Quote:
Originally Posted by sabredog
Well I'll be!
That sort of attitude is going to sell you some books for certain. Glad to read what you posted. I wish the Luddites in the publishing industry had the same vision.
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Thanks, I hope so too on the sales!
As for Luddites, well, yes, that may be close to accurate. Or at least, not grasping Moore's Law and what exponential curves really mean. I've long studied the S-curve for ebook adoption (the S-curve is the "S" shaped curve that adoptions of new products tend to follow), and my curve-fitting of ebook sales data show they're on a path to overtake print sales and become the dominant format within a few years. (Print will remain, I'm sure, but more a niche. More so in some areas, e.g. e-readers are more cumbersome for reading textbooks where you need to flip back and forth a lot, but new ereaders will likely come to address that. For reading novels and other linear-reading books, ebooks appear likely to dominate, and fairly soon.) The curve fit has a really tight correlation coefficient, so it seems likely to happen.
The thing is that publishers and authors aren't math / computer science guys. (Which is my background, former CS professor.) There's also a psychological factor I've noticed. Some might grasp the idea, but are either fearful of it, or just like what they know (paper), and thus refuse to acknowledge the science behind it. (Pick any scientific / technology based change, and you tend to find a lot of resistance -- the earth being flat vs. round, earth orbiting the sun or vice versa, etc.) So it's understandable, and probably predictable, that the established players will ignore and fight change. I try to take a realistic view of things and plan for where the curve is heading. Plus there are just all these books on my shelf that I personally wish were ebooks!
There's also a business case for them, that with print the big publishers have a monopoly power (much lower cost printing and shipping than small publishers) which they lose when it comes to ebooks. So they're understandably afraid of something that levels the playing field and takes away their golden goose. My view is that it's vastly better for society to have all books available to read, not just the ones a small group has chosen (on the basis purely of profit, at that, not merit). Which is why I started ReAnimus Press, to help authors get their books available where people can read them. I love this job!
Changing subjects -- @croptop -- glad you found the coupon useful, and discovered Ben Bova. I really like his stuff. By way of background for those who haven't read his work, he's a six-time winner of the Hugo Award and many other awards, including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel of the Year (2006, for Titan) and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation. He is the former editor of Analog and Omni magazines, and the author of over a hundred books, both fiction and non-fiction. Bova has served as president of both Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. and the National Space Society. And a nice guy. I'm really pleased we've been able to publish a bunch of his books (and we have several more in the pipeline, so keep an eye out for them).