Books you gave up on ever being ebooks

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

What's the story with his literary estate? His classics at least are available as e-books.

Although most of the Foundation series (and its extension that joins it to the robots) is available, there are some gaps there (Robots and Empire and The Rest of the Robots for sure).

In addition, none of his sci-fi short story collections are available as eBooks (The Martian Way and Other Stories, Earth Is Room Enough, Buy Jupiter and Other Stories, etc.). And, not many of his non-Foundation novels (A Whiff of Death, Murder at the ABA, etc.) are available.

In my Calibre database, it works out to 21 of 49 fiction books (novels or short story collections) are available as eBooks. That's a shockingly low percentage for such a big-name author, and it doesn't include the hundreds of non-fiction books he wrote, of which only a handful are available.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

In my Calibre database, it works out to 21 of 49 fiction books (novels or short story collections) are available as eBooks. That's a shockingly low percentage for such a big-name author, and it doesn't include the hundreds of non-fiction books he wrote, of which only a handful are available.

But the question is why aren't they available? Is it because no publisher is interested or because whoever controls his estate wants too much for the rights?

[CWatkinsNash]

Luck Be a Lady, Don't Die, by Robert Randisi. It's the 2nd book in the Rat Pack Mysteries series. It's OOP and the only one in the series that hasn't been re-released as an ebook.

I can only assume the rights are tied up with the old publisher (there were publisher changes as the series was originally released) because Mr. Randisi has done a magnificent job of getting much of his backlist back out there in ebook form.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

But the question is why aren't they available? Is it because no publisher is interested or because whoever controls his estate wants too much for the rights?

It's because whoever controls his estate is an idiot.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's because whoever controls his estate is an idiot.

I wouldn't say an idiot so much as not all that interested in seeing the books published as ebooks. A lot of times, the literary estate simply isn't actively marketing the books, but rather waiting for someone to do all the work for them. For an author, the books are their life. For the heirs, it's more just something that's kind of out there that might be worth some money, kind of like your grandfather's coin collection. If someone approaches them, they might be interested, but it has to be for the right price. Most of these books would barely make back what it cost to commercially produce the ebook.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

A lot of times, the literary estate simply isn't actively marketing the books, but rather waiting for someone to do all the work for them... Most of these books would barely make back what it cost to commercially produce the ebook.

A good thing about old sci-fi and fandom is that lots of the old books have already been fan-scanned, So if some publisher does decide to bring out legitimate editions, there's at least a base to start from.

[ZodWallop]

I was about to say I'd like to see the rest of John Irving's books released as e-books. But checking Amazon UK shows that for whatever reason, we Americans are just being screwed over. At the moment, we can't even get The World According to Garp

[tonymcfadden]

There a book I read yonks ago that I can't even find as dead tree format -- "Stealing Lillian". Hilarious book. I'd love to see it re-released.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by tonymcfadden

There a book I read yonks ago that I can't even find as dead tree format -- "Stealing Lillian". Hilarious book. I'd love to see it re-released.

Abebooks if you'd like a paper copy.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's because whoever controls his estate is an idiot.

Of course! That never occurred to me!

Thanks, Jon!

Wow!

In fact, another 'Wow' is called for: WOW!

[nabsltd]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

For the heirs, it's more just something that's kind of out there that might be worth some money, kind of like your grandfather's coin collection. If someone approaches them, they might be interested, but it has to be for the right price.

For an author like Asimov, the estate is making pretty close to zero on his books right now, as most are out of print. And, even of the ones that aren't, I suspect that a lot of the sales are used copies. So, if they want to make any money, they're going to have to do something, and an eBook would be by far the biggest amount of money in their pocket, because it might get all the fans who already have paper copies of the books to spend more money.

Most of these books would barely make back what it cost to commercially produce the ebook.

With a $500 scanner, I could take any print copy of the book and turn it into an ePub with about 40 hours worth of work, and I'm not a pro...a pro could likely do it much faster. I've taken crappy OCR from other people and done it in less than 40 hours, too. So, even if you paid somebody, it would be about $1,000-2,000 to have a book done. Since they're a pro, I'd expect Kindle-ready plus ePub for that price.

Put it up at Amazon for $5, and you make a profit at 600 copies with the 70% royalty rate, and you only need to sell 1200 copies at the 35% rate. Do you really think the first eBook release of any Asimov fiction won't sell 1000 copies worldwide?

Basically, eBooks are the one format that an author's estate can make money on without having to pay somebody else a large percentage of the profits, because it can be done by any moderately skilled person. For authors like Asimov, there's a bit of work because there isn't an electronic copy of the original for many of the books, but for more modern authors, most worked with some kind of word processor, and if you've got the files, you're really only a few hours away from an ePub.

This is one reason I feel that large publishers are basically criminals as far as eBooks are concerned. They have access to those electronic originals for pretty much every book published since 1995, yet instead they use a printed book as a source and OCR it. Just today I fixed up a book that was originally published in 1997, yet Berkley couldn't even find a copy that used proper typographic quotes when they did the OCR.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

For an author like Asimov, the estate is making pretty close to zero on his books right now, as most are out of print. And, even of the ones that aren't, I suspect that a lot of the sales are used copies. So, if they want to make any money, they're going to have to do something, and an eBook would be by far the biggest amount of money in their pocket, because it might get all the fans who already have paper copies of the books to spend more money.


With a $500 scanner, I could take any print copy of the book and turn it into an ePub with about 40 hours worth of work, and I'm not a pro...a pro could likely do it much faster. I've taken crappy OCR from other people and done it in less than 40 hours, too. So, even if you paid somebody, it would be about $1,000-2,000 to have a book done. Since they're a pro, I'd expect Kindle-ready plus ePub for that price.

Put it up at Amazon for $5, and you make a profit at 600 copies with the 70% royalty rate, and you only need to sell 1200 copies at the 35% rate. Do you really think the first eBook release of any Asimov fiction won't sell 1000 copies worldwide?

Basically, eBooks are the one format that an author's estate can make money on without having to pay somebody else a large percentage of the profits, because it can be done by any moderately skilled person. For authors like Asimov, there's a bit of work because there isn't an electronic copy of the original for many of the books, but for more modern authors, most worked with some kind of word processor, and if you've got the files, you're really only a few hours away from an ePub.

This is one reason I feel that large publishers are basically criminals as far as eBooks are concerned. They have access to those electronic originals for pretty much every book published since 1995, yet instead they use a printed book as a source and OCR it. Just today I fixed up a book that was originally published in 1997, yet Berkley couldn't even find a copy that used proper typographic quotes when they did the OCR.

First off, you grossly underestimate the time and effort to produce a professional quality ebook. It's not just a case of scan, it's also a case of editing the result to catch all the scan errors and formatting. Multiple that times the number of books (Asimov, for example, had hundreds of books) and it becomes a significant expense. That begs the question of if the literary estate actually has a copy of the books in question that is available for scanning.

Second, what ever makes you think that publishers keep an electric copy of every book they have published since 1995? If you check out the manuscript requirements, you will see that as late as 2015, publishers where still requiring manuscripts on paper, not electronic format. [ (http://www.writersdigest.com/online-...g-a-manuscript) note the last requirement, Use 20-lb bond paper].

Some authors might keep copies, though there are still some authors who prefer to write long hand. But then you run into format issues (with the various formats of Word, Word Perfect and numerous other programs) and the standard failure to back up. Those floppy disk that people use to back up to tend to go bad.

It's really not as straight forward and simplistic as you think.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by nabsltd

For an author like Asimov, the estate is making pretty close to zero on his books right now, as most are out of print. And, even of the ones that aren't, I suspect that a lot of the sales are used copies. So, if they want to make any money, they're going to have to do something, and an eBook would be by far the biggest amount of money in their pocket, because it might get all the fans who already have paper copies of the books to spend more money.

We're acting like there aren't already Asimov eBooks available. In the U.S. at least, all of his major books have been released. The missing Asimov books are typically ones that are long OOP even in the paper world. Isaac Asimov on Kindle

Not that those shouldn't be scanned. But be realistic in your discussions.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

First off, you grossly underestimate the time and effort to produce a professional quality ebook. It's not just a case of scan, it's also a case of editing the result to catch all the scan errors and formatting. Multiple that times the number of books (Asimov, for example, had hundreds of books) and it becomes a significant expense. That begs the question of if the literary estate actually has a copy of the books in question that is available for scanning.

Second, what ever makes you think that publishers keep an electric copy of every book they have published since 1995? If you check out the manuscript requirements, you will see that as late as 2015, publishers where still requiring manuscripts on paper, not electronic format. [ (http://www.writersdigest.com/online-...g-a-manuscript) note the last requirement, Use 20-lb bond paper].

Some authors might keep copies, though there are still some authors who prefer to write long hand. But then you run into format issues (with the various formats of Word, Word Perfect and numerous other programs) and the standard failure to back up. Those floppy disk that people use to back up to tend to go bad.

It's really not as straight forward and simplistic as you think.

I have a friend that works in digital publishing and as a hobby scans old movie novelizations that would otherwise never be released.

Because of the nature of those books, all he has to work with is an old mass market paperback and ABBYY FineReader. Yet he turns out very fine, professional grade scans.

Plus there's all the small-press and self-published reissues of books from the sixties, seventies and eighties, where there definitely weren't electronic manuscripts, possibly no manuscript at all.

Creating a good, quality e-book isn't the Herculean effort you make it out to be.

[crossi]

It also doesn't need to be perfect. Just run the scan through spellcheck to get most of the errors and a quick read of the output to catch most of the rest. Sell it fairly cheaply and without DRM and if there are any remaining problems the purchaser can fix it if they want. You can always release an updated version later for re-downloading if the sales warrant it. A not perfect version is better than nothing at least for me.