"The book industry is gonna get Napstered..."

[pdurrant]

No idea. I'm not even sure what formats LS take, or who they supply them with.

I'll see what I can find out.

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Paul, do you know what cut LightningSource takes if they're the ebook distributor instead of Mobi/Amazon?

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Format C:

I don't think so.
I mean, I can see the difference between amanuensis' work and Gutemberg's...

In turn, I can assure you there is a striking difference between my custom-sized editions of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" (PDF here) and every other eBook edition out there. The former, I would propose, excelling both in terms of aesthetics and (in comparison to eBooks sourced from the same translation) accuracy most of its competitors.

- Ahi

[ahi]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

No idea. I'm not even sure what formats LS take, or who they supply them with.

I'll see what I can find out.

LIT, PDF, and PDB as per:

http://www.lightningsource.com/ops/f...kopsmanual.pdf

- Ahi

[pdurrant]

Apparently, Lightning Source distribute ebooks in "Adobe Acrobat ebook Reader, Microsoft Reader, and Palm eBook formats." Apparently not Mobipocket or Sony or ePUB.

Reading through the submission process, LS clients can set retail price for ebook, and the discount. I don't know what limits are set on the discount, but it does seem to be under the publisher's control, as for print books.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

No idea. I'm not even sure what formats LS take, or who they supply them with.

I'll see what I can find out.

[TheJohnNewton]

Originally Posted by HarryT

...What makes a paper book have more "inherent value" than a data file?...

I think what he was getting at was the value of possessing a copy of a paper book vs. a copy of an ebook. By its physical nature a paper book has certain qualities that give value to possessing it that an electronic book does not have or diminishes to almost zero. A paper book is an exclusive use item. If I am using my copy you cannot use it. If I purchase a copy nobody else can purchase that same copy. It may take some time and effort to locate a physical copy and then it has to be transported to my location or I have to physically go to a location to get it. All of those things give value to having possession of a physical book. An ebook on the other hand can be had almost instantly from almost any location on the planet and never need go out of stock. There is little to no value in possessing a copy before the moment that you want to read it.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by TheJohnNewton

There is little to no value in possessing a copy before the moment that you want to read it.

How does this not apply to a paper book? The space it takes up on your bookshelf until you actually read it is hardly added value.

- Ahi

[TheJohnNewton]

Originally Posted by ahi

How does this not apply to a paper book? The space it takes up on your bookshelf until you actually read it is hardly added value.

- Ahi

Ahi - My entire post was intended to show the value of possesing a paper book before the moment you want to read it, in short it takes time and money to actually get the paper copy if you can even find one. Another way to look at it, if you don't have a paper copy on hand when you want to read it what would it cost you in time and money to get it? That is the value of having it in your possesion already. With an ebook that is almost zero time and zero money as I can access almost any ebook nearly instantly from my couch. You could almost say from a practical standpoint I do have every ebook in my library already.

BTW, some people do value having the physical book sitting on their shelf but that is a different matter and something many find lacking from ebooks.

[HansTWN]

Value is what people perceive it to be, whatever somebody is willing to pay for something. Physical existence really does not matter. What must change in the digital age is the perception that works in digital form have zero value, or we will have a future without innovation. If everybody says an ebook has an intrinsic value and is willing to pay a fair price for it --- then it has value. A pbook may even have negative value for a person. Say you mother gives you one, you hate it, but you can't get rid of it or you will disappoint her. So it is just taking up space on your shelf.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Value is what people perceive it to be, whatever somebody is willing to pay for something. Physical existence really does not matter. What must change in the digital age is the perception that works in digital form have zero value, or we will have a future without innovation. If everybody says an ebook has an intrinsic value and is willing to pay a fair price for it --- then it has value......

Perfectly put.

The problem is, that thinking doesn't support the idea that seems so rife nowadays, "if I want it, I have a right to it, and if I don't want to pay for it I have a right to get it for free".

Cheers,
PKFFW
P.S: Can't give you karma until I spread it around more

[yvanleterrible]

A paper book also has some other negative values. You need space for them. If you dedicate a whole room to them, that will mobilize a certain percentage of rent or mortgage. Then you would have to find shelving and that's not free, I should know it's part of what I make for a living. And then there's the whole issue of maintenance, organisation, cleaning.
With ebooks there would be organisation time and a little electricity to bring it into hard disk storage but that's it.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

What must change in the digital age is the perception that works in digital form have zero value, or we will have a future without innovation.

Forgive me, Hans, but this seems plainly wrong to me.

Consider how the creative professions traditionally supported themselves throughout most of history, and it is actually the last 100 or so years that suddenly look like an aberration, not the increasingly prevalent attitude that the costless reproduction of creative works ought not be a guarantee of livelihood to their authors, and much less to their publishers.

Not to mention that some amazing books even less than two hundred years ago were written on a subscription basis... that is to say, the author found enough people willing to pony up (or promise to pony up) money for his book in advance to it being written to make his efforts (including paying for printing, et al) worthwhile.

Author's getting 3% - 10% of the purchase price, and the fundamentally non-creative book industry (of publishers, printers, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers) getting the other 90% - 97% is not the only viable model... nor is it even one that seems particularly defensible to me.

And I write all this as a publisher.

- Ahi

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by ahi

Forgive me, Hans, but this seems plainly wrong to me.

Consider how the creative professions traditionally supported themselves throughout most of history, and it is actually the last 100 or so years that suddenly look like an aberration, not the increasingly prevalent attitude that the costless reproduction of creative works ought not be a guarantee of livelihood to their authors, and much less to their publishers.
- Ahi

How creative professions supported themselves throughout history? Well usually through grants from kings and nobles, or through orders for specific works. Such as portraits or statues of these aristocrats. And that, of course, meant that such works were not available to the public. Music was not recordable at all. It is only during the past 2 centuries, that many people have learned to read, and through the industrial revolution that many people have the means and access to most creative works. That subscription deal you mention was very innovative yes, and we sure need innovative models now.

I just think it is wrong to distinguish -- a sculpture makes a statue, therefore he gets paid. A composer or an author makes something that can be easily copied, therefore he does not. Even though a good book can be enjoyed by millions, few have the opportunity to see a sculpture in person and a picture of it is not the same. We are shooting ourselves in the foot here. Who will write books for us to read in the future? Many people would write for fun, nobody would be able to spend a lot of time on it or go hungry.

For the Amazon model an author gets 35% not 3%. Actually not so bad, since it gives you instant access to millions of eyeballs. Honestly, if I was an author I would be happy that such an opportunity is available. And once a writer has achieved some notoriety he can switch. A simple business decision, better to sell 1000 books and get 35% than 5 books and get 90%. You pay Amazon for the shelf space.

As for publishers, I do think they will go the way of the horse buggy. It will just be authors and book sellers. Perhaps you can find a business model as a consultant to aspiring authors.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

A composer or an author makes something that can be easily copied, therefore he does not.

Except they did.

Most of, if not all, the works of the greatest composers of classical music were rampantly copied and internationally performed without, in the vast majority of cases, any compensation to them and nobody gave a damn, not even the composers themselves.

As to who will write our books? People like Moejoe, who enjoys writing and who have no delusional expectation that it will pay their bills, until one day it starts to despite all expectation.

Given the incredible amount of unremarkable trash the North American publishing industry churns out every single day, cutting the number of aspiring authors by even as much as 90% might easily be solely and wholly a blessing and nothing else.

By the way, this reminds me of C.J. Cherryh some time ago having written a post here complaining that routine delays in the receipt of $20,000 advance royalty payments can make paying bills and mortgages difficult for (it vaguely seemed to be implied) the average author. Apparently even when publishers are willing to throw $20,000 at you before a single copy is sold, writing is still not sensible to treat as your sole source of income. So part of me wonders whether you might be imagining writing even under the best circumstances as more lucrative than it can be for 99%+ of writers.

Hell... the moment you stop talking about the anglosphere's publishing market, or perhaps China's, you get into national publishing markets where books are regularly printing with the expectation of selling as little as 1000-2000 copies. Most writers, both historically and contemporarily, neither do nor sanely can treat their writing career as their sole income producing occupation in life unless they are in the tiny highest echelons of their national field or they are independently wealthy.

Or so it seems to me.

If at any point my tone seems unduly combative, Hans, it's mostly just that I am about to fall asleep, so please take no offense.

- Ahi

[ahi]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

As for publishers, I do think they will go the way of the horse buggy. It will just be authors and book sellers. Perhaps you can find a business model as a consultant to aspiring authors.

This will not happen in our lifetime for reasons I detailed at despairing length elsewhere.

Book publishers are in no way analogous to music publishers, so if your prediction comes from any such comparison, you ought to discard it as your model.

And as to discarding my business model--even if it was not clear to me that my work was bringing genuinely worthwhile books to market that might otherwise never come to be--I would not become a consultant of any sort to anyone as that is not where my strengths lie. Not unlike my authors, I also have a day job and have both the capacity and the willingness to earn my money through honest work of other sorts until the cheques from book sales start to be hefty enough that I (and hopefully at least some of my authors also) can do otherwise.

(And lest anyone assume I am insane and referencing my edition of The Art of War in the above--I am not. Public domain stuff is neither my primary nor even my secondary focus in publishing.)

- Ahi

[ahi]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

For the Amazon model an author gets 35% not 3%. Actually not so bad, since it gives you instant access to millions of eyeballs. Honestly, if I was an author I would be happy that such an opportunity is available. And once a writer has achieved some notoriety he can switch. A simple business decision, better to sell 1000 books and get 35% than 5 books and get 90%. You pay Amazon for the shelf space.

Yes, 35% of the list price, from which you get to pay for printing, ISBN numbers, business registrations, tax preparation, your bookmaker/typesetter/graphic designer, taxes, and probably lots of other things I cannot readily think about.

After everything is said and done--assuming you are pricing the book sanely--your actual profit might well (under unideal circumstances) be as little as 3% and even under more ideal circumstances could easily enough be no more than 10%... assuming after all is said and done you sell enough copies to make a profit at all.

Unlike an author with a publisher who either gets money even before publishing, or starts getting money from the first copy sold (even if with a great delay, on account of the positively retarded depression era practices of the North American publishing/book selling industry)... without having to spend any money on the book up-front (assuming the publisher is credible and decent).

Oh... and getting listed on Amazon doesn't give you access to millions of eyeballs. Not only does it not do so instantly, but it may never do so even over the full life of your book being in print. Hell... give it the wrong title, and it may literally never show up in any Amazon.com searches *ever* unless somebody specifically links to it, or through purchase patterns it gets linked up with another book. And given the right title, your book may still fail to rank sufficiently well for Amazon to send a meaningful number of customers your way automatically.

Am I wrong, as per your own experiences with publishing and self-publishing?

- Ahi