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Dear Book Industry:
We, the readers, are trying to SAVE you. We love books. We want to read lots of them. And we are willing to pay for them. But please listen to us:
Fair prices. Open formats. No DRM.
And in return, we will give you lots and lots of money.
Let me give you an example:
On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers.
This book has been optioned to be the basis for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Perhaps you've heard of that series...you know, Johnny Depp, pointy hats, zombies and sea monsters. Made about a billion dollars.
Now, when it was announced that the new Pirates movie would be based on this book, it is a good bet that even a tiny percentage of the billion or so Pirates fans might be interested in reading the book. I sure know I was.
So off to Amazon I go. Hm. Used paperback, $14.35 plus shipping. No new version available.
So, I can pay nearly 20 dollars for a second-hand paperback, of which you, the author and publisher get nothing.
Too bad there isn't, say, a $5 ebook for me to latch onto. Why, if that were available, I would buy it. Today. Right this minute.
You, author and publisher, would get to split $3.50 (based on the 70% Amazon revenue split) while nicely avoiding printing two copies for every copy sold (since most sell-throughs are below 50%), as well as shipping, warehousing and returns costs.
But instead, you get nothing.
And after buying the book, if I thought it was as cool as it sounds, I would tell a lot of my friends and you know what? A lot of them might go out and buy it right away, too.
But no, you sit and fret about the future, wondering what to do, while ignoring the piles of money your customers would like to push into your hands if only you'd listen to them.
You see, that's the difference between printed books and ebooks:
Printed books have a very limited shelf life. The majority of books get a couple of months to make it before they disappear off shelves. If a reader misses out during the month when it is actually available on store shelves, odds are they will never hear about this great book they missed and never buy it. And even if they somehow hear about the book later and decide to buy it later, the publisher gets nothing because they've let the book go out of print...because it was a failure in the initial month of its release.
But ebooks can be an eternal revenue stream. Ebooks never need to go out of print. They can be sold directly by publishers and authors to readers for not just months, but years or decades. And because any reader can instantly get a copy affordably, if they find a book they like, they'll tell their friends: Word of mouth can spread so that lots of other people go out and buy that same book directly from you instead of hunting in second-hand book stores and yard sales.
Don't forget that the film version of The Wizard of Oz was considered a failure when it was released. It was only after 50 years of being rebroadcast every year on network television did it come to be recognized as the beloved and very profitable classic that it is today.
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