TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘book publishing’ Category

By David Rothman

Matt Sumell, a short story writer, is the first “Featured Contemporary Author” on the home page of the BookGlutton site. BG is a Web community through which you can annotate others’ works—publicly or privately—or publish your own. You can even do ePub conversions from HTML.

“We’ll be highlighting contemporary authors that have uploaded original work or excerpts of published material in a section on the homepage,” says Travis Alber, BookGlutton co-founder. “Although we continue to bring in public domain and Creative Commons work, we have now begun to expand our catalog to new copyrighted material; we’re excited to provide a space for new and contemporary authors to showcase their writing. We’ll be rotating the featured authors frequently.
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By Rob Preece, founder of BooksForABuck.com

Moderator: See earlier item on e-book pricing. Unrelated: Rob’s test of BookGlutton’s ePub conversion. Try it yourself. - D.R.

Sometimes you can’t win for losing. E-books get dinged for being “too expensive.” But offer great books at super-affordable prices instead—and you might get attacked for that.

Pricing is one of the most controversial aspects of e-books. When I started BooksForABuck.com, my market research indicated that many e-book publishers had set price points above those charged by traditional publishers for paper books. I love e-books and can understand charging more for the portability, adjustable font, and convenience. The problem is, you have to try e-books before you discover the advantages. My market research indicated that high prices kept many from bothering.

Logical savings for the reader

There is a logic that if a publisher doesn’t need to pay for paper, for shipping, invest in printing thousands of books that might not sell and might get returned at some future point, there should be a savings for the reader. That made sense to me. Certainly for small publishers, the cost of printing is non-trivial, and the risks of offset printing a quantity (as opposed to the extremely high price for POD printing) are substantial.

I came up with the “Books For A Buck” concept and sampled everyone I could reach; a high percentage indicated that they’d be intrigued by affordable books, and that a buck was a heck of a price. Many of them indicated that they’d be willing to experiment with a new author if they could buy a book at a price low enough that they wouldn’t feel too disappointed if they ultimately didn’t enjoy it.

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By David Rothman

The Espresso machine is a print-on-demand gizmo, a forerunner of what you may see someday at the corner FedEx Kinko’s. So is the demand out there for it? Todd Anderson, director of the University of Alberta Bookstore, is a believer, judging from PW’s write-up of his comments to a Book Industry Study Group seminar.

Cost of machine: $144,000.

Date of installation: November 1.

Number of books printed through early February: 2,364 books, totaling 537,754 pages, 1,500 more titles printed since then.

No, I haven’t analyzed the economics. I’d welcome thoughts on this. I still think the real action will be in e-books, but the POD alternative is great to have around for the holdouts. Meanwhile how about the eco angle of E vs. POD? Your other comparisons? Of course, for physical bookstores, on-site POD comes with an inherent appeal—less competition.

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By David Rothman

“Speaking of libraries,” Philip Gulley writes in a mostly lighthearted essay in Indianapolis Monthly on Kindles vs. traditional books, “what will become of them if the Kindle succeeds? Copyright laws, written by lobbyists and passed through a Congress beholden to big money, will prevent libraries from downloading books and sharing them for free with patrons, which will effectively make literature and information inaccessible to the poor. Books will become like healthcare in this country, available to some and not others. Congress might eventually remedy this, but it will take 50 years, and in the meantime three generations of poor children won’t know the pleasure of curling up with a good book, expanding their minds, and broadening their opportunities.”

The TeleRead take: Well, Philip, you’re off on the details, but I like the spirit of the above, which, alas, considering the copyright lobby’s influence in D.C., turns out to be less of a joke than you thought. TeleRead, anyone? And new business and access models for libraries, with fair compensation to creators?

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By David Rothman

The positives of Ezra Klein’s CJR article and related video: He’s a new Kindle user and hails the machine as “credible. As a product of Amazon, it’s intertwined with the world’s largest online bookstore, legitimized by the one company that can lay some claim to having already changed the way we use, or at least acquire, books. The real question, though, is what took so long?”

In general, the Klein article is upbeat on E and notes the possibilities of  adjustable font sizes, outbound links, interactivity and updated books (albeit, I’d assume, not the 1984ish variety). At the same time his CJR piece correctly recognizes that the Kindle and the like are not perfect replacements for paper books, given the screen-contrast problems of E Ink, among the other flaws.

The negatives—blindness to the eBabel and DRM issues: Um, Ezra, I mostly liked your piece, but as an e-book newbie, you unwittingly left out a few details. Unless we want the whole bleepin’ e-book world to revolve around Jeff Bezos, we deserve nonproprietary e-book standards in areas ranging from the basic format to guidelines for shared annotations and interbook linking.

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By David Rothman

“You can tell that no progress has really been made in changing cultural expectations when the same arguments that were trotted out a decade ago continue to be pursued. A Slashdot thread reprises the same debates about e-books that we’ve been having forever…’prefer real books,’ ‘turning pages is nice,’ ‘price of e-books is too high,’ ‘nothing compares to paper,’ ‘but free e-books are cool,’ ‘I read on my palm V etc etc.’” - Sherman Young, author of The Book Is Dead.

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By Aaron S. Miller, CTO of BookGlutton, a Web-based community of readers

I’m happy to announce the first tool in our Web API, the BookGlutton ePub Converter. It’s a simple way to create the IDPF’s open e-book format, ePub, from a basic HTML file. The tool can be used from anyplace on the Web, in back end scripts or front end pages, but the curious can play with it on our site, where we’ve put up some documentation and a test form.

I’ve voiced concerns about the ePub format before, but I’ve been working with it for over a year and want to make it more accessible to independent, open-source Web developers and tech-savvy Web readers. I think free tools like this, and hopefully open source libraries to accompany them, will do a lot for the ePub format.

Try the converter—and share feedback

So please, create some ePubs. Readers, convert some of your favorite HTML editions to ePub and let me know how it goes. Authors, if you feel overwhelmed about how to get your work into the ePub format, use this tool to generate boilerplates. Web developers, if you’re curious about the internal XML workings of the format, rename your epub with a .zip extension and open the files up in your favorite text editor. Ask yourself how the format could be improved for Web browsers and let the IDPF know what you think. And finally, share what you build.

Moderator: That’s an unofficial ePub logo. Hello, IDPF? When will you do an official one? Meanwhile I’d encourage people to try out Aaron’s ePub converter, as he suggestions—and share feedback in our comment area, not just privately. - D.R.

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By David Rothman

Yes, the actual book—the paper and cardboard—accounts for just part of what you pay at the store.

But new hikes in paper and fuel costs may make e-books more competitive with P than before. And of course we know which approach is greener.

Related: P-books as global warmers: Another argument for E. Paper books are a speck of paper consumption, but e-book readers can also display newspapers, far more villainous as polluters in P format.

And speaking of the p-to-e transition: Reluctantly, a daily stops its presses, living online, the New York Times’ write-up on the Capital Times in Madison,Wisconsin. Also see Wikipedia item.

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By David Rothman

Chief of Random House to step down—are pirate booksites to blame? reads a Bookyards headline. Actually, as I see it, it was a mix of factors, not just just slow growth but also CEO Peter Olson’s declining health. I doubt that Internet bootlegging counted in the grand scheme of things.

That said, Random House does need to consider new business models—for example, use of innovation to grow library sales. Even Random can’t do this alone. Librarians and publishers should spend less time fighting over copyright-related matters and more time lobbying for new funding mechanisms. Remember, library e-books are the best of both worlds—free to patrons (reducing the piracy risk) but a revenue stream for creators. No, I’m not saying library sales are a panacea; here’s to retail growth, too! But I think library revenue could be much bigger than now, thanks to the possibilities of e-books.

Olson’s rumored successor: Gail Rebuck of Random House UK (photo).

The Bookseller on her ‘tude toward E: Rebuck warns that publishers should take e-books seriously but be vigilant on copyright matters to protect themselves and writers. “However, she said that ultimately it did not matter if, in 2050, a writer is read in a traditional paperback or a hand-held device. ‘As a publisher, I am happy to supply either to customers, and the essence of what I am selling will be the same, whatever the technology transmitting it. I think there is an irreducible quality to reading that means the book will never die.’” Let’s just hope she’ll be open to backing off from traditional DRM as well as to ePUB—both would make it easier for legitimate customers to enjoy e-books.

Related: PW item and Google news round-up on Olson’s expected departure from Random.

(Thanks, Tamas.)

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By Joe Wikert, a VP in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons

Literary Video’s tagline is “Creating Multimedia Content that Sells Books.”  I discovered this service last month and exchanged a couple of e-mails with David Woodard, founder and creative director.

With the ever increasing importance of video in the publishing world, I jumped on the opportunity to do a blog interview with David.  Here’s what he had to say about Literary Video and what it’s up to:

JW: You had been working for a publisher in Nashville for awhile and decided to launch this new business venture, Literary Video.  What’s your vision for the business and what drove you to create this start-up?

DW: Working in book marketing for eight years taught me many things, but one of the most impressive things I learned was that the best salesman for a book is almost always the author. There are exceptions to this, but by in large it is true.

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By David Rothman

Science fiction and classics are easily among the more popular genres dear to TeleBlog readers. Could this mix be more than just the result of SF’s appeal to our smart, tech-loving regulars who, along the way, frugally enjoy their free classics?

Might SF works reflect more of the spirit of old classics than modern literature does, regardless of criticisms of the prose of Asimov-style writers?

Often, in works such as Isaac Asimov’s, we see less emphasis on character than on action, ideas and interesting situations, if you go by the opinions of many a critic. And even though many female SF fans belie the usual genre stereotypes, most readers of SF are men—perhaps for those very reasons.

TeleBlog survey: Seventy-six percent went for sci-fi

No, this isn’t to say that SF fans ignore other genres such as thrillers, or completely diss modern award-winning literature, even if I suspect SF is a big component within the prestige category. But tellingly, in our recent TeleRead blog survey, 76 percent of the participants listed “sci fi/speculative fiction” among the genres they’d browse in a bookstore if they had an hour to kill. Thirty-three percent went for “classics/public domain.” Just 11 percent mentioned romance/erotic—the very favorites of Jane’s DearAuthor audience.

What does this mean for e-publishers? If they want to reach men fitting the SF/tech/classics pattern, they do well to advertise on sites such as Manybooks.net and Feedbooks. While economy-minded, pub domain fans can be won over with the right titles. The money is there to spend. Another Teleblog survey, in June 2007 revealed that 53 percent of the participants said they planned to buy an iPhone. Even more significantly, as Robert Nagle observed, “the huge number of people who bought 20+ books and e-books per year offers some hope for publishing.” In other words, all that frugal reading of free classics doesn’t interfere with purchases of books.

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By David Rothman

Amazon is suing the State of New York over collection of sales taxes—in a case that could have important repercussions for sellers of both e- and p-books. That’s a long way from the POD and ePub issues, but meanwhile here’s a tip for Jeff Bezos.

Perhaps a kinder, gentler Amazon, in those two areas, would help your company come across as more likable and yield benefits in seemingly unrelated legal controversies. If you’re gonna fight people who say you’re killing off small bookstores, you’d better cut back on your Standard Oil act.

Housekeeping: Stay tuned later today for Ficbot’s e-book-oriented review of the Asus Eee PC. I’ll also have e-book-related thoughts on Adobe’s loosening of Flash restrictions.

Technorati Tags: Amazon,Amazon.com,Jeff Bezos

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