[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ASterling

Codex Group is Peter Hildick-Smith - we consulted with him when we started out and could work with him again if we decide to go that route/it seems right. He is extremely knowledgeable. He is a former Marketing VP for Del Rey and launched the natural product line for Quaker and his partner is a Wharton MBA with lots of additional marketing experience. He not only has experience, he performs ongoing analysis of the records that are available (granted, they are awful and incomplete). Volume-wise, e-books in general, are probably between 15 and 20% of the total book market. In this, I don't mean just trade publishing (where they are still about 25%), I mean all things put in book form - trade, educational, technical, religious, everything. Peter understands everything we say about marketing and agrees with us. Where we part with him is that he is all about refining marketing for current products and current audiences. That's great for the former Harlequin or any other well-recognized genre/type of book - not so good in a lot of other areas.

I'm not saying that they are not knowledgeable; I'm saying that none of the big eBook retailers "tell." Amazon doesn't publish figures, not really; B&N doesn't; Sony doesn't. Kobo doesn't. Apple's claims are hysterically funny to anyone in the biz. I don't think that SW does. So...who's left? How can they even come up with rough guesses? They have to pull sales figures from BIP or other locations, which MEANS, by and large, trade-pubbed books with ISBN's. There are millions of books on Amazon--and many, many, MANY, have no ISBNs. Ditto on B&N, Apple, etc. (And, what about Harlequin, speaking of? And their sales? From their own website?)

I showed y'all that homely PDF book for a reason. The actual text is the most-adopted of its type in North America (probably English-speaking world) in general. It is from what I call "BDSM" - Bedford/St. Martins - a subdivision of Macmillan. It probably ships a million units each semester. Obviously there is a big need for this book to be in electronic form and usable by students. A low-adopted, more specialized text with the same editor for Pearson ships 50,000 books per semester. Out of those numerous students who HAVE TO BUY THIS BOOK either new or used, a tremendous number would buy the e-book I got the "free trial" of, if it were even remotely usable. That is a vast amount of money and would bump up e-book sales hugely. This book cannot be used as intended in present flowable ePub form. New methods are needed if that technology or system is desired.

Now, do you understand what I am saying?

Yes, of course I understand. I'm not daft. I've ordered the book for free for 7 days, and I'll see what's what. I don't know what's inside it that is so onerous, (yet....) but my EDUCATED guess is, Macmillan went to Amazon. Amazon converted it for them. (that's not a guess, BTW). Amazon did what was essentially easiest--they put it into the PDF wrapper. Now, mind you: Amazon does this for FREE. McMillan has a stranglehold on the book--and all those tens of thousands of readers don't really have an option, but to put up with this crap quality, right? It ain't like they're going to defect to a book put out by somebody else--they have no choice.

So here's the question: what's MacMillan's incentive to pay someone like us a (relatively) small fortune to make the book properly? When Amazon will, without blinking, make it for free? Believe me, I've looked into educational book publishing. It's the last really untouched eBook frontier. But I've not found ANY way into any of these publishers, and no way into any of the 90-bajillion buying/bidding processes for the districts that BUY these books. All US school textbooks are APPROVED, let's not forget. Each one goes through years of writing, editing, typesetting, and then are approved by various and sundry schoolboards.

Hitch, if you could make such books work, you would probably have zero business complaints because you wouldn't be "white labeling" smaller projects. You could charge high prices for what an excellent book designer does for a print book and charge for updates on a continuous basis.

Yup, that would indeed be lovely.

It should go without saying this is a lot of work and very intensive work.

We've done books that are thousands of pages. We've done automotive parts catalogs, medical textbooks, workout books with 997 images (really)...I'll have to look at it, but...

I surveyed my students in a 33-member class today. Out of the group, 3 used Kindles - two used much older ones, and one had a Kindle Fire. This is *very* unusual. The two older ones were "hand me downs" from older relatives. So 10% of the group, average age 19 or 20, and all said they used the devices to read for pleasure, never for school. They all said they use paper textbooks for school.

Well...hard to know what's cause, versus what's effect, here.

In this case, the situation isn't that educators are stupid and stuck on the old paper books and don't "get it." The difference between pleasure reading of a novel or popular non-fiction book with few or no illustrations, and what happens with a textbook (note taking, questions, workbooks, etc) is vast.

Yes, of course it is. I would never think that they are remotely the same.

Thanks--I'll look at it and report back to y'all, as folks in the South say.

Hitch