TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Rich Adin’ Category

By Rich Adin

It appears that Barnes & Noble and some publishers plan to experiment with giving pbook buyers a discount coupon to purchase the ebook version of the purchased pbook. I’ve been wrestling with this idea for quite some time and I’m still undecided about how valuable such a system will be to me.

There are several considerations. Will I need to buy the hardcover or can I buy the paperback pbook? Buying the hardcover pbook isn’t much of a problem for me as I only buy hardcover pbooks. But where it does have some effect is on which books will come with the discount coupon and how recent will those books be: Will they be brand new releases still on the bestseller lists or will they be part of the long tail only? The answer also affects the price I would be willing to pay (or maybe it doesn’t; let’s see how the discussion unfolds) for both the p and e books.

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By Rich Adin

Before the printing press and moveable type, we relied on scribes (in the broader sense of being more than just a copyist) to record words and to copy manuscripts. This was a one-person operation, even if there were many scribes tackling the same document.

The advent of the printing press and moveable changed manuscript production. Now several people working together produce numerous copies of the same manuscript, each having a hand in the whole project.

But ebooks are changing our world again. eBooks in the age of the Internet puts us back to the one-person endeavor. One person can be author, editor, publisher, marketer — just what a scribe did 700 years ago. The question is: Is this progress? (more…)

By Rich Adin

There have been lots of articles and comments regarding Rupert Murdoch’s views on making online news pay. Many commentators have suggested that putting the news behind a pay wall is bound to fail. I’m not so sure that Rupert is wrong. If we want original news reporting (i.e., news origination) and in-depth reporting rather than just the 10-second blurb TV gives us, we need to pay for it. Newsgathering is not free and costs need to be covered.

I subscribe to the New York Times. Daily delivery runs me about $50 per month. I am willing to pay for the subscription because I want to first know what is actually happening in my world before I start listening to the pundits tell me what those facts mean. I can’t imagine relying on Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Stephen Colbert, Ariana Huffington, or Al Franken for the facts of what is happening in my world.

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By Rich Adin

In Part I of this 3-part article, I discussed the role reviews play in my decision-making process as to whether or not to buy a particular book. As noted, reviews are rather limited, largely because there are so few credible reviews and so many books published each year. In Part II, published yesterday, I discussed the role cover design plays and how good cover design acts as an assurance for the book buyer. Today’s discussion addresses the final legs of my decision-making process: Content and Pricing.

Content

A good writer grabs you with the first dozen or so words; a hack writer like me doesn’t have that knack. I am willing to plod through a nonfiction book but not through a novel. So I want to see that the story gets off to a good start. I also want to see how many errors there are in the first chapter.

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By Paul Biba

Rich Adin is starting a series on this on his An American Editor Blog. While I think it’s a bit off topic to reprint them in full here, the articles are worth reading for Rich’s usual thoughtful attitude towards books and what surrounds them. I suggest you go over and take a look. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the first one:

I have been thinking about what goes into my decision whether or not to buy a particular book. An ever-increasing numbers of books are available every year — enough to overwhelm any dedicated book buyer. I suspect that the only time the decision was (relatively) easy was in the days of scribal versions and the early days of the printing press and moveable type. I recall reading that even at the time of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, thousands of books and pamphlets were being written and published every year.

By Rich Adin

One of my favorite op-ed columnists is Leonard Pitts, Jr. of the Miami Herald. I don’t always agree with him, but like certain other columnists (Froma Harrop, Paul Krugman, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks, Linda Chavez, and George Will), I always read his opinion piece. Some people are worth reading and their opinions worth considering, whereas lining the litter box is the proper place for certain other columnists (Michelle Malkin comes readily to mind) – they simply lack any pretense to intelligent conversation. (If I want to be harangued, my wife and kids can do the job expertly.)

In a recent column, Pitts observed: “But objective reality does not change because you refuse to accept it. The fact that you refuse to acknowledge a wall does not change the fact that it’s a wall. And you shouldn’t have to hit it to find that out.” This made me think of the ebook war between ebookers and publishers.

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By Rich Adin

Do word choices matter? Do word choices misspelled matter? Is there a difference between break and brake? Not if you read some of the ebook novels I have read recently!

Yes, I’m complaining about authors who don’t see the value in hiring a professional editor, authors who think they can both write a compelling story and either self-edit it or hire the next door neighbor to give it the editorial once over, and the publishers that encourage this type of thinking. Professional editors do serve a purpose and the more I read fiction ebooks, the more concerned I become about what will happen to readability, understanding, and literacy in the Age of eBooks. (more…)

By Rich Adin

One of the blessings of ebooks is that they are digital files that are easily corrected (note I said easily, not inexpensively), unlike the printed book, which once published becomes a fiscal nightmare if it is error laden. This problem, and what to do about it, came to mind as the result of a recent New York Times article, “Doubts Raised on Book’s Tale of Atom Bomb.”

The Last Train from Hiroshima by Charles Pellegrino was published in January 2010 by Henry Holt to acclaim. Alas, there may be a major problem: The technical details of the mission are based on in-person recollections of someone who was not there. So the question becomes: What is to be done? [Update: According to today's New York Times, the publisher, Henry Holt, has decided to recall all 18,000 copies of the book. Apparently other issues have arisen, including whether the author truly has a doctorate degree and whether other sources actually exist. Here the publisher is acting as a gatekeeper and warranting the quality of the book; what would be the case if the book had been self-published?]

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By Rich Adin

I suspect that Macmillan’s upper management feel elated after getting Amazon to agree to an agency distribution and pricing model. But a few pin pricks to deflate that elation are probably warranted.

Macmillan showed some, but not much, gumption when it stood up to Amazon. Would Macmillan have taken the stand it did in the absence of Apple paving the way? I doubt it; Macmillan hasn’t shown any strategic or tactical brilliance in the ebook wars — this was its first bold stroke.

None of the publishers who are pushing the agency model have shown much initiative. All of the initiative has come from outside the publishing world, which is not a good sign. So I will again suggest a way for publishers to lead the way: an international repository.

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By Rich Adin

I’m a big magazine reader. In addition to the many books I buy each year (I have more books in my to-read pile than I can read within the next few years), I subscribe to a lot of magazines. My subscriptions include Smithsonian, The Atlantic, The Week, The Economist, American Heritage, New York Review of Books, Business Week, PC World, U.S. News & World Report, The Scientist, Discover, and several more. I begin my day, every day, with a pot of tea and the day’s New York Times and my local newspaper. Between the books I buy and the magazines and newspapers to which I subscribe, I spend a lot of time reading!

I admit to being curious. I like to keep up with what is happening around me and I really dislike the 10-second news blurbs that TV and radio offer (although National Public Radio deserves kudos for All Things Considered). I think being broadly read helps me as an editor.

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By Rich Adin

Since my last listing of recently bought books, I’ve added a few and read a few. For example, I bought in hardcover and read Robin Hobb’s Dragon Keeper, the first book in a new fantasy series, and Lawrence Watt-Evans’ A Young Man Without Magic, also the first in a new fantasy series, both of which I enjoyed. I also read several ebooks, including Randolph Lalonde’s First Light Chronicles: Omnibus, Patrick Welch’s Brendell: Apprentice Thief, Wendy Palmer’s The Frog Prince’s Daughters, and Frances Evlin’s The Eternal Trees of Prand, to name a few, which were also enjoyable although several suffered from poor editing (e.g., misuse of compliment and complement, misspellings such as court marshal for court-martial).

But fiction is not where I spend the bulk of my book money. For fiction, with exceptions for certain authors, of which Hobb and Watt-Evans are examples, I usually buy ebooks rather than hardcovers, and because of various publisher- and ebookseller-imposed restrictions, I tend to limit my fiction purchases to ebooks without DRM and that cost me less than $5. Primary, although not sole, reasons why I do not buy nonfiction in electronic form are the lack of universal DRM and good formatting (I’d like, for example, a table to look like a table, to be able to access footnotes, to view an illustration in its proper place). I want to know that what I buy today I can read next year or 5 years from now; not that I must rush to read a purchase for fear that it will be unreadable on my next reading device.

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By Rich Adin

On February 14, in a New York Times Sunday Magazine article titled “How Christian Were the Founders?”, the question of what control people with personal agendas have over what elementary and secondary school students are taught. The article reminded me of a book I read several years ago, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn by Diane Ravitch (2004), which addressed the same issue.

What bothers me most about what is happening before the Texas State Board of Education, which is the focus of both the article and the book, is that whatever decisions the TSBE make will affect the education not only of Texas students, but of students in 46 other states. I don’t care if Texas wants to dumb-down its student population, but it bothers me that it wants to drag down the rest country along with it (more…)