DOJ suing Apple over ebooks.

[plib]

Originally Posted by Barcey

I find it interesting that people that are accused of violating copyright are immediately labelled thieves and criminals (when they aren't legally) but now we're supposed to give the publishers the benefit of the doubt, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Just saying there appears to be a double standard.

For the record I agree that they haven't admitted guilt but I think it's pretty obvious that they are guilty.

Cut off their internet connection. Now!

(An additional $150,000 fine per book sold would probably be reasonable too.)

[plib]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Are you Mike Shatzkin? C'mon, you can tell the truth.
If not... the infatuation you seem to have with him is getting a little embarrassing. You should rotate your pundits occasionally.

It's hard to rotate something that is set in stone.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Are you Mike Shatzkin? C'mon, you can tell the truth.
If not... the infatuation you seem to have with him is getting a little embarrassing. You should rotate your pundits occasionally.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Stonezkin

Heck , how often has JA Konrath been cited around here as the fount of all wisdom on publishing?

Different quotes by different people? Probably quite a bit.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I do cite him a lot, but I've also cited others. Heck , how often has JA Konrath been cited around here as the fount of all wisdom on publishing?

Konrath's made millions following his own advice. Several other people are very, very happy with their publishing income after following his advice. Some have become millionaires; some have just sold more books than they thought they would through legacy publishers; some believe they owe him for more than money. At least one believes Konrath saved her life.

How many people have gotten rich by applying Shatzkin's ideas of how publishing works? How many lives has his blog saved?

Shatzkin writes some good stuff, and it's definitely ideas worth considering. And Konrath goes off the deep end sometimes, and is amazingly blasé about Amazon's growing monopsony. But there are reasons that Konrath gets quoted by a lot more people--he's making statements that people find useful and directly applicable to their lives. Shatzkin mostly talks theory that will take years or decades play out; there's no immediate way to check his accuracy.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Shatzkin writes some good stuff, and it's definitely ideas worth considering. And Konrath goes off the deep end sometimes, and is amazingly blasé about Amazon's growing monopsony. But there are reasons that Konrath gets quoted by a lot more people--he's making statements that people find useful and directly applicable to their lives. Shatzkin mostly talks theory that will take years or decades play out; there's no immediate way to check his accuracy.

But Konrath's accuracy has not been checked either. That people find it useful does not mean that it is really useful. Also possible effects people see can have other reasons so without proper blinded experiments you can not say so much.

[kennyc]

Here's one I took note of on my birthday: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2012_01_13_archive.html

I would also encourage anyone interested in self-pub/ebook-pub to download (free) "Be the Monkey" from:
http://www.barryeisler.com/ebooks/ebooks-buy.php

it is a zip file containing epub, mobi, and pdf versions.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by tompe

But Konrath's accuracy has not been checked either. That people find it useful does not mean that it is really useful. Also possible effects people see can have other reasons so without proper blinded experiments you can not say so much.

People find it useful because it makes them money. Sometimes, a lot of money. That means it has been checked; it's been tested in the open market and found effective. Not sure how "do this to make more money" could be "not really useful" if it works.

They're working from different perspectives--Shatzkin's talking about the future of the industry; Konrath's giving business advice to authors. And it's effective business advice. It's possible that Konrath's advice will (1) speed up the collapse of the publishing industries, which may very well *not* be good for authors, including those following his plan, and/or (2) not be useful at all in another 5 years as market & culture change. But Konrath's not saying his system will work forever; 10 years ago, it wasn't viable, and 10 years from now, something else may be much better for professional authors.

Shatzkin has no direct, specific advice for authors--nor anyone else in the publishing industry. He's got Thoughts About the publishing industry. They're complicated, because the industry's complicated. They are not, by any objective standard, useful, as opposed to "meaningful."

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

People find it useful because it makes them money. Sometimes, a lot of money. That means it has been checked; it's been tested in the open market and found effective. Not sure how "do this to make more money" could be "not really useful" if it works.

They're working from different perspectives--Shatzkin's talking about the future of the industry; Konrath's giving business advice to authors. And it's effective business advice. It's possible that Konrath's advice will (1) speed up the collapse of the publishing industries, which may very well *not* be good for authors, including those following his plan, and/or (2) not be useful at all in another 5 years as market & culture change. But Konrath's not saying his system will work forever; 10 years ago, it wasn't viable, and 10 years from now, something else may be much better for professional authors.

Shatzkin has no direct, specific advice for authors--nor anyone else in the publishing industry. He's got Thoughts About the publishing industry. They're complicated, because the industry's complicated. They are not, by any objective standard, useful, as opposed to "meaningful."

Don't really want to blow Shatzkin's horn too much but Shatzkin's job description is business consultant. By definition he gives business advice to people in the book industry. Is he successful at it? Not sure but he gets quoted an awful lot in the business press and he appears to be a frequent organizer of business conferences and seminars. I think he is a good clearinghouse of inside info on the book industry. For example, he references things like this:

The biggest question going forward is how Amazon will react to this. Cader’s unique and invaluable analysis says that Amazon will have a “pool” of about $113 million for discounting and incentives in the coming year. B&N, with half their market share, would have about $57 million.

You can look at info like that and judge how BN is going to do in any future price war with Amazon.



JA Konrath is quoted a lot here, I suspect, because he says things folks here want to hear:
(BPHs evil, DRM evil, low prices work for everyone , self-publishing is the preferred way to success for writers, etc.)

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by stonetools

JA Konrath is quoted a lot here, I suspect, because he says things folks here want to hear:
(BPHs evil, DRM evil, low prices work for everyone , self-publishing is the preferred way to success for writers, etc.)

Gee. I've only ever heard Konrath talk about what has worked for him. Are there two Konrath's?... or could it be that people who are dead-set against the current publishing model ever changing are simply trying to infer a few things?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

At least one believes Konrath saved her life.

Interesting story.
Even more interesting, Ms Davenport had another story to tell six months later.
http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/publi...iter-suggests/

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Interesting story.
Even more interesting, Ms Davenport had another story to tell six months later.
http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/publi...iter-suggests/

Wow! Just Wow!

[whitearrow]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

If customers aren't willing to pay $15 for an ebook, all the moaning about cost structures is pointless. The publishers have it totally backwards - you start with what a customer is willing to pay and go from there, rather than deciding what you must charge and then telling the customer why your product is going to cost more than they want to pay. Customers don't care about your business, they just want the product.

The problem is that big publishers haven't historically considered their customers to be readers, but the retailers they dealt with on a day to day basis. It's retailers they've marketed to in order to get prime store space, and retailers they've tried to impress with their newest offering. Even getting publishers to think readers are actually important to their business is an entirely new mindset for them.

Their resistance to ebooks is evidence of this, because they are resisting with all their might, despite how much readers demonstrably want ebooks available. Their tone-deafness on pricing, the inability to contact a human at a publisher directly when you find an ebook with problems, all of it -- as unbelievable as it seems, the BPH's still don't seem to get that the people who actually read the books are really important to their business.

[crossi]

Originally Posted by whitearrow

The BPH's still don't seem to get that the people who actually read the books are really important to their business.

It seems that in many cases the BPH's are actually hostile to the people they need to keep in business. They treat us like potential thieves with DRM, they post blogs and articles that sound resentful that their customers aren't all willing to blindly pay inflated book prices, they retaliate against authors that self publish even rejected books and they seem to be at war with one of their major distributors. A business that is hostile to customers (readers), suppliers (authors) and their distributors doesn't seem very healthy.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by whitearrow

The problem is that big publishers haven't historically considered their customers to be readers, but the retailers they dealt with on a day to day basis. It's retailers they've marketed to in order to get prime store space, and retailers they've tried to impress with their newest offering. Even getting publishers to think readers are actually important to their business is an entirely new mindset for them.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to them... for years, they were not a direct-to-consumers industry. They sold to distributors who sold to retailers, so even their interest in retailers was second-hand.

It's like if consumers suddenly wanted to talk to the manufacturers of coffee cups, demanding more variety in the artwork and better grammar in the cute phrases, and also coffee cups need to fit in our new dishwashers, of which there are eight different styles and we demand each style cup be made to fit each of their cupholders. (Anybody know who owns copyright on the artwork on coffee mugs from the 50's? Is "World's Greatest [family member]" a trademarked phrase?) (Rhetorical. Entirely rhetorical.)

I'm not, of course, sympathetic enough to think they shouldn't have to make these changes. Sorry; the market has changed. Everyone and his cousin now has a cupmaking machine, and if you want to sell mugs at $8-$15 each, instead of the $2 each that my neighbor charges, you'll need to convince me yours is actually more valuable to me.

Or, well, they can continue to try to convince distributors and retailers that their mugs are better and deserve ALL THE SHELF SPACE... but retailers, who *do* deal with individual customers, have reasons to disagree. Especially when the shelf space is digital.

I do understand that it's a *massive* business shift, for companies with a great deal of inertia. However, it's not like this exploded out of the blue... ebooks have been around for decades, and commercially available for over 10 years. The BPHs have certainly had time to notice, "hey, there's this new marketing option suitable for our content that we're not really set up to deal with; how should we fix that?"

Instead, they've decided to go with, "this new marketing option could damage our meat-and-potatoes, the hardcover book sales. Let's keep it as limited as possible."

Which, ah, worked somewhat for several years... but it turns out there are plenty of people *not* making millions on hardcovers, who are willing to explore the new marketplace.