Was at an utter and complete loss for words. Then went through a list of some very good publishing related blogs to get writing ideas and nearly every one of them had great posts. So let’s just trapeze through what each has to say.
iPad as gateway drug to Digital Learning
Evan Schnittman at Black Plastic Glasses has finally started writing again and he makes two excellent points.
First the notion that there are three kinds of reading -
there are three kinds of reading; extractive: immersive, and pedagogic.
Extractive reading works in digital form as finding and extracting data and information is optimized by the power of digital.
Immersive reading struggled to flourish in digital form until the e-ink screen went mainstream with the release of the Kindle.
Pedagogic reading, the kind done when learning from a textbook …
The Kindle definitely is, along with Sony Reader and other eReaders, a near-perfect device for immersive reading.
The second notion is equally as powerful -
Personally, I think that the current version of the iPad is … one that has been designed for an ulterior purpose … to make significant headway in the education space — particularly in higher education.
Do read his post for an explanation. He also touches on an important point – The iPad as eReader notion lets students convince their parents to buy them a device they’ll probably use mostly for surfing and games.
Martyn Daniels thinks Amazon and B&N have got the right idea
At the Brave New World blog we have a short and sweet post explaining why B&N and Amazon might be on to something -
There is clear an opportunity to attract those many authors who feel disenfranchised by the traditional publishing and reward model. Resellers such as Amazon and B&N can offer higher rewards and access to an established channel.
He also points out that Amazon have a really good chance of making something out of AmazonCrossing -
A global player, such as Amazon, is in a great position to pick out foreign winners, acquire the rights, translate the work and in doing so cut out the traditional publisher.
Picking foreign winners is always difficult, but getting the readers to recommend them and then having the sales data to validate them is an interesting and logical twist.
Publishing is going through an upheavel and literally everything is up for grabs - the publisher role, the distributor role, the platform, the store. Readers and Authors are the only two constants.
Eoin Purcell’s take on Amazon’s latest moves
It’s telling that so many people are writing so much about AmazonCrossing and the J. A. Konrath deal.
Eoin Purcells writes about Amazon’s Publishing moves -
Beside this new imprint and a fairly large increase in the numbers of titles published under the Encore brand, they also announced this week that they had acquired a pretty mainstream writer.
Publishers surely must see the danger that Amazon presents when it pursues actions like these!
He also quotes Mike Shatzkin on the Amazon-J. A. Konrath deal -
This is pretty big news, as Mike Shatzkin points out:
this is a significant jolt to conventional publishing economics.
Sales of Konrath’s $2.99 ebook will deliver him about $2.10 a copy (Konrath says $2.04; not sure where the other six cents is going…), as much or more as he would make on a $14.95 paperback from a trade publisher, and significantly more than he’d make on a $9.99 ebook distributed under “Agency” terms and current major publisher royalty conventions.
Think about that – Amazon can afford to pay Mr. Konrath more from a $2.99 ebook than Publishers can from a $9.99 ebook or even a $14.95 paperback.
Eoin Purcells ends with this note -
Print may wither much sooner than we expect!
Eoin
Yes, it’s certainly looking like it. All the people predicting that ebooks will be 25% of the market by 2020 might want to take a look at the economics of the J. A. Konrath deal.
Mike Shatzkin on the Shock of the J. A. Konrath Deal
The above gem isn’t the only one in Mr. Shatzkin’s piece. Consider these -
Giving up non-Kindle channels today for an ebook isn’t necessarily giving up a lot, particularly with Kindle clients available to be used on other devices.
In explaining his decision to sign with Encore, Konrath credits Amazon with being able to “send an email to every person who bought” a previous book of his through their website.
Signing up new books for what publishers would consider reasonable advances just got harder. So did maintaining a 25% royalty rate for ebooks.
Amazon has certainly made it much tougher for Publishers to get ebook rights from authors in return for just 25% royalties.
Publishers might just be delaying the inevitable. Windowed releases, not releasing ebook versions, 50% price increases through the Agency Model - These aren’t going to save Publishers.
Persona Non Data talks about US Publishing at the Seoul International Book Fair
A really good powerpoint presentation (how often do you hear that?) on The United States of Publishing.
Sildes 9 (sector share of books industry in 2008) and 14 ($90 million worth of ebook sales in Q1, 2010) in particular are very interesting.
It’s also interesting to see little to no mention of the Kindle while Apple and Google get mentions. Guess everyone likes the promise of what might happen more than the revolution that already has.
British Library to digitize 40 million newspaper pages
Not content with the 80,000 free public domain books it’ll soon be bringing to Kindles (for free) the British Library has announced that it will digitize a very impressive sounding number of newspapers pages.
Teleread have a good description -
a 10 year venture to digitize three centuries of 52,000 local, regional, national and international newspapers.
Checking at Resource Shelf reveals that access is free on-site at the British Library while off-site there will be an access fee. It also seems that each newspaper page costs $1.40 to scan -
The cost of the 10-year digitization project wasn’t immediately clear, but Sanderson said the process — from cleaning a single page to making a file of it — costs up to $1.40.
It’d be nice if this stuff found its way to the Kindle too. Hopefully, Amazon can swing another deal.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sells 1 million copies in the UK
The Bookseller reports that Steig Larsson’s translated novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, became the 21st novel of the 21st century to cross 1 million sales in the UK.
The book has sold over 20 million copies in 41 countries. You’d think a smart company would take note of this and get into this business of acquiring non-English books and translating them.
The Bookseller does point out that translated books don’t usually do this well -
In January 2009, The Girl Who Played with Fire became the first ever translated novel to top The Bookseller’s Original Fiction chart since records began, while the mass-market edition of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest sold more than 98,000 copies in just three days upon release last month, making it one of the fastest-selling novels since records began.
It’d be interesting to see what happened if Amazon managed to get a hit this big – whether it was through AmazonCrossing or AmazonEncore. That would really shake up the Publishing world.
Filed under: publishing Tagged: | future of publishing
I do question if the two Amazon imprints automatically mean the death of print. I could be wrong, but aren’t both imprints also available as printed editions, also through Amazon? Since Amazon generally uses print on demand technology for their printed material, they are saving a lot on inventory and return costs compared to traditional publishers even with their print offerings.
Personally, I’d rather read books on my Kindle for a variety of reasons, but for paperphiles the physical printed books would still be available. So the probability of the death of print would be affected by the number of paperphiles out there.
I think the difference is that most people think there’ll be an equilibrium with 25% ebooks. Personally the equilibrium seems to be more likely to be 25% paper books. At that point traditional publishers are in a lot of trouble – because they mostly aggregate risk and handle distribution and marketing and it’s not the same big barrier with ebooks as it is with paper books.
I’ve been really amazed by how long it’s taken for American publishers to catch on that there are books people will want to read being written in languages other than English. And it still takes forever to get even a tiny fraction of what’s on offer.
I’m spoiled by the relatively wide availability of foreign-made videogames and movies, I suppose. But I value reading more than either of the above, and enjoy other viewpoints and cultures.
The notion that Amazon has invented something new re: signing up major authors to work directly with Amazon, bewilders me. This is just another of self-publishing. Sure, it may work for major, established authors who can afford to hire all the support services their former publishers gave them, but in general, what makes this any better than selling your book through a vanity POD press? Authors need editing, copyediting, marketing, fulfillment management (Amazon is going to schlep print copies to the local indie store for signings?) Authors also need liability insurance, subrights management, etc. Unless Amazon is going to develop a full-fledged publishing services department to take care of the huge range of business issues attached to successful book publishing, why would the average author ditch traditional pubs to sell exclusively via Amazon?
Regarding the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
I do wonder however, if the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is more because of all the buzz the movie received / is receiving overseas. Perhaps that is the ticket for non-English books. Create a blockbuster film and then you can have the book translated.
I’m fairly sure the books were translated before the movie came out. Whether they were available in the US, I can’t say, because the people I heard talking about it have historically been willing to import books from the UK or other English-speaking countries, but still translated.
Which is another annoying and peculiar thing: when a book has been translated for the UK market but nobody seems to want to bring it to the US. Had to wait -ages- for the first couple of Witcher novels to be brought across. Why? Don’t ask me.