Originally posted at the Huffington Post
Slate’s technology writer Farhad Manjoo recently wrote a very interesting article about some off-base predictions of yore about our digital future. He focuses on a whopper of a Newsweek column from 1995 (which is actually titled “The Internet? Bah!“) about how the Internet would be a passing fad because, among other things, online shopping can’t replicate the experience of a salesperson, an online database can’t replace a daily newspaper, and the Internet was so jumbled he couldn’t even find the date of the Battle of Trafalgar.
Whoops.
Rather than just hardy har har-ing at the article, Manjoo takes a different, and very insightful approach. He notes that the author of the article was hardly a Luddite – he was actually deep in the weeds of the early Internet. The problem with the article wasn’t that the author was dumb, the problem was that he was looking strictly at the Internet of 1995 and ignoring the potential for innovation and change.
Manjoo lays out four principles for more successful predictions about our digital future:
1. Good predictions are based on current trends
2. Don’t underestimate people’s capacity for change
3. New stuff sometimes come out of the blue
4. These days it’s best to err on the side of (technological) optimism
When people make predictions about our e-book future, I find myself mystified that some people are so dismissive of their inevitability. I see blog posts and comments around the Internet from people who look at the nascent e-book landscape and think, “Blech. Expensive grayscale Kindles in a white piece of plastic? No way e-books are going to catch on!” Some people admit that they’re going to be a part of our lives, but do so grudgingly and see them as yet another signpost that we’re all going to hell in a handbasket.
Here’s the thing they ignore: e-books are only going to get better.
Move over Nostradamus, here are some predictions about our digital book future:
1. The e-book reading experience is only going to improve.
Sure – not everyone loves the current grayscale Kindles and tiny iPhone reading experience, particularly for books that are illustrated or are beautifully designed. But better devices are coming and it’s going to open up a new era of book design of unlimited possibility.
I remember that my high school English teacher told us that when William Faulkner was writing The Sound and the Fury he wished he could have published the text in different colors to denote the different perspectives, but obviously that would have been prohibitively expensive for publishers at the time. Not anymore. With the iPad and other devices coming soon, E-books are going color.
Tomorrow’s writers are going to have almost limitless ability to include beautiful color photos and art and interactivity and creative design even in the mass-est of mass market books, the ones that are currently printed on cheap paper and sold on supermarket racks and where the idea of including anything colorful or design-y besides the cover is laughable.
Think of how much a fancy illustrated book costs now and then think about how cheaply that can be done digitally. E-books may be uglier than print books now, but they’re about to get more beautiful.
2. E-readers and e-books are only going to get cheaper.
Sure, right now e-readers are out of reach for much of the population. That’s going to change. Every new technology is out of reach until it gets cheaper. Digital toys that would once have sold for $100 are now given out in McDonald’s Happy Meals. Lower prices for iPad-like devices of the future are inevitable.
And while publishers are currently taking a stand against deeply discounted e-books, the $12.99-$14.99 price point that they are fighting for is still half the cost of a $25 hardcover.
It’s soon going to be possible to buy e-books cheaply on an affordable e-reader device, and they’re going to be more colorful and interactive than most of their print counterparts.
3. Finding the books you want to read will only get easier.
One of the most common fears about the coming era is that no one will be able to find the good books in a time when anyone can just upload their novel to Amazon. It’s the Fear of the Jumble, which was also expressed in that column at Newsweek, where the author complained that (in 1995) you couldn’t even find the date of the Battle of Trafalgar on the Internet. He didn’t realize that Google and Wikipedia would come along to give you that answer in mere seconds.
Already there are sites like Goodreads and Shelfari cropping up that allow people to swap reviews and recommendations about books. People increasingly find new books through blogs, forums, and heck, hearing from an author directly. It was never really possible before for authors to reach their audience directly – now it’s a piece of cake.
Humans are really, really good at organizing things. If we can organize the billions and billions of web pages out there so that we can find what we want within a few seconds I think we can manage a few million books.
4. People are ignoring the digital trend.
I was watching a Seinfeld rerun the other day and there was a funny moment when Elaine hated a movie she was watching so much she called the video store and threatened not to rewind it. I’m going to have to explain this joke to my kids. And then I’m going to tell them about this funny thing we used to have where used to get these things called DVDs in the mail rather than having them downloaded straight to the TV (or wall or inside our eyeballs or whatever we’re watching movies on in the future).
Everything that can be digitized is being digitized because it’s cheaper and easier to send pixels around the world than physical objects. First it was music, then newspapers, then movies. Books are next in line.
5. Habits change
Yes, yes. The smell of books, reading in the bathtub, writing in the margins, a bookshelf full of books, etc. etc.
People will still have that choice and there are some books that simply can’t be replicated digitally. But when faced with a better option, consumers shift extremely quickly. Right now the benefits of e-books are a little murky except for early adopters and those that can afford the devices. But that’s just right now. Pretty soon they’re going to be better (color! design! portable! interactivity! instantaneous!) and cheaper. Readers won’t pay a premium for an inferior print product out of habit and nostalgia in great numbers.
The e-book era is going to be one of incredible innovation and unlimited opportunity, and people who don’t see e-books dominating the future of the book world are ignoring the coming innovation and creativity and affordability. I refuse to believe the skeptics and pessimists. Books are about to get better.
Allison-
I think that no matter what happens, "educational babysitters" will be there for whenever a parent isn't willing, or (as I would like to imagine, more frequently) when a parent just doesn't have time to read to their child. Ultimately, the parent still has a choice to sit down with their child and read a book, but if the child can do it on their own, and they don't have that "barrier to entry" I think it is a plus.
Similarly, Xbox games on the e-reader will still depend entirely on the end-user's willingness to download those games (until the games come stock… then we can wail, moan, and gnash teeth) and thus wrecking, I think, the joy of the e-reader, but the option will still be there, which is, I guess, a subsequent win for consumers.
I want a solar powered e-book. If they had that, I would buy it.
I would still be nervous about it breaking though.
Oh, and I would miss real book flaps and the little data page. Other than that, I can see myself adapting for sake of cost. Especially if th e work was colorful 😀
I see an ipad in my near future. The flying car not so much.
I would really like to believe that the future of books is going to open more doors to unpublished authors and not make it more difficult to garner an audience. There's hope till the end, right?
So I have a question, which may be totally off base, but this got me to thinking. Do you think that the popularity and advancement of e-book readers will have any implications for the novelist? Specifically the unpublished, hungry writers?
For instance, will the less expensive publishing costs (therefore lowered risk) allow publishers/editors to be more courageous about taking on newer writers? Or will the lowered costs possibly even allow for more volume of books to be published in a year?
This is such an insightful post, Nathan!
I agree with every point, some of which I hadn't thought of before, and even then, I still agree with them. That's just wierd. I actually find myself in the relatively odd postion of having nothing to add.
Now what do I do??
Well, I will say that I'd love a car that flies.
Other than that, I'll just reiterate that I completely agree with everything here!
Viva the future!
I've always been excited about where technology is going, and your post has provided good insight into the cool developments that may be coming in e-books over the next few years. These are exciting times in which we live.
Wow, couldn't have said it better myself! Great post, Nathan.
This is an exciting time to be a reader and a writer. I'm a self-published Kindle author and the last seven months have been beyond wonderful. My books have connected with readers and one of my novels (A Scattered Life) was optioned for film. I am grateful.
I agree that we're in the beginning stages of ebook technology–I can't wait to see what happens next.
I read through several of the posts here, and most were about the e-reading experience. I'm having the same thoughts as Maggie: how will ebooks affect the author? What are the advantages for them and how does it enhance the author/publisher experience over print books? Maybe this is a blog topic for you, Nathan. 🙂 n
Word. People, listen to the prophet.
We're going to need a new PSA.
Actually, it's important to consider the digital divide in this future. As technology advances, public policy must keep pace to ensure that entire populations of kids aren't left out. When all books are digitized, only those with the reader devices will be able to consume them. This, it turns out, is a kinda important topic.
That's one heck OF A post. I'll admit to being a skeptic…but that stems from me not understanding E-readers and most technologies. Combating my incredulity is my utter curiosity about the fate of books. As a young, unpublished writer I think coming to terms with E-readers is coming to an understanding about my career's future. I won't give you all the credit, but find validity in the fact that you are aiding in the opening of people's minds.
I totally agree that ebooks are the next big thing. I hate ebooks with a passion that borders on the fanatical, but I can see that this is where publishing is heading.
Instead of asking about when ebooks become popular, agents and publishers need to be asking themselves if this is a technology that the industry wants to embrace.
Did you learn nothing from the iPod and iTunes? iTunes killed the music industry. It made it possible for people to purchase only the one song they wanted out of a whole album or it allowed them to outright pirate the music they wanted to hear instead of purchasing it.
The same thing is poised to happen to publishing. As ebooks become more and more popular you will find that people are stealing the books they want to read instead of purchasing them.
Is that the direction you really want publishing to go? I see all the big publishers were lined up to support the iPad — but it doesn't seem like they gave it any real thought.
anon-
There are lots and lots of differences between books and music and the publishing industry and the music industry. For one, while people will definitely sell short stories, most books don't do better broken up, so the threat of the entire business model changing from albums to singles doesn't have a parallel. We've also had over a decade for the electronic media market to learn and for the public to mature and not expect that they're going to necessarily get things for free.
Sure, piracy will be an issue. But this is a case where the industry is creating the market, not the pirates – the pirates created the mp3 market and the music industry was playing catchup. That's a crucial difference.
What are the advantages for them and how does it enhance the author/publisher experience over print books?
If ebooks become staggeringly popular, there is a huge opportunity for mid-list authors to skip the whole Submission -> Rejection slush pile and take their book directly to the readers.
There are quite a few authors making $40k+ through Amazon.com's Kindle by taking their ebooks directly to the public at a discount rate.
Expect this to continue into the future. Authors who can't find a home with big publishers will have an opportunity to use gorilla marketing to build their own fan base around their works and make a pretty decent living doing it.
I hope that this will cause publishers to loosen the purse strings a bit when it comes to author advances and that they will need to publish more and more 'smaller' books with sales in the 10k – 50k range instead of relying on the million sellers to build their business.
Either way, the face of publishing is changing. The question is if Agents and Publishers can keep up.
I'm just waiting for the price to come down. My husband already wants one, and I'm flexible. I see nothing wrong with having both worlds — some e-books and some tangible books.
IMO, one of the negative aspects of the e-book readers is the fragility of the device. Hope the designers can address that in the near future. The consequences are much more dire when I drop or fumble an e-reader than if I dropped a paper book.
Sure, piracy will be an issue. But this is a case where the industry is creating the market, not the pirates – the pirates created the mp3 market and the music industry was playing catchup. That's a crucial difference.
I will chalk up your comments to a legitimate and sincere naïveté.
There is already significant piracy of books — sometimes the pirates go so far as to scan entire books before release (ie, Harry Potter) and release them onto the net and there has been a major movement to pirate all comic books in digital form. (Look up DCP in your favorite web browser if you are deathly curious.)
The industry is playing catch-up to the pirates and the second you make things easier for people — like with the nook and the iPad where the content is not locked like on the Kindle — you will see a huge increase in the number of people who leech instead of buy.
Never underestimate the general public when it comes to not paying for things.
What I'm trying to get across to you (poorly, forgive my writing skills) is the idea of value. When you move from paper to digital there is a loss in the perception of value. We value a book because it has a physical presence in our home and in our hands. When you move that same book (or comic) into a digital form you lose the perception of value that the consumer has and that is what hurt the music industry more than the invention of the .mp3. People perceived that music was free and they started stealing it instead of buying it.
I see the same thing happening to books.
anon-
The scale is vastly different. Look, I know piracy is something the industry is going to have to deal with. I just don't think it's going to be on the order of magnitude that the music industry was facing.
I don't think it's mainstream that people expect not to pay anything for music anymore. There's still obviously a very strong contingent that pirates music and movies, but I personally think attitudes are changing.
It's going to be a definite challenge, but I really don't think it's going to be an existential one as it was to the music industry.
sometimes the pirates go so far as to scan entire books before release (ie, Harry Potter) and release them onto the net
For real? I mean, really, you're using THAT as an example of how piracy will kill the publishing industry?
Meanwhile, Green Day, Beyonce, and Rihanna were going bankrupt from music piracy.
Concerns over "piracy" of digital media are a red herring. The software industry has not collapsed. The music industry has not collapsed. The movie industry has not collapsed. They have, however, changed.
The people who are getting the digital content for free are people who wouldn't have bought it in the first place. In many instances, the digital "piracy" of a single song has led to an iTunes purchase of an entire album. Music piracy has been around far longer than mp3s… or are you, Anonymous, too young to remember cassette tapes?
I also disagree with your perceived value theory. There are many, many books that are just as physical as any other, yet they have absolutely no value except as kindling on my next camping trip. I certainly would not value a Raffi CD more than I value my Clash mp3 files (legally purchased, I might add).
Meanwhile, Green Day, Beyonce, and Rihanna were going bankrupt from music piracy.
There will always be success stories, however the industry as a whole has been losing money. Here is a little quote from Business Week for you,
"Total industry sales were about $10 billion last year, down from $14 billion in 2000, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Revenues from digital download services like Apple iTunes and Amazon MP3 are still growing strong, but they're not generating enough revenue to make up for the sharp decline in CD sales."
Piracy and the perception that music is free has led to a decline in sales.
And here is a quote from the LA Times talking about the movie industry,
"The studio bosses who should be celebrating the unprecedented upswing in moviegoing at theaters — with theater box office up roughly 15% this year — have been getting a big dose of bad news from the other end of the food chain. DVD revenues have cratered in the past six or so months, dropping off (depending upon whose figures you trust) as much as 15% to 18% overall."
They are also getting hurt by both piracy and the Red Box rentals. DVD sales are down this year by as much as 18%. A far larger loss than can be explained away by the flagging economy.
The perception of the value of a movie has been reduced to $.99 and that is killing their DVD sales.
Again, I ask it as a question… Is that where you want the publishing industry to go?
I see the industry blindly embracing the move to digital and ignoring how this move has damaged other media industries.
anon-
It's not a question of "want" or "don't want." It's going this direction whether you or I or anyone else wants it or not. We can be apprehensive and resistant to the change or we can be optimistic and look for opportunity.
I've examined e-reader technology's emergence as much as is in my power to do. I'm left with several unanswered questions.
e-reader technology creates an unknown degree of personal separation from a text. How much is digital reading different, more or less, from paper reading? To what degree is a lifelong paper reader's personal experience different from a comparable native digital reader's experience? Other variables of that question; how is a lifelong paper reader's experience different from the same reader's digital reading experience? A native digital reader's digital reading experience different from the same reader's paper reading experience?
Technology unquestionably creates an alienation effect. The more the world becomes digitally connected the more personal experience becomes disconnected from the full reality of in-person interactions.
Reading creative writing by itself isolates individuals from in-person interactions, yet deeply engages readers in secondary world personal interactions. Reading is therefore nonetheless an important personal though private experience.
Written word's attraction and greatest strength comes from how it provides a private, personal, individual experience, which no other media channel delivers as effectively. Reading by one's self offers an escape mechanism for coping with the pressures and stressors of an increasingly emotionally indifferent and jostling world. All media besides paper creates variable amounts of alienation effects from conscious or nonconscious awareness of technology and from conscious or nonconscious awareness of sharing the experience with audiences, strangers or otherwise.
Reading, writing, and literature study have one foremost practical societal benefit. They foster effective, conscious, critical thinking for one's self, which contributes to the individual and the greater good. If e-readers bring more eyes to the page, society benefits overall. In that, I'm satisfied digital reading will eventually be so. What I'm not satisfied about digital reading is whether it enhances or detracts from personal experience more than paper reading.
It's not a question of "want" or "don't want." It's going this direction whether you or I or anyone else wants it or not. We can be apprehensive and resistant to the change or we can be optimistic and look for opportunity.
I totally agree with you. This is the direction things are moving, I'm saying that it isn't the big win for the industry that most industry professionals seem to think that it is.
You will see an upturn in sales on these new devices in the beginning, until people realize how easy it is to download the content that they want without having to pay for it.
Great post. I'm really optimistic about e-books. I spent the money on a Kindle (I decided I didn't want a backlit screen like the iPAD has–hate the eye strain from reading off the computer) and it's better than I dreamed. I got the leather cover so I can hold it like an old fashioned book and I can download anything in their library without having to pay for internet connection. Living in Australia it saves me tons of money not to have to pay shipping charges. I've been won over.
"It's going to be a definite challenge, but I really don't think it's going to be an existential one as it was to the music industry."
Nathan–
Book piracy already IS a huge issue, at least to the authors I know. There are tons of sites that pride themselves on posting both print books and ebooks on the day of publication. My friends are constantly having to identify themselves to these sites and tell the sites to take their books down. Which doesn't last long. A book gets taken down and two hours later, the site has locked itself to anyone but members and the stolen books are right back up again.
I even known of pirate sites that post books that are being sold strictly for charity, and that are being publicized as such.
So e-piracy of books isn't something that might be a problem, or that isn't a problem yet but will be in the future. It's already a problem. And if the future of publishing involves e-books, I think that publishers and agents need to address this. The authors can't do much in a vacuum.
gehayi-
They are addressing it. No one is going to be able to stop it completely, but you can bet it already is a big part of digital strategy and will probably be even more important in the future. I still don't see it being an existential threat to publishers, but of course it all remains to be seen.
Nathan–
How are publishers addressing the problem of e-piracy of books? What are they doing to stop it, shut down the pirate sites or at least slow it down?
I'm not being sarcastic. I'd just like to know what, specifically, is being done.
gehayi-
Here's one program as an example.
I'm not being sarcastic. I'd just like to know what, specifically, is being done.
Nothing is being done to prevent the piracy of regular books or comics (scans) or the piracy of digital ebooks.
Any technology they develop to lock a file to a specific piece of hardware can be easily cracked and despite that informative link Nathan posted — pirates don't post books online where they can be found using web crawling software.
Pirates organize themselves into release groups who distribute their content to networks of private ftp sites. From there it is downloaded by members of the group and then uploaded to hundreds of thousands of private Bittorrent sites — whose pages are not viewable to the general public or web crawling bots.
Anyone can sign up for these sites and have instant access to an almost unlimited library of music, movies, video games, applications and (of course) ebooks.
This is what I was talking about above — the pirates are already one step ahead of book publishers and this is why industries like the music industry and movie industry are hurting.
Look at the PC gaming industry… this is an industry that has almost disappeared due to piracy. Developers were forced to move to console systems which were much more difficult to hack/crack before they started to see the kinds of record profits that they see now.
Devices like the nook and the iPad are open platforms. They read any .pdf file or epub format file that you can copy to the device. They are not locked like a console system and will be totally open to the outright digital theft of books as these devices become more and more common.
Having identified the problem I guess the next question is, "What do you do about it?"
I remember reading the iPod, not sure if it was called that then, was rejected by several companies before being picked up by Apple.
Why would anyone by a box to carry music when we have cassette tapes and CD players?
Now we have iPhones.
With the environment being so important to us and the convenience of the coming iPad, I have little doubt ebooks will become huge.
But will author commissions follow suit and reimburse us as if a paperback was bought?
Jimmy Ng
Nathan,
When will it be possible to place a book, written, say, in MSWord, with a specialist 'e-publishing' site that will translate the book into the formats used by e-book readers, add a few bells and whistles like cover pages etc. and then post on all sites that sell e-books (Amazon, Barnes and Noble….)?
If the answer is now, who, who! Please, Please! If the answer is never, why not?
When will it be possible to place a book, written, say, in MSWord, with a specialist 'e-publishing' site that will translate the book into the formats used by e-book readers, add a few bells and whistles like cover pages etc. and then post on all sites that sell e-books (Amazon, Barnes and Noble….)?
The short answer is that if you are bright enough to write a novel, you should be bright enough to figure out how to convert your word .docx file to a format where it can be used by ebook readers.
All the information you seek is right at your fingertips. Rub the magic Google and the ebook genie will pop out.
That Business Week stat is intriguing. "Total sales" is what people paid. It does not factor in a change in costs. Certainly a 25% drop in total sales over an entire decade looks shocking. Until you think about the change in the model. The sales of downloaded music is growing strong while sales of CDs are dropping. That's a lot of brick and mortar cost and a lot of cost of goods and shipping that simply is ignored by this statistic. You are showing us only a very small piece of a very large picture, Anonymous. It also does not describe how that $10 billion in sales today is parceled out among the artists, labels, distributors, manufacturers, and retailers. I have some suspicions about all that, but I have no statistics to back them up so I'll keep them to myself.
Also, the bittorrent description is terrifying, to be sure, but honestly, how many consumers even know what a bittorrent is? When I was in college 20 years ago, I knew people who "phreaked"–they used other people's telephone calling card numbers to charge long distance calls. I just found an online stat claiming $35 billion lost per year to phreaking. Last I checked, telecom was alive and well. Some people did it a lot, but most users of telephones had never even heard the term.
The RIAA and MPAA tried to legislate digital formats out of existence because they were scared to death of piracy. They made up very convincing-looking statistics and spent oodles of money lobbying Congress. It was wrong-headed and a huge waste of time and money. They even sued a 12-year-old girl who lived in the projects. But that didn't stop digital formats from taking over.
My point is, this whole piracy thing is overblown. Yes, there have to be efforts to contain it through law enforcement and legal action. Yes, PR campaigns explaining that copying without paying is in fact taking food out of the mouths of industry executives' children. Every industry that sells something worth having faces theft and fraud. And no matter what DRM or locks or whatever you put on the product, someone properly motivated will find a way to steal it. But that won't stop digital formats from taking over.
Anonymous, I don't agree that you've "identified the problem." I believe you've gotten caught up in a side issue that is not nearly as bad as some people make it seem. The overall economic benefits of digital FAR outweigh the potential loss from piracy.
I just wrote a blog about this last week; "Internet killed the paperback star", haha. I used to think that technology would be the end of traditional literature, and now I know that it will, but it wont be the end of literature as a whole. I'm looking forward to new advances in technology, especially those that allow us writers to be more visually creative with our work. Great post!
As an author whose works have been published primarily in electronic format, I'm always very excited to read positive thoughts and insights on digital publishing.
Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful article, Mr. Bransford!
@anon
"The short answer is that if you are bright enough to write a novel, you should be bright enough to figure out how to convert your word .docx file to a format where it can be used by ebook readers."
I should also probably be 'bright enough' to shampoo my carpet.
There will always be some writers who like just to write, as there are some scientists who like just to do science and musicians who like just to create music.
A world in which an artist or scientist must acquire, amongst others, the skill of self-promotion will miss out on a lot of talent.
From my own experience with an ebook reader (nook), the battery is going to have to improve before people are really going to buy into it. Case in point, my four hour battery. At least B&N declared mine defective and are getting me a new one in 6-8 weeks, so I can have more than 4 hours of reading time before I recharge. But really, we need about 4 weeks on a single charge. Battery technology hasn't improved that much.
Also, the ebook price will have to drop down for fiction if there are cheaper print versions out there. OR ebooks will have to offer something that mass market cannot compare with–something other than instant download, because I don't need the book that bad. I can wait a few weeks for the mass market to arrive. Or months, in the case of Stephen King's latest, for it to arrive in mass market form.
Just a few opinions.
Jodi
Personally, I'll probably won't be buying a e-book. Not because of the reasons that people listed, but simply because with my eyesight, reading stuff on a screen simply is problematic for me.
Whereas with blogs, etc. you can change the focus to make it larger, I don't think that being able to do that on a Kindle (if you can do that) will cure the problem for me.
Not trying to be a Luddite, but simply acknowledging the physical realities of my being (which is also why I don't do audiobooks as much either).
Well, as a debut author (not out until next year but still) I can only say, "Bring it on!" I think these predictions are pretty darn accurate. The timeline for things may be a bit on the flexible side, but all of these things will happen. For those who miss the touch and feel of those lovely covers, I'm also seeing a time in the future when a popular add-on for ereading devices will be a slip cover for whatever favorite book you happen to be reading. In fact, I'll go far as to predict you might see store versions of digital books which is basically the slip-cover plus the download code for the book, much like you now get special dvd packaging with digital copy included for an extra five bucks.
I do love reading your insight and thoughts into the ebook world and where it may all be going.
Though I have to say I've never come across any of these blogs you mention that are pessimistic about the ebook trend? I'd be curious to read what they have to say, could you point me in the direction of any?
'It's going in this direction whether you or I or anyone else wants it or not.'
For the first time I strongly disagree with you, Nathan. Everything that happens in publishing (and in many other areas) is the result of decisions by people, including you and your commenters. 'IT' is us. We may see the accumulated results of our actions and inactions as impersonal forces and movements, like geology or the weather, but we are then speaking metaphorically, not literally. NOTHING in publishing can go in ANY direction without you or I or somebody else wanting it. EVERYONE can influence a market, in however small a way.
That said, I agree with you regarding optimistic opportunism. Likewise that piracy is unlikely to threaten the existence of publishing. Even the apparent decline of recorded music and movies may be a fluke, a return to a kind of normalcy after a decade or two of extraordinary sales of extraordinarily expense album CDs and movie tapes and DVDS. I wonder how current recorded music sales compare in real terms with sales in the 1970s?
One of the reasons I won't hop on the bandwagon yet is because I know it's getting better–why would I drop hundreds on the first thing out of the gate when a) I don't need to and b) it's only going to get better and less expensive?
In my humblest of opinions, however, you overstate the case of how great ebooks will be and how soon we're looking at digital only. I think there will be room for both paper and digital for a long time. Some books will be improved by the digital format, but the literary novel? I don't think anything beats words on a page–take it paper or digital, your preference, but the draw for me isn't the flashy extras, it's the words.
w00t! You tell 'em, Nathan! I've been published in ebook and print formats for six years and I can tell you from experience, the ebooks WAY outsell the print.
eBooks are fine. But they have zero to do with their print counter parts. I'm sick of the pricing excuses and comparisons. The two products are very different.
Much like Cell phones, I'm just going to wait until the stupid things to work out all their kinks. They may be inevitable, but that doesn't mean I need to stick with them through all their false starts and fumbles.
I agree, Nathan. I love print, but I love all of the advantages of e-books.
My favorite thing about e-books is the flexible font size. I got glasses a couple of years ago mainly so I could read the damned tiny type in the New Yorker. When I got my Kindle, I subscribed to the e-version. Now I can read those stories in bed, at night, without glasses!
I totally love e-books, and I have read more than a few of them. Cheaper is always better for me (we're on a budget), so I'm glad it's only going to GET cheaper!
I remember when everyone said internet shopping couldn't compare to the real thing! It's funny to look back on that now.
Although I'm not sure at the moment whether I'll eventually use an e-book, I definitely think they will catch on in a big way.
I'm fascinated with E-readers and have been keeping up with announcements of various innovations. I haven't yet bought one though.
The one I think looks the coolest is the Skiff, but it's bigger than I'd want, and not sure it can do color. But, it's bendy–how cool is that?
I have no doubt that E-readers of some sort will be as commonplace as laptops and cellphones in the near future, and will happily dive into the technology when the prices drop a bit.
I thought about getting a Kindle or Nook for Christmas, but decided on a netbook instead. I did download the Kindle software, but haven't had a chance to use it too much yet.
As a writer and editor, I have only one question to ask in the midst of all this ebook enthusiasm:
Who's going to edit these books?
No, I'm not being facetious. We're told all the time that ebooks are getting better and better because the reputable publishers of same are employing editors to do the same quality of work as they do for print books…or better. But we all know that in many cases, that’s simply not true, and it’s becoming less true by the minute. Not because editors don’t care–but because they can no longer feed themselves, much less anyone else, on the remaining money that’s left to pay for editing once book prices are slashed so low.
It's still an unpleasant elephant-in-the-room that a great number of ebooks are badly edited now, if they're edited at all. In the excitement of instant access to inexpensive books, what a consumer doesn’t realize is that very few epublishers can afford to pay editors anything other than a percentage of sales; if they do include an editorial fee for a book, it's so small as to be laughable. So what happens when ebooks get cheaper, and cheaper, giving these publishers even smaller margins from which to work?
How these ebooks will magically get competent–never mind great–editors when no one will have the money–or, in some cases, the inclination–to pay them anymore, is the question no one’s answering. You can say all day long that nothing will truly replace "real books," or real editors, or real book people… but if you're saying that while buying your ebooks on the cheap, you're lying to yourself.
Formatting, color text, graphics, browsing capabilities, and all the rest, are great–if the books are worth reading in the first place.
But if no one’s editing…soon, they won’t be.
My take,
Janny
Totally 100% true, Janny.
I took a brief spin through the really small press/self publisher land and it didn't take very long before I vowed never to go back again. After awhile I was actually insulted that someone would sell me such a subpar product. At this point, to me, the idea of quality in self-publishing is laughable.
I am more than willing to pay for quality
I've been resisting e-books mainly because I'm so attached to my paper copies. I think it's a nostalgia thing. But, I'm pretty sure I'm buying an iPad next month and one of the biggest things I'm looking forward to is the instant gratification of buying a book online and reading it immediately. I do most my holiday shopping online these days, so I have a feeling the same will happen with my book buying. Should be interesting! My husband will certainly like the space that will be saved.