Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneFancher
Common E-book sales are a fraction of even the worst distribution NY came up with. The only factor off-setting that differential is the direct sale that allows the bulk of the money to go directly to the author. If you like an author's work and buy second hand, you're directly undermining the author's ability to write more. That, to me, is self-defeating.
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Ah, but what if I don't know if I like the author's work?
The big purpose of secondhand books is, "Hey, I liked this; maybe you'll like it too--try it for free and find out." And ebooks are eroding that aspect of literature. The concept of "1purchase=1reader" has never been how books worked. Would never let them flourish.
Books got to be popular because they were read by many people after the buyer, not because the buyer convinced all their friends to go buy another new copy.
This *is* a problem with digital books, because ebooks lack a lot of the features that can make buying your own copy useful. You can't get them signed. You can't get the leatherbound special edition *or* the supersmall fits-in-your-pocket paperback. There's no new updated cover with a forward by Author's More Famous Friend. (Well. There can be updated covers, but the appeal for cover art in ebooks is much less. It's useful, but it doesn't get seen nearly as often.) There's no way to show your "ebook shelf" to your friends, so they can pick one to borrow. It's hard to put six people in a room reading ebooks, hard to have "library night with cheese and wine and light conversation." The social aspects of books (which were always a bit limited) are mostly removed from ebooks.
The ebook industry *desperately* needs to find a way around this. Maybe by having online discussion groups for books (where the entire text would be available, which means copyable). Book clubs where ebooks are exchanged by email, swapped around in a small group with an understanding that they won't be shared with anyone outside of the group. (These already exist. If they're not legitimized somehow, they'll continue to *not encourage sales* outside of the group, because the people involved can't legally talk about where they got their books.) Maybe transfer licenses that work a limited number of times (which, when exhausted, puts us back exactly where we are now, except that maybe people will be less prone to wanting to share if they know 5 other people have already read this one).
Any method of adding social aspects to ebooks is going to mean less direct sales, which is painful for authors who are counting every book sale. But those methods are going to be necessary, if books are going to take part in the digital age as a vital form of entertainment instead of a rarified hobby, similar to stamp collecting: sure, there are lots of afficionados, and even fanatics, but for the most part, they don't share it with their friends.
Me? I read over 100k words per week. Sometimes half a million words in a week. My budget for books isn't going to increase anytime soon. And the circular nature of reading means I read more of what I know I'll like--which means there are a dozen fanfic authors whose new works I pounce on, and hundreds of professional authors whose names I don't even know, because I don't have a chance to taste their works before buying, because none of my friends have sent me a link and said, "you *gotta* read THIS!"
People don't send each other links and say, "You *gotta* buy THIS!" Ebooks need to find a way around that problem.