[LINK] The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age

[Jan Whitaker]

At 01:04 AM 5/02/2009, Kim Holburn wrote:
> > In short, the terms (of e-publishing) are *unbelievably favorable*
> > for publishers. It essentially moves them from print publishing
> > margins to software publishing margins: pay once for the creation of
> > the content, sell an infinite number of times with no additional per-
> > unit cost.

Must be something in the water. The topic of ebooks has been on 
several online writing groups, as you could expect.

- Agents and editors love ebooks because they work with so many at 
the same time and can take them with them everywhere.
- Publishers seem to be moving that direction slowly, not sure if 
there is or isn't a market
- Authors are fighting the royalties battle, like the farmer selling 
to suppliers, since that is about their only assurance of earning for 
providing the majority of the effort. Some publishers are taking 
advantage and changing the rules to the author's disadvantage
- Book sellers like Amazon are getting on board; reduces their 
physical inventory storage requirements

One distribution method that has slipped off the radar since the 
Kindle release [also keep in mind they aren't very useful outside the 
US, but are getting there with some international access to product 
in the works it's been said] is the POD model. POD publishers are 
expanding, like lulu.com and iUniverse. But I haven't heard much more 
about local POD that A&R were to be installing. Has anyone seen or 
bought a POD book from A&R here?

I was reading a few articles on this saying that the wait can be as 
little as a few minutes for the product to be printed, but that must 
be a really short book. I've never seen one, though.

Jan


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
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Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

Writing Lesson #54:
Learn to love revision. Think of it as polishing the silver for 
guests. - JW, May, 2007
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