Ebook conversion slowing

[crossi]

A few years back nearly every day there were some backlist books that I had been waiting for converted to ebooks. I used to get a lot of emails from ereaderiq. Now this has slowed to a trickle. I haven't got an email from ereaderiq for quite a few months. It seems the ones left just aren't interested in converting so there may never be an ebook version unless I wanted to wait 70 years, assuming the book hadn't been long forgotten by everyone and lost forever.

[ElspethB]

I hear you. I've started working on converting some of my own pbooks because I've given up on being able to purchase them as ebooks. It takes me a while since I don't have a lot of time to devote to the project, but I've managed to produce a handful. I was happiest about my conversion of ...And Ladies of the Club since my hardcover edition was a massive 1200-page doorstop of a book. So much nicer to have it as an ebook!

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by crossi

A few years back nearly every day there were some backlist books that I had been waiting for converted to ebooks. I used to get a lot of emails from ereaderiq. Now this has slowed to a trickle. I haven't got an email from ereaderiq for quite a few months. It seems the ones left just aren't interested in converting so there may never be an ebook version unless I wanted to wait 70 years, assuming the book hadn't been long forgotten by everyone and lost forever.

You have a point. I think the last backlist book that I bought was Christopher Rowley's Battle Dragon's (i.e. Bazil Brokentail) series. Number 6 came out in January. Zelazny's Courts of Chaos came out in November. I'm kind of hard pressed past that. Maybe some of Feist's Riftwar books.

When I look at the holes in my collection, there are some specific works by a few well known writers such as Zelazny and Asimov, and some of the early works by mid list writers, but most seem to be slightly obscure orphaned works where the author is dead and whomever holds the copyright doesn't seem particularly interested if they aren't going to make bank (and most of these type books won't sell all that many). There certainly is a dog in the manger aspect to this situation given that many of those books are rapidly fading from memory. A lot of authors from the late 70's and early 80's who only published a handful of books.

[maddz]

Tor.com have been running a blog about forgotten women authors in SFF (which has been interesting as many of the authors featured I own in pbook). It started with women authors from the 70s and is now on the 80s. It may be worth suggesting adding in male authors as a separate blog.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by maddz

Tor.com have been running a blog about forgotten women authors in SFF (which has been interesting as many of the authors featured I own in pbook). It started with women authors from the 70s and is now on the 80s. It may be worth suggesting adding in male authors as a separate blog.

Yes, I've noticed that blog from their newsletter. A few times I went to buy books mentioned and the books were not available in ebook format.

[maddz]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Yes, I've noticed that blog from their newsletter. A few times I went to buy books mentioned and the books were not available in ebook format.

Which ties in with the slowing down of backlist conversions. I suspect the only way many of these titles will ever get converted is by scanning, OCR and proof-reading as they were either written on paper or nobody can access the electronic files anymore (either because of format drift or because no-one has hardware able to read the file anymore).

(My thesis is in that situation - it was written on an electronic typewriter and the digital file can’t be read anymore.) Even some early Word files I have problems with, and I’ve got to covert some ClarisWorks files from a friend’s father’s Performa (which is still usable - thank goodness - our PowerPCs went to the tip when we moved 3 years ago) and get them into a more modern format for an iMac to access.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by maddz

Which ties in with the slowing down of backlist conversions. I suspect the only way many of these titles will ever get converted is by scanning, OCR and proof-reading as they were either written on paper or nobody can access the electronic files anymore (either because of format drift or because no-one has hardware able to read the file anymore).

(My thesis is in that situation - it was written on an electronic typewriter and the digital file can’t be read anymore.) Even some early Word files I have problems with, and I’ve got to covert some ClarisWorks files from a friend’s father’s Performa (which is still usable - thank goodness - our PowerPCs went to the tip when we moved 3 years ago) and get them into a more modern format for an iMac to access.

Yep. Even by the mid 80's, PC's were not all that common. I'm not sure when the cut over was when most books were written on computers and yes, then you have the format drift.

It's kind of funny in that OCR hardware and software has improved tremendously, but I suspect for many of the backlist books still not converted, it would be hard to cost justify converting them, just from a profit point of view. Let's face it, you just aren't going to sell that many copies of works like da Cruz's The Ayes of Texas or Daniel Hood's Fanuilh series to list two slightly obscure titles that are on my to buy list if they ever hit ebooks. Or for something less obscure, Asimov's Black Widowers series.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Yep. Even by the mid 80's, PC's were not all that common. I'm not sure when the cut over was when most books were written on computers and yes, then you have the format drift.

It's kind of funny in that OCR hardware and software has improved tremendously, but I suspect for many of the backlist books still not converted, it would be hard to cost justify converting them, just from a profit point of view. Let's face it, you just aren't going to sell that many copies of works like da Cruz's The Ayes of Texas or Daniel Hood's Fanuilh series to list two slightly obscure titles that are on my to buy list if they ever hit ebooks. Or for something less obscure, Asimov's Black Widowers series.

Daniel Da Cruz's Republic of Texas Series is on my watch list too.
Apache

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Yep. Even by the mid 80's, PC's were not all that common. I'm not sure when the cut over was when most books were written on computers and yes, then you have the format drift.

It's kind of funny in that OCR hardware and software has improved tremendously, but I suspect for many of the backlist books still not converted, it would be hard to cost justify converting them, just from a profit point of view. Let's face it, you just aren't going to sell that many copies of works like da Cruz's The Ayes of Texas or Daniel Hood's Fanuilh series to list two slightly obscure titles that are on my to buy list if they ever hit ebooks. Or for something less obscure, Asimov's Black Widowers series.

The Fanuilh series is on mine. I own the paper books, but would like to have the series in electronic format.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

It's kind of funny in that OCR hardware and software has improved tremendously, but I suspect for many of the backlist books still not converted, it would be hard to cost justify converting them, just from a profit point of view. Let's face it, you just aren't going to sell that many copies ...

Then what is the justification for sitting on the copyright?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Then what is the justification for sitting on the copyright?

Because the law says they can and they don't have any particular interest in making the effort.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Because the law says they can and they don't have any particular interest in making the effort.

Then it seems to me that copyright should expire sooner. ("should" has nothing to do with how hard it is to make treaties better and how easy it is to make them worse.)

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Then what is the justification for sitting on the copyright?

Because many of them are still being sold in physical form?

[bgalbrecht]

From what I've read, the problem with Zelazny may be the aftermath of an unpleasant divorce and the literary estate going to the ex-wife. Open Road Media seems to be one of the few publishers actively acquiring the backlist of living and dead authors. My guess is that most authors and literary estates overvalue the market value of their works, and most publishers think the ROI is too low for the advances the copyright holders are asking for.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

From what I've read, the problem with Zelazny may be the aftermath of an unpleasant divorce and the literary estate going to the ex-wife. Open Road Media seems to be one of the few publishers actively acquiring the backlist of living and dead authors. My guess is that most authors and literary estates overvalue the market value of their works, and most publishers think the ROI is too low for the advances the copyright holders are asking for.

Yes, I've heard the same about the Zelazny books, though I believe that they were merely separated at the time of death which is why the estranged wife got the estate. As for the rest, that's basically what I said earlier in the thread. Some are orphans, meaning that the copyright holders may not even be aware they own the copyrights, others likely have little interest in seeing the work made available as ebooks since we are talking of sales in the thousands which means that they would barely recover their cost.