Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
Point taken, especially with ebooks now. I mean from what I understand with traditional publishing the author got a certain amount of the $ for their work but it was limited by how widely published the work could be in paper (with translations as well) but if you look at markets like Amazon you get a higher percentage of the $ and a lot more people can get a given book a lot faster than any paper book could be distributed since it isn't necessary to print the books out on paper or transport them etc. Paper is limited by the speed of the vehicle transporting the books but ebooks are only limited by the speed at which information can be transmitted over a modem connection.
|
Agreed.
Ebooks are a major disruption in distribution efficiency.
In that respect, the move from pulps to paperback was a step backwards because pulps were distributed via newspaper and magazine channels that were much faster than book channels. That remains true today. And it is an under-appreciated advantage of digital: the time to bring a title to market is much shorter. A tradpub book typically takes about two years to reach the market after acceptance whereas small digital publishers can bring the title to market within weeks or even days. (Pulps worked on a 60-90 day cycle much like comics do today.)
Another under-appreciated advantage (for readers and authors, anyway) is the freedom from the page count restrictions of pbooks. Short stories can come to market individually, long narratives don't need to be restructured and either padded or broken up into series to reach market. A 30k word novella and a 200k word mega novel are both equally easy to distribute. Over time I think this will be defining even in markets that today are hostile to digital.
Ebooks are impacting the entire supply chain in different ways for each segment. And it is revitalizing/boosting a lot of niches ranging from short fiction to entire genres and subgenres some of which have minimal market access via print.