Cheaper e-books will kill us, says publisher

[saoir]

Originally Posted by 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.

You said it simply and correctly.

The posts here that point out that converting takes "work" and "time" and "cost" are wholly self evident. No one that I can see on this form has claimed otherwise.

The point is that a) a similar process is already incurred when preparing for paper books that is at least as challenging and costly, and b) it is a one off cost that can be spread over the sales of the book. The inevitable conclusion being that the "preparation" phase for ebooks is no more expensive, and probably quite a bit less expensive, than that for paper books. And when we remove the multiple margins paid to distributors, retailers, storage and transport costs then it is a no brainer that e-books should be a fraction of the cost of paper books.

. . . . that is, of course, IF the profit of the publisher and author stay the same. IF the ebook is sold at the same or slightly less than the paper book . . . then it is clear and self evident that the publisher and author are making super profits. Considering that most authors, I understand, do not have contracts distinguishing between paper books and e-books, then it is the publisher who is creaming it in this phase of the development of the market.

However as I and others have suggested, I believe that if they continue to do so, they will spark a disintegration of the ebook market including a massive illegal sector that will take a decade or more to recover from.

As an aside - Last week I was at a work seminar in a city nearby and this topic came up. Three guys had bought the new Sony e-reader at Xmas, and all had abandoned them because they were angry at the cost of ebooks. One offered to sell his to me for 50 dollars. I declined as I am happy reading on my iPhone.

Saoir

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Steve 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,

Why do you get formatting errors?

For example a LaTeX file for a book not containing mathematical formulas or images will not have any formatting errors at all if it cleanly go through running latex on it.

To me it still seems that it is a problem with the source format or the process that causes these problems.

[Charbax]

Originally Posted by 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.

Google and Archive.org scans books at below $10 per book. Now they actually even have automated book scanning systems which automatically can flip pages for each scan.

Basic image scans of each page are perfectly usable for ebooks, you can get the image scans displayed on the ebook reader you can even zoom in to have less eventual border around the text so the fonts as displayed on the ebook reader are larger.

Then OCR can be achieved by Google and others and eventual spelling mistakes in the OCR can be corrected by all users combined using collaborative OCR correction systems once people use ebook readers that have textual input, touchscreens and are connected to the Internet.

Anyways, true cost of digitizing a book is peanuts.

[GeoffC]

A large volume of ebooks that have obvious errors in them will inevitably damage the ereader concept.

[cerement]

Originally Posted by tompe

Why do you get formatting errors?
For example a LaTeX file for a book not containing mathematical formulas or images will not have any formatting errors at all if it cleanly go through running latex on it.
To me it still seems that it is a problem with the source format or the process that causes these problems.

I think it's because most of the converters here are starting with Gutenberg texts (or archive.org texts or Google Books), stuff that has been OCRed, then proofed a couple of times, but not to any major extent. We're just adding another layer of proofing.

BUT on the other hand, we all agree that even to get their paper copies, publishers already have an electronic file that has been proofed and edited multiple times. They are not printing directly from Word, and (except for artisanal printers) they are not setting type for letterpress. The process is already electronic, the electronic file already exists.

I can understand publishers needing to charge for server space and bandwidth, but (even with the cost of moving from an existing electronic format to another) we are not seeing the justification for why ebooks should be selling for more than first-edition hardbound releases. I can see (and I am willing to pay) prices that range from 70 to 100% of a massmarket paperback edition for a multi-format ebook.

[Although, personally I would take 50% off the price I would be willing to pay if there was any DRM]

[pdurrant]

The most common problem I've seen is that most source documents are in inconsistently styled Microsoft Word documents. Getting from there to a clean HTML version takes a while.

Originally Posted by tompe

Why do you get formatting errors?

For example a LaTeX file for a book not containing mathematical formulas or images will not have any formatting errors at all if it cleanly go through running latex on it.

To me it still seems that it is a problem with the source format or the process that causes these problems.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

The most common problem I've seen is that most source documents are in inconsistently styled Microsoft Word documents. Getting from there to a clean HTML version takes a while.

Yes, but Steve Jordan has full contol of the source and he knows that he will transform it to different ebooks formats so in that case the source ought to be consistently formatted.

And in the best case it should not be a Word document at all since it is very unsuitable as a source format.

My point is that if you write in a suitable format (for example a simple text file with simple markup) you will for free get correct eBooks without much work.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by tompe

Yes, but Steve Jordan has full contol of the source and he knows that he will transform it to different ebooks formats so in that case the source ought to be consistently formatted...

My point is that if you write in a suitable format (for example a simple text file with simple markup) you will for free get correct eBooks without much work.

In theory, yes. In practice, you discover that different conversion engines want different formatting and display the final docs differently, and so you end up creating multiple versions of your document, whatever WP app you use, to get everything to come out as pretty as possible in every format.

If you have to essentially create differently-formatted copies, using an app like Word or InDesign that has strong style and formatting controls makes the job a lot easier than using a simple WP program with only basic tools.

I'm not saying that Word is the best app for the job... just that it is the most practical tool for me to use. Others' needs may vary.

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by cerement

I think it's because most of the converters here are starting with Gutenberg texts (or archive.org texts or Google Books), stuff that has been OCRed, then proofed a couple of times, but not to any major extent. We're just adding another layer of proofing.

The internet Archive text files at archive.org are not proofed. Nor are the text files derived from google books. The OCR from both leaves an awful lot to be desired. I have just spent all day cleaning one up.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

In theory, yes. In practice, you discover that different conversion engines want different formatting and display the final docs differently, and so you end up creating multiple versions of your document, whatever WP app you use, to get everything to come out as pretty as possible in every format.

But that is what you want to avoid. If I was setting up this for myself I would define a simple format. I would then write translators from this format to HTML or other formats that is suitable for each enginge that is used to transform to the final format.

And it would probably take me much less time than 24 hours to write these translator programs...

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by tompe

But that is what you want to avoid. If I was setting up this for myself I would define a simple format. I would then write translators from this format to HTML or other formats that is suitable for each enginge that is used to transform to the final format.

And it would probably take me much less time than 24 hours to write these translator programs...

You could do us all a big favor and write those translator programs, and make a fortune on them to boot. Except--wait! --people have been trying to do that (Calibre, et al.), and the process is still buggy and infuriating.

And that's without even getting into the special formatting that some writers--cough! cough!--like to use to portray situations like alien communication. Trying to get that to look right in ebook format is enough to drive you to drink.

Everything Steve said is completely consistent with my own experiences. It can take days to debug formatting problems, and even then you finally just throw up your hands and say, "Good enough!"

As for why people use Word, it's because, love it or hate it, it's the industry standard writing tool. Everyone can read it, and everyone knows how to use it, and it works well as a tool for composing, editing, and (simple) formatting. Few people are going to choose a writing tool based primarily on its suitability for making ebooks. Not until ebooks are a far bigger part of the market.

I don't think that's the problem, anyway. The problem is getting ebook formatting incorporated into the workflow for typesetting. That's coming, I think, but it's not there yet.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by tompe

But that is what you want to avoid. If I was setting up this for myself I would define a simple format. I would then write translators from this format to HTML or other formats that is suitable for each enginge that is used to transform to the final format.

And it would probably take me much less time than 24 hours to write these translator programs...

So: When are you going to write these programs and put 'em on the market for us authors to buy?

Yes, I said "buy"... if it would do what you say it would do, it would have plenty of takers...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Everything Steve said is completely consistent with my own experiences. It can take days to debug formatting problems, and even then you finally just throw up your hands and say, "Good enough!"

Frak, yes.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by starrigger

You could do us all a big favor and write those translator programs, and make a fortune on them to boot. Except--wait! --people have been trying to do that (Calibre, et al.), and the process is still buggy and infuriating.

And that's without even getting into the special formatting that some writers--cough! cough!--like to use to portray situations like alien communication. Trying to get that to look right in ebook format is enough to drive you to drink.

It is hard to do a general solution that fits alla authors. But it is probably easy to to one solution that fits one author that is motivated to get ot to work.

Calibre is not trying to do what I described. The important thing is that you use limited markup and you make sure that this limited markup is transformed to something that "renders" correctly using engines like Calibre. By following this limited markup during the writing most works is done then.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by tompe

It is hard to do a general solution that fits alla authors. But it is probably easy to to one solution that fits one author that is motivated to get ot to work.

Calibre is not trying to do what I described. The important thing is that you use limited markup and you make sure that this limited markup is transformed to something that "renders" correctly using engines like Calibre. By following this limited markup during the writing most works is done then.

But maybe that "limited markup" isn't what you want for your paper book. Maybe you want to make use of the options that today's technology gives us, in the look and feel of book text. (But which is, for the most part, not easy to replicate in an ebook.)