How much do you think it costs to print a book-cover in color?
Note that costs on very long offset runs (say 250,000 copies) are MUCH lower than they are to print up one copy of a book. Even there the cost of the cover is probably 20x the cost of a page.
Suppose you can get your costs on a laser printer down to $0.01 per page. For a 200-page book, this means the black and white interior will cost about $1 to print. The cover in color might cost another $0.50-$1. You can't use a standard laser printer on those.
The patronage system is not that different from the way open source bounties work. It also funds a lot of open source software development, but it is not really a viable way to go for things like literary and scholarly works.
Now, I am both a software engineer and an author of a book. Copyright works very differently in these areas. In software we like to use libraries. In scholarly or literary works, we like to avoid quoting long passages of others because it interferes with the flow, and such a restriction allows us to demonstrate our own understanding. So reuse criteria are very different.
BTW, you are being very pessimistic. New technology including POD, etc. are making it quite possible to do inexpensive production runes (under $400 for 100 copies of a 200-page trade paperback book). Add to this very mature software like LaTeX and you have the possibility of producing quality books cheaply for limited markets.
I don't think print publishing is a dying model. I do think that worrying too much about electronic copying is a sure-fire way to kill a book or any other work.....
My point originally though is that the original poster seems to think that Google is stealing his books, but really, Google only allows a reader to read 20% of the book in a 30 day period. This allows you to do some fairly extensive research but is not a substitute for buying the book if you need to read it.
On the other hand, I have a customer that runs a bookstore. Occasionally I have to do maintenance of their computer systems that take some time to do. So what do I do? I pick up a book and read it. I have no intention of buying it. I am just passing the time waiting for software to load/download, antivirus scans to run, diagnostics to complete, etc.
The question I was asking wasn't a question of copyright infringement (where Google was almost certainly guilty under current law), but rather the allegation that what they were doing was harmful to writers. In reality, Google's approach is substantially less harmful to writers than are public and college libraries, bookstores where I can pick up and read a substantial portion of a book before deciding whether to buy it, etc. This is an area where Google's activities are helpful to writers but it is still illegal because we look at copyright in the wrong way.
Most of these countries really would buy more American products if finances allowed. I have spent a considerable amount of time overseas and can say that with near certainty. This isnt a zero-sum game once intangible goods are added to the system.
The only real problem is that of commodity prices. More wealth in India and China mean more factories being built, more cars being purchased, higher consumptions there of oil, coal, etc. and hence higher prices for commodities across the board. What this is likely to mean is that tangible, shipped goods will become more expensive while intangible goods will become less.
I agree. This is likely to increase offshoring of American jobs.
However, I think that aside from effects on commodity prices, more distribution of wealth in the knowledge industry will probably help considerably in improving the standard of living for everyone.
I am actually working on some code contributions for LaTeX in the form of various packages. Anyone can donate money, code donations are often more important. I want to get FREE versions of OCR-B fonts out so that one doesnt have to buy them for commercial work (the ones from LaTeX are free for non-commercial use only).
I generated the barcode in LaTeX based on the ISBN that came as part of my $299 publishing package. This $299 also included having them verify the electronic proof and hard copy proof, sending a hard copy proof to me for review, etc.
You can actually buy an ISBN for a couple hundred dollars directly but this is inefficient. If you are buying 10 of them, they cost about $100 each, and if you are buying 100, you get them for about $13 each..... As I set up my publishing business, I will be buying a 100-ISBN bundle.
I think it is easy for people to forget here how different the software and book worlds are in terms of how copyright works.
For example, I pushed hard to get the LedgerSMB manual licensed under a BSD license rather than a share-alike one in the spirit of the GPL. The major reason is that an aggregate work which might include this in a book as a separate (and referenced) work would actually make it harder for us to distribute (and eventually make money off) such manuals in the future.
Repeat after me: Books are not software. Books are not software. Books are not software......
You make a valid point about copyrights being a benefit society gives to authors for the society's benefit. I don't agree with the rest of the tone of your comment but I figure that should be pointed out.
I didn't see the grandparent as saying copyrights are not necessary, just that they are currently unbalanced. In my view we need to shorten the terms of copyright, and increase the minumum amount of expression necessary for copyright infringement to occur (copying, say, 3 bars of music really should be non-infringing due to de minimis considerations). I also think we need to write into law that when a book is taken out of print or left out of stock at the publisher for more than a year, any exclusive license is automatically terminated and any assigned copyrights revert to the authors.
I would add that I think copyright is worthless for software but the issues there are fundamentally different and have to do with re-use of practical elements.
If I walk into a bookstore every day for a month and spend 30 minutes reading your books, is that stealing?
How is this fundamentally different from what Google is doing here?
As an author as well, my biggest frustration with Google Books is how long it takes them to get the books up. It might be copyright infringement in the letter of the law, but it is no more stealing than if I borrow your book from a friend to read it.
Hence copyright terms are supposed to be for "limited times" and we have other things such as fair use.
There is absolutely no reason to support someone's great-grandchildren into their retirement on residual royalties.
I think that copyright terms should be dropped to something like 30-50 years tops. life+100 years is absolutely rediculous.
See, copyright is essentially a transaction between the creator of a work and the society at large. Because these are two parties to the dynamic, they both have interests and rights involved.
I am a writer of non-fiction, and Google Books presents more problems for non-fiction writers than fiction writers. My own thinking is that fiction writers are probably nearly entirely unaffected by Google Books. If you read 20% of the content of a fiction work, you are more likely to have to go out and purchase the book than you would if it is non-ficton (and the excerpt has all the information you need).
However, I think that the value for getting a book on Google books, as a writer, is great enough that I would have submitted my book even if Google wasn't going to pay me advertising money to do so. 20% of a book is a substantial amount, but after careful review, I decided it wasn't a high enough amount to discourage people from buying it.
There is a second issue here which needs to be considered. Copyright affects literary and scholarly works in an entirely different way than it does software because the expressive elements tend to be re-used differently. In literary and scholarly works, the expressive ideas are not closely bound to the functional elements. I can read a book on mechanical engineering, and include those ideas in my own book without simply including an excerpt. With software development, typically we include the excerpt in the linking process. So these are really fundamentally different issues.
I do think we need copyright reform (de minimis requirements need to be adjusted upwards, copyright terms need to be adjusted downward, etc.) but one can't just say "Free software is great!" and then apply the same ideas to literature of scholarly works. It doesn't quite work. The copyright issues are different, the criteria for re-use is different, and the economic models are quite different. I think that limited terms of exclusive rights are very important in these areas, but they don't work for software. I say this as both a software engineer and an author.
Actually, the economics of bookstores is not what you suggest.
Bookstores actually have one of the lowest markups in the industry (they buy books at 60% of what they sell them at-- most other businesses are about 50%). Let me explain how this works when I run a micro-run (100 copies) of my book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084/) by sales channels.
The micro-run of 100 copies costs me $3.84 per book including shipping to get it to me. I assume the printer makes a little bit there too. So suppose the actual cost is probably closer to $2 regarding base production (no royalties at all in these calculations).
The list price for the book is $15.99. As you will see, this does not allow for a normal distribution chain with many steps. Let's look at how it works depending on where I sell it. If I sell a copy retail, that gives me $12.15 profit per book.
If I sell it to a bookstore, I would sell it at 9.59 per copy. This means I make $5.85 per book in this case (close to my royalties when Booksurge sells a copy through Amazon, which are $5.60).
If I sell copies to a distributor, though, I have to sell it at 40% of list, or $6.39. This would mean I would get $2.55 per book. The distributor only gets about $3 per book too. It is still a lot more than Booksurge pays me when they sell through distributors (I get $1.60 per book there).
So what you generally see is 40% of the list price gets used in production, author royalties, and publisher profits. 20% goes to the distributor, and 40% goes to the bookstore.
In just about every other business, the retail store ends up making 50% of their sale price which can go to operational expenses, etc. For book sales, it is only 40%.
However, as an author, my sense is that the ways the bookstores look at mitigating their risk make sense only in limited cases. For example, most want to do consignment. I will ONLY do consignment if I get prime placement because I don't get any more from consignment than I do from wholesale sales.
You should look at on-demand publishers too. Many will let you set the price of the book and just charge a flat rate for producing it. It cost me $299 to set my book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084) up for print-on-demand through Booksurge. They don't let me set the price, but I get 35% of list price as royalties through retail channels.
I am also looking at creating a publishing business and expect to do some things differently (generally pay authors 20% of list price on every book sale, but asking in return for a certain number of royalty-free copies for promotional use etc). If you do your own book design often times you can get a discount. What we would do is help with editing, design, etc. and coordinate with authors on marketing (we would get a share probably similar to the author on wholesale sales, and less than the author on distributor sales).
Books would be available both in paper and ebook formats (probably PDF) too. No, we won't use DRM either
I sent my book to them to have it listed because of the advertising.
Better yet, I get advertising revenues from my book(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084/). But I would still have done it even if I didn't get the revenues from the advertising.
POD, micro-runs (100-books or less at a time), LaTeX.... Who needs Random House anymore?
The publishing industry worked very well when the only way you could self-publish was with expensive long offset runs. Nowadays, print on demand is making self-publishing much easier and more affordable. Add to it affordable typesetting/design software, and you have a chance to really crack these cartels.
I also do micro-runs for wholesale (100 copies of the book at a time).
Interestingly.... I did the entire book design, including the cover, in LaTeX. It came out great. I am extremely happy with the quality that the free software in this area is able to provide. The only few issues are design mistakes I made, and not software limitations (the barcode should be placed differently on the back, etc).
My most recent journal entry includes a follow-up post on advice for people designing books using LaTeX.
Actually the idea is to reduce American casualties in the event of a nuclear war to "acceptable" levels so that we don't have to be afraid to launch a first strike. "Acceptable" civilian casualties being, presumably, a couple million.....
Re-read your history documents, starting with the Balfour declaration. Also look at the specifics of the Israeli war of independence, the factions in it, the massacres, etc. Hitler and the holocaust had absolutely nothing to do with the establishment of the state of Israel except for retrospective propaganda purposes:-)
Slashdot Mirror
How much do you think it costs to print a book-cover in color?
Note that costs on very long offset runs (say 250,000 copies) are MUCH lower than they are to print up one copy of a book. Even there the cost of the cover is probably 20x the cost of a page.
Suppose you can get your costs on a laser printer down to $0.01 per page. For a 200-page book, this means the black and white interior will cost about $1 to print. The cover in color might cost another $0.50-$1. You can't use a standard laser printer on those.
Print on demand is also a great way for publishers to resurrect out of print books or those with limited demand.
As I start my publishing business this year, I will start most books on a print-on-demand service and then do longer offset runs as needed.
The patronage system is not that different from the way open source bounties work. It also funds a lot of open source software development, but it is not really a viable way to go for things like literary and scholarly works.
Now, I am both a software engineer and an author of a book. Copyright works very differently in these areas. In software we like to use libraries. In scholarly or literary works, we like to avoid quoting long passages of others because it interferes with the flow, and such a restriction allows us to demonstrate our own understanding. So reuse criteria are very different.
BTW, you are being very pessimistic. New technology including POD, etc. are making it quite possible to do inexpensive production runes (under $400 for 100 copies of a 200-page trade paperback book). Add to this very mature software like LaTeX and you have the possibility of producing quality books cheaply for limited markets.
I don't think print publishing is a dying model. I do think that worrying too much about electronic copying is a sure-fire way to kill a book or any other work.....
My point originally though is that the original poster seems to think that Google is stealing his books, but really, Google only allows a reader to read 20% of the book in a 30 day period. This allows you to do some fairly extensive research but is not a substitute for buying the book if you need to read it.
On the other hand, I have a customer that runs a bookstore. Occasionally I have to do maintenance of their computer systems that take some time to do. So what do I do? I pick up a book and read it. I have no intention of buying it. I am just passing the time waiting for software to load/download, antivirus scans to run, diagnostics to complete, etc.
The question I was asking wasn't a question of copyright infringement (where Google was almost certainly guilty under current law), but rather the allegation that what they were doing was harmful to writers. In reality, Google's approach is substantially less harmful to writers than are public and college libraries, bookstores where I can pick up and read a substantial portion of a book before deciding whether to buy it, etc. This is an area where Google's activities are helpful to writers but it is still illegal because we look at copyright in the wrong way.
But that isn't quite the way it works.
Most of these countries really would buy more American products if finances allowed. I have spent a considerable amount of time overseas and can say that with near certainty. This isnt a zero-sum game once intangible goods are added to the system.
The only real problem is that of commodity prices. More wealth in India and China mean more factories being built, more cars being purchased, higher consumptions there of oil, coal, etc. and hence higher prices for commodities across the board. What this is likely to mean is that tangible, shipped goods will become more expensive while intangible goods will become less.
I agree. This is likely to increase offshoring of American jobs.
However, I think that aside from effects on commodity prices, more distribution of wealth in the knowledge industry will probably help considerably in improving the standard of living for everyone.
Let's make copyright equal to the term of the natural life of the author. When an author dies, the works become public domain immediately. Deal?
I am actually working on some code contributions for LaTeX in the form of various packages. Anyone can donate money, code donations are often more important. I want to get FREE versions of OCR-B fonts out so that one doesnt have to buy them for commercial work (the ones from LaTeX are free for non-commercial use only).
That is the price I get from Booksurge, including shipping via UPS ground. (USPS media mail is about $20 less.)
I generated the barcode in LaTeX based on the ISBN that came as part of my $299 publishing package. This $299 also included having them verify the electronic proof and hard copy proof, sending a hard copy proof to me for review, etc.
You can actually buy an ISBN for a couple hundred dollars directly but this is inefficient. If you are buying 10 of them, they cost about $100 each, and if you are buying 100, you get them for about $13 each..... As I set up my publishing business, I will be buying a 100-ISBN bundle.
65% royalties on electronic distribution of out of print works? That is quite a bit more than they get for printed works sold in a book store....
I think it is easy for people to forget here how different the software and book worlds are in terms of how copyright works.
For example, I pushed hard to get the LedgerSMB manual licensed under a BSD license rather than a share-alike one in the spirit of the GPL. The major reason is that an aggregate work which might include this in a book as a separate (and referenced) work would actually make it harder for us to distribute (and eventually make money off) such manuals in the future.
Repeat after me: Books are not software. Books are not software. Books are not software......
You make a valid point about copyrights being a benefit society gives to authors for the society's benefit. I don't agree with the rest of the tone of your comment but I figure that should be pointed out.
I didn't see the grandparent as saying copyrights are not necessary, just that they are currently unbalanced. In my view we need to shorten the terms of copyright, and increase the minumum amount of expression necessary for copyright infringement to occur (copying, say, 3 bars of music really should be non-infringing due to de minimis considerations). I also think we need to write into law that when a book is taken out of print or left out of stock at the publisher for more than a year, any exclusive license is automatically terminated and any assigned copyrights revert to the authors.
I would add that I think copyright is worthless for software but the issues there are fundamentally different and have to do with re-use of practical elements.
lets you read the whole book, even when it is under copyright. (By default, Google Books now lets you read 20%.)
If I walk into a bookstore every day for a month and spend 30 minutes reading your books, is that stealing?
How is this fundamentally different from what Google is doing here?
As an author as well, my biggest frustration with Google Books is how long it takes them to get the books up. It might be copyright infringement in the letter of the law, but it is no more stealing than if I borrow your book from a friend to read it.
Hence copyright terms are supposed to be for "limited times" and we have other things such as fair use.
There is absolutely no reason to support someone's great-grandchildren into their retirement on residual royalties.
I think that copyright terms should be dropped to something like 30-50 years tops. life+100 years is absolutely rediculous.
See, copyright is essentially a transaction between the creator of a work and the society at large. Because these are two parties to the dynamic, they both have interests and rights involved.
I am a writer of non-fiction, and Google Books presents more problems for non-fiction writers than fiction writers. My own thinking is that fiction writers are probably nearly entirely unaffected by Google Books. If you read 20% of the content of a fiction work, you are more likely to have to go out and purchase the book than you would if it is non-ficton (and the excerpt has all the information you need).
However, I think that the value for getting a book on Google books, as a writer, is great enough that I would have submitted my book even if Google wasn't going to pay me advertising money to do so. 20% of a book is a substantial amount, but after careful review, I decided it wasn't a high enough amount to discourage people from buying it.
There is a second issue here which needs to be considered. Copyright affects literary and scholarly works in an entirely different way than it does software because the expressive elements tend to be re-used differently. In literary and scholarly works, the expressive ideas are not closely bound to the functional elements. I can read a book on mechanical engineering, and include those ideas in my own book without simply including an excerpt. With software development, typically we include the excerpt in the linking process. So these are really fundamentally different issues.
I do think we need copyright reform (de minimis requirements need to be adjusted upwards, copyright terms need to be adjusted downward, etc.) but one can't just say "Free software is great!" and then apply the same ideas to literature of scholarly works. It doesn't quite work. The copyright issues are different, the criteria for re-use is different, and the economic models are quite different. I think that limited terms of exclusive rights are very important in these areas, but they don't work for software. I say this as both a software engineer and an author.
Actually, the economics of bookstores is not what you suggest.
Bookstores actually have one of the lowest markups in the industry (they buy books at 60% of what they sell them at-- most other businesses are about 50%). Let me explain how this works when I run a micro-run (100 copies) of my book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084/) by sales channels.
The micro-run of 100 copies costs me $3.84 per book including shipping to get it to me. I assume the printer makes a little bit there too. So suppose the actual cost is probably closer to $2 regarding base production (no royalties at all in these calculations).
The list price for the book is $15.99. As you will see, this does not allow for a normal distribution chain with many steps. Let's look at how it works depending on where I sell it. If I sell a copy retail, that gives me $12.15 profit per book.
If I sell it to a bookstore, I would sell it at 9.59 per copy. This means I make $5.85 per book in this case (close to my royalties when Booksurge sells a copy through Amazon, which are $5.60).
If I sell copies to a distributor, though, I have to sell it at 40% of list, or $6.39. This would mean I would get $2.55 per book. The distributor only gets about $3 per book too. It is still a lot more than Booksurge pays me when they sell through distributors (I get $1.60 per book there).
So what you generally see is 40% of the list price gets used in production, author royalties, and publisher profits. 20% goes to the distributor, and 40% goes to the bookstore.
In just about every other business, the retail store ends up making 50% of their sale price which can go to operational expenses, etc. For book sales, it is only 40%.
However, as an author, my sense is that the ways the bookstores look at mitigating their risk make sense only in limited cases. For example, most want to do consignment. I will ONLY do consignment if I get prime placement because I don't get any more from consignment than I do from wholesale sales.
You should look at on-demand publishers too. Many will let you set the price of the book and just charge a flat rate for producing it. It cost me $299 to set my book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084) up for print-on-demand through Booksurge. They don't let me set the price, but I get 35% of list price as royalties through retail channels.
I am also looking at creating a publishing business and expect to do some things differently (generally pay authors 20% of list price on every book sale, but asking in return for a certain number of royalty-free copies for promotional use etc). If you do your own book design often times you can get a discount. What we would do is help with editing, design, etc. and coordinate with authors on marketing (we would get a share probably similar to the author on wholesale sales, and less than the author on distributor sales).
Books would be available both in paper and ebook formats (probably PDF) too. No, we won't use DRM either
I agree.
I sent my book to them to have it listed because of the advertising.
Better yet, I get advertising revenues from my book(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084/). But I would still have done it even if I didn't get the revenues from the advertising.
POD, micro-runs (100-books or less at a time), LaTeX.... Who needs Random House anymore?
Project Gutenberg has a monopoly on electronic publication of many of these texts because nobody can compete with them!
[/sarcasm]
The publishing industry worked very well when the only way you could self-publish was with expensive long offset runs. Nowadays, print on demand is making self-publishing much easier and more affordable. Add to it affordable typesetting/design software, and you have a chance to really crack these cartels.
I recently published my book via a POD publisher (Booksurge). You can see it at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439223084/
I also do micro-runs for wholesale (100 copies of the book at a time).
Interestingly.... I did the entire book design, including the cover, in LaTeX. It came out great. I am extremely happy with the quality that the free software in this area is able to provide. The only few issues are design mistakes I made, and not software limitations (the barcode should be placed differently on the back, etc).
My most recent journal entry includes a follow-up post on advice for people designing books using LaTeX.
Actually the idea is to reduce American casualties in the event of a nuclear war to "acceptable" levels so that we don't have to be afraid to launch a first strike. "Acceptable" civilian casualties being, presumably, a couple million.....
Re-read your history documents, starting with the Balfour declaration. Also look at the specifics of the Israeli war of independence, the factions in it, the massacres, etc. Hitler and the holocaust had absolutely nothing to do with the establishment of the state of Israel except for retrospective propaganda purposes :-)