"Friction" is why e-books adoption is slow

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by watcha

What does seem to be forgotten here is that paper is friction-free as far as powering it goes... Price is the only way to start a reading revolution. In fact, I reckon the experience will have to be virtually free - just like some of the newspapers now distributed in our UK cities.

Yes, paper books don't need a power source, and yes, a workable pricing model will help. But there still need to be legitimate reasons to switch to e-books, and e-books' strengths need to be presented positively to the public (even if it's just a typical Madison Avenue-style "Buy it, you'll look cool and get laid" commercial) in order to get them on-board.

Although we haven't discussed it much in this particular thread, others have discussed the possibility of getting the public into e-books by first introducing them to e-newspapers and e-magazines. Periodicals have a set and regular customer base, and if an already-popular periodical offered some incentive or value-added extra (to ease that friction), subscribers and other regular readers might get on-board readily and enjoy the daily/weekly/monthly content. If the content, combined with the extras, is compelling enough, people will endure some friction to get into the new system, and over time, much of the friction will be duly worn away.

Then, once they are regular e-readers, they could add e-books to their periodical reading in due course.

[petermillard]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Pete:
By and large, the authors love it. They volunteer their books for the Free Library.

My mistake - I had the impression (wrong, obviously!) that this 'gradual reduction in price down to bargain bucket freebies, model' was part of the publishers contract, rather than an author-led act of self-promotion.

I confess, I have looked at Baen's site before, but never managed to get beyond the 'exploding spaceships' home page. Today I did, and the free library (and Eric Flint's introduction to it) looks very interesting, so many thanks for pointing me that way. And yes, I did download a couple of books, just to take a look...

It's counter-intuitive, but the empirical results are that books put into the free library increase in value -- and boost the careers of the authors as well.

Absolutely - which begs the question, if it works so well, why aren't more authors doing this - especially authors with books out of print. How difficult can it be for an author to self-publish an eBook after the hard work (the writing) is done? Obviously there may be contract issues with existing publishers, and if a book is old enough, it may not actually exist in an electronic form, but even so I would have expected to see more of it.

Pete.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by petermillard

I confess, I have looked at Baen's site before, but never managed to get beyond the 'exploding spaceships' home page. Today I did, and the free library (and Eric Flint's introduction to it) looks very interesting, so many thanks for pointing me that way. And yes, I did download a couple of books, just to take a look...

The other very clever thing that Baen do is to "package" each month's releases into a monthly "Webscriptions" package. This means that new authors get lots of exposure to customers who buy the package. I've found some wonderful authors that way, whose books I'd never have bought individually, simply because I've never heard of them.

How difficult can it be for an author to self-publish an eBook after the hard work (the writing) is done?

These days it's dead easy - anyone can sell a book through MobiPocket's web site, for example, completely independently of any publisher. Of course, by doing it that way you miss out on all the work that the publisher does for you.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by petermillard

Absolutely - which begs the question, if it works so well, why aren't more authors doing this - especially authors with books out of print. How difficult can it be for an author to self-publish an eBook after the hard work (the writing) is done? Obviously there may be contract issues with existing publishers, and if a book is old enough, it may not actually exist in an electronic form, but even so I would have expected to see more of it.

Pete.

If the author is published in print, the contractual obligations forbid him most of the times to even put more than a set number of words from the book as sample on his web site, not to talk about releasing it under cc

See P. Watts for that, Tor severely limited the number of words he could put as sample, and I believe that's true in most cases just that few authors are as candid and have this f.. you atitude that Dr. Watts has - since his book Blindsight was initially printed in a less than 4k run and not taken by one of the big chains, he went ahead damned Tor and released the whole book under cc and since then he got 3 more hc's printings, a tpb run comes next year, got nominated for all major awards and the like...

There are exceptional cases when the author can negotiate a cc release with his publisher, but most of the times that's forbidden (C. Stross is another author who talks relatively open about this issues, not as candid as Dr. Watts, but still you can get the idea...)

If you are not published, to release your work as e-book is generally seen as suicidal for any chance at a print published career. There are people that do well as e-only, but again most authors want to get a book in print, and going e first is seen as destroying almost any chance of that (again there are exceptions like J. Scalzi, but...)

[nekokami]

I agree that the Baen Free Library model does work particularly well for authors with series, though I think it would also work well for any author with more than, say, 3-5 books. The older books are often out of print anyway, so the author can't get any sales from them, and some authors could probably start trying to sell ebook versions of their out of print inventory on their own, but why get into that mess, if Baen will publicize them-- and sell the newer books?

I've been trying to talk Steven Brust into looking into the Tor-Baen deal, now that it seems to be on again. He's got 10 books in the Vlad Taltos series, plus 5 volumes of the "Kaavren Romances." If he were to give away Jhereg and The Phoenix Guards through the Baen Free Library, and offer the rest of his volumes for sale there, I feel pretty confident that his work would sell quite well in that venue.

[NatCh]

You might also suggest he try Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill -- I rather enjoyed that one, and I don't think it's in print anymore.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by NatCh

You might also suggest he try Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill -- I rather enjoyed that one, and I don't think it's in print anymore.

Are you sure about that? It's in my public library in a trade paperback edition.

That was a rather odd book. I liked it.

[NatCh]

Nope, not sure of it at all, Nate. Although, the library having a copy of it doesn't necessarily mean it's in print. I bought my copy upwards of 10 years ago, and I haven't seen it on a store shelf lately, that's what I was basing my guess on.

Amazon only has used copies, so perhaps that's a better indicator.

And, yeah, it's a strange one, but I liked it too. Maybe that says something about the two of us.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

I do think selling physical products may help: The question is how to go about it? The simplest way would be to sell pre-loaded SD cards or USB keys, but once you get into physical packaging the biggest savings on ebooks is lost. One possibility might be to sell cards with micropay credits for somewhere like fictionwise. Go to the store, buy the card and load up that way. My own thought would be something like buy an SD card with so much credit on it-- go to the kiosk in the store, browse for books, load and leave. The card could either come with its own login to the ebook store, or you can add your own.

What I would like to see is you go into the bookstore, plug your reading device into some computer terminal, purchase your books and they get loaded onto your device and away you go off to read. That would make purchasing ebooks sorta like purchasing dead tree books. You can go into a shop, talk to people, see what's what and then purchase what it is you want in electronic form.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jswinden

What needs to occur is a new eBook paradigm. A lot of you are comparing Apple's iPod and iTunes to eBook sales. Apple's is the exact paradigm from which the publishing industry must shift away. In the Apple paradigm, Apple sells specially formatted songs that play only on Apple software. In the Apple paradigm, you wind up with dozens of companies selling songs that play only on their software.

What Apple did was see the competition and come up with new formats for music they could not play. So if you wanted to purchase any music from Apple, you had to purchase an iPod.

Sony is doing the same thing. They came out with a new ebook format and the only portable device that displays it is a Sony Reader.

Sony might be the last company to come out with a new ebook format and get away with it. We have yet to see how well Adpobe will do with Digital Editions. And for DE to take off, it needs to be supported in enough portable devices and the books sold all over.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What Apple did was see the competition and come up with new formats for music they could not play. So if you wanted to purchase any music from Apple, you had to purchase an iPod.

Apple is a hardware vendor, so naturally they want you to buy their hardware.

However, it's simple enough to convert content bought through iTunes to another format -- I believe converting to MP3 is an option in the iTunes desktop app. (Don't currently have it installed and can't check.)

Sony is doing the same thing. They came out with a new ebook format and the only portable device that displays it is a Sony Reader.

Sony might be the last company to come out with a new ebook format and get away with it. We have yet to see how well Adobe will do with Digital Editions. And for DE to take off, it needs to be supported in enough portable devices and the books sold all over.

Unfortunately, that's Sony, all over, and I doubt the Sony Reader only format will fare well. They have a habit of doing proprietary stuff that everyone else ignores, witness the Memory Stick form factor for flash expansion media. (I believe even Sony is moving away from that now, and going to SD instead.)

Adobe might do better with Digital Editions, since they are reasonably cross-platform. I'm not a big fan ot the PDF format, for example, but I can read PDFs one everything I have, including my PalmOS PDA.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

DMcCunney, I don't see where you're getting the idea that a webscription eBook costs more than a paperback. That's only true for e-Arcs, which cost $15 but are out before the hardcover. Once the book has been released, the eBook cost is lower than that of the paperback, with new release hardcovers being available for $6.00, less if bought in a monthly bundle.

I don't have that idea, and I don't know where you got the idea that I did.
______
Dennis

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

So don't use a Mac for that purpose. I have both a Mac and a PC - I use whatever is the appropriate tool for the job that I'm doing. When it comes to eBooks, the PC is the better tool.

Why don't you do the same?

When it comes to music, Windows is also the better tool vs the MAC (with OS X). The tools on Windows are far superior to what's available for a MAC.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Nope, not sure of it at all, Nate. Although, the library having a copy of it doesn't necessarily mean it's in print. I bought my copy upwards of 10 years ago, and I haven't seen it on a store shelf lately, that's what I was basing my guess on.

Amazon only has here, so perhaps that's a better indicator.

And, yeah, it's a strange one, but I liked it too. Maybe that says something about the two of us.

I just checked, and you can buy the 2003 trade paperback from the publisher.

http://www.tor-forge.com/cowboyfengsspacebarandgrille

Or, you could buy it here.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I agree that the Baen Free Library model does work particularly well for authors with series, though I think it would also work well for any author with more than, say, 3-5 books. The older books are often out of print anyway, so the author can't get any sales from them, and some authors could probably start trying to sell ebook versions of their out of print inventory on their own, but why get into that mess, if Baen will publicize them-- and sell the newer books?

It works for any author that has more than one book. It would work for an author that has only one book.

The key to the Baen effort is that you can download and read one or more complete novels by an author on their list, free of charge. You read the books, decide you like a particular author's stuff, and buy the next one when it appears.

Stuff you download but don't buy isn't a loss to Baen or the author, as you wouldn't have bought those titles anyway.

I've been trying to talk Steven Brust into looking into the Tor-Baen deal, now that it seems to be on again. He's got 10 books in the Vlad Taltos series, plus 5 volumes of the "Kaavren Romances." If he were to give away Jhereg and The Phoenix Guards through the Baen Free Library, and offer the rest of his volumes for sale there, I feel pretty confident that his work would sell quite well in that venue.

I agree. I'm a big Vlad Taltos fan, and have the recent ones in hardcover.

I'm less of a fan of the Khaavren stuff -- Brust is doing pastiches of Dumas, and while I like Dumas, they don't go down as well as the Taltos books.

I read the Phoenix Guards, and a friend who is also a Brust fan asked how I liked them. I replied the characters were idiots. "Of course they're idiots!" he replied. "Dumas' characters were idiots, too!"

I thought about it and decided he was right. They were young, with fine tailoring, exquisite manners, and sharp swords. Why did they need brains?
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Dennis