AAR

[maggie b.]

Last week I bought Jill Barnett's newest book. She has bee a favorite author for awhile so I was surprised to see it was available on kindle only.
I couldn't help but wonder why an author of this caliber wouldn't get a HB book with a full court press of advertising.

Another author I purchased was the same. Experienced. A proven seller. And writing a book about a subject publishers put out in ebook only at a price I can't get a used Harlequin for.

One of my local Borders is closing. So are a local Catherine's and a local restaurant (they deserve to go. High priced bad food is never an option.) With the loss of these three stores, my community loses over 100 jobs. 100 jobs! The restaurant was a victim of bad business practices and lousy cooking, the Catherine's a victim of the economy. But I've heard Borders is dying partly because of their inability to keep up with technology.

All of that stewed together in my brain to come up with a few questions:

1. What kind of job loss impact will the growing emarket have? I don't just mean book stores slowly dying (sob!) but also at the publishing house, what jobs will be destroyed because they ebook cuts them?

2. What affect will it have on quality? Right now, publishers publish much that can be counted junk anyway. But - will they maintain editing standards in this new world order? Or will editors also be victims of the ax, with publishers eventually just making everything available in a sort of publish your own environment?

3. Will we even need publishers? Will authors just be marketing directly to us? (shudder)

4. Will authors find contracts harder and harder to hold on to? If you can't produce within a certain amount of time or sell a certain number will the next step be the ebook, want it or not?

Don't get me wrong. I know digital is the future and I have a kindle - plus kindle for my phone and kindle for my pc. But what it all means remains a mystery to me.

maggie b.
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She is too fond of books and it has turned her brain. - Louisa May Alcott

[mariel9898]

Good post. I don't answers just observations and opinions. I bought a NookColor and I love it, but I've been thinking about these very points. The book publishing industry seems not to have learned a thing from the music industry which is too bad. It will take time but we'll see how everything ends up.

1) I'm not so sure that going mostly digital will affect publisher headcounts very much though I could be wrong. I think the impact will be greatest for the book binding business.

2) As for quality, I think it depends on how the publishers react. I think sites like AAR may get more traffic as people have more choices and want to read unbiased reviews before purchasing books. The better publishers are not going to change their business model. However, anyone can publish their own books very easily today. Both Amazon and B&N have self publishing or print on demand books. Readers are going to have to rely much more on reviews to make decisions.

I think for many authors this will be a positive thing, but it might make for a rough start. They may have to sell their books very cheap (think less than $1) or maybe even free until they have a following. But once they get a following they should have a better time of it financially.

3) I think publishers will not go away. Look at the music industry. It's still dominated by some huge companies, but in this digital age it's much easier (in some ways) for a good band or singer to find their niche. Anyone can now publish their work, if it's good it will catch on. In some ways it will be harder on the writers because they may have to take more of an active marketing role for their books.

4) Publishers will probably play around with the print book/eBook formula. Some books (think Harry Potter) will not be seen in eBook form for many years. Some may be eBook only especially at first.

The bigger picture is the future of eBooks in terms of price and DRM. There are too many people who either don't know or don't care about educating themselves about it and it's a shame because in the long run it might be something that many will wish they had taken the time to think about it.

Right now, you can get lots of free eBooks. You can get almost anything that is out of copyright for free in one form or another, one file type or another. To me that's wonderful because more people will be reading the classics. Most new books remain much too expensive digitally. Publishers should realize that the cost of materials is greatly reduced, the cost of shipping, storing, etc also and should pass those savings on to the consumer. There is no reason that an e-book should cost the same or more than a physical book. Yet many are the same price.

Another problem we will face is that of DRM or digital rights management. As far as the laws go it's a huge gray area that will be probably be cleared up by a bunch of lawyers. A lot of people don't care for eBooks because when you buy an e-book you are not actually buying a book, but rather the right to read the book. Well, what exactly does that mean? If I buy and eBook from B&N for my NC and it has DRM it means I can only read it on my NC. What if B&N goes bankrupt? What if I decide I'd rather have a Kindle? Shouldn't it make sense that I could keep a backup of what I paid for so I can keep it and read it on whatever device I have now and whatever one I might have in the future?

This is where the real battle and confusion lies. It is still a mystery. We can only wait and see. But we also need to make informed decisions about this.

[maggie b.]

[xina]

I have Kindle on my ipad and iphone. Love it, but I still buy paper books too. I don't think I will ever give that up. I enjoy the huge number of books I can carry around digitally and buy so easily (that's a bad thing at times ), but I still lend out books to my non digital reading friends and I still love the feel of a book in my hand. Going to various bookstores is enjoyable to me and I often end up buying something. I'm not sure I am the norm. It seems like most are one way or the other.
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[maggie b.]

[Charlotte McClain]