaTeX in academic works is that you want to focus on the content and if you use more primitive tools like Word you will spend more time on non-content tasks such as formatting or getting the paper consistent.

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by starrigger

So don't make assumptions about how easy it is to correct errors in ebooks just because they're electronic. Because it ain't.

It should be, you'd think. But it just isn't.

Well said, well said! There are a lot of contingent factors here meaning it's not simple to see what connections there are between one node of the publishing chain to the next node but there are multiple connections that affect other connections etc.

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by BuddyBoy

Don't forget 7. Share of overhead.

I remember now why I try to stay out of these discussions. I hope after this one winds down I can stay away for another year or two.
[...]
Ergo, the main cost savings for ebooks, when produced in concert with pbooks, is the cost of printing and distribution which amounts to less than $1-2 per hardcover.

Ebooks are often at least $1-2 less than hardcovers.

Therefore, ebooks are not overpriced.

I don't know whether ebooks are overpriced or not but one fallacy I see being made (not by you, but by folks who say ebook publication is simple) is that those making that argument are often oversimplifying the process of publication and distribution of which no one company has control over. But, many like to imagine there is one bad publisher company or one bad publishing industry and they should change whereas it's always much more complicated than that.

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by tompe

This is kind of funny since the argument for LaTeX in academic works is that you want to focus on the content and if you use more primitive tools like Word you will spend more time on non-content tasks such as formatting or getting the paper consistent.

Well, many scholars in the humanities and social sciences do not use LaTeX. I think those in the sciences and engineering often do and the harder sciences in the social sciences do.

For those of us scholars who mainly deal with textual material, Word is what is most often used. As an anthropologist, I don't need to worry about illustrations, equations, tables and so forth generally. It's text, text, text all the way. And then endnotes.

I think the publisher has a lot more work to do in this case because they'll be the ones doing the formatting. As I understand in the sciences, when you submit a journal article, everything must be properly formatted and so forth. Not the case for us cultural anthropologists. We only need to worry about having the text there (aside from simple things like paragraph indentations), correct endnotes, and of course correction citation format. After that, it's the publisher who worries about the formatting.

By the way, this also goes to show that there isn't just one monolithic publishing industry. Even within the publish industry itself, there are different conventions. In the sciences the rules for journal article submission are different than in the humanities and the social sciences etc.

[ssaxt0]

I disagree that eBooks are not overpriced as someone earlier stated and if this is the case, why did I not get an explanations from any of the publishers even though I was told that I would get a response with 48 hours. Only Sony responded when I asked about their prices but they stated that was the price they got from Simon & Schuster(S&S. They never responded at all. Explain how a 7.99 paperback is 9.99 for an eBook. That to me cannot be explained. I work in IT and I know that there are much in the way of scanning and conversion software out there.

When I was looking for a conversion software for eReader to pdf, I found that the vendor for that software had publishing software so the software is out there. As an It professional, I know that there are costs associated with purchasing these software tools but again, I do not see this increasing the price of eBooks. What I see as the most difficult aspect of hosting eBook purchases is the download process and payment process. I would love to see a side by side comparison of costs to publish an eBook versus a paperback/hard cover books.

Another concern I have is that with these prices, you will see a lot more unauthorized publications of paperbacks by people scanning them onto computer and posting them on the Internet. I was looking for eBooks from Eric Van Lustbader who has written many books but people will know him for some of the new Bourne books. Well, when I plugged him into Google.com, I got a lot of torrent sites offering hundreds of books with authors starting with the letter V. The pricing differences will just promote this type of activity from others.

[EowynCarter]

Well, my main problem with E-books are DRM, rather than price.
Luckily, mobi DRM can be striped off easily. The fist thing I do is to get the drm off, so i don't have to re-download my collection when i re-install windows, or change my E-reader or whatever else might happens.
Or worse, find myself with noting at all when the website closes.

Music, movies, E-books, all the same debate. When will the publishers stop treating their customers like thieves, and just let them enjoy what they paid for ?

[Lemurion]

A big part of it is that while DRM-free ebooks are realatively cheap to make - you create one file per format and then copy it as needed - the same is not true of DRM ebooks.

Regardless of the DRM scheme, every customer requires a unique version of a DRM ebook. That one fact removes a lot of the cost advantage of going electronic. Then there are the costs associated with the DRM - DRM servers and licenses aren't free.

There's no reason DRM-free ebooks can't be no more expensive than standard paperbacks. Sticking to DRM could be one reason some publishers think they can't afford to lower the prices.

[dmikov]

Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern

There is work involved from going to a Word document to making it published. It's not as simple as going to the "File Menu" and then executing the "Convert to PDF" or "Convert to Mobi" command. Not that way. Anyone who has done page layout design or printing of any kind would tell you it's not that automatic and simple.

Typesetting (both for digital versions and print versions) need to occur. Then there are pagination issues, layout, formatting, indexing, etc. And then, issues with footnotes or endnotes. A lot more complicated than one may sometimes think.

It is not as simple as pushing button, but it is not prohibitively hard, costly or lengthy. The testament to which is the 10.000 book library right here on mobile read. Cost you nothing does it?
It takes me around 45 min to format the book I need in FB2 for archiving and then in LRF for reading. It does not include proofreading, but it does include chapter detection, epigraph, formatting, toc, pagination etc.

[Sonist]

I agree that e-books take time to make right.

And they will probably take as long as paper books to design, once e-readers are more advanced and support richer design features.

But, the cost of professional designing, illustrating, proofreading and otherwise preparing an e-book for publication, pale compared to the costs of printing, distribution and storage of paper books.

Thus, e-books should be cheaper.

If the publishing industry tries to gouge the market, they'll just lose sales to piracy. The more they gouge, the more sales they'll lose. Simple as that.

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by dmikov

It is not as simple as pushing button, but it is not prohibitively hard, costly or lengthy. The testament to which is the 10.000 book library right here on mobile read. Cost you nothing does it?
It takes me around 45 min to format the book I need in FB2 for archiving and then in LRF for reading. It does not include proofreading, but it does include chapter detection, epigraph, formatting, toc, pagination etc.

I find that some books can be converted relatively quickly. Others take days, even weeks. It depends on the quality of the source file.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

When I convert one of my own books, knowing and working with my own source material, doing the work myself, I still find it takes most of a 24-hour day to do all the work properly. Most of this is eaten up in page-by-page checking for formatting errors at each stage, compounded by the fact that I am creating 6 different formats of one book, each requiring a different set of steps to accomplish, and source files customized for each one to start with.

Unfortunately, I rushed The Lens through production and missed a lot of simple errors and typos, meaning I am now doing it all again. Yes, it's a pain, and worth the trouble only to the extent that you care about giving your consumers a quality product. (In fact, I'll be sending Revision 1 out to everyone who's already bought the original, so they'll have the clean copy. Get a print publisher to do that!) In hindsight, I should have waited until after Read an E-Book week was over to do a proper final check on the material before conversion.