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Old 02-02-2009, 12:32 PM   #31
Greg Anos
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You know, a CEO is hired to set strategy for 5-10 years into the future. Obviously, this one is not succeeding at the task. He confuses one time charges with continuing costs. I really would like to know what company he is CEO of, it will make a great short over the next few years...

I would like to ask this CEO, how did Project Gutenberg get to where it is, with 27,000 separate downloads available, for free, funded by volunteers? (I am a contributor to the public domain, both by scanning/OCRing public domain texts and writing new texts directly released into the public domain.) Or look at the downloads available on MobileRead. If it weren't for the continual extentions of the Berne convention, these sources would be much bigger. It's real and it's there. You should give it a look and see what your "Free Market" competitors are capable of doing. Note: these are legal Public Domain e-books, not darknet pirated editions still under copyright. But those exist also.

This is capitalistic "Creative Destruction" at it's finest. You only choice is adapt or die. Frankly, I'm betting in your companies' case on the latter.

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Old 02-02-2009, 12:33 PM   #32
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Here in Russia, typical eBook price (they're all DRM-free) is more or less $1 (1/10th of the actual hardcover book).
Sometimes there's actually sales, and everybody is happy. Moreover, in our stores I've seen most accurate and well-formed eBooks ever (correct multi-level ToC, big covers, embedded illustrations). And most times you pay once and get eBook in any format you want (epub, mobipocket, html, rtf, pdf, fb2, palmdoc, etc) - e.g., I am usually download epub and pdf versions, all free of additional charges.
So I must say, that maybe Mr. Michael Justus must look closer to publishing process and do not build wild theories.

Last edited by 13xforever; 02-02-2009 at 12:51 PM. Reason: added absolute eBook cost
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Old 02-02-2009, 12:34 PM   #33
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Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward View Post
I really would like to know what company he is CEO of, it will make a great short over the next few years...
S. Fischer Verlag.

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Old 02-02-2009, 12:38 PM   #34
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One thing that could help our cause would be a standard universal format. Mobi, eReader, LRF, whatever, as long as it is one unified format.
I don't think that matters much. Lack of DRM matters, so that people who want to can convert books... but right now, some books are not available in paperback; some books are never published in hardcover; some books are never translated from their original language. Some books are graphic novels, printed in color. And publishers (and readers) don't demand a single, universal format for all print books--there's an acknowledgment that some types of content are better suited for one format or another, and some types convert well across several formats.

A universal format isn't what's stopping publishers; they're just terrified of not correctly identifying the format their target demographic uses. Technophobia... they don't even know how to frame the questions to start the research to find out which format is better-suited for their books.

They're very much not used to thinking about "what tech devices do our customers have & use?" Book publishers (I believe) don't research their customers' choice of lamps or mass transit use to decide which books should be hardcover or paperback; they're not expecting to think about "do we market this to a business commuter crowd reading on PDAs, or a leisure crowd with dedicated ebook readers? Or students reading on laptops? Do they use Windows or MacOS or Linux?"

It's not that these are impossible questions or that companies can't find their customers' demographics--software companies ask these questions all the time. It's that book publishers have believed--and until recently, it's been true--that the technology level & methods of their customers was fairly irrelevant to them. And they want it to continue that way.
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Old 02-02-2009, 12:39 PM   #35
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I think I agree with about anyone above here.

I haven't read the article in full neither;though great topic to get our frustrations out!

How much do they say it differs in cost to set up an office with 5 employees and a server (director, IT data, 2 Book design and formatters, and someone to handle the finances),compared to hiring a Library sized warehouse, packaging and handling, still buy an office for 3 employees, ...

Don't you think most books of writers are digitally created in the first place?
It takes more time to format a book into a paper design, then it does to format it to fit the ebook reader screens!
I was just thinking that - If the book is digitally created in the first place (by digitally created, I mean written on a computer in a word processor), it's ALREADY in a digital format (obviously) and it takes about five seconds to convert it to almost anything ELSE you want it in, (except possibly DRM'd formats, I don't know what it takes to create one of those). So that blows his argument out of the water right there. I don't know enough about the publishing process (though I think I'll go email Dana Stabenow and ask...) to know at what stage digital becomes paper in the process.

Last edited by phenomshel; 02-02-2009 at 12:40 PM. Reason: to add syntax
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Old 02-02-2009, 12:43 PM   #36
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I agree with most everyone here that there seems like a one time cost to setup the infrastructure for delivering e-book contents. But I think after the infrastructure is setup, the cost of actually maintaining an e-book delivery service would be less. You cut out the need for having to do business with retail stores, storage space and shipping.

I guess it depends on how much it costs to hire tech support and tech people to operate and maintain the infrastructure.

I think the question I have, does the publishing industry really want to go digital. Right now, I think there is a premium price assocated with hardback versus paperback books and publishers gain some revenue with hardback editions. Can't see them doing the same for electronic versions, so they probably have to come up with a different model to make up that money. Perhaps offer editions with extra content for a higher price?
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Old 02-02-2009, 12:46 PM   #37
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Right now, I think there is a premium price assocated with hardback versus paperback books and publishers gain some revenue with hardback editions.
They can still have tiered pricing. New releases can cost more for the first fee months. Then, they can drop a bit. Popular books can also be more. Back catalog can be less. There is basically NO back catalog for MMP these days. They stores keep only the newest (or popular older) stuff in stock.

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Old 02-02-2009, 12:56 PM   #38
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Old 02-02-2009, 01:26 PM   #39
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I did leave a comment for Dana Stabenow at her blog, and was fortunate to receive an almost immediate reply. Her answer to my question about when digital becomes paper was this:
"2.Dana
Posted February 2, 2009 at 10:55 am | Permalink
I don’t know. No, I’m not being cute, I really don’t know. I send the book in as a Word .doc attached to an email and a year later a physical book shows up on my doorstep courtesy of UPS."

I invited her to check out this discussion.
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Old 02-02-2009, 01:51 PM   #40
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Originally Posted by 13xforever View Post
Here in Russia, typical eBook price (they're all DRM-free) is more or less $1 (1/10th of the actual hardcover book).
Sometimes there's actually sales, and everybody is happy. Moreover, in our stores I've seen most accurate and well-formed eBooks ever (correct multi-level ToC, big covers, embedded illustrations). And most times you pay once and get eBook in any format you want (epub, mobipocket, html, rtf, pdf, fb2, palmdoc, etc) - e.g., I am usually download epub and pdf versions, all free of additional charges.
So I must say, that maybe Mr. Michael Justus must look closer to publishing process and do not build wild theories.
Really? This sounds like some sort of ebook heaven.
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Old 02-02-2009, 02:16 PM   #41
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costs

Let us not forget that the publisher is not substituting a server for a warehouse. He is in the business of publishing and so needs that warehouse. Where his reasoning is faulty is in believing that an e-book sale results in a loss of paper book sales. Eric Flint has stated that his p-book sales go up from every free book he puts out. He clearly and I think correctly states that an author's biggest fear is obscurity, not piracy. I had never heard of Steve Jordan until I read his freebie, and now I have purchased his whole (not very big) library. Those who suffer from mental myopia are doomed to obscurity.
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Old 02-02-2009, 02:30 PM   #42
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wow just wow. This only demonstrates to me how clueless this guy (industry?) is about technology.

It is "comparable" cost to set up a physical warehouse as it is to set up a digital infrastructure? Did he mean "equivalent"? Because if he did there is no way you can tell me building (or renting) a 10,000SqFt warehouse (for example) and staffing and maintenance costs the same as renting a Virtual Server at GoDaddy.

BOb
I think that the root of a lot of the problem here: Bloat. They don't get how to run lean. They don't seem to even consider that you don't necessarily need your own web store, let alone that there are very inexpensive ways to do it if you decide you really do. That web division probably has an overpaid executive, a couple directors and a few midlevels before you even get to the direct producers. I think some of the genre publishers can do well with their own web stores, like Baen and Harlequin. They have more brand visibility with the customers. I couldn't tell you who publishes most of the books I read. I'm sure there are quite a few different houses involved. I'm not going to buy books from them unless I can't find them at a bookstore. They should just focus on distribution rather than trying to build and market their own store.

As for producing books, if they mandate the style in which manuscripts are submitted and released from the editing process that will fix a lot of the problem. I was in a liberal arts field in university and we had style guides. I'm a programmer now and we have style guides. This is not rocket science. We also have versioning control. It's free. They need to simplify.
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Old 02-02-2009, 02:33 PM   #43
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The positive side of this is that I think we will see a higher growth in independent publishers (those who sell ebooks). I think it'll begin a domino effect that will topple a lot of big publishers.
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Old 02-02-2009, 02:45 PM   #44
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I was just thinking that - If the book is digitally created in the first place (by digitally created, I mean written on a computer in a word processor), it's ALREADY in a digital format (obviously) and it takes about five seconds to convert it to almost anything ELSE you want it in...
NEW books are already digital. Books more than 10 years old, often are not, or not anymore; whatever digital files were used in the creation process are long gone. So creating ebooks out of out-of-print books often involves scanning & OCRing them, with all the accompanying proofreading hassles.

And the process between "Receive Word doc" (or similar) and "print paper" involves some conversion--fonts, paragraph settings, layout, swirly pictures at chapter breaks, and so on. The process between "Word doc" and "proper ebook" (lit, mobi, epub, ereader for the most part) is a different conversion--it has to create metadata, a digital table of contents, page breaks by chapters, and so on. They could auto-convert to basic text, or to "text + bold & italics," but more than that takes formatting time. Also, it gets more complex when there are pictures involved.

I believe It's no harder than setup for print--but it's <i>different</i>. And while a good XML markup could work for both, most publishers haven't yet figured that out. (And it does take both technical awareness & real time/money resources to set up to do on a large scale--they first have to be convinced it's worth the investment.)

However... even with all those setbacks, the people here are aware that "convert well-formatted document to good ebook" can be as little as a few minutes, perhaps a couple of hours if it's very complex. (Dictionaries are complex.) Most of the extra time involved in book conversion is fixing formatting problems or typos/OCR errors.

The idea that a publishing house can't afford to spend ~2 hours per ebook (let's assume some time for metadata & other weirdness) in order to release an edition that costs no storage fees and has no return from the distributors is insane.
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Old 02-02-2009, 02:51 PM   #45
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The positive side of this is that I think we will see a higher growth in independent publishers (those who sell ebooks). I think it'll begin a domino effect that will topple a lot of big publishers.
Like most industries, the management is overly concerned with numbers. For them it may well come to a make or buy decision -- do we build our own systems or simply buy a small successful operation. More often than not the "buy" decision is the less expensive one.
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