"Sorry, it's more like a desperate attempt to cling to the old sales model. You have to switch gears to accommodate the future - electronic books. That means no paper printing at all. Anyone who plans to build a long-lasting business by clinging to the past in the face of a technological revolution will have an uphill battle ahead of them."
I always love this argument...particularly since not only was I there and an active participant for the first e-book revolution, but I also make a point of keeping up with how e-books are doing (that is, in fact, tracked by the Association of American Publishers).
Publishers tried to make the e-book work between 2000-2002, but there just wasn't a big enough market. And, almost ten years later, with a decade of development and the Kindle and the Sony reader out, do you know how much of the book market the e-book has taken over? Well, in January e-book sales represented 1.1% of total book sales for that month in the United States, and in February they rose to 1.5% (although, in that case, there was a decrease in book and e-book sales from January to February, and the e-book sales decreased less than the total book sales did). This is the first time I've ever seen e-book sales get to over 1% of the book market - and it took over ten years to get there. The total e-book sales for 2008 was $113 million out of total book market of $24.3 billion, or 0.5%.
Believe me, the printed book is not in any danger - and any publisher who abandons the printed book for e-books right now would be asking to go out of business.
I'd also add that the point of a publisher business model is to get the books you publish into the hands of paying readers. This means being realistic about what is out there, and not wasting valuable time on side-issues.
For example, I don't sell e-book versions of the books I publish. I have e-samples available for the new books, and full e-books for the public domain reprint(s), but I don't charge a cent for either. That's just because the e-book represents so little of the book market (frequently less than 0.7%) that concentrating on making inroads there just doesn't get books into the hands of readers - although they are very good for free advertising on file sharing websites. On the other hand, a new technology is being tested called an Expresso Book Machine, or EBM, that prints a book for a reader within minutes, and could allow any bookstore with one of these machines to have access to millions of books. That is something I am going to try to get into at the earliest opportunity.
This Bookabooka thing is a waste of time for a publisher. It's not going to cut into book sales any more than the second hand book market will, and the only thing you can do by trying to fight them is enrich your lawyer while alienating the people your business model relies on to buy your books. It's a side-issue, and wasted time that could be spent publishing more books.
Well, speaking as an actual publisher, I don't see a problem with Bookabooka. They aren't making any copies, and what people want to do with books once they've bought them, so long as they aren't breaking the law, is their own business.
Besides, if one of my company's books is being rented, hopefully whoever rents it will like it enough that they buy a copy for themselves.
"Instead, they threw it all away, and opted to become cavemen."
I keep reading that from people, and I really can't understand why that is what people project on the future of the Colonials. Why cavemen? I mean, I may be training as a historian, and I do have an interest in ancient history and anthropology, but the idea that they became cavemen seems rather obviously wrong to me.
What I think would have happened is this: you would have gotten a number of small, scattered farming communities. These communities would see rapid growth in the first few generations, although they'd remain subsistence farmers. Eventually, they'd gain enough critical mass for towns, and in a few generations, those towns might become cities.
Realistically speaking, that's the only logical way they could have had the civilization survive anyway. It's true that they're starting with a great deal of technology at their finger-tips, but they don't have the technological resources to reproduce it. At best, they can keep it running as long as possible, but you're talking about that technology breaking down within a couple of generations anyway.
Think of it this way. They've survived with computers, but it takes a lot to build a computer. You have to be able to get the silicon for parts, you need the machinery to make the circuit-boards, etc. That's stuff they'd have to rebuild, and with their small population, they don't have time for that.
So, you would see cities again within a few generations. You'd see civilizations rising, expanding, and eventually dying. There's nothing to say this isn't the way it happens - keep in mind, we're talking about landfall on Earth being 150 THOUSAND years ago. The entire city of Toronto could have been there that long ago, and we wouldn't have any signs of it today.
"But does international law clarify where idea ends and expression begins? And what are the best practices for a songwriter to avoid being hit with an accidental plagiarism lawsuit like Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music?"
Those are superb questions...what do you think the answers are?
"OK, I think that I think rationally about copyright, though that may not be a completely objective opinion. Here's my way of thinking about it, and ya'll can decide if it's rational or not:"
Forget rational - you need to get it right first. You've got a lot wrong here.
"Now, suppose George Gershwin was willing to write "An American In Paris" as long as he had a copyright for 17 years, but the law required that he have the copyright for the rest of his life plus 100 years. Would that be rational?"
No, it would not be rational, but the law doesn't work that way. Under copyright law, your hypothetical Gershwin is completely free to release his "An American In Paris" into the public domain whenever he wishes. So, the only thing keeping it in copyright for the term you specified (which is off by 30 years in the United States, and 50 years in Canada), is your hypothetical Gershwin.
"People might say "It's his property!" But if somebody copies it, have they stolen it from him? Doesn't he still 'have' it."
In fact, they have stolen something from him. They've stolen his ability to determine how his work is distributed - when you're living off royalties while you work on your next piece, that can make a big difference.
Let me pose something to you - let's say your hypothetical Gershwin decides that he's going to write "An American in Paris," and he decides that he's going to release it as Creative Commons, which is a decision that copyright law allows him to make. But, somebody comes along, we'll call it "Evil Corporation X," and starts distributing it for money, against your hypothetical Gershwin's wishes. Would you not say that something has been stolen from him? He wanted to give this to the world, but somebody took that decision away.
Now, I'm going to point something out here, and you may not like it - I'm going to point out that you don't really understand copyright all that well to begin with. Don't feel too badly - most of the people on here wouldn't recognize modern copyright if it came up and bit them.
"I thought the original idea of copyright was to give a creator enough incentive to do creative work. Just like $50K might be enough incentive for that builder to build the house."
Now, that is certainly the wording in the U.S. Constitution. But let me pose you two questions - first, is that the wording from the original copyright legislation, which predates the U.S. Constitution by around 70-80 years? Second, is that what copyright is doing right now?
To answer question one, the answer is "no." The original copyright legislation, the Statute of Anne of 1709, begins with:
"Whereas printers, booksellers, and other persons have of late frequently taken the liberty of printing, reprinting, and publishing, or causing to be printed, reprinted, and published, books and other writings, without the consent of the authors or proprietors of such books and writings, to their very great detriment, and too often to the ruin of them and their families: for preventing therefore such practices for the future, and for the encouragement of learned men to compose and write useful books..."
So, in fact, protecting creative artists from exploitation is mentioned first, and encouragement comes in as number 3. Times change, and the purpose of copyright in the United Kingdom in 1710 is not the purpose in the United States in 1810, and it will not necessarily correspond to the purpose in 2010.
So, let's look at the purpose of copyright in 2009. Most of it the reader, viewer, or listener will never see. That's because most of it is a legal framework used to govern the relationship between creative artist and the means of distribution. As a writer, editor, author, and the owner of a publishing company, I have to deal with this on a regular basis. People complaining about copyright frequently have tunnel vision about it - they look at the length of the term alone, declare it unreasonable, read propaganda about why the term is there that is usually dead
"I don't know what is contract said, but if he's like most of us it's called "work for hire" and he's already been paid. Unless he has a contract that promises a percentage of the future royalties and licensing he's just upset that he didn't negotiate said type of contract back in the day."
Um...you should have done your research. According to Ellison's press release ( http://harlanellison.com/heboard/visitors/startrekpressrelease.html ), that IS what happened. Ellison's contract specified that he would receive royalties on material based on City on the Edge of Forever, Paramount and Pocket Books put out a trilogy based on it, and refused to honour the contract.
I just took a look at Chapter V of this book, just to see if this is a case of somebody presenting a well-researched argument or an economist spouting off about something they know nothing about (and economists do that more often than most people would think - I once saw an economist at a conference proudly present a model for revenge that flew in the face of the whole of human history). I'm afraid that when it comes to the matter of books, it was downright dishonest in places.
This is propaganda.
Some examples:
Page 111-112 - the authors ask the question of how well the American copyright extensions have worked, and judge it solely on number of works created. Then, they declare that it didn't help, because there isn't a massive increase. They DON'T mention that there wasn't a decrease either - in fact, there is a very slow increase. They also don't look at works that were not properly registered. Even more telling, they don't look at other factors - whether the quality of life of the authors was impacted positively or negatively, whether there were enough publishers to provide an increase in publications, etc. They base their conclusion on a single metric.
Page 115 - A clear case of apples and oranges. Having talked about the reasons given for the CTEA (without, I might add, actually examining them in any detail), they comment that 8 years later, the same corporations are trying to get the European copyrights extended from 50 years to 95 years to keep up with the United States, implying that these companies are essentially raising one, then using it as an excuse to raise another. Which would be evil, except that it's not what's happening - the CTEA involved books, and the recent lobbying is about music, which have entirely different copyright terms. So, it would be more accurate to say that having harmonized one section of the creative arts, they're attempting to harmonize another - which is far less evil.
Page 115-116 - Here the argument turns absolutely dishonest. The authors want to demonstrate that books out of copyright are more available than books in copyright. So, here is what they do - they take Edgar Rice Burroughs, and compare the books that are in copyright to the ones that are out of copyright, and show that indeed, the ones in copyright have fewer editions available. This is a trick, though - Edgar Rice Burroughs is one of the most famous writers of his day. Conspicuously, they don't provide any data for number of books published in total that are out of copyright compared to availability - they just take the case of a single, famous author, and extend that to be the case for the whole. If they extended it, it's fairly certain that they'd find that the majority of books that have entered the public domain are no longer available in print or online, undermining their argument. Most people would not claim that the exception is the rule, but they have made precisely that claim.
Pages 117-118 - The authors now demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of how the book market works, as they claim that having classic spy novels in print would devalue new spy novels. To channel Morbo from Futurama, "Publishers do not work that way!" In fact, the decision of whether a book gets published or not is entirely based on how well it is likely to sell, and having a classic spy novel that is consistently selling well is more likely to reinforce the sales of new ones, not devalue them.
These are selected errors, both factual and methodological. It would be nice if there was actual research here, rather than taking a few surface facts and drawing ignorant conclusions.
"Name them. (And once you do I will show you why every one you name is entirely ineffective to deter the filing of frivolous lawsuits.)"
You know, up here in Canada, we have a mechanism that works quite well. In a civil case, the loser is required to pay at least part, if not all, of the winner's legal fees by default. That means that while there are some frivolous lawsuits, something like what the RIAA has been doing would bankrupt them up-front.
I've often wondered why the United States doesn't have such a measure...it seems to me that it would prevent frivolous lawsuits while opening the door for non-frivolous ones quite effectively...
This is one case where I think the technology could very well be a perfect match for the product.
Here's the thing - one of the key reasons that e-books didn't even stand a chance of taking over the regular book market is in the way that people consume books - it's long and involved. Having a huge library on disk isn't as much of a selling point when only three or four books will be relevant at once. A regular book tends to be better suited for that sort of consumption.
A newspaper, on the other hand, is consumed in short bursts. It is also consumed far more actively - people discuss news on forums, and being able to comment immediately is a draw. So, some e-reader would be perfectly suited for this.
So, I think this one actually has a better chance of catching on than the Kindle or Sony Reader.
"Kindle and Kindle 2 were 2 of the best things that have happened to authors; nice to alienate Amazon."
I'm afraid I don't really know about that - and I'm not talking doubts, I seriously do not have information. And I've looked. There is a giant black hole where sales information should be on the Kindle. I've read informed estimates that have suggested anywhere from only tens of thousands of Kindles have sold to around a million. And Amazon just isn't talking.
It's quite frustrating from a publisher perspective - I've got to decide whether or not to support this thing, and any time somebody tells me that I should just trust them on something rather than giving me actual figures, I get very suspicious. At least Sony has revealed that between 2006 and 2008 they sold 300,000 units of their reader, which is decent, but not that awe-inspiring. If what publisher reports I've read are true, and sales of books for the Kindle are lagging behind sales for the Sony Reader, that suggests a customer base of around 150,000 or less.
But again, Amazon isn't talking. And the sales figures I can get from the Association of American Publishers suggest the e-book isn't anything other than a niche market, and bound to stay that way. So, while I think the Kindle is helping to expand the e-book market, and getting more people to read is always a good thing, I don't think we can really say it's "2 of the best things that have happened to authors."
Aside from which, as a small publisher, I have little sympathy for Amazon these days. They're facing an antitrust action because they've been trying to force small publishers to use their in-house print shop, which is known for a very inferior product, with a stance of "use our shop or we turn off your buy button." You can read about it at http://antitrust.booklocker.com/
As for the Author's Guild issue, frankly, I was quite interested to see if software reading a book was legally a performance or not - it is a bit of a gray area. I guess now we won't know.
Well, the business license shouldn't cost you too much, and the rest you can do on your computer. That's if you're self-publishing.
It will cost you a lot more with Lulu. Seriously, the cost of publishing a book printed by Lightning Source and getting worldwide distribution comes to around $150 in total (but Lightning Source only deals with businesses).
The comments really are revealing here, but not in a positive way. The summary itself is inflammatory, stating that a clarification of the Guild's position is a "rant" with the author "moaning" - and I haven't seen a single comment modded up here that suggests that anybody actually READ the piece.
First of all, the issue here is not that reading aloud is copyright infringement - it isn't, and Blount explicitly says so. The issue here is as follows:
1. Audiobook rights constitute a separate right from e-book rights in copyright law.
2. Amazon is advertising that the Kindle 2 has the ability to effectively generate an audiobook from the e-book, and using that as a major selling point.
3. Amazon is not buying audiobook rights, even though they are generating an audiobook performance for commercial gain.
All of this was clarified in the article - which apparently nobody read. Now, whether a computer-read book constitutes a full audiobook is a tricky matter, but we're not talking about software reading to the blind here - in fact, Blount specificially states "In fact, publishers, authors and American copyright laws have long provided for free audio availability to the blind and the guild is all for technologies that expand that availability. (The federation, though, points out that blind readers can't independently use the Kindle 2's visual, on-screen controls.) But that doesn't mean Amazon should be able, without copyright-holders' participation, to pass that service on to everyone." What we're talking about is the ability to create an audiobook being advertised as a selling point to sell more Kindles, without the audiobook rights having actually been acquired by Amazon.
What will be determined - and with technology advancing, it is an issue that does need to be hashed out - is whether a computer generated audio reading of a book on a commerical e-book reader constitutes an audiobook performance. Sadly, that's not what's being discussed here. Pity, as this is one place where there could be a fruitful and intelligent discussion on that.
"I've seen a claim [kindleboards.com] that when both formats (printed and ebook) are available, 10% of sales are ebook. Beats me if that's accurate or not."
Thank you for posting that - it's interesting, although I have to admit, it's damned difficult to decipher. I imagine it is accurate, but what does it mean? The actual quote is:
"In 14 months, for the 230,000 titles that we have Kindle additions, Kindle unit sales already represent more than 10 percent of Amazonâ(TM)s total sales in those 230,000 titles. We spent 14 years building our physical books business. And in just 14 months, this is already 10 percent. So we are all very surprised that it is being adopted so quickly."
But 10% of what? Money sales, or units moved? If it's money sales, what is the spread across the books - is it an even spread? If it is units moved, the number becomes meaningless very quickly - a quick look at the Kindle Store bestseller list shows that the #1 bestseller is being sold for free, same with #3, 12, 15, 17, and 25. That completely skews the numbers - and to this day, Amazon still won't tell anybody how many Kindle units have sold.
I'm sorry, but I do find this suspicious - at least with the AAP I've got some solid numbers to play with...this is too much along the "just trust us" line to be trustworthy...
About a place like Lulu - if you really want to self publish with a Print on Demand model, you're better off starting a small company and going through Lightning Source. Trust me on this - vanity presses are no way to go, and as a business you will make more money and get better service.
"You have an early industry mindset. Up until a couple of years ago, there hasn't been a device that could replace a book. This thing is just getting started."
No, I don't have an early industry mindset. I have a present-day industry mindset. And, funnily enough, you're repeating pretty much exactly what people were saying back in 2000.
I right now use e-books for free advertising. If you go onto my website, you'll find an e-book sample of the opening of every new book I've published, and a full e-book of each reprint (there's one right now, but more are coming). So, I don't ignore e-books at all - I make active use of them.
However, the e-book market share is too small for it to be worth my time as a small publisher to take the considerable effort required to reformat these books for the Kindle. And I check up on the market share every couple of months. If the e-book gets up to 10% or higher of the market share, it will become worthwhile for me to start producing commercial e-books.
There's nothing backwards about doing stuff this way. You're talking in sweeping terms about massive changes to a market that not only have not happened, but have been predicted before and failed to happen. And there are indicators that can be used to track this - in the time that the Kindle was available, the e-book market grew steadily (it has actually been doing that since they were brought out), but very slowly in comparison to the rest of the book market.
Now, let's look at some actual stats here. Doing a search, I've been able to pull e-book net sales figures from 2002 to 2008. Please note, the Kindle was released at the end of 2007:
Okay, so the release of the Kindle may have an impact on the sales - there is certainly a change in the sales rate as of the beginning of 2008 (of course, correlation is not causation, and there are other e-book readers that were released at the same time). The sales rate increased over the course of 2008. So, consumption certainly increased. All this means that the e-book is a growing market.
The question lies in what will happen now. The release of the Kindle 2 may help push sales further, but I want to point out a trend in the sales figures - after each growth spurt, there has been a flattening out and sometimes a drop - this happens in 2005, and it happens in 2007. So, past history suggests that sometime in 2009 or 2010 there will be another flattening out and possible drop.
Let's do some number crunching. What were the actual growth rates between these quarters for 2008? Doing the math, we get:
Q1: 23% Q2: 15% Q3: 20% Q4: 21%
So, the highest growth in the past 5 quarters has been between Q4 2007 and Q1 2008. Otherwise, the growth is hovering at between 15-21%. That's nothing to sneeze at, but that's far from taking over the industry in the next ten years. And, as I said, we've seen a 4 month period of growth followed by a flattening out before.
Now, the point I'm trying to make in my long-winded, statistics-laden way is that this is far from a settled matter. You're predicting the death of the printed book based on a growing market representing less than 1% of the total book market, a market that is seeing steady growth, but also having an established pattern of growth followed by a flattening out. All of the evidence suggests that the e-book is going to become like the audiobook - a strong complement to the printed book, but not a replacement. The indicators that you would expect to see at this point in time for a dramatic change - a substantial and sustained drop in print book sales followed by an equal and sustained rise in e-book sales, along with the expected growth rate, simply isn't present.
Compare with DVD sales, for a moment - this is a case where there was a replacement of one product with another - the DVD was introdu
"An e-reader will be simple enough that people aren't going to buy the media in print form when they are comfortable with using an e-reader. There's just far too much overlap to be worth it."
You've raised some very good questions there, and I'll try to address your points as best I can...
"Well you may have a point there when it comes to eBooks; however, I must ask how did the paper book market sales project after the e-Book market was created in the year 2000?"
That is a superb question, and it's one I really don't have an answer for. There has been a general downwards movement of book sales for some time, although from what I can see, e-books don't seem to be either causing it or making up for it - most of the material I've read regarding it has tended to place the cause at people just not reading as much, instead going for more bite-sized chunks of media, such as movies or TV shows. But, I don't really have any good statistics on that. I do know that there was an experiment to try to make the commercial e-book work between about 2000-2002, and quite a few people were watching as a couple of publishers tried to make it work. The sales were pathetic enough that by 2002 most e-book development from the major publishers had been put on the back burner.
"Many eBooks are given away for free as part of some web site with advertising on it. Your publishers.org data is not going to be able to record the free eBooks given away on a web site that has advertising pay for the eBook instead of the purchase price."
That is one problem with the AAP statistics - to draw that out further, there is no standard pricing scheme for commercial e-books, so what the statistic tells you is how much money was made in total, not the number of units that moved. It is possible (although not likely) that it could very well have been 6.5 million e-books at $1.00 per copy.
However, when you look at the overall situation from an "is this profitable" angle, the total does help. Ultimately for a publisher to stay in business, it has to make money. Even if 6.5 million e-books did sell at $1.00 per book, it still remains a very small piece of the overall pie (in short, selling lots of copies is useless if you go broke doing it).
Looking at your idea, it is an interesting one. It certainly is viable so long as you can get the advertisers you need on side. There are some questions about effectiveness, though - losing some advertisers can be fatal, whereas with a commercial book the book itself provides a revenue stream, and can pay for itself under ideal circumstances.
Your chart is also interesting, although from what I can tell, it does look like a regular sales pattern for a single book. So far with all of the books I've published, there's been a spike at some point (usually just after the Ingram Advance advertisement goes through), followed by a slow decline. There are only so many people who will buy any given book, and the longer the book is available, the fewer people are left to buy it.
I would draw your attention to the difference between giving an e-book away and an actual sale. In a sale money changes hands, whereas people will download just about anything for free for the simple reason that it's free (strange, I know, but even I've caught myself downloading something I'll never even take a second look at because it was free swag). I personally use e-book versions, either full or samples, to try to market my own company's books. Financial viability is based on revenue generated, though, and so far the e-book seems much better at reinforcing the print book than generating revenue on its own.
"It also hardly takes into account information read for free on web pages showcased in Slashdot and other web sites as sources for free information. Why buy the book when you can get the same information from web sites for free?"
And that is one of the best points I've seen, and it's one of the things I meant when I talked about publishers needing to adapt to reality. I should have said "what the market was doing" when I posted originally, as that makes it a bit clearer. Every type of book is consumed a bit differently. A technical manual, for example, would be consum
"Has a modern, viable e-reader been available at a reasonable price for the last 9 years?"
In a word, yes. There have been several. On a very basic level, there's the PC, the laptop, and quite a number of readers from quite a few companies. There's also the Palm Pilot, cell phones, and variations.
"Alternatively, an e-book can be downloaded instantly and for free instead of having to go out and buy it or wait for it to be shipped."
Except for the up-front cost of e-book reader, and the price of the book if it's a new one. Aside from which, availability is a side issue - we're talking about technical merits.
"I don't have to dedicate space to store each book."
Yes you do - you're just dedicating space on the reader, which requires electricity and maintenance. And if your reader goes down, you run the risk of losing the contents of it.
"I can copy them around and thus preserve perfect working copies instead of having them worn down over time."
Until your reader breaks down or needs to be upgraded, and suddenly you find out that the format has changed, so you have to get all of your book files again.
"No heavy books."
That is the one merit on this list that is objectively true.
"Easy search."
Apples and oranges - certain books are searched in certain ways, and others are searched in other ways. A dictionary would be easier to use electronically, yes, but a novel isn't consumed that way.
"So instead of keeping track of many books I have one device to keep track of, that's self-contained and easy to use."
And if it ever gets stolen, your entire library goes with it.
Understand something - I was there at the beginning of this entire thing. I've heard all of these arguments before. In 2000, they might have been convincing. Today, history has already spoken. For ten years, they haven't made a difference. E-books were made easier to read on home computers and laptops - the market still wouldn't buy them. Just about every handheld device out there was rigged to be able to handle e-books, from phones to palm pilots. Lots of little phone games sold, but not too many e-books.
You're looking for this magic bullet that will make the printed book disappear. I'm not sure why - frankly, you're treating the printed book and the e-book as mutually exclusive. They're not. The e-book has a lot of strengths, which you have listed. That makes it a wonderful complement to the printed book. But it does NOT make it a replacement. The printed book has one thing that the e-book doesn't, and simply cannot complete with: simplicity.
Let me put it to you this way - take the screwdriver. There are lots of electric drills out there, and have been for years. But there are a lot more good, old fashioned screwdrivers. Both can do the same job, and the power drill has all sorts of features that add value, but the screwdriver is just simpler and easier. So it's still around - one did not replace the other.
"All this can be said for movies and music too. Cory takes the stance that the Internet will just copy around DRM. And it's true, you can find DRM-free formats of just about anything you want. People won't be so concerned about having a printed book 30 years from now as having a free, instant access book on their e-reader."
At the current growth rate, 30 years from now the e-book MIGHT have gotten up to 10% of the market share, making it competitive with audiobooks. As it stands, in the last nine years, the e-book has yet to break 1% of the total book market. I know - I've been following e-book sales recently.
Two things you have to keep in mind here - first, I've had a long time to think about it. My first book sale was supposed to be a major e-book that would break open the market. It had everything it needed except for me not being Stephen King. It flopped instead...and so did every other e-book released alongside it. I've had a long time to try to figure out why, and I have never bought the "sentimental attachment to paper" that a lot of people bring out.
Second, I run a publishing company. I don't get bonus points for making decisions based on ideology - I have to go with what the market is actually doing. The Association of American Publishers tracks book sales for the entire domestic American market every month. As I said, in 9 years, the e-book hasn't managed to creep past 1% of book sales. Why?
Requiring new technology is not a major barrier. DVD overtook VHS with ease, but you can't play a DVD on a VCR - you need a separate player. Even as the price was going down, the DVD offered far more than VHS could. It was a more robust format, it lasted longer, and it could just do more. Regardless of having to buy a new player, it made watching movies easier - no rewinding required, no magnetic degradation, and a smaller physical product.
If DVDs can overtake the VHS while a good DVD player costs around $300 at the time (I know, that's the time when I got my first DVD player), then surely if the e-book was better, more robust, and easier to use, it would be able to do the same to the printed book. And yet, it hasn't. Around a decade in, and the market has pretty much rejected it as anything other than a handy way to read a book or two while travelling. Why?
Put simply, the e-book fails to improve on the printed book on just about every level. Rather than making it simpler, it adds complications. Let's look at it point for point:
1. Robustness. If you buy a printed book, so long as you treat it properly, it can last for over a century. I have books on my shelf that are around 50 years old, and all I have to do to read them is to open them up (I also have a couple that are over 100 years old, although those are treated with far more care). With the e-book, however, you have to worry about data corruption, and file format changes. An e-book reader is technology, and technology advances - it also breaks down. The number of things that can go wrong with a printed book are fairly few and far between - the number of things that can go wrong with an e-book are considerably higher in number.
2. Ease of use. Here the e-book and the printed book are a bit closer, but which is better depends on consumption. When it comes to a novel or history book, a printed book is far more accessible and easy to use - all you have to do is open it to the page you want and read. Something like a technical manual does better as an electronic file - search functions will make it easier to use than a printed index. So, here they are about even, but even does not make the e-book better. Again, the e-book fails to improve across the board.
3. Just plain better: the printed book takes it easily. It is completely self-contained, and easy to use. Any part of it can be referenced at any time, and you don't need any equipment to use it. The e-book adds an equipment requirement that was not there before, which makes it a harder sell. When you look at VHS vs. DVD, both r
One question I want to raise here is price. Doctorow mentions the difficulties that a $300 million movie would have in breaking even. I want to know why that movie would have to cost $300 million in the first place.
I know everybody isn't a fan of this series, but take the Underworld movies for a moment. They may not be high art, but they look great, the acting is decent, the stories are generally well-written, and they are stylish as hell. The budgets (from the IMDB) are as follows:
Underworld: $22 million (approx) Underworld Evolution: $50 million Underworld Rise of the Lycans: $35 million
Compare this to a movie picked at random out of a hat, the Steve Martin 2006 Pink Panther movie, which was NOT an FX movie. Its budget was $80 million. Anybody else think it could probably have been done for $30 million?
Frankly, Underworld itself looked better than a few movies I've seen with budgets three-to-five times as large. It also broke even a lot easier than a more expensive FX movie that would have looked just as good.
There are two-parters from Doctor Who (such as Impossible Planet/Satan Pit) that look movie-quality, and cost a fraction of what a big budget movie would cost right now. So, I think the question is a serious one for the survival of the industry - assuming that a movie has to make two dollars for every dollar spent to be in the black, how can it afford to be making movies that require a gross take of $600 million in order to succeed? And how can $300 million be justified as a starting budget on any movie?
"So in theory, a media company putting their content on files, instead of a physical container, would save a lot of money by just selling files instead of audio CDs, Video DVDs, Paper Books, Paper Newspapers, etc."
Well spoken, but wrong. In the case of books, a company going all e-book would go out of business very quickly. And here's why:
Just because a technology is new, it doesn't make it better. Laserdisc came before the DVD, but it didn't usurp the videotape - unlike DVDs, it was bigger, and more difficult to use than VHS. The idea that new = better, or even that new = successful is a fallacy; it depends on the product in question.
Take the e-book, for example. You talked about how ePrint has replaced it, but let's look at the figures. The e-book "revolution" started in 2000 (I know - I was one of the authors in it). Eight or nine years later, how is it doing? Has it taken the book industry by storm?
Well, in December 2008, American domestic net books sales totaled $1.5 billion. Of those, e-books represented $6.5 million. So, the e-book sales represented a grand total of 0.43% of the total book market for the month of December. In fact, if you look at e-book sales per month, about the highest they get is to 0.8% of total net book sales, and that is on months when total book sales take a nose dive. There is a steady climb, but at the rate it's going, it will be two or three decades before e-books reach the 10% mark, much less something higher.
So, close to a decade in, and the e-book has made so small an impact on book sales that it is close to non-existent. Any publisher abandoning the printed book to go after less than 1% of the total market would be an idiot to do so, and would go out of business as a result.
It is important to adapt, but one has to adapt to the right changes. Just because a technology is new it doesn't mean that it's going to replace the market that is already there. One has to look at what the market is doing - how are readers consuming the product? In some cases, such as tech manuals, which involve a lot of searching for isolated "word bites," an online offering will fare better than a printed book. But for a novel or history book, far from it.
Print is not dead, and what media distributors have to adapt to is not technology, but reality.
"Finally, they cost about $270 now and dropping. Be afraid."
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you there. Not only am I a writer, author, editor, and small publisher, but I was also there for either the start of the e-book revolution, or the first e-book revolution, depending on how you look at it. The e-book as it stands doesn't have a chance against the printed page.
And that has nothing to do with price, or even the often-cited emotion. If there's one thing I've noticed, it's that technology markets are not sentimental. If something better than the printed book showed up, the printed book would disappear close to overnight - mark my words. But something better hasn't yet shown up.
You're right that e-books are wonderful for travelling, but they have a lot of what you could call "barriers to entry" that are not related to price. Look at it this way - all you need to use a printed book is a light source, a pair of eyes, and a pair of hands. You don't need electricity; sunlight will do. When it comes to an e-book, though, you need a lot more.
No matter what, you need a power source - if you're travelling from one continent to another, you have to get adapter plugs for it just like you would any other type of appliance. You also need to worry about file formats - technology is always a moving target, and so you can't assume that the file format of today will be the same used thirty years from now. You have to worry about downloads, which means that you usually have to worry about DRM of some sort. And moving an e-book file is not necessarily possible because of that DRM; rather than being able to just move an e-book from one device to another, you may have to download a new copy; upgrading your e-book reader could result in you having to re-buy your entire library.
Compare that to a printed book, which is completely self-contained, will last for around thirty years or so before it might need repairs, and those repairs are probably going to be as simple as the light application of glue. They're easy to move around, you can loan them to friends or family without worrying about restrictions, and to top it all off, most of them are cheap. Price is just the icing on the cake.
So, considering that, you can see what Doctorow means when he says that an e-book is a poor substitute for the printed book.
Slashdot Mirror
"Sorry, it's more like a desperate attempt to cling to the old sales model. You have to switch gears to accommodate the future - electronic books. That means no paper printing at all. Anyone who plans to build a long-lasting business by clinging to the past in the face of a technological revolution will have an uphill battle ahead of them."
I always love this argument...particularly since not only was I there and an active participant for the first e-book revolution, but I also make a point of keeping up with how e-books are doing (that is, in fact, tracked by the Association of American Publishers).
Publishers tried to make the e-book work between 2000-2002, but there just wasn't a big enough market. And, almost ten years later, with a decade of development and the Kindle and the Sony reader out, do you know how much of the book market the e-book has taken over? Well, in January e-book sales represented 1.1% of total book sales for that month in the United States, and in February they rose to 1.5% (although, in that case, there was a decrease in book and e-book sales from January to February, and the e-book sales decreased less than the total book sales did). This is the first time I've ever seen e-book sales get to over 1% of the book market - and it took over ten years to get there. The total e-book sales for 2008 was $113 million out of total book market of $24.3 billion, or 0.5%.
Source: http://www.publishers.org/
Believe me, the printed book is not in any danger - and any publisher who abandons the printed book for e-books right now would be asking to go out of business.
I'd also add that the point of a publisher business model is to get the books you publish into the hands of paying readers. This means being realistic about what is out there, and not wasting valuable time on side-issues.
For example, I don't sell e-book versions of the books I publish. I have e-samples available for the new books, and full e-books for the public domain reprint(s), but I don't charge a cent for either. That's just because the e-book represents so little of the book market (frequently less than 0.7%) that concentrating on making inroads there just doesn't get books into the hands of readers - although they are very good for free advertising on file sharing websites. On the other hand, a new technology is being tested called an Expresso Book Machine, or EBM, that prints a book for a reader within minutes, and could allow any bookstore with one of these machines to have access to millions of books. That is something I am going to try to get into at the earliest opportunity.
This Bookabooka thing is a waste of time for a publisher. It's not going to cut into book sales any more than the second hand book market will, and the only thing you can do by trying to fight them is enrich your lawyer while alienating the people your business model relies on to buy your books. It's a side-issue, and wasted time that could be spent publishing more books.
Well, speaking as an actual publisher, I don't see a problem with Bookabooka. They aren't making any copies, and what people want to do with books once they've bought them, so long as they aren't breaking the law, is their own business.
Besides, if one of my company's books is being rented, hopefully whoever rents it will like it enough that they buy a copy for themselves.
"Instead, they threw it all away, and opted to become cavemen."
I keep reading that from people, and I really can't understand why that is what people project on the future of the Colonials. Why cavemen? I mean, I may be training as a historian, and I do have an interest in ancient history and anthropology, but the idea that they became cavemen seems rather obviously wrong to me.
What I think would have happened is this: you would have gotten a number of small, scattered farming communities. These communities would see rapid growth in the first few generations, although they'd remain subsistence farmers. Eventually, they'd gain enough critical mass for towns, and in a few generations, those towns might become cities.
Realistically speaking, that's the only logical way they could have had the civilization survive anyway. It's true that they're starting with a great deal of technology at their finger-tips, but they don't have the technological resources to reproduce it. At best, they can keep it running as long as possible, but you're talking about that technology breaking down within a couple of generations anyway.
Think of it this way. They've survived with computers, but it takes a lot to build a computer. You have to be able to get the silicon for parts, you need the machinery to make the circuit-boards, etc. That's stuff they'd have to rebuild, and with their small population, they don't have time for that.
So, you would see cities again within a few generations. You'd see civilizations rising, expanding, and eventually dying. There's nothing to say this isn't the way it happens - keep in mind, we're talking about landfall on Earth being 150 THOUSAND years ago. The entire city of Toronto could have been there that long ago, and we wouldn't have any signs of it today.
"But does international law clarify where idea ends and expression begins? And what are the best practices for a songwriter to avoid being hit with an accidental plagiarism lawsuit like Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music?"
Those are superb questions...what do you think the answers are?
"OK, I think that I think rationally about copyright, though that may not be a completely objective opinion. Here's my way of thinking about it, and ya'll can decide if it's rational or not:"
Forget rational - you need to get it right first. You've got a lot wrong here.
"Now, suppose George Gershwin was willing to write "An American In Paris" as long as he had a copyright for 17 years, but the law required that he have the copyright for the rest of his life plus 100 years. Would that be rational?"
No, it would not be rational, but the law doesn't work that way. Under copyright law, your hypothetical Gershwin is completely free to release his "An American In Paris" into the public domain whenever he wishes. So, the only thing keeping it in copyright for the term you specified (which is off by 30 years in the United States, and 50 years in Canada), is your hypothetical Gershwin.
"People might say "It's his property!" But if somebody copies it, have they stolen it from him? Doesn't he still 'have' it."
In fact, they have stolen something from him. They've stolen his ability to determine how his work is distributed - when you're living off royalties while you work on your next piece, that can make a big difference.
Let me pose something to you - let's say your hypothetical Gershwin decides that he's going to write "An American in Paris," and he decides that he's going to release it as Creative Commons, which is a decision that copyright law allows him to make. But, somebody comes along, we'll call it "Evil Corporation X," and starts distributing it for money, against your hypothetical Gershwin's wishes. Would you not say that something has been stolen from him? He wanted to give this to the world, but somebody took that decision away.
Now, I'm going to point something out here, and you may not like it - I'm going to point out that you don't really understand copyright all that well to begin with. Don't feel too badly - most of the people on here wouldn't recognize modern copyright if it came up and bit them.
"I thought the original idea of copyright was to give a creator enough incentive to do creative work. Just like $50K might be enough incentive for that builder to build the house."
Now, that is certainly the wording in the U.S. Constitution. But let me pose you two questions - first, is that the wording from the original copyright legislation, which predates the U.S. Constitution by around 70-80 years? Second, is that what copyright is doing right now?
To answer question one, the answer is "no." The original copyright legislation, the Statute of Anne of 1709, begins with:
"Whereas printers, booksellers, and other persons have of late frequently taken the liberty of printing, reprinting, and publishing, or causing to be printed, reprinted, and published, books and other writings, without the consent of the authors or proprietors of such books and writings, to their very great detriment, and too often to the ruin of them and their families: for preventing therefore such practices for the future, and for the encouragement of learned men to compose and write useful books..."
So, in fact, protecting creative artists from exploitation is mentioned first, and encouragement comes in as number 3. Times change, and the purpose of copyright in the United Kingdom in 1710 is not the purpose in the United States in 1810, and it will not necessarily correspond to the purpose in 2010.
So, let's look at the purpose of copyright in 2009. Most of it the reader, viewer, or listener will never see. That's because most of it is a legal framework used to govern the relationship between creative artist and the means of distribution. As a writer, editor, author, and the owner of a publishing company, I have to deal with this on a regular basis. People complaining about copyright frequently have tunnel vision about it - they look at the length of the term alone, declare it unreasonable, read propaganda about why the term is there that is usually dead
"I don't know what is contract said, but if he's like most of us it's called "work for hire" and he's already been paid. Unless he has a contract that promises a percentage of the future royalties and licensing he's just upset that he didn't negotiate said type of contract back in the day."
Um...you should have done your research. According to Ellison's press release ( http://harlanellison.com/heboard/visitors/startrekpressrelease.html ), that IS what happened. Ellison's contract specified that he would receive royalties on material based on City on the Edge of Forever, Paramount and Pocket Books put out a trilogy based on it, and refused to honour the contract.
Yeah, but Space is actually good, and is not affiliated with the Sci-Fi network. I think it's right now owned by Global.
The stories I've heard about the Sci-Fi Network have been pretty cringeworthy for a while, though...
I just took a look at Chapter V of this book, just to see if this is a case of somebody presenting a well-researched argument or an economist spouting off about something they know nothing about (and economists do that more often than most people would think - I once saw an economist at a conference proudly present a model for revenge that flew in the face of the whole of human history). I'm afraid that when it comes to the matter of books, it was downright dishonest in places.
This is propaganda.
Some examples:
Page 111-112 - the authors ask the question of how well the American copyright extensions have worked, and judge it solely on number of works created. Then, they declare that it didn't help, because there isn't a massive increase. They DON'T mention that there wasn't a decrease either - in fact, there is a very slow increase. They also don't look at works that were not properly registered. Even more telling, they don't look at other factors - whether the quality of life of the authors was impacted positively or negatively, whether there were enough publishers to provide an increase in publications, etc. They base their conclusion on a single metric.
Page 115 - A clear case of apples and oranges. Having talked about the reasons given for the CTEA (without, I might add, actually examining them in any detail), they comment that 8 years later, the same corporations are trying to get the European copyrights extended from 50 years to 95 years to keep up with the United States, implying that these companies are essentially raising one, then using it as an excuse to raise another. Which would be evil, except that it's not what's happening - the CTEA involved books, and the recent lobbying is about music, which have entirely different copyright terms. So, it would be more accurate to say that having harmonized one section of the creative arts, they're attempting to harmonize another - which is far less evil.
Page 115-116 - Here the argument turns absolutely dishonest. The authors want to demonstrate that books out of copyright are more available than books in copyright. So, here is what they do - they take Edgar Rice Burroughs, and compare the books that are in copyright to the ones that are out of copyright, and show that indeed, the ones in copyright have fewer editions available. This is a trick, though - Edgar Rice Burroughs is one of the most famous writers of his day. Conspicuously, they don't provide any data for number of books published in total that are out of copyright compared to availability - they just take the case of a single, famous author, and extend that to be the case for the whole. If they extended it, it's fairly certain that they'd find that the majority of books that have entered the public domain are no longer available in print or online, undermining their argument. Most people would not claim that the exception is the rule, but they have made precisely that claim.
Pages 117-118 - The authors now demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of how the book market works, as they claim that having classic spy novels in print would devalue new spy novels. To channel Morbo from Futurama, "Publishers do not work that way!" In fact, the decision of whether a book gets published or not is entirely based on how well it is likely to sell, and having a classic spy novel that is consistently selling well is more likely to reinforce the sales of new ones, not devalue them.
These are selected errors, both factual and methodological. It would be nice if there was actual research here, rather than taking a few surface facts and drawing ignorant conclusions.
"Name them. (And once you do I will show you why every one you name is entirely ineffective to deter the filing of frivolous lawsuits.)"
You know, up here in Canada, we have a mechanism that works quite well. In a civil case, the loser is required to pay at least part, if not all, of the winner's legal fees by default. That means that while there are some frivolous lawsuits, something like what the RIAA has been doing would bankrupt them up-front.
I've often wondered why the United States doesn't have such a measure...it seems to me that it would prevent frivolous lawsuits while opening the door for non-frivolous ones quite effectively...
This is one case where I think the technology could very well be a perfect match for the product.
Here's the thing - one of the key reasons that e-books didn't even stand a chance of taking over the regular book market is in the way that people consume books - it's long and involved. Having a huge library on disk isn't as much of a selling point when only three or four books will be relevant at once. A regular book tends to be better suited for that sort of consumption.
A newspaper, on the other hand, is consumed in short bursts. It is also consumed far more actively - people discuss news on forums, and being able to comment immediately is a draw. So, some e-reader would be perfectly suited for this.
So, I think this one actually has a better chance of catching on than the Kindle or Sony Reader.
"Kindle and Kindle 2 were 2 of the best things that have happened to authors; nice to alienate Amazon."
I'm afraid I don't really know about that - and I'm not talking doubts, I seriously do not have information. And I've looked. There is a giant black hole where sales information should be on the Kindle. I've read informed estimates that have suggested anywhere from only tens of thousands of Kindles have sold to around a million. And Amazon just isn't talking.
It's quite frustrating from a publisher perspective - I've got to decide whether or not to support this thing, and any time somebody tells me that I should just trust them on something rather than giving me actual figures, I get very suspicious. At least Sony has revealed that between 2006 and 2008 they sold 300,000 units of their reader, which is decent, but not that awe-inspiring. If what publisher reports I've read are true, and sales of books for the Kindle are lagging behind sales for the Sony Reader, that suggests a customer base of around 150,000 or less.
But again, Amazon isn't talking. And the sales figures I can get from the Association of American Publishers suggest the e-book isn't anything other than a niche market, and bound to stay that way. So, while I think the Kindle is helping to expand the e-book market, and getting more people to read is always a good thing, I don't think we can really say it's "2 of the best things that have happened to authors."
Aside from which, as a small publisher, I have little sympathy for Amazon these days. They're facing an antitrust action because they've been trying to force small publishers to use their in-house print shop, which is known for a very inferior product, with a stance of "use our shop or we turn off your buy button." You can read about it at http://antitrust.booklocker.com/
As for the Author's Guild issue, frankly, I was quite interested to see if software reading a book was legally a performance or not - it is a bit of a gray area. I guess now we won't know.
Good luck!
Just remember to get advice from Lightning Source, and the Ingram Advance ad is really worth the money.
Well, the business license shouldn't cost you too much, and the rest you can do on your computer. That's if you're self-publishing.
It will cost you a lot more with Lulu. Seriously, the cost of publishing a book printed by Lightning Source and getting worldwide distribution comes to around $150 in total (but Lightning Source only deals with businesses).
The comments really are revealing here, but not in a positive way. The summary itself is inflammatory, stating that a clarification of the Guild's position is a "rant" with the author "moaning" - and I haven't seen a single comment modded up here that suggests that anybody actually READ the piece.
First of all, the issue here is not that reading aloud is copyright infringement - it isn't, and Blount explicitly says so. The issue here is as follows:
1. Audiobook rights constitute a separate right from e-book rights in copyright law.
2. Amazon is advertising that the Kindle 2 has the ability to effectively generate an audiobook from the e-book, and using that as a major selling point.
3. Amazon is not buying audiobook rights, even though they are generating an audiobook performance for commercial gain.
All of this was clarified in the article - which apparently nobody read. Now, whether a computer-read book constitutes a full audiobook is a tricky matter, but we're not talking about software reading to the blind here - in fact, Blount specificially states "In fact, publishers, authors and American copyright laws have long provided for free audio availability to the blind and the guild is all for technologies that expand that availability. (The federation, though, points out that blind readers can't independently use the Kindle 2's visual, on-screen controls.) But that doesn't mean Amazon should be able, without copyright-holders' participation, to pass that service on to everyone." What we're talking about is the ability to create an audiobook being advertised as a selling point to sell more Kindles, without the audiobook rights having actually been acquired by Amazon.
What will be determined - and with technology advancing, it is an issue that does need to be hashed out - is whether a computer generated audio reading of a book on a commerical e-book reader constitutes an audiobook performance. Sadly, that's not what's being discussed here. Pity, as this is one place where there could be a fruitful and intelligent discussion on that.
"I've seen a claim [kindleboards.com] that when both formats (printed and ebook) are available, 10% of sales are ebook. Beats me if that's accurate or not."
Thank you for posting that - it's interesting, although I have to admit, it's damned difficult to decipher. I imagine it is accurate, but what does it mean? The actual quote is:
"In 14 months, for the 230,000 titles that we have Kindle additions, Kindle unit sales already represent more than 10 percent of Amazonâ(TM)s total sales in those 230,000 titles. We spent 14 years building our physical books business. And in just 14 months, this is already 10 percent. So we are all very surprised that it is being adopted so quickly."
But 10% of what? Money sales, or units moved? If it's money sales, what is the spread across the books - is it an even spread? If it is units moved, the number becomes meaningless very quickly - a quick look at the Kindle Store bestseller list shows that the #1 bestseller is being sold for free, same with #3, 12, 15, 17, and 25. That completely skews the numbers - and to this day, Amazon still won't tell anybody how many Kindle units have sold.
I'm sorry, but I do find this suspicious - at least with the AAP I've got some solid numbers to play with...this is too much along the "just trust us" line to be trustworthy...
Um...
About a place like Lulu - if you really want to self publish with a Print on Demand model, you're better off starting a small company and going through Lightning Source. Trust me on this - vanity presses are no way to go, and as a business you will make more money and get better service.
Actually, I will add one thing...
"You have an early industry mindset. Up until a couple of years ago, there hasn't been a device that could replace a book. This thing is just getting started."
No, I don't have an early industry mindset. I have a present-day industry mindset. And, funnily enough, you're repeating pretty much exactly what people were saying back in 2000.
I right now use e-books for free advertising. If you go onto my website, you'll find an e-book sample of the opening of every new book I've published, and a full e-book of each reprint (there's one right now, but more are coming). So, I don't ignore e-books at all - I make active use of them.
However, the e-book market share is too small for it to be worth my time as a small publisher to take the considerable effort required to reformat these books for the Kindle. And I check up on the market share every couple of months. If the e-book gets up to 10% or higher of the market share, it will become worthwhile for me to start producing commercial e-books.
There's nothing backwards about doing stuff this way. You're talking in sweeping terms about massive changes to a market that not only have not happened, but have been predicted before and failed to happen. And there are indicators that can be used to track this - in the time that the Kindle was available, the e-book market grew steadily (it has actually been doing that since they were brought out), but very slowly in comparison to the rest of the book market.
Now, let's look at some actual stats here. Doing a search, I've been able to pull e-book net sales figures from 2002 to 2008. Please note, the Kindle was released at the end of 2007:
http://www.openebook.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm
Okay, so the release of the Kindle may have an impact on the sales - there is certainly a change in the sales rate as of the beginning of 2008 (of course, correlation is not causation, and there are other e-book readers that were released at the same time). The sales rate increased over the course of 2008. So, consumption certainly increased. All this means that the e-book is a growing market.
The question lies in what will happen now. The release of the Kindle 2 may help push sales further, but I want to point out a trend in the sales figures - after each growth spurt, there has been a flattening out and sometimes a drop - this happens in 2005, and it happens in 2007. So, past history suggests that sometime in 2009 or 2010 there will be another flattening out and possible drop.
Let's do some number crunching. What were the actual growth rates between these quarters for 2008? Doing the math, we get:
Q1: 23%
Q2: 15%
Q3: 20%
Q4: 21%
So, the highest growth in the past 5 quarters has been between Q4 2007 and Q1 2008. Otherwise, the growth is hovering at between 15-21%. That's nothing to sneeze at, but that's far from taking over the industry in the next ten years. And, as I said, we've seen a 4 month period of growth followed by a flattening out before.
Now, the point I'm trying to make in my long-winded, statistics-laden way is that this is far from a settled matter. You're predicting the death of the printed book based on a growing market representing less than 1% of the total book market, a market that is seeing steady growth, but also having an established pattern of growth followed by a flattening out. All of the evidence suggests that the e-book is going to become like the audiobook - a strong complement to the printed book, but not a replacement. The indicators that you would expect to see at this point in time for a dramatic change - a substantial and sustained drop in print book sales followed by an equal and sustained rise in e-book sales, along with the expected growth rate, simply isn't present.
Compare with DVD sales, for a moment - this is a case where there was a replacement of one product with another - the DVD was introdu
"An e-reader will be simple enough that people aren't going to buy the media in print form when they are comfortable with using an e-reader. There's just far too much overlap to be worth it."
I'll believe it when I see it.
You've raised some very good questions there, and I'll try to address your points as best I can...
"Well you may have a point there when it comes to eBooks; however, I must ask how did the paper book market sales project after the e-Book market was created in the year 2000?"
That is a superb question, and it's one I really don't have an answer for. There has been a general downwards movement of book sales for some time, although from what I can see, e-books don't seem to be either causing it or making up for it - most of the material I've read regarding it has tended to place the cause at people just not reading as much, instead going for more bite-sized chunks of media, such as movies or TV shows. But, I don't really have any good statistics on that. I do know that there was an experiment to try to make the commercial e-book work between about 2000-2002, and quite a few people were watching as a couple of publishers tried to make it work. The sales were pathetic enough that by 2002 most e-book development from the major publishers had been put on the back burner.
"Many eBooks are given away for free as part of some web site with advertising on it. Your publishers.org data is not going to be able to record the free eBooks given away on a web site that has advertising pay for the eBook instead of the purchase price."
That is one problem with the AAP statistics - to draw that out further, there is no standard pricing scheme for commercial e-books, so what the statistic tells you is how much money was made in total, not the number of units that moved. It is possible (although not likely) that it could very well have been 6.5 million e-books at $1.00 per copy.
However, when you look at the overall situation from an "is this profitable" angle, the total does help. Ultimately for a publisher to stay in business, it has to make money. Even if 6.5 million e-books did sell at $1.00 per book, it still remains a very small piece of the overall pie (in short, selling lots of copies is useless if you go broke doing it).
Looking at your idea, it is an interesting one. It certainly is viable so long as you can get the advertisers you need on side. There are some questions about effectiveness, though - losing some advertisers can be fatal, whereas with a commercial book the book itself provides a revenue stream, and can pay for itself under ideal circumstances.
Your chart is also interesting, although from what I can tell, it does look like a regular sales pattern for a single book. So far with all of the books I've published, there's been a spike at some point (usually just after the Ingram Advance advertisement goes through), followed by a slow decline. There are only so many people who will buy any given book, and the longer the book is available, the fewer people are left to buy it.
I would draw your attention to the difference between giving an e-book away and an actual sale. In a sale money changes hands, whereas people will download just about anything for free for the simple reason that it's free (strange, I know, but even I've caught myself downloading something I'll never even take a second look at because it was free swag). I personally use e-book versions, either full or samples, to try to market my own company's books. Financial viability is based on revenue generated, though, and so far the e-book seems much better at reinforcing the print book than generating revenue on its own.
"It also hardly takes into account information read for free on web pages showcased in Slashdot and other web sites as sources for free information. Why buy the book when you can get the same information from web sites for free?"
And that is one of the best points I've seen, and it's one of the things I meant when I talked about publishers needing to adapt to reality. I should have said "what the market was doing" when I posted originally, as that makes it a bit clearer. Every type of book is consumed a bit differently. A technical manual, for example, would be consum
"Has a modern, viable e-reader been available at a reasonable price for the last 9 years?"
In a word, yes. There have been several. On a very basic level, there's the PC, the laptop, and quite a number of readers from quite a few companies. There's also the Palm Pilot, cell phones, and variations.
"Alternatively, an e-book can be downloaded instantly and for free instead of having to go out and buy it or wait for it to be shipped."
Except for the up-front cost of e-book reader, and the price of the book if it's a new one. Aside from which, availability is a side issue - we're talking about technical merits.
"I don't have to dedicate space to store each book."
Yes you do - you're just dedicating space on the reader, which requires electricity and maintenance. And if your reader goes down, you run the risk of losing the contents of it.
"I can copy them around and thus preserve perfect working copies instead of having them worn down over time."
Until your reader breaks down or needs to be upgraded, and suddenly you find out that the format has changed, so you have to get all of your book files again.
"No heavy books."
That is the one merit on this list that is objectively true.
"Easy search."
Apples and oranges - certain books are searched in certain ways, and others are searched in other ways. A dictionary would be easier to use electronically, yes, but a novel isn't consumed that way.
"So instead of keeping track of many books I have one device to keep track of, that's self-contained and easy to use."
And if it ever gets stolen, your entire library goes with it.
Understand something - I was there at the beginning of this entire thing. I've heard all of these arguments before. In 2000, they might have been convincing. Today, history has already spoken. For ten years, they haven't made a difference. E-books were made easier to read on home computers and laptops - the market still wouldn't buy them. Just about every handheld device out there was rigged to be able to handle e-books, from phones to palm pilots. Lots of little phone games sold, but not too many e-books.
You're looking for this magic bullet that will make the printed book disappear. I'm not sure why - frankly, you're treating the printed book and the e-book as mutually exclusive. They're not. The e-book has a lot of strengths, which you have listed. That makes it a wonderful complement to the printed book. But it does NOT make it a replacement. The printed book has one thing that the e-book doesn't, and simply cannot complete with: simplicity.
Let me put it to you this way - take the screwdriver. There are lots of electric drills out there, and have been for years. But there are a lot more good, old fashioned screwdrivers. Both can do the same job, and the power drill has all sorts of features that add value, but the screwdriver is just simpler and easier. So it's still around - one did not replace the other.
"All this can be said for movies and music too. Cory takes the stance that the Internet will just copy around DRM. And it's true, you can find DRM-free formats of just about anything you want. People won't be so concerned about having a printed book 30 years from now as having a free, instant access book on their e-reader."
At the current growth rate, 30 years from now the e-book MIGHT have gotten up to 10% of the market share, making it competitive with audiobooks. As it stands, in the last nine years, the e-book has yet to break 1% of the total book market. I know - I've been following e-book sales recently.
Two things you have to keep in mind here - first, I've had a long time to think about it. My first book sale was supposed to be a major e-book that would break open the market. It had everything it needed except for me not being Stephen King. It flopped instead...and so did every other e-book released alongside it. I've had a long time to try to figure out why, and I have never bought the "sentimental attachment to paper" that a lot of people bring out.
Second, I run a publishing company. I don't get bonus points for making decisions based on ideology - I have to go with what the market is actually doing. The Association of American Publishers tracks book sales for the entire domestic American market every month. As I said, in 9 years, the e-book hasn't managed to creep past 1% of book sales. Why?
Requiring new technology is not a major barrier. DVD overtook VHS with ease, but you can't play a DVD on a VCR - you need a separate player. Even as the price was going down, the DVD offered far more than VHS could. It was a more robust format, it lasted longer, and it could just do more. Regardless of having to buy a new player, it made watching movies easier - no rewinding required, no magnetic degradation, and a smaller physical product.
If DVDs can overtake the VHS while a good DVD player costs around $300 at the time (I know, that's the time when I got my first DVD player), then surely if the e-book was better, more robust, and easier to use, it would be able to do the same to the printed book. And yet, it hasn't. Around a decade in, and the market has pretty much rejected it as anything other than a handy way to read a book or two while travelling. Why?
Put simply, the e-book fails to improve on the printed book on just about every level. Rather than making it simpler, it adds complications. Let's look at it point for point:
1. Robustness. If you buy a printed book, so long as you treat it properly, it can last for over a century. I have books on my shelf that are around 50 years old, and all I have to do to read them is to open them up (I also have a couple that are over 100 years old, although those are treated with far more care). With the e-book, however, you have to worry about data corruption, and file format changes. An e-book reader is technology, and technology advances - it also breaks down. The number of things that can go wrong with a printed book are fairly few and far between - the number of things that can go wrong with an e-book are considerably higher in number.
2. Ease of use. Here the e-book and the printed book are a bit closer, but which is better depends on consumption. When it comes to a novel or history book, a printed book is far more accessible and easy to use - all you have to do is open it to the page you want and read. Something like a technical manual does better as an electronic file - search functions will make it easier to use than a printed index. So, here they are about even, but even does not make the e-book better. Again, the e-book fails to improve across the board.
3. Just plain better: the printed book takes it easily. It is completely self-contained, and easy to use. Any part of it can be referenced at any time, and you don't need any equipment to use it. The e-book adds an equipment requirement that was not there before, which makes it a harder sell. When you look at VHS vs. DVD, both r
One question I want to raise here is price. Doctorow mentions the difficulties that a $300 million movie would have in breaking even. I want to know why that movie would have to cost $300 million in the first place.
I know everybody isn't a fan of this series, but take the Underworld movies for a moment. They may not be high art, but they look great, the acting is decent, the stories are generally well-written, and they are stylish as hell. The budgets (from the IMDB) are as follows:
Underworld: $22 million (approx)
Underworld Evolution: $50 million
Underworld Rise of the Lycans: $35 million
Compare this to a movie picked at random out of a hat, the Steve Martin 2006 Pink Panther movie, which was NOT an FX movie. Its budget was $80 million. Anybody else think it could probably have been done for $30 million?
Frankly, Underworld itself looked better than a few movies I've seen with budgets three-to-five times as large. It also broke even a lot easier than a more expensive FX movie that would have looked just as good.
There are two-parters from Doctor Who (such as Impossible Planet/Satan Pit) that look movie-quality, and cost a fraction of what a big budget movie would cost right now. So, I think the question is a serious one for the survival of the industry - assuming that a movie has to make two dollars for every dollar spent to be in the black, how can it afford to be making movies that require a gross take of $600 million in order to succeed? And how can $300 million be justified as a starting budget on any movie?
"Print is dead, but ePrint replaced it."
"So in theory, a media company putting their content on files, instead of a physical container, would save a lot of money by just selling files instead of audio CDs, Video DVDs, Paper Books, Paper Newspapers, etc."
Well spoken, but wrong. In the case of books, a company going all e-book would go out of business very quickly. And here's why:
Just because a technology is new, it doesn't make it better. Laserdisc came before the DVD, but it didn't usurp the videotape - unlike DVDs, it was bigger, and more difficult to use than VHS. The idea that new = better, or even that new = successful is a fallacy; it depends on the product in question.
Take the e-book, for example. You talked about how ePrint has replaced it, but let's look at the figures. The e-book "revolution" started in 2000 (I know - I was one of the authors in it). Eight or nine years later, how is it doing? Has it taken the book industry by storm?
Well, in December 2008, American domestic net books sales totaled $1.5 billion. Of those, e-books represented $6.5 million. So, the e-book sales represented a grand total of 0.43% of the total book market for the month of December. In fact, if you look at e-book sales per month, about the highest they get is to 0.8% of total net book sales, and that is on months when total book sales take a nose dive. There is a steady climb, but at the rate it's going, it will be two or three decades before e-books reach the 10% mark, much less something higher.
Sources: http://www.publishers.org/Dec08stats.htm
http://www.publishers.org/
So, close to a decade in, and the e-book has made so small an impact on book sales that it is close to non-existent. Any publisher abandoning the printed book to go after less than 1% of the total market would be an idiot to do so, and would go out of business as a result.
It is important to adapt, but one has to adapt to the right changes. Just because a technology is new it doesn't mean that it's going to replace the market that is already there. One has to look at what the market is doing - how are readers consuming the product? In some cases, such as tech manuals, which involve a lot of searching for isolated "word bites," an online offering will fare better than a printed book. But for a novel or history book, far from it.
Print is not dead, and what media distributors have to adapt to is not technology, but reality.
"Finally, they cost about $270 now and dropping. Be afraid."
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you there. Not only am I a writer, author, editor, and small publisher, but I was also there for either the start of the e-book revolution, or the first e-book revolution, depending on how you look at it. The e-book as it stands doesn't have a chance against the printed page.
And that has nothing to do with price, or even the often-cited emotion. If there's one thing I've noticed, it's that technology markets are not sentimental. If something better than the printed book showed up, the printed book would disappear close to overnight - mark my words. But something better hasn't yet shown up.
You're right that e-books are wonderful for travelling, but they have a lot of what you could call "barriers to entry" that are not related to price. Look at it this way - all you need to use a printed book is a light source, a pair of eyes, and a pair of hands. You don't need electricity; sunlight will do. When it comes to an e-book, though, you need a lot more.
No matter what, you need a power source - if you're travelling from one continent to another, you have to get adapter plugs for it just like you would any other type of appliance. You also need to worry about file formats - technology is always a moving target, and so you can't assume that the file format of today will be the same used thirty years from now. You have to worry about downloads, which means that you usually have to worry about DRM of some sort. And moving an e-book file is not necessarily possible because of that DRM; rather than being able to just move an e-book from one device to another, you may have to download a new copy; upgrading your e-book reader could result in you having to re-buy your entire library.
Compare that to a printed book, which is completely self-contained, will last for around thirty years or so before it might need repairs, and those repairs are probably going to be as simple as the light application of glue. They're easy to move around, you can loan them to friends or family without worrying about restrictions, and to top it all off, most of them are cheap. Price is just the icing on the cake.
So, considering that, you can see what Doctorow means when he says that an e-book is a poor substitute for the printed book.