Simon & Schuster is delaying ebooks by four months

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Harmon

...

It is not going to be easy for them.

Yep! Adapt or die eh?

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

Don't get me started on agents, for me they're a notch below child-molesters (shamelessly stealing a Woody Allen joke and fully aware of the irony too).

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, writers need to be their own publishers. They need to cut these parasitic old industries away from the flesh and start doing all this stuff for themselves. We're entering a very radical time in writing, it hasn't been this way since the 1960's when zines and author-owned publishing companies started to flourish. It's the perfect opportunity for writer and audience to cut a new, fair deal.

I've stopped buying from corporate publishers now, same as I don't buy from RIAA affiliated music publishers. The creators are never paid what they deserve, my money is bypassing the pockets of the artists and going into the faceless coffers of some industry that treats artists like shit.

Four month delays, eight months, two years, doesn't matter any more. I'm no longer a customer and there are more joining me every day.

I was listening to the audio of one of the Canadian Copyright Consultation townhalls. There was a music agent that was emotionally telling the room that he representing a well known Canadian artist (that everyone in the room would know if he mentioned his name) who had worked years in the industry but didn't have enough money to purchase a house.

All I could think of was, 'let me see you make your living off of his work and I bet you have a house. I bet you have a really nice house'.

It seems that every time an artist is trying to figure out how they had all the blood sucked out of them, it's the publishers and the agents that are the vampires in the room spouting inflated statistics about how much blood mosquitoes suck worldwide each and every day.

[bminata]

Even in the scenario where some variables stay the same (promotion, proofread, up-front payment, etc) and publishers have to "subsidize less successful authors" and "no book stand on its own" as mentioned here, in e-publishing the cost for production, warehousing, distribution should be much less than in print. There's really no reason for publishers to insist the price for ebooks should be the same with printed books - other than profits.

[markbot]

Maybe we can recruit some environmental groups into our cause. It is certainly very inefficient to destroy forests for paper books when there is an environmentally friendly alternative.....that is also cheaper and what consumers want.

As of this day forth, I will never buy a new hard cover book.

[Ervserver]

Sounds as though the publishing companies want to play the same sort of games the recording industry has/does, this is very detrimental to their livelihood

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by bminata

Even in the scenario where some variables stay the same (promotion, proofread, up-front payment, etc) and publishers have to "subsidize less successful authors" and "no book stand on its own" as mentioned here, in e-publishing the cost for production, warehousing, distribution should be much less than in print. There's really no reason for publishers to insist the price for ebooks should be the same with printed books - other than profits.

Just as another side point, one of the things that authors and agents have blogged about that hurts them the most is "returns." And I don't mean the real returns done by customers--I mean the bookstores ordering X amount of books and then "returning" them after only two weeks. Then when a customer orders the book, they order 5 and "return" 3 or 4 after two days. They pay nothing for returns so they don't have to work to sell them. If they decide the shelf needs more space, they rip the covers off, throw the books out and replace them.

A store that was closing in NY and moving a few streets down--RETURNED/scrapped every book in the store rather than move the books (was blogged about by a few agents a couple of years ago.) This type of thing adds huge and somewhat hidden costs that aren't there in ebooks (customers can return an ebook for a variety of reasons, but this is on a customer basis, not a bookstore one.)

So there are definite things within the industry that could be streamlined to save costs and some of those things should probably be looked at before worrying about delaying an ebook for 4 months...

[Sydney's Mom]

Originally Posted by bookwerm

Ignoring financial factors for a moment, and following your logic then (and I'm being completely sincere), what's the difference between and hbook and a pbook? Because your argument is true for both formats (identical content/intellectual property, just re-formatted). And authors get paid differently from hbook vs. pbooks, and pbooks are released a certain period of time after hbooks. If ebooks are just another format of the same IP, why shouldn't publishers figure out a way to formally insert it into the release process? Why should they be obliged to release ebooks the same date as hbooks?

Good point. I think hbooks are to pbooks as theatrical releases are to DVDs. It is the same format, you are just payming a premium for earlier distribution. I agree that pubishers shoud figure out a way to release the ebook into the process at the same time as the hbook. After all, people with ereaders are voracious readers, and probably are the very people who used to buy the hbook. I would be willing to pay the same for the ebook, less some amount for the production cost and the fact that I can't lend it out.

This is really a fight between the publishers and Amazon, not the publishers and those who have ereaders. It is too bad that Amazon won't budge, and put the ebook up for sale at a higher price initially, and drop the price at a later date. As I have said repeatedly (sorry) there are some books I want to read as soon as they come out (Southern Vampire, early Steven King, Harry Potter). I didn't have an ereader until afteer I finished HP. Everything else, I have bought in ebook form, if it was availkable. If it wasn't, I still got it in ebook form.

[Sydney's Mom]

The problem is where some people read books. I read them primarily during my daily commute, and hbooks are just too bulky (along with my lunch, my laptop and my knitting). I just want the ebook because of convenience, not price. For me, it is the ebook or nothing,

[Harmon]

I don't remember where I picked up this site - so I may be reposting it here - but it's worth a look on this topic: http://www.idealog.com/blog/the-eboo...sy-has-subtext

[ShadowAuthor]

This is insane. Maybe those publishers should give a call to the RIAA and see how well the heavy-handed approach to music distribution worked for them.

I'm a returning college student who is switching careers and like the idea of purchasing and reading e-books instead of hardcover and paperback offerings. I can't begin to say how invaluable the search feature for books is. I never forget a story, but I can't always exactly remember where a specific scene or quote was. I'm also not a fan of highlighting as I read, it ruins the experience as far as I'm concerned. But I digress...

Like others have said, I don't buy hardcover. I'm working towards an MA in English, so most of my required texts are either classics (probably free) or used paperbacks that I can get through Amazon and other assorted sites for dirt cheap.

I'll suffer through reading a public domain classic on my iPhone rather than be gouged for a hardcover or overpriced paperback. I just picked up Flannery O'Connor's The Complete Stories today. 350 pages of thick paperback. I would have loved to get it for an e-reader, but it isn't available.

[Daithi]

BREAKING NEWS !!!

Warner Music, Sony BMG Music, and EMI Music have just announced that they will start staggering the release of their artists' newest albums. They will now release the CD first, and hold back the release of iTunes and other MP3 compatible versions for 4 months. One executive at EMI was overheard saying, "This will teach Apple."

OK, just kidding, apparently the music industry is smarter than the publishing industry.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Daithi

BREAKING NEWS !!!

...

OK, just kidding, apparently the music industry is smarter than the publishing industry. <-- shuddering emoticon

Or maybe they at least learn their lessons.

Too bad the book publishers have to go through it themselves cause they're not smart enough to look around.

[llreader]

Originally Posted by bminata

Even in the scenario where some variables stay the same (promotion, proofread, up-front payment, etc) and publishers have to "subsidize less successful authors" and "no book stand on its own" as mentioned here, in e-publishing the cost for production, warehousing, distribution should be much less than in print. There's really no reason for publishers to insist the price for ebooks should be the same with printed books - other than profits.

I agree, and as an aside, while I am sympathetic to the idea of giving less marketable authors a chance, I am not entirely symptathetic. Agents and publishers take their cut partly to make marketing decisions about what is good and what isn't. Right now, there seems to be a "publish 'em all and let the market sort 'em out". Who cares, if they get paid either way? Maybe they should be more choosy, and take more responsibility for their decisions.

It isn't going to put too much of a crimp on authors - there are many ways to publish your work these days, the problem is getting it read and recognized as good by some arbiter of good taste that can get others to read it. But that is a problem either way.

[orwell2k]

Originally Posted by bminata

Even in the scenario where some variables stay the same (promotion, proofread, up-front payment, etc) and publishers have to "subsidize less successful authors" and "no book stand on its own" as mentioned here, in e-publishing the cost for production, warehousing, distribution should be much less than in print. There's really no reason for publishers to insist the price for ebooks should be the same with printed books - other than profits.

It all comes down to profit in the end, but part of the problem seems to be a cluelessness of how to handle the new e- format (and a laziness in defining a new business model form the gorund up). Hardback and paperback books are what they know, so naturally they try to tie the new e- formats to the old p- formats. This false premise as a starting point is why all the later reasoning goes horribly wrong.

The Author's content is the same, of course, and there are costs assiciated with proofing and formatting the content for e- distribution. One could cynically questions how much actual effort the publishers put into these aspects, as most eBooks seem to be very poorly formatted, often with obvious typos and grammatical errors, or sometimes problems with the way images (e.g. maps) have been inserted.

But as for the other p- costs of "production, warehousing, distribution" and so on are obviously non-existent, save for an incremental cost to host the required web services to sell and distribute the e- formats. So the relationship of eBooks to pBooks is primarily the content (as it should be) and the sooner this ridiculous link between hardcover, paperback and eBook formats is severed the better.

[crutnacker]

You have to wonder what the logic is here. The audience for ebooks and ereaders is avid readers and readers on the go. These people bought their readers because they LIKE to read. In short, they are your best customers. By throwing them a file that costs probably nothing to produce (I would imagine that publishing software probably can easily generate e-books these days) for $9.99, you aren't destroying the publishing business, you're free up extra cash for them to sample other authors.

Want to make that $9.99 price work for you immediately Simon and Schuster? Tack on sample chapters of similar works from other authors to the end of the e-book.

I understand that $9.99 may eat into $25 sales, but how much of that $25 is actually profit?

I think the real issue for publishers is that they see the game has shifted. If ebook readers take hold, then it becomes possible for popular authors to take them out of the middle completely. For the cost of editing the book and formatting it (which could easily be handled outside the publishing world), Stephen King could toss his book on Amazon and take in probably 85% of the sale price.

Just ask the classic rock musicians who saw themselves dropped from major labels. Many have indicated that moving to the "self-publishing" route for their music, they're seeing a lot bigger checks from their sales, even when they sell a lot fewer copies.