Is the e-book threatening the future of our literary culture?

[Colt]

I've never been able to figure out this seemingly recent movement for small publishers and authors who can't "break in" to the traditional publishing business... Printing up small batches up books for sell by the author themselves or online.

Why not just publish ebooks? I didn't even know that much about the whole ebook industry until fairly recently but I knew they existed. If you want to gain recognition and popularity as a new author, the internet would be a great way to do so. Not printing up 100 (I'm sure expensive) special editions to sell yourself to people who you probably know or are acquaintances. - Colt

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Colt

I've never been able to figure out this seemingly recent movement for small publishers and authors who can't "break in" to the traditional publishing business... Printing up small batches up books for sell by the author themselves or online.

Why not just publish ebooks? I didn't even know that much about the whole ebook industry until fairly recently but I knew they existed. If you want to gain recognition and popularity as a new author, the internet would be a great way to do so. Not printing up 100 (I'm sure expensive) special editions to sell yourself to people who you probably know or are acquaintances. - Colt

Why not just publish ebooks?

I can think of a few reasons.

First, print on demand makes all sorts of interesting things possible. I know a chap in California who takes public domain texts from Project Gutenberg, typsets them, adds cover art, and sells them as physical books. He is doing *very* well at it. Folks could just get the ebooks from PG for free, but his market wants actual physical books, and is willing to pay for them.

Second, if you are trying to get published by a major publisher, or get noticed in the market, having real books to use as samples can be useful.

For instance, Bantam Books is the world's largest mass market paperback house. There are a few hardcovers of Bantam books I'd love to have, but the prices are in the stratosphere. Why? Because Bantam only printed a few. The primary edition was the mass market paperback. The *very* limited edition hardcover was done to have hardcover copies to send to reviewers, many of whom would not review paperbacks. Crazy? Sure. But no one ever said publishing was sane.

On that line, how many reviewers can you think of who review ebooks? I can't think of any. If I issue a book as an ebook, and want it reviewed in the newpapers, I better have physical books to send to reviewers if I expect it to be even looked at.

And with print on demand technology, you can target much smaller niche markets. Maybe there's a total audience of 500 for a specialized tome. If you can reach that 500 to let them know the title exists, you can actually publish and sell the book and even make a bit of money. A standard publisher could not, as they would need sales of ten to twenty times that, and would have to print far more to feed the distribution channel.

And some of what you see is simply the very old practice of "vanity publishing".
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Dennis

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Or, to put it another way, e-books won't get you into the exclusive club that is the publishing industry. Well, as you pointed out:

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Crazy? Sure. But no one ever said publishing was sane.

Maybe we'd all like to do something sane. And maybe the insane won't be running the asylum forever.

The world is changing, and despite the publishing industry's efforts to the contrary, the book world will change too. E-books are a viable alternative to traditional publishing. They have their own challenges, to be sure, but they are worth the effort, because they allow the author to establish whether he has any worth in the market, as opposed to a publisher that unilaterally refuses to even read his work because he is not already famous or published.

E-books also allow the author to take total control of their books' production, right down to cover art, promotion, and pricing. The author retains exclusive rights to his work. The author (assuming he does all of his own editing and proofing) gets every dime of the book's cost. The author can evaluate his market directly, and take steps to adjust either his content or his marketing efforts to target those markets.

Check out the romance genre, and you'll see that e-books are ably taking advantage of that market, worldwide, using the above advantages, and are doing nicely, thank you. As generations grow up who are not afraid of reading on smartphones and computers, e-books will become more widespread, and people will keep collections of books on their computer the same way they now store their music.

E-books may not be a part of the publishing industry, but the publishing industry isn't everything. It only takes time.

[mocelet]

As someone who works in scientific engineering, there seems to be a "different way of working" in the "creative" world. Publishing houses have come into existence for books, music and film, and they all work by finding content creators (authors, musicians, actors etc) and taking a risk on them by paying for work which does not yet exist, and then publishing what results. I suppose that this is the commercial development of the old system of The Wealthy adopting artists and having works created for them.

However, in the rest of the commercial world, a person or company has a (hopefully) good idea, develops it, and then if it is good enough they can sell it. That idea might be a type of food, a gadget or a machine, but if it is not good enough then the person or company might go bust. Sure, there is still investment up front, whichi might be from a venture capitalist, a bank, or friends and family, but the creator takes on the risk.

The Internet has removed the need for publishing houses in many ways. You no longer need to cut and press a vinyl disc to distribute music, you no longer need to print ink onto paper for books, and perhaps most importantly, neither MP3 files, nor eBooks need to use distribution companies who handle the logistics of spreading tens of thousands of physical items to thousands fo retail locations.

There will always be authors and musicians who want to have the safety of a publishing house, and since they are being paid an advance on their work the publishing house will want to milk them for every penny, and any electronic versions will be laden with ineffective DRM if available at all.

However, I believe that there is a second group of creators, which is growing day by day, who are willing to self finance, accept the financial risk themselves, and will use the Internet to distribute their work.

Regardless of how many people there are out there who will happily "steal" "pirate" copies of music or books, there will always be people who are happy, willing, and even eager to pay a content creator for good art. This new group of self supported artists will benefit from these supporters of the arts, and will get 50-100% of the revenue from their work being sold, as opposed to the 2-10% typical when work is sold through publishing houses.

Eventually the publishing houses may find themselves in the minority, but I doubt it will be in the near future.

Ramble over. Sorry for posting a rambling brain dump as my first post on the boards. I shall try to be more constructive in the future...

[nekokami]

I had the impression that "vanity press" printings of ones own books didn't count for much if one wanted to talk to a regular publisher later. No?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Not at all... every opinion is welcome, and your analogies to the "rest" of the commercial world are good and exactly to the point. Publishing is facing the inevitability of having to alter or abandon the specialty model they've built up and protected for so long, thanks to the incursion of technology, and the realities of the modern web-based marketplace. They won't disappear tomorrow, but the market is already progressing around them, and it's up to the publishers to adapt to evolution, or perish.

Whichever they do, books will still be there, and people will still read them. The only thing that is at risk is themselves.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I had the impression that "vanity press" printings of ones own books didn't count for much if one wanted to talk to a regular publisher later. No?

Based on what I've heard, vanity press books aren't considered any better than e-books. Vanity press authors are still considered "outsiders," not ready for prime time, or just plain "not good enough" for publishing.

Of course, if a vanity press run did phenomenally well in the market, any publisher would be willing to take it on (and share in the profits). The same can be said about e-books ... witness "Aragon," originally an e-book and now a major motion picture, and "The Plutonium Blonde," which started online (on the Sci Fi Channel website, I believe) and went to traditional publishing after garnering huge popularity.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I had the impression that "vanity press" printings of ones own books didn't count for much if one wanted to talk to a regular publisher later. No?

Correct. I was not implying that using a vanity press to get a book published would help you to get published by a regular house.

But some of the print-on-demand efforts have to be counted as vanity press efforts: the author wanted to see a book in print with his name on it, and would pay to produce the book,
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Dennis

[nekokami]

That would be Eragon, I think, and you're right, it's quite a notable exception.

Interestingly, as mocelet points out, it's different in different areas of endeavor, including some creative areas. I'm self-publishing an original card game. (http://zigraphix.com if anyone is interested.) It's quite possible that if it does well, a larger game company may offer to buy it from me. That's a fairly standard practice in the game market.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Correct. I was not implying that using a vanity press to get a book published would help you to get published by a regular house.

But some of the print-on-demand efforts have to be counted as vanity press efforts: the author wanted to see a book in print with his name on it, and would pay to produce the book,
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Dennis

I think my question is really, don't all POD efforts count as "vanity press," as far as traditional publishers are concerned? Except for the rare items like Eragon, I have the impression that not only does a vanity press or POD (maybe even self-published ebook) publication "not count," but it may actually prejudice publishers against you. Maybe it's only that they won't buy that particular work, though, unless it's done outstandingly well in sales.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Based on what I've heard, vanity press books aren't considered any better than e-books. Vanity press authors are still considered "outsiders," not ready for prime time, or just plain "not good enough" for publishing.

Correct. An author published by a vanity press won't be taken seriously.

Of course, if a vanity press run did phenomenally well in the market, any publisher would be willing to take it on (and share in the profits).

Of course. But I've never heard of it happening. There's a good reason most vanity press publications are produced by vanity presses...

The same can be said about e-books ... witness "Aragon," originally an e-book and now a major motion picture, and "The Plutonium Blonde," which started online (on the Sci Fi Channel website, I believe) and went to traditional publishing after garnering huge popularity.

The Sci-Fi Channel website paid for the fiction they put up, and the woman who served as the editor, Ellen Datlow, has a very high reputation in the field.

Back in May, Sci-fi.com killed the effort and fired Ellen, deciding what they got out of it wasn't worth what they put into it. The site piously announced that after June 15th, it would no longer be available. The content is still there. A couple of friends of mine work on the site. I've wondered a bit if they decided to simply leave the content in place, figuring the guy who made the decision to kill it would never notice.

Electronic publication is still a thorny issue in some respects. There was a tempest in a teapot within SFWA (The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) a while back about whether stories published on web sites counted as professional credits in qualifying for SFWA membership. There are an assortment of sites that publish SF short fiction, and pay contributors, so it should be a no-brainer, but we're talking about SFWA, who has often seemed confused about whether it is a trade organization or an exclusive little club.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I think my question is really, don't all POD efforts count as "vanity press," as far as traditional publishers are concerned? Except for the rare items like Eragon, I have the impression that not only does a vanity press or POD (maybe even self-published ebook) publication "not count," but it may actually prejudice publishers against you. Maybe it's only that they won't buy that particular work, though, unless it's done outstandingly well in sales.

Not really: some traditional publishers have or have had print-on-demand efforts. A friend of mine was freelance copy editing for one such effort (later killed) by (I recall) HarperCollins. They saw it as a way to bring some older stuff back into print.

The point-to-print on demand is that you can print on demand, and it's possible to produce books economically with far smaller press runs than traditional publishing allows. It's also possible to produce books as high-quality in appearance and production as anything a major publisher does.
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Dennis

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The Sci-Fi Channel website paid for the fiction they put up, and the woman who served as the editor, Ellen Datlow, has a very high reputation in the field.

This suggests something else we've discussed in other forums, namely, direct commercial support of an author, in much the same way advertisers subsidize television.

Without knowing what SciFi expected to "get" out of publishing the novel (more eyes for SFC, which would lead to more advertising revenue, I suppose... good luck tracking those numbers), I'd wonder why the novel was considered good enough for printing, but not for SciFi.com.

Still, they're a television station... not a publishing house, and other than advertising their own TV products, not much of a content website. It's therefore not that surprising if they just didn't "get it."

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

There was a tempest in a teapot within SFWA (The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) a while back about whether stories published on web sites counted as professional credits in qualifying for SFWA membership. There are an assortment of sites that publish SF short fiction, and pay contributors, so it should be a no-brainer, but we're talking about SFWA, who has often seemed confused about whether it is a trade organization or an exclusive little club.

Yes, the SFWA is clearly in that "Castle" mentality, I've noticed: As long as we keep the barbarians out, the world will be better off (especially us).

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

This suggests something else we've discussed in other forums, namely, direct commercial support of an author, in much the same way advertisers subsidize television.

Without knowing what SciFi expected to "get" out of publishing the novel (more eyes for SFC, which would lead to more advertising revenue, I suppose... good luck tracking those numbers), I'd wonder why the novel was considered good enough for printing, but not for SciFi.com.

SciFi.com didn't publish novels. Everything they published was was short fiction. Stuff on the site may have been an excerpt form, or expanded into a novel.

What they obviously hoped for was increased readership of the site because of the fiction. When they thought they weren't getting it, they said "Why are we paying an editor and paying for fiction if it isn't drawing people to the site?", and killed it.

Of course, the guy who made the call seems will up on the short list for the "doesn't get it" award, so...

Still, they're a television station... not a publishing house, and other than advertising their own TV products, not much of a content website. It's therefore not that surprising if they just didn't "get it."

No, not surprising at all. They still review books, and I have some hardcovers that were SciFi.con Notable Book selections (with this noted on the cover of the book). Generally speaking, it's been good stuff. But deciding that the purpose of the website was to promote and serve as an adjunct to the TV channel, rather than being a general purpose site about SF was part of what was happening on the site.

Yes, the SFWA is clearly in that "Castle" mentality, I've noticed: As long as we keep the barbarians out, the world will be better off (especially us).

Well, some of SFWA is. The Executive Director and her husband are friends, and we've had various chats about the issues. I'd call her on our side of the fence, but she's a paid employee required to carry out organization policy, and organization policy is a matter of fractious political dispute within the organization. Former SFWA President Jane Yolen once said something like "They're a bunch of little kids, and I'm their Mommy" referring to the membership.
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Dennis

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

You're right, I shouldn't make blanket assumptions like that. At any rate, it doesn't sound like an organization you'd much want to join...