Publishers 'completely divided' over e-book pricing

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Non existent proofreading is a major problem for paper books as well. An old friend used to be a VP at an editorial production house that did copy editing, proofreading, that typesetting for publishers. She lamented the lack of it on a mailing list we were on. Another member of that list was an editor at a major publisher, who said "But copy editing, proofreading, and such are part of the budget for the book, and are always done!" "Maybe they still are in your house", replied my friend, "but I'm the one who gets to deal with the ones who used to pay us to do it, and don't do so any more." They were trying to cut costs, and decided proofreading was an unnecessary expense...

Your friend is absolutely correct. What the publishers who believe they are paying for copyediting and proofreading are really paying for is for the editor to style the document for the typesetter.

When I started my business (editorial services for book publishers) 25 years ago, the rule was that we were paid first to edit and secondarily to code (style). The coding we did was broad coding, for example, marking something as a first-level head. And this work was done over the full panoply of the publisher's list.

Subsequently, as publishing companies were bought by conglomerates and the focus turned more to the quarterly dividend for shareholders, things began to change. A publisher's C-list books (an A-list book is a top seller that gets the most attention and it goes downhill from A to C) were no longer being edited or proofed, except cursorily and that work was done either inhouse or sent to a "mill" that would do the work for one-half to one-third the price previously paid.

A few years later, in order to cut costs, the B-list books were farmed out only to the mills.

Today, even many of the A-list books are being farmed out to the mills -- and the emphasis has changed. It is more important to do extensive coding/styling than to pay attention to grammar and spelling. Now, to save money, editors are expected to code/style every element and are expected to do so at the same rate of pay that they received in 1995. An unwillingness to do that level of microcoding at the offered level of pay means the book gets shipped to a mill that will do it for even less.

Something has to give and what gives is quality editing and proofing. And the bastions of quality editing and proofing -- the university presses -- are under financial siege and having to cut corners or go out of business.

The future is clear -- editing and proofing will become forgotten skills; only spell check will prevail.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

This part I don't get at all. Why should it be more expensive? It doesn't cost any more to produce (arguably cheaper), and the person is not getting anything tangible, plus have to deal with DRM that makes it difficult or impossible to do what they could with a paper book.

I think that means that 4% of respondents work for the Publishing industry.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

E-books actually have more inherent value than printed books, being more portable, less space-taking, more flexible in display/read/translate possibilities, and more environmentally-positive. They should not be thought of as printed books' "poorer cousin."

Or significantly less inherent value due to DRM restrictions on what you're allowed to do with them, depending on your point of view.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Macmillan (St. Martin's, Tor, etc.) seems to think this. They often set the list of an ebook at $14 when it has a MMPB release at $7.99

Macmillan is the US umbrella organization of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH, a big German publishing entity.

Holtzbrinck is still trying to evolve a coherent digital strategy. I had a long conversation a while back with Pablo Defendini, the manager of the Tor.com site. One question I asked was "Is Tor.com a test bed for digital straegy at Holtzbrink? Do you have high visibility in the owning corporation?" The answer was a resounding "Yes!"

So I think you'll see variations within Macmillan. Tor CEO Tom Doherty, for instance, certainly knows better (and was an old friend of and investor in Baen Books, keeping a close eye on what Baen was doing.) Other imprins will have different ideas. Holtzbrinck will watch and see what works.

The publishing industry is collectively groping toward an uncertain future. Eveyyone knows ebooks are here to stay. What they don't know is how to make money selling them.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

At twice the price, I'd expect there to be no issues, what so ever.

DMcCunney, I took the poll question as being ebooks should be more expensive than the paper version, since the poll showed "More expensive than the printed book" as an option. If they want to have it being the same price as the paper book, ok, but I will not pay more than the paper book, especially with DRM restricting what I can do.

You and everyone else I know feels the same way. The bottom line seems to be "The ebook should not be more expensive than the mass market paperback edition."

I can see areas in which this may not be true down the road. For example, the ePub format is a container. It can contain more than text. It's possible to produce an ePub edition delivered on CD or DVD, that would include an audio version of the book, a video interview with the author, a gallery of art inspired by the book, and other things besides the actual electronic text. How much should that cost? More than the mass market paperback, for sure.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

DMcCunney - Yea, the "ARC" versions of Baen books are like that, but well... they're ARC's. The final ebooks are, ime, better than trade paperbacks from other publishers.

Agreed. Which is why the errors in the Baen ebook were so striking. They normally produce very clean copy. Once it was confirmed it was an ARC, All Became Clear.

I don't get why you wouldn't use the same source text for the ebook...sure, the structure will need fixing, but spelling?

(And one reason I buy more Baen eBooks is that they're typically $6!)

But you generally do use the same source text for the ebook.

The main variation I can think of is some of the Amazon Kindle editions. When enough people click "I want to read this book in a Kindle edition" that Amazon decides it's worth doing, there may not be an extant electronic file to start from. In that case, a printed version is scanned and OCRed, thd the result becomes the Kindle version. (Note that copy editing and proof reading don't happen...)

In current releases, the publisher gets a manuscript in MS Word format. That gets copy edited and proofread, then imported into Adobe InDesign for markup and typesetting. The output from InDesign is a PDF that goes to the printer, and is the input to the imagesetter than actually makes the plates the printer will print from.

One issue for ebooks is that InDesign produces crappy ePub output. Decent ePub requires well formed XML as input, and while the tools are starting to appear to markup to XML, they aren't widely adopted in publishing yet. We'll see. From the viewpoint of the person doing the markup, whether the output is a PDF or XML should be irrelevant. They just need a tool with the features they need to do the job, in an interface that makes using the tool reasonable.
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Dennis

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

You and everyone else I know feels the same way. The bottom line seems to be "The ebook should not be more expensive than the mass market paperback edition."

I can see areas in which this may not be true down the road. For example, the ePub format is a container. It can contain more than text. It's possible to produce an ePub edition delivered on CD or DVD, that would include an audio version of the book, a video interview with the author, a gallery of art inspired by the book, and other things besides the actual electronic text. How much should that cost? More than the mass market paperback, for sure.

If the ebook came with extras like that, I'd be willing to pay more. However, as things stand, they currently do not. For just the standard book, any amount more than than the paperback is too much.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

You and everyone else I know feels the same way. The bottom line seems to be "The ebook should not be more expensive than the mass market paperback edition."

I can see areas in which this may not be true down the road. For example, the ePub format is a container. It can contain more than text. It's possible to produce an ePub edition delivered on CD or DVD, that would include an audio version of the book, a video interview with the author, a gallery of art inspired by the book, and other things besides the actual electronic text. How much should that cost? More than the mass market paperback, for sure.

That would be a special edition and not the standard option though, so there's nothing wrong with them asking more for a product like that, however that would be more a thing that fans might want and as such they would still need to produce the ebook version separately.

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if thats the way they want with some authors in the future, combine the stuff you list with a limited edition hardback version and then flog it at a higher price to fans, you see the same marketing methods used nowadays with stuff like dvds, videogames etc all the time.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Crowl

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if thats the way they want with some authors in the future, combine the stuff you list with a limited edition hardback version and then flog it at a higher price to fans, you see the same marketing methods used nowadays with stuff like dvds, videogames etc all the time.

It wouldn't surprise me either. We already see it in books, with deluxe signed limited edition hardcovers in slip cases, trade hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and mass market paperbacks. This is simply an extension of the concept into other media.

"Director's Cut", anyone?
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Dennis

[basschick]

try the first ebook in the dragonriders of pern series, dragonflight. it's got amazing amounts of typos in many varieties. also the most recent harry dresden ebook - ouch! also alpha and omega by patricia briggs - it has tons of words that are in all caps, always at the beginning of a sentence, often but not always at the beginning of a paragraph.

and the paper versions don't have those typos including the spaces in the middle of many words that occur in dragonflight.

Originally Posted by ahi

I keep hearing anecdotes like this on mobileread... but to date I have yet to come across a single non-vanity-published paper book that has the sort of errors seemingly every eBook I've read contains.

- Ahi

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

In current releases, the publisher gets a manuscript in MS Word format. That gets copy edited and proofread, then imported into Adobe InDesign for markup and typesetting. The output from InDesign is a PDF that goes to the printer, and is the input to the imagesetter than actually makes the plates the printer will print from.

For those who doubt, Dennis' description of the process is pretty accurate. I say "pretty" because there is one step that is not mentioned but needs to be. After the manuscript is edited (presumably) by a professional editor, the edited copy is usually returned to the author to approve or disapprove the editor's changes (the changes are shown using Track Changes). Unfortunately, that sometimes -- and more often than you might think -- means that corrections made in editing are undone by the author who believes whatever he/she wrote originally is sacrosanct. I have had the "pleasure," on a few occasions over my 25 years of editing, of discovering that the print version of a book that I edited had been returned to its original (or to near-original) state by the author, replete with errors, because the author was incensed that the publisher had permitted me to do anything more than run spell check and the publisher was more interested in appeasing the author and getting the book out than in whether the book had a minimum number of errors.

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

One issue for ebooks is that InDesign produces crappy ePub output. Decent ePub requires well formed XML as input, and while the tools are starting to appear to markup to XML, they aren't widely adopted in publishing yet. We'll see. From the viewpoint of the person doing the markup, whether the output is a PDF or XML should be irrelevant. They just need a tool with the features they need to do the job, in an interface that makes using the tool reasonable.

Absolutely true. We have tried to use InDesign's export to ePub feature and its output ain't pretty. Considering that Adobe has adotoped and helped design the ePub standard and is pushing ADE, you would think that Adobe would solve this problem. Perhaps that will be the big inducement to upgrade to InDesign CS5. One thing, though, is true: version CS4 is a major improvement over CS3.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

If the ebook came with extras like that, I'd be willing to pay more. However, as things stand, they currently do not. For just the standard book, any amount more than than the paperback is too much.

My hope is that the publishers offer variations. I am not interested in "enhancements" to fiction books -- I just want the straight text. I know I'm supposed to start thinking 21st century, but I continue to think of ebooks as just a digital version of pbooks -- at least when it comes to fiction. Consequently, I'd like the option to buy just a digital version of fiction without enhancements at a lower cost.

OTOH, for nonfiction I would like to see appropriate enhancements (and i don't consider an included audio version an enhancement), that is enhancements that help improve my understanding of the text. For example, I'm currently reading Hadrian, the new biography of the Roman emperor. I could see enhancements such as a family tree type diagram that shows the relationships between the various individuals named in the book that was accessible at a tocuh. Or an immediate callup of Latin terms that are used that go beyond the terse dictionary definitions. And interactive maps. Anyway, in nonfiction, I would be willing to pay for an enhanced version, but I would still want the option of buying a nonenhanced version at a lower price.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by rhadin

For those who doubt, Dennis' description of the process is pretty accurate. I say "pretty" because there is one step that is not mentioned but needs to be. After the manuscript is edited (presumably) by a professional editor, the edited copy is usually returned to the author to approve or disapprove the editor's changes (the changes are shown using Track Changes).

You're absolutely right. But that was part of "copyediting and proofreading", and left out deliberately because it wasn't relevant to my point.

There's a nice description of the process from a non-fiction author's view here: http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2009...nd-feels-like/

Unfortunately, that sometimes -- and more often than you might think -- means that corrections made in editing are undone by the author who believes whatever he/she wrote originally is sacrosanct. I have had the "pleasure," on a few occasions over my 25 years of editing, of discovering that the print version of a book that I edited had been returned to its original (or to near-original) state by the author, replete with errors, because the author was incensed that the publisher had permitted me to do anything more than run spell check and the publisher was more interested in appeasing the author and getting the book out than in whether the book had a minimum number of errors.

And sometimes it's the other way around. The late John Brunner recounted writing an SF novel where he had an assortment of usages done deliberately he knew a copy editor would want to "correct". So in his submission draft, he circled all such instances and wrote STET! in the margin. (Yes, this was back in the hardcopy submission draft days.) Sure enough, when he got the galleys, every instance had been "corrected" by a helpful copy editor, leading to the conclusion that no one at the publisher knew what "STET" meant.

The authors I know all recognize that a good editor can make a book better, and while they might not look forward to the revision letter, they will pay attention to what it says and consider that the editor just might know what she's talking about.

One interesting question is how often you are able to get in direct touch with the author, and personally go over copy edits and corrections.

Absolutely true. We have tried to use InDesign's export to ePub feature and its output ain't pretty. Considering that Adobe has adotoped and helped design the ePub standard and is pushing ADE, you would think that Adobe would solve this problem. Perhaps that will be the big inducement to upgrade to InDesign CS5. One thing, though, is true: version CS4 is a major improvement over CS3.

And I expect CS5 to be an improvement over CS4. I just found it quite ironic that Adobe was the major force behind the ePub format, yet their own software does a bad job of producing it.

An old friend is a DTP specialist at a major publisher, and spends her day in InDesign doing markup and typesetting. She used to use Quark Xpress, and was actually annoyed by InDesign: she had developed significant expertise in Quark, and knew how to get around the design flaws and misfeatures to get it to do what she wanted. InDesign didn't have those design flaws and misfeatures, and all that hard won expertise was now irrelevant...

I have an old version of InDesign here (v2 or so), which was passed along to me for a project I was working on. I actually did the job in MS Publisher 2007, once I discovered the MS add-in that would let me publish to the PDF format the printer wanted, since I was familiar with it and knew how to make it do what I wanted. I look at the old version of InDesign on occasion to get familiar with it, but can't justify springing for CS4 right now, since it isn't what I do for money.
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Dennis

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The publishing industry is collectively groping toward an uncertain future. Eveyyone knows ebooks are here to stay. What they don't know is how to make money selling them.

Well, a lot of it is. Some companies have allready made up their minds, and I don't think Baen and O'Rilley are precisely doing badly. Sure, it's still a relatively small market, but it's growing - and the small publishers are getting into the act as well, E-Reads and Nightshade Books in particular are taking Webscriptions into areas of scifi and fantasy Baen themselves don't really do.

As a note, I also don't currently buy any new Holtzbrinck-label books after their panic reaction to Tor's Webscription experiment.


DMcCunney - QuarkXpress? Pfft. From working on one particular project, I had to aquire proficiency in Adobe Framemaker. (Yea, erk!)

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Well, a lot of it is. Some companies have allready made up their minds, and I don't think Baen and O'Rilley are precisely doing badly. Sure, it's still a relatively small market, but it's growing - and the small publishers are getting into the act as well, E-Reads and Nightshade Books in particular are taking Webscriptions into areas of scifi and fantasy Baen themselves don't really do.

I'm quite fond of Nightshade Books, and was able to thank them personally at Worldcon a few years ago for publishing Liz Williams' "Inspector Chen" fantasies. (Liz is a friend, and the books are just wonderful.)

Baen is a mid-level action/adventure house, so there will be things they won't do, but they will offer other stuff through Webscriptions.

My understanding is that Webscriptions makes Baen more money than all foreign sales combined.

O'Reilly has been battered by the publishing downturn, but not as badly as a lot of others. They have an active ebook program, and are well regarded in the market place. I'm hardly the only techie who looks for an O'Reilly title first when looking for a book on a computer topic.

As a note, I also don't currently buy any new Holtzbrinck-label books after their panic reaction to Tor's Webscription experiment.

Tor is setting up to do ebooks again, and the last I knew, Holtzbrinck had reversed their objection to no DRM, and Tor content through Webscriptions was on the table again, with making it's way through various legal signoffs the main hurdle.

DMcCunney - QuarkXpress? Pfft. From working on one particular project, I had to aquire proficiency in Adobe Framemaker. (Yea, erk!)

I used Framemaker a bit back when, as it was what there was if you ran Unix...
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Dennis