Yet another thumb of the nose from publishers

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But, it costs hardly anything to keep and eBook "in print" long after the paper versions have gone out of print. So really, the eBook copies can continue to sell long after they can no longer be bought new in paper. So really, That is something that needs to be factored into the price.

Yes and no.

One of the interesting side effects of ebook and print-on-demand solutions has been the effect on contracts. Contracts are valid for a particular period. The author contracts with the publisher, and the publisher has the right to offer an edition of the book for as long as the book is in print. When the book goes out of print, the author (or author's agent) can request that the rights revert, and attempt to resell the book elsewhere or self-publish.

What does "out of print" mean when you have POD and ebooks? A publisher could potentially hold the rights forever, and this is probably not what you want.

Current contracts take this into account, and look at the numbers of sales in POD and ebook editions to determine whether a book is still in print. Sales below a certain number are taken as indicators that the publisher is no longer attempting to actively sell the book, and the rights should revert.

So that potentially longer sales period may not have the effect you think, as sales will drop below the contractually specified level, and the publisher will no longer have the right to offer the book.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Actually, you do have that sort of control using ePub with ADE. You want Monotype Bembo, you embed it. You want a specific line spacing, you specify it in the CSS. Really, it's a no brainer. You just tell Amazon, since you do not support what we need, you cannot have our book.

You have that control using ADE. You do not have that control with a dedicated reader that does not use that technology.

And it you want to stay in business, you don't tell Amazon "You can't have our book". You need to sell your book, and Amazon is a largest on-line retailer.
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Dennis

[vaughnmr]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Amazon has the resources to develop an in-house DRM solution, and did, though in Amazon's case, the motive seems to have been vendor lock-in - you can buy any ebook you want, as long as you buy it from Amazon...
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Dennis

You keep saying that, but it's not true. You can get ebooks for the Kindle in lots of places. And any ebook w/o drm can be converted.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What if you make a PDF sized for the screen? Make one for the 6" screen, the 5" screen, the 7" and the 9.7" screen and you have it. And it should not be too much extra work given that this is PDF.

It depends on the content of the book.

Many books aren't problems. They are simple single column volumes which may have embedded in-line illustrations. But it that case, it's possible to create PDFs with the tagging to permit the PDF viewer to reflow the text to fit the screen (assuming the device you use has a PDF viewer that supports it.)

The use case I was discussing was the textbook, which is typically two column, with illustrations, sidebars, and footnotes. How do you scale that to fit a smaller screen and keep it readable?

Another poster advocated simplifying the layout of the textbook to not use such stuff, and make it easier to have the same source become both paper and electronic documents. Unfortunately, that founders on content.

As an example, I'm reading a volume on Italian art in the period from 1600-1750. It uses dual columns, and has a plethora of footnotes, a bibliography, and an index, as well as embedded illustrations. It's a trade paperback with 668 pages, of which 505 are text and images, and the rest are footnotes, index, etc. It's dual column, set in Monophoto Eckhardt, in what looks to be 8pt type.

It you tried to recast that as one column, it would be a much fatter book. You couldn't maintain the font size in one column at over twice the width, as it would be too hard to read. The eye would lose track of where it was on the page. You would have to use a larger font size, and increase the page count. That costs.

The dual column layout is generally part of a strategy to get more text on the page while maintaining readability.

In an electronic version, it doesn't matter, as the file can be however large it needs to be to contain the required number of pages. In a print version, it does matter.

But this puts you in the position of having to create and maintain two very different output formats from the same source, which again adds to cost.

For something like a novel (once InDesign gets more support for ePub output), Save As PDF for the printer, and Save As ePub for ebook becomes an effective strategy. For other forms of content, things get trickier.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What would work (IMHO) would be a kiosk where you buy your eBooks. You can either bring in a memory card or having the eBooks on a memory card that the store sells you. That way, you go into the store and can browse the shelves and decide what it is you want and then go to the kiosk to find out if the book is available as an eBook and then buy it. But to do that, DRM should be eliminated.

With something like the B&N nook, no kiosk is required. You can use the built-in networking to browse the catalog, "pull a book off the shelf and read it" in a virtual fashion, and if you like it, purchase and download it from the reader (probably while sitting the the cafe having coffee and pastries.).
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Dennis

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

They own their DRM system outright, but not through acquisition of MobiPocket. Mobi provides the format they use for ebooks, but they rolled their own DRM, and do not use Mobi's.

Sorry to disagree, Dennis, but that's not correct. Amazon use Mobipocket DRM - that's why DRM can be removed from Kindle books using the same "MobiDeDRM" script that works with any other Mobipocket book.

The only difference between Amazon's DRM and that of a book bought from Mobipocket is that Amazon have their own private DRM server. The actual DRM mechanism, however, is Mobipocket DRM. That's probably one of the main reasons that Amazon bought Mobipocket: to acquire their DRM technology.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sorry to disagree, Dennis, but that's not correct. Amazon use Mobipocket DRM - that's why DRM can be removed from Kindle books using the same "MobiDeDRM" script that works with any other Mobipocket book.

The only difference between Amazon's DRM and that of a book bought from Mobipocket is that Amazon have their own private DRM server. The actual DRM mechanism, however, is Mobipocket DRM. That's probably one of the main reasons that Amazon bought Mobipocket: to acquire their DRM technology.

In essence, you're both right. Amazon aquired the DRM scheme from Mobipocket, but they effectively "rolled their own" by altering it slightly and hosting their own server to handle the kindle DRM. It's not "standard" Mobipocket in the sense that you can't buy Mobipocket DRM content elsewhere and have it work without jumping through some hoops. The PID ranges are different, for one thing.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

In essence, you're both right. Amazon aquired the DRM scheme from Mobipocket, but they effectively "rolled their own" by altering it slightly and hosting their own server to handle the kindle DRM. It's not "standard" Mobipocket in the sense that you can't buy Mobipocket DRM content elsewhere and have it work without jumping through some hoops. The PID ranges are different, for one thing.

The PID is different, yes, but the actual encryption algorithm is identical - that's what I was referring to when I said that it's the same DRM mechanism, and is why, given an encrypted book and an encryption key (the PID), the same code can be used to decrypt a book whether it's been bought from Mobipocket or from Amazon.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The PID is different, yes, but the actual encryption algorithm is identical - that's what I was referring to when I said that it's the same DRM mechanism, and is why, given an encrypted book and an encryption key (the PID), the same code can be used to decrypt a book whether it's been bought from Mobipocket or from Amazon.

Kind of like saying that the UK and US both speak English, but it's not the same language.

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The use case I was discussing was the textbook, which is typically two column, with illustrations, sidebars, and footnotes. How do you scale that to fit a smaller screen and keep it readable?

By doing away with the glitz, i.e. the second column and sidebars. Footnotes are an easy hyperlink.

I'm curious how a second column reduces space used? Doesn't the extra margin in between the two columns translate to empty space equaling more pages?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by taming

I know this is a minority opinion, but once reading electronically became my first choice--that is, I no longer would choose a paperback or hardcover tree book when an eBook was available--the value of the digi content goes up for me. I understand that the financial cost to the publisher is less, but it then becomes a commodity like many others, one in which the cost to produce the product hasn't got a whole lot to do with the sale price. The missing piece is that the quality of the books is often not there in terms of how they display.

That last is a problem with several sources.

One increasingly affects all books. When a book is prepared for publication, there are steps involved in copy editing and proofreading to produce a clean, error free manuscript that can be turned into a published book. These steps are increasingly not done, to cut costs, in an apparent belief that a pass through a spell checker suffices.

A second is that ebooks are not part of the standard work flow, and the ebook must have additional production. The standard practice in almost all publishers is that the original manuscript is a Word document. The document goes through the edit/copy edit/proofread process to produce a final approved manuscript. That document is imported into Adobe InDesign for typesetting and markup. The output from InDesign is a PDF file. The printer feeds the PDF file to an imagesetter to produce the plates from which the books are printed.

PDF files are problematic as ebooks, as many devices can't display them, and many PDFs are designed for a larger screen than the average reading device has, aren't coded to allow the viewer to reflow it to fit the screen if the device has PDF viewing capability, and may have layout you don't want to reflow as the result would be hash.

The ebook world is settling on a standard format, and an assortment exist, with MobiPocket, used by the Amazon Kindle and Kindle app,) and ePub, used by the current Sony Readers and Barnes and Noble nooks among others having the largest usage. To produce those requires extra steps.

Adobe InDesign is slowly acquiring ePub compatibility, and current versions can output to an ePub file, but don't do it very well. To do good ePub, you really need to start with well formed XML, but tools to do that are not widespread in publishing.

If InDesign gets better support for ePub, some problems will lessen, as once a document has been marked up, it can be "Save As PDF" for the printer, and Save As ePub" for the ebook. ePub contains the necessary data and metadata, so it's possible to do a scripted conversion of the ePub file to other formats like Mobi. Ebooks can become part of the standard workflow.

Until that day arrives, ebooks are an extra step a lot of publishers are still learning how to do properly.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

By doing away with the glitz, i.e. the second column and sidebars. Footnotes are an easy hyperlink.

I'm curious how a second column reduces space used? Doesn't the extra margin in between the two columns translate to empty space equaling more pages?

Read the whole post you refer to.

Readability is a complex topic, but one factor is "measure" (the number of words on a line). With a two column format, I can have less words per line, use a smaller point size, and get more readable text on a page. If I must use one column, I'm forced to a larger font, and likely more space between lines (leading) to preserve readability while getting the same word count. This drives up page count, and makes for a larger, more costly printed volume.

In the book I used as an example, the margin between columns is perhaps 1/4". That doesn't add a lot to the page count.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

You keep saying that, but it's not true. You can get ebooks for the Kindle in lots of places. And any ebook w/o drm can be converted.

You can get MobiPocket format ebooks from a lot of places, and Mobi books without DRM can be side-loaded and read just fine.

If you want to purchase a commercial title for the Kindle, you must either buy from Amazon, or buy from elsewhere and strip the DRM, to enable you to read it. And since Amazon is likely to have a substantially lower price than other vendors, why would the average user want to purchase from other than Amazon?

Amazon wants to sell you ebooks, and be your sole source vendor for purchased titles.
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Dennis

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

You have that control using ADE. You do not have that control with a dedicated reader that does not use that technology.

And it you want to stay in business, you don't tell Amazon "You can't have our book". You need to sell your book, and Amazon is a largest on-line retailer.
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Dennis

Most dedicated readers that handle ePub with DRM use ADE. So there's no issue there. But, if enough publishers stood up to Amazon and said.. we cannot do what we want to do on a Kindle. When you implement ePub, you can have our eBook on your platform, then maybe that might help get Amazon to add ADE/ePub. Or they could say, here is our eBook on the Kindle, but it look not nearly as good as our eBook in ePub. Blame Amazon for that one.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Kind of like saying that the UK and US both speak English, but it's not the same language.

And neither is more correct then the other. Just evolved differently.