What are eBooks?

[DiapDealer]

Mistakes in books used to make them more valuable.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Baen is a tiny company, working in a small corner of a small market.
They put out maybe 50-60 new titles a year.
The randy penguin puts out well over 15,000 titles a year.

Baen is the very definition of outlier, both for readers and authors. They don't even operate out of NYC or London.

I would hardly set them up as an example of what tradpub *is* but I would (and do) hold them up as an example of what tradpub *should* be.

Penguin Random House currently has 94 imprints (and some of the imprints have imprints) located throughout the US. Many of them are very small and specialized (preschool, literary, non-fiction, travel guides, etc) but I would say they are all considered traditional. Size doesn't seem to matter in that sense.

Baen, AFAIK, do not offer advances and their royalties are not particularly generous. That doesn't sound very attractive to authors either.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Baen, AFAIK, do not offer advances and their royalties are not particularly generous. That doesn't sound very attractive to authors either.

But it's demonstrable that Baen authors are not switching in droves to self-publishing, despite being free to do so, and that their authors do tend to stay with them for many years. Whatever it is that Baen are doing, their authors appear to be happy with them.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

My favorite goofy mistake from any book (trad- or self-pubbed) was the following sentence:

"The sound of gunfire lit the afternoon sky as they prepared to leave."

Tried to read that book (trad-pubbed, btw) several different times, but could never get past that sentence.

Sonoluminescence

To be fair, it's a fantasy book, flying sailboats powered by windspirits, sound may make pretty lights when combined with elementals

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Sonoluminescence

Synesthesia?

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Synesthesia?

Nah, tastes purple to me.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Baen, AFAIK, do not offer advances and their royalties are not particularly generous. That doesn't sound very attractive to authors either.

Baen do offer advances, but not huge advances. I beleive their royalty payments are about the same as the big publishers, or better. They're certainly not like some romance publishers that (allegedly) create shell companies to reduce royalty payments to authors by licensing out publication rights.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Baen do offer advances, but not huge advances. I beleive their royalty payments are about the same as the big publishers, or better. They're certainly not like some romance publishers that (allegedly) create shell companies to reduce royalty payments to authors by licensing out publication rights.

One Baen author told me otherwise. Perhaps, each contract is different.

I do remember hearing just prior to when Baen started selling at Amazon murmurings that several long time authors weren't happy and that led to a few changes. Some authors have pulled their books from Baen's website.

In any case, your comment describes a traditional publisher.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Sonoluminescence

To be fair, it's a fantasy book, flying sailboats powered by windspirits, sound may make pretty lights when combined with elementals

So did you recognize it from memory, or did you have to do some searching?

I'd heard the synesthesia excuse before, but wasn't buying it. The author's short stories had always amused and interested me prior to his first novel, but I never saw any evidence of a desire to engage in experimentally "clever" prose of that nature. I'm fairly certain it was just a brain-fart that the proofers did not pick up on.

Maybe "Gunfire lit up" and then a later revision to the "sound of gunfire" without following through on the rest of the sentence. Probably not fair of me to let it ruin the book for me, but I am what I am and it was deal-breaker for me (though some awkward POV switches within action scenes probably didn't help either).

[fjtorres]

The UK Society of authors has something to say about dealing with tradpubs:
http://www.societyofauthors.org/soa-...-writers-group

Solomon noted that legislation is needed to protect creators, who suffer from a power imbalance when negotiating with publishers:

Authors are not in a strong negotiating position. Publishers are often large multinationals while authors typically work alone. Especially at the start of their careers they may have little or no advice and are thrilled to be offered publishing contracts. Creators frequently need to negotiate with monopolies or with dominant players in highly specialised markets, such as scientific publishers. Individual creators are therefore at an inherent disadvantage when negotiating the terms of their contracts.

Philip Pullman, President of the Society of Authors, backed the call, saying:
Authors often work in a solitary way, and our main task is very different from negotiating contracts and rights. It's not always easy to see our way through the thickets of legal language that grow so vigorously around the commercial exploitation of our work, nor to know how our own position with regard to our rights compares with others. When a paper like the EU Study shows how much worse the position of authors is in the UK than in many other countries, we can only welcome it strongly, and urge publishers to comply with its recommendations. The essential point is that the balance of fairness has tilted the wrong way, and it's often not only the work that's being exploited - its creators are too. It's time for that to stop, and for authors to be rewarded here as justly as they are elsewhere.

Tradpub may not be down to the level of child labor and sweatshops but neither are they doing their captives any favors.

Do note that a big bone of contention is rights squatting and rights reversion.

Again, the issue isn't one small publisher (or ten) but the "industry standard" contract the majority of authors are stuck with on "take it or leave it" terms. In the olden days, they had no choice.

Now they do, mostly thanks to ebooks.
That needs to be celebrated not denigrated.

More books for readers, more power to authors.
This is bad?

[issybird]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Probably not fair of me to let it ruin the book for me, but I am what I am and it was deal-breaker for me.

I always remember a deal-breaker for me. In the first few pages of a book, the author described sheep's bellies as "swelling with incipient pregnancy." I was halted in my tracks. What is an incipient pregnancy and why would a belly swell with it? I couldn't get past it.

To be fair, it was not my kind of book, not at all, and I was just trying it out because it had been highly recommended to me. I wasn't looking for a reason to abandon it, but I certainly took this as evidence that it would not go well. Also to be fair, this was a hugely popular author whose books have sold in the several millions and it shouldn't have had that kind of error.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

So did you recognize it from memory, or did you have to do some searching?

Searching. Ha, I assure you that my memory is completely whatsit, tip of my tongue

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I'd heard the synesthesia excuse before, but wasn't buying it. The author's short stories had always amused and interested me prior to his first novel, but I never saw any evidence of a desire to engage in experimentally "clever" prose of that nature. I'm fairly certain it was just a brain-fart that the proofers did not pick up on.

Not synesthesia. Sonoluminescence actually is light caused by sound waves (Well, you need bubbles in a liguid, but flying sailships so why not )
http://acoustics-research.physics.uc...oluminescence/

Yep, I reckon it was a dodgy edit as well.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by issybird

I always remember a deal-breaker for me. In the first few pages of a book, the author described sheep's bellies as "swelling with incipient pregnancy." I was halted in my tracks. What is an incipient pregnancy and why would a belly swell with it? I couldn't get past it.

To be fair, it was not my kind of book, not at all, and I was just trying it out because it had been highly recommended to me. I wasn't looking for a reason to abandon it, but I certainly took this as evidence that it would not go well. Also to be fair, this was a hugely popular author whose books have sold in the several millions and it shouldn't have had that kind of error.

Since the word means begin or start to develop, how does one start to develop a pregnancy. Wait never mind, I gave myself the giggles.

[Cinisajoy]

The funniest one I ever read was "the herd of staffs at the hotel greeted me happily (or some other strange adverb.)

[Catlady]

I remember a book in which a character was "squatting on his hunches" before a campfire.