Charles Stross on eBooks

[tompe]

Interesting text about eBooks by Charles Stross in his ongoing series about publishing:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...-9-ebooks.html

[mr ploppy]

I don't know where he gets the idea that proofreaders go anywhere near an ebook, presumably he has never read one?

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I don't know where he gets the idea that proofreaders go anywhere near an ebook, presumably he has never read one?

As with other discussions about ebooks, there are two views. Yours appears to be evaluating as they're currently being treated by publishers. The other is the ebook industry as it should be, i.e. viewing ebooks as simply another venue and expending the same effort to assure quality production as in expended on HC, PB, and audio books.

Based on the way many publishers treat ebooks I've often wondered if they don't have a hidden agenda to kill the entire industry-but I can't figure out why they would hide it if that's the case. Sure, it'd cause a fuss if they said they wouldn't produce ebooks any more but what could be done about it? Producing poor-quality ebooks is already producing a fuss.

[Greg Anos]

Tompe, what I find is a common disconnect in the book/e-book world. All the cost analysis is based on the creation of a new book. New in the sense of just written, now being published for the first time.

Yes there are many expenses involved, most of which don't show up to the end reader. But...

They are all one-time costs. And once the book is released they become sunk expenses.

What about the book released 50 years ago? or even 10-20? What costs are required for creating an e-book copy of them? Most of those costs involved in creating the book in the first place don't have to be redone. Only the OCR'ing and copyproofing need to be done...

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

Based on the way many publishers treat ebooks I've often wondered if they don't have a hidden agenda to kill the entire industry-but I can't figure out why they would hide it if that's the case. Sure, it'd cause a fuss if they said they wouldn't produce ebooks any more but what could be done about it? Producing poor-quality ebooks is already producing a fuss.

I have gone back to real books for most of my reading, ebooks being reserved for things that are either unavailable or just too expensive on the second hand market to justify. A lot of that is down to the sheer volume of mistakes in ebooks, but I don't think it is a deliberate decision made by the publishers. I think it's more a case of the market not being large enough for them to allocate resources to it. But unless they at least proof read them, I can't really see that market getting much bigger.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I have gone back to real books for most of my reading,

Them's fightin' words... ebooks are real books.

I will never switch back to paper for casual entertainment reading. I read reference books on paper, and some nonfiction, but the majority of my reading is on a screen, and is going to stay that way unless there are drastic changes in either my life or the technology makeup of my community.

A lot of that is down to the sheer volume of mistakes in ebooks, but I don't think it is a deliberate decision made by the publishers. I think it's more a case of the market not being large enough for them to allocate resources to it. But unless they at least proof read them, I can't really see that market getting much bigger.

Baen's books have no notable level of mistakes. (They've got some, but no worse than print. And when they're informed about them, they fix them.) I don't think it's a case of publishers deciding not to allocate the resources--I think they were told that OCR programs work better than they actually do. I think they ran a few test books through a program, and it looked great, and it didn't occur to them that each book would be a bit different.

The market will get bigger. Much bigger. It may, however, leave the Big 6 behind. Small presses are jumping into the ebook marketplace, because they've noticed what Baen noticed a decade ago: no print cost-per-book, no storage and inventory costs, no requirement to invest in materials before you make sales means it doesn't really matter how high your sales levels are, beyond a certain minimum; you can start small and slowly build a core marketplace of loyal readers by providing quality books that they like.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Baen's books have no notable level of mistakes. (They've got some, but no worse than print. And when they're informed about them, they fix them.) I don't think it's a case of publishers deciding not to allocate the resources--I think they were told that OCR programs work better than they actually do. I think they ran a few test books through a program, and it looked great, and it didn't occur to them that each book would be a bit different.

The sort of mistakes I am thinking about aren't really down to OCR. The last ebook I read (am still reading), there was a lot of commonly repeated mistakes. Viscous instead of vicious, Norte Dame instead of Notre Dame, Eight-First Street changing to Eighty-First Street and back again every few pages, apostrophes where they shouldn't be and no apostrophe where there should be (Tops Burger's). Then there's general grammar mistakes, words that seem to be missing (he went on rampage), and the wrong words (he held her in her arms and kissed her).

Fair enough it's a small/independent publisher, but I also have real books from the same publisher and while you get maybe 3 or 4 mistakes per book in those, in the ebook versions there's on average 2 per page.

[Kali Yuga]

I'm actually noticing fewer and fewer proofreading errors in the latest batch of books I've procured. Occasionally there's a formatting error here and there.

Paper books are hardly magical creations that are typed up by fairies and thus immune from typos and errors, by the way. It's only a matter of time before publishers start dedicating the kind of resources to proofreading and formatting for the electronic editions as they do to the paper ones.

[pwalker8]

Pretty interesting. I had always wondered what the cost break down for publishing was.

[mr ploppy]

There's no real reason why the same file couldn't be used as the basis for both print and ebook.

[EricLandes]

Originally Posted by tompe

Interesting text about eBooks by Charles Stross in his ongoing series about publishing:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...-9-ebooks.html

Stross pretty consistently slants his writing as anti-Amazon. I don't know from where this (un-?)intentional bias originates.

It carries through in this piece. It's not blatant, but adjectives used to describe things Amazon tend toward the negative.

That said, the CMAP series he's posted is quite good, and VERY informative. If only from one specific perspective.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

There's no real reason why the same file couldn't be used as the basis for both print and ebook.

Mostly. If the program used to prep for print will output into useful-for-ebook formats. Some page layout programs are great for print but awful for anything else, and they don't necessarily allow styles to convert to HTML markup that converts nicely into ebook formats. (However, that shouldn't affect spelling & typos; several small ebook companies release poorly-edited books. I always check the sample; if it's got errors that make me wince, I don't buy.)

And any book that wasn't released as an ebook & pbook at the same time involves re-converting, usually from a scanned pbook, because publishers don't keep the print-ready version around after the book is out of print.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

I don't know where he gets the idea that proofreaders go anywhere near an ebook, presumably he has never read one?

I don't know where he gets his ideas, period. It's laughable to suggest that the agency model is going to lead to more overall profits for the book publishers, and this will speed anything.

And right, the public don't give a crap, Mr. Stross. Either the product is cheap and available, or they go to the darknet. Period.


Also, the current publishing industry being a smoking pile is an upside from my perspective. Adapt or die, I'm quite indifferent to individual company's fortunes - I, like joe public, know what I want and what I'll pay (even if job public can't articulate it very well).

Oh, and stripping/destruction should be taxed as the ecologically unsound process it is.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by EricLandes

Stross pretty consistently slants his writing as anti-Amazon. I don't know from where this (un-?)intentional bias originates.

I haven't read enough of his blog to know whether he had an anti-Amazon bias before the Amazon-MacMillan game of chicken back at then end of January. At the time, he made it quite clear that he was upset that Amazon was playing chicken at the expense of MacMillan authors, all over something that's currently less than 1% of sales. As near as I can tell, this only affected sales of his Merchant Princes series in paper editions, and that MacMillan wasn't even selling any ebooks of the series at the time. And, even Stross notes that MacMillan is still not selling all of the books in the series as ebooks.

My guess is that Stross did not lose very much income over the 1-2 weeks where Amazon was not selling his Merchant Princes series in paper, but the fact that Amazon is willing to stop selling all of a publisher's product as a negotiating point (and it's not the first time they've done it), makes them evil in his eyes.

It apparently doesn't matter that all of the ebook retailers relying on Ingram have not been able to buy Agency 5 ebooks for 6 weeks and counting, as long as the big 3 ebook retailers (Amazon, B&N and Sony) can.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

publishers don't keep the print-ready version around after the book is out of print.

What do they do when they want to reprint it, when someone makes a film/TV version, or there is some other reason there has been a rise in demand for it? If they are really deleting print ready files, that is a pretty short sighted decision given the relatively low cost of storage space.

But the sort of mistakes I'm thinking of would really have been caught long before it went anywhere near a printer. If they were self published it would make sense, but if something is published by a third party, even if they are just a tiny independent publisher, that means that someone other than the author has read it.