Linkstravaganza?

[alanajoli]

I probably don't actually have enough links for an extravaganza, but it sounded good in my head, so I'll let it stand.

• I've been waiting until it was public to announce this, and since this interview at Operation Awesome is up, I'm going to say that makes the news officially out there: lyster , aka Max Gladstone, is being represented by Weronika Janczuk

Comments

[jeff_duntemann]

There was a big article in the Wall Street Journal this morning (on page B1) about downward price pressure on the big New York houses by the indies, and said basically what I said on Contra in the April 5 entry you cite here. Key to the whole business appears to be social networking, which is how word of mouth happens these days.

As to how many writers can make money this way, well, it's hard to know. I'm still thinking about that. Writers who write only a little may be at a disadvantage, no matter how good their material may be.

Still, let's all remember that the field is in its infancy, and we're still inventing the basic mechanisms. Fasten your seat belts. It's gonna be an interesting ride.

[alanajoli]

Oooh, thanks for the article link.

A friend of mine who works in business publishing mentioned the concern about how little of the money charged per book is actually spent on the physical product -- and how much more of the cost per copy goes into paying for authors, images, and administration, at least at her house. I suspect that book pricing works differently over the different parts of the industry, and that's going to get skewed as the e-book market grows and develops, as well. I have the feeling that traditional trade houses are going to go toward the indie model I've seen with smaller advances and larger royalty percentages -- something I'm not thrilled about, considering my own experience with a similar contract! But you're right, the whole market is a brave new world, and we'll just have to hang on tight!

[jeff_duntemann]

I'll write more about this in the future, but my vision has two big elements:

1. Authors are going to have to do more than just emit words into manuscripts. Ebook formatting will be as essential a skill as word processing is right now. Ditto editing, especially in fiction. Too much of the need for editing is an excuse for lazy writing.

2. Publishers will gradually morph into author co-ops, in which authors share online resources but ultimately create their own books. The key is that authors will own and control the process, though the transformation won't be complete until all printing is POD printing.

The days of the 55% retail discount are numbered.

[alanajoli]

Jeff, are you familiar with Book View Cafe at all? They're exactly the kind of co-op you're talking about -- so yes, I think that future is already coming into being!

[bccreations]

Despite this, and despite the uptick in college students reading e-books, most college students aren't using e-readers for their text books

A lot of that has to do with the format e-textbooks are available in. Previously they were PDF and then that moved to Flash. Now we have a big push for iPad, but most ebooks are still Flash-based. We do some Kindle conversions and Universal PDFs for nook, etc, for those titles whose market makes it viable.

I don't get the sensation of the Kindle announcement. It's an announcement and people are talking like it already happened. It flooded my twitter feed the day it was announced. They've been announcing A DANCE WITH DRAGON for years and that's still not finished. Until Amazon actually makes available book lending, then it's all talk.

[alanajoli]

Good point on the Kindle announcement. I think people are excited because previously it sounded like Amazon was *not* going to work with Overdrive, ever. That they're working on making that happen says to folks that Amazon's willing to work with the external group to make library lending possible -- where before it had seemed like they disdained the library lending format. So you're right, it's just talk, but at least it's talk in the right direction (as far as libraries are concerned!).

And the format issues you're talking about make sense with the text book issue. I think the iPad and other tablets are going to make digital textbooks friendlier, especially if you can, say, make hand-drawn digital notes alongside your chemistry textbook, for example. It'll happen eventually!

[anonymous]

With publishers limiting the uses of electronic copies of books, is the kindle announcement really good news for libraries or just their readers. Because if it becomes more expensive for them to keep electronic copies in stock than hard copies that's probably not helping their budget.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2011/0228/Limits-on-library-e-books-stir-controversy

[alanajoli]

I've only very briefly given my thoughts on this subject, because other people have covered it in more depth and more thoughtfully than I can -- but I think it's going to become increasingly important for libraries to be able to offer digital content to their patrons, because patrons are going to increasingly demand it. I know that when I was working the desk, I got asked the "when will I be able to borrow in my Kindle?" question quite a bit. And I'm not sure that publishers won't be shooting themselves in the foot with the limited check-outs thing, either -- if libraries have options between books from a publisher that offers unlimited copies and publishers that don't, aside from the "must have" titles, they'll probably go with what their budget can afford. To me, that'd mean more permanent copies and fewer limited ones, because it ends up being a better value for the money.

But as Jeff says above, this is all in its infancy yet -- we'll have to wait and see how it all pans out!