Someone is WRONG on the internet.

Yeah–point made big time.

“Difficult and expensive” are also relative. Agreed, InDesign is a sunk cost. Most outfits of any size already have it (or Quark eXpress, but my impression is that Quark shops are moving to Indesign), so it’s already a part of the work flow.

The pieces that aren’t in place are the conversion routines to take an ePub file and turn it into a different ebook format, and the automation to turn the process into a pipeline, so it all happens automatically once the ePub file exists.

That will take some doing, and have costs. The software that does it may be free, but the time and expertise of those doing it is not. It will be a fairly significant development effort with attendant costs, and not without political obstacles in larger organizations.

But I hardly think it’s the biggest and most important roadblock to ebooks. I’d call that simply recognizing that there is a market for ebooks, with money to be made in it.

InDesign is neither free not dirt cheap, but if you’re a major publisher, that’s not a huge consideration, and it’s the major publishers that need to get on board.

InDesign is a sunk cost for major (and some minor) publishers, so I was assuming that in my comment. I do agree with you, though.

I read you to mean that it was difficult and expensive, and that was THE major stumbling block for major publishers to get on board.

This is a huge lost opportunity for Tor. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales (with minimal fixed and practically no unit costs to reduce revenue) are involved. I hope they get their act together.

I became a Baen Webscriptions fan by browsing the Samples (1/4 of each book) they post online, and making my buying decisions based on that. I’ve read most of the Free Library and I now buy several more authors because of that (and the Baen Webscriptions).

It’s gotten so that I hardly buy fiction from unknowns anywhere else, just because I can’t determine whether I like someone new without at least a sample of his work. I’d like to have the chance to do the same with Tor; I’m sure there’s a lot more good fic waiting to be read.

My vision of the future uses ePub as the intermediate format, as ePub is a format that can be created with InDesign, and many publishers use InDesign to do the markup and typesetting, generating the PDFs that that will go the printer’s prepress department and be fed to imagesetters to make plates.

ePub isn’t widely supported on devices the reader will use yet, but it contains all of the elements needed, so you should be able to take an ePub file and convert it to MobiPocket, Sony LRF, eReader or whatever other format the end user’s device does support. And more important, it should be possible to automate that process, so that once the ePub file is created, the rest can happen untouched by human hands.

InDesign is neither free not dirt cheap, but if you’re a major publisher, that’s not a huge consideration, and it’s the major publishers that need to get on board. Anything that can make the production of ebooks an automatic part of the process will be a good thing.

Production of an ebook requires a step between either the Word -> markup/typesetting or markup/typesetting -> pre-press operations to generate properly formatted ebook files. That takes software and expertise to do it I suspect many publishers don’t have.

Trust me. It’s not hard and the software is dirt cheap, free, or already on the publisher’s servers. A wander through the MobileRead forum will make that crystal clear.

Uh, what?!!?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/defenestration

I agree, and that’s part of the problem.

Some years back, I attended a talk given by Beth Meachum, Tor’s Editor In Chief, at a local SF fan group meeting. One of the points Beth made was that SF fans were an important group, but not necessarily representative of the SF market. If Tor published only the stuff folks in that group liked, they’d go out of business. So they did things like publish the latest Piers Anthony Xanth novel (”Don’t groan, people. That stuff sells!“) because they had the broader market to be concerned with.

And people need to remember that Tor doesn’t just publish SF. Tor is also responsible for the Forge imprint, which publishes a lot of other things. Anybody care to take a guess at who Forge’s readership is and where they stand on ebooks? I wouldn’t.

Frankly, I think the really vocal folks criticizing Tor are a tiny minority, and not necessarily representative of the broader ebook market. I want ebooks as much as the next guy, too, but I’m patient. I’m simply happy to see Tor recognizing that there is an ebook market and moving to address it.

I’m just curious about the level of anger I see from some of the more vocal protesters. If they get that upset over not immediately having the rest of a series available in electronic format, I wonder how they react to really important things, like potential threats to their life, health, or livelihood.

Meanwhile, I think Tor will find out how many people want ebooks only, once they have more of their catalog available in ebook form, and offered for sale. While we can probably assume that some folks might grab both editions, I think most will grab one or the other.

Tor is in part taking a leaf from Baen’s book, and promoting their paper books as well as their website. There are losts of folks delighted with what they have who have indicated intent to read other books by those authors, which was kind of the point.

And Tor recognizes there is a market for ebooks. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have tried to do the deal with Baen to offer Tor content through Webscriptions.

Yes, it would have made sense for Tor to have the other books in series where they gave away the first also available in ebook form, (though there’s the question of how they would sell them,) and I think it was a tactical misstep on their part to not have done so. But while I think Tor is aware there is a market for ebooks, I don’t think they realized exactly how many highly vocal folks wanted only ebooks, and were enraged at the idea of being expected to buy paper volumes.

Well, they know now. The next questions are how long it will take before they remedy the lack, and how they will sell them when they do.

I expect we will see those books in electronic editions in the not all that distant future. I am not the only person who popped up on their new site and said they really needed to offer the other books as ebooks as well. pnh stated that Macmillan was in the process of digitizing Tor’s catalog and more would be forthcoming.

The next questions are when and how they will be made available. It’s a good question. Should Tor attempt to develop the capacity to sell direct to the mass market, or should they sell through established retailers like Amazon and Fictionwise? Or should they restart their aborted deal with Baen and sell through Webscriptions?

I assume we’ll see, soon enough.

A publisher may realize there is a market for ebooks, but realizing it and and addressing it are different matters.

First, electronic publishing is in many respects a different business model. No one sensible changes their business model without clearly understanding they are doing so, and what the implications are. You can assume some publishers are still groping toward a coherent digital strategy.

Second, before you can sell ebooks, you must produce them. The current work flow is essentially Word document -> markup/typesetting -> pre-press operation to generate plates for printing -> printing and binding of finished book.

Production of an ebook requires a step between either the Word -> markup/typesetting or markup/typesetting -> pre-press operations to generate properly formatted ebook files. That takes software and expertise to do it I suspect many publishers don’t have.

Third, you have the question of how you sell them. Publishers traditionally have been manufacturers, selling to wholesalers and large retail chains, not directly to the reader. Most of them aren’t set up to do large scale direct to the reader sales.

This is where someone like Amazon can step in. They already sell books, and lots of other things directly to consumers, and have the infrastructure in place. In essence, they’re a catalog retailer doing mail-order fulfillment. They can take the heavy lifting of selling ebooks off the publisher’s hands.

Fourth, most of the major publishers are owned by conglomerates with fingers in other media pies, like movies and music. The corporate assumption will be “Electronic content will be pirated, and we must Take Measures to prevent it!”, resulting in an assortment of DRM schemes, which are at best a PITA for the consumer.

Finally, you have the question of what the reader will use to display the ebook, and what format you you issue in. Adobe PDF? Mobipocket? Sony LRF? eReader PML? ePub? Failure to adopt a standard across the industry is an impediment to ebook adoption. I want to download an ebook once, and read it on whatever I happen to have handy, which might be a PC, Mac, PDA, smartphone, or Blackberry. We are getting closer, but not there yet.

And even if all of the above are addressed, I think many publishers don’t understand the number of ebook converts who will now only read an electronic edition, and refuse to buy a paper book. Getting that across may take some doing.