There’s been quite a flurry about Amazon and IDG not coming to terms, with a number of writers thinking Evil Amazon is trying to hurt them. Sciece Fiction Writers of America have been very involved in this, and have pulled all links to Amazon (unless a book could only be purchased from Amazon) in support of IDG. You can get details of the whole story various places, starting with Sarah Hoyt here and Amanda Green here. And full disclosure, I am starting up some ebook lines through Sarah and Amanda’s Naked Reader Press. But that doesn’t mean I can’t work the numbers.
I’ve been reporting on eBooks versus traditional publishing for years, and I was writing about it predicting a lot of this stuff before the first Kindle came out.
Here are some facts for you:
- cost of a traditional book comes down like this: first, the book is discounted 50 percent or more to the bookseller; they get their margin out of that 50 percent. So we *know* the production cost of the book is less than that. In the mean time, the bookseller has to pay for millions of square feet of shelf space, utilities, people doing the shelving, and so forth. We know those costs are substantial, that’s part of why Borders is gone.
- based on the major publishers’ financial statements, it appears that of that 50 percent, about five of that percent goes to the writer — when the publisher eventually pays it after the Hollywood accountants get done with it. The publisher has to pay for printing the books and shipping them, which by far dominates their costs. — taking possibly 30 of that 50 percent.
- The remainder of their costs involve making up the type and loading up those high-volume presses. Press time is expensive, so they don’t like to do it for small runs. Thus they can’t afford to print a book unless they expect fairly big sales — say 5000 copies. But to get to that point, they need to
- design, copy-edit, and set the books. Here’s a clue. A good paperback cover for a midlist book pays the artist between $500 and $1000 . A good copy-edit of a whole book, and the time spent using modern tools to prepare it, is about the same. Total, usually about a grand. Add to that an amortized part of the overhead cost of picking a good book to publish; it’s hard to estimate, but considering what a junior editor, editorial assistant, or first reader gets paid, it ain’t damn much.
That means the cost of typesetting etc per item for 5000 copies is between 5 and 10 cents. Add to that the 35 to 70 cents a copy the author gets for an $8 paperback, and the total cost of the book — as opposed to shipping and selling the pulp brick on which it’s supplied — is less than a dollar for 5000 copies. The pulp brick costs about $2.40 each. And if the sales exceed that first 5000 run, the costs of preparing the book are already amortized; it costs effectively zero. But the pulp brick still costs $2.40 each, and then you have to pay the book seller.
What Amazon did to start was realize that with cheap shipping and centralized storage and packaging — what’s called, together, “fulfillment” — they could buy books with that 50 percent discount, sell them wih only a 20 percent margin instead of 50 percent, and still make a hefty profit, while making it easy for books to be advertised and for people to find them. This was a Good Thing For Authors.
Now, where does IDG come into that? Basically, they present books from smaller presses to bookstores. They’re Amazon as middle man: they take their cut, but they pay for advertising to bulk bookbuyers. They get their cut out of the book stores’ side.
So let’s compare that to ebooks.
Of ALL those steps, something less than 12 percent, INCLUDING THE ROYALTY, is being paid to produce the book contents, and the marginal cost of making and delivering a copy of an ebook is literally one ten billionth yes that’s billion with a B, of that $2.40 for making and shipping the brick.
Also note that IDG has no place in that whole process; the real question here is why IDG should get a cut at all. Their ONLY contribution is in the distribution of the bricks. That’s why they’re called a “distributor.”
Here’s a piece I did on the “agency” model when it was first proposed:http://pjmedia.com/blog/kindle-ipad-macmillan-and-the-death-of-a-business-model/
Here’s what I said then:
Who is going to win? Bet on Bezos. The mainstream publishers can hold on for a while, based on reputation and while e-readers aren’t widely available; there’s still some prestige to being published by a reputable publisher like MacMillan. But eventually, some publisher will realize that a book that would have sold for $29.95 in a physical edition can be sold for the cost of the royalty, plus a small markup for production and administration. Our $29.95 novel would sell instead for $3.95. When that happens, except for coffee table books and an occasional print-on-demand hard copy, the physical book is dead.
SFWA is just playing Monte Python “I’m not dead yet!”
Yah lost me.
Who is IDG?
The link talks about IPG.
And I’m still lost.
Yeah, there are some “who, what, when, where, and how” issues here. What in Hell is IDG, and maybe I’m just some plebe who can be ignored if I don’t know.
To the main point, the dead tree publishers all have lefty gatekeepers in the agent and editor crowd, so unless you’re really, undeniable famous, you’re never going to even get read by a dead tree publisher if you’re not a lock-step liberal. On our side of the ditch, you have to be invited to the Regnery-Eagle cult, and if you’re not invited, you have a manuscript sitting on your computer and nobody notices.
You can throw something from Word to Kindle up for nothing. You can find a reliable Republican graphic design firm to do you a cover and some ad copy for at most a couple thousand dollars. You can have a pretty good presence on even a site like Drudge for a few days for a couple of thousand bucks. Beats Hell out of whoring for the liberals in Nooooo Yawk.
See here: http://www.amazon.com/Red-Blue-Establishing-Republican-ebook/dp/B005M784HW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1330901532&sr=8-2
My family needs the money!
I do not buy e-books. I too much like to get comfortable and read a book. I do not wish to do it before a computer, even a notebook. I also like to highlight as I read. When I re-read a book, I use a different color highlight to show new things I noticed/learned. Sometimes I use sticky notes. I even will write in the margins, betimes.
A book is more than a story. A book is a tool for knowledge.
I get my news online, because I must, because the print version is worthless. I do, however, miss reading my paper in the morning or evening. Online news is great, because it is truly timely, and there are so many links which give real depth to a story. There is no real depth to a newspaper.
Now, maybe e-books have ways to do all those things, except the get comfortable part. I dunno.
Oh, yeah, when I buy a book, I do not get bombarded with spam.
I am just old-fashioned. Or maybe just old.
I’ve been buying e-books for years (started when I got my first Palm PDA, which will give ya an idea how long), and I’ve never been spammed because of my e-book purchases. Purchase e-books from reliable retailers, like Amazon, and you won’t have a spam problem.
Also, on my Kindle Fire (or any Kindle, for that matter):
* I can carry dozens or hundreds of books in about the same space as a single paperback;
* If I fall asleep reading (which happens occasionally), my Kindle remembers my place;
* All the books are stored securely on Amazon’s servers so I can re-download them if my Kindle is damaged and I need to get a new one, or if for some reason I delete it off the Kindle;
* You can highlight in Kindle books (admittedly, just one “color”), but you can also add notes and annotations… and they’re automatically indexed and searchable so you can find them quickly, and backed up to Amazon’s servers so you don’t lose them. Oh, and the highlighter ink doesn’t bleed through the pages on Kindle books;
* A large number of books in just about every genre are available free (not even a shipping charge) through Amazon itself; many new authors make one of their books free to attract new readers. Honestly, some of them aren’t even worth that price, but there are gems among the trash.
For me, e-books are the way to go, for the reasons above and many others.
I was like you. “Ain’t going to buy me none of them thar newfangled ebook thingies. Ah likes me paper books.” *spit*
And then I bought a smart phone and put the Kindle reader on it so I could do reviews for Baen Books — they only give review copies in e-format.
Pretty soon it was the only place I was reading. Then I got a Kindle for my birthday. Now I don’t read paper books hardly at all. In fact, if a book isn’t available in Kindle format, I don’t buy it — and I’m hardly the only one I know like that.
And it does have a notes feature btw. Give it a shot Marc. You might be surprised — I was.
Marc, I know people who swear that handwriting began to die when we stopped using dip pens, that that quality book production went out with the end of hand-set type.
Printed books will probably survive for a while, especially as print on demand books. But when they cost 10-20 times as much as an ebook, they’ll be a luxury product at best.
There are Catch-22s all over the place with the current state of publishing and who knows what will happen? It seems that no matter what you do you’re working against you’re own interests.
Writers want some kind of exclusivity, union presence, gatekeepers, no gatekeepers, freedom, restrictions, control over product, vetting system, freedom, cheap pricing, power in numbers, individuality, artificially high prices because of “demand”, artificially low prices because of lack of demand, hopes for movie money which actually IS unionized and then there’s freedom.
The digital world has made once semi-exclusive trades as photography and writing nearly worthless and on top of that some of those parts still not worthless can be stolen with ease. Unionizing is the obvious answer and the huge numbers involved make that idea just as obviously impossible. That doesn’t mean a few writers can’t get together and create a Magnum with at least some nod to exclusivity and a sense of the elite.
Writers seem to largely think, well, just put all this product out there and let the public sort it all out. The problem with that is that you’ll end up with the equivalent of American Idol and that’s if you’re lucky.
For some years now I’ve had alarm bell’s going off in my head over the brutal fact that “Ender’s Game” is far and away the consensus No.1 pick on “Best of” list as the best science fiction novel of all time. For a genre which writes about the future so much, SF writers seem to have trouble understanding that the mainstream public will destroy science fiction because democratizing fiction writing rewards incompetence with clueless consensus and chases talent and artistry right out of sight.
Just about any novel Jack Vance ever wrote is better than “Ender’s Game” and to compare Card’s odious paean to mediocrity to a work of art like “Dune” is a crime in art terms. However the stubborn “I’m entitled to my opinion” wins out over the idea of an informed opinion. In this sense, if I take a helicopter ride over Louis and Clark’s route I’ve done a better job because context and a long view and a sense of our own history is kaput.
Before you can stand up for yourselves you have to understand who you are in the first place. If you’re a fork lift driver writing 7 novel fantasy series in the break room in your spare time then stand up and cheer and if you’re the shade of John Campbell who wants to earn a living from writing then go and slam a window down on your head. I say be careful what you wish for cuz you’re liable to get it. If we’re all experts and iconoclasts then there is no such thing and I’ll happily be one of the guards of the Bastille who decides to open fire on the great unwashed who see freedom in the equal opportunity to gut art just like a fish.
This is not entirely a tech-driven event: the same democracy of the “all” descended on fine art in America in the ’70s, particularly in photography and now nobody knows anything and everybody knows everything and the more nuance and layering is ignored in favor of the obvious the more art becomes a trailer park to serve individual egos rather than art.
Needless to say fine art photography, when it even is actually photography, has long since become a wasteland of Left-leaning propaganda, irony heaped on irony, conformism and empty intellectualism because middle-class red neckery obsessed with a fear of its own red neckery and middle classlessness has won the day. People involved in this field are addicted to work shot with an 8×10 view camera because that is the only way to detect a “serious” artist and so you have all the “Ender’s Game” any “serious” moron could hope to wish for.
An equivalent also happened with SF’s some good/some bad “New Wave” in the early 60s that attempted to patronize every writer prior to 1960 but thankfully was eventually at least semi-circumvented by the last generation of hard core genre fans before the genre itself succumbed to happy uplifted porpoises fighting to survive in vast tracts of the equivalent of Tom Bombadil while the Lord of the Rings happened virtually entirely off-stage, such is the shame experienced by SF writers of SF itself where maximum “fun” must be excised or it’s not “serious.”
We want a Flickr version of literature; well now we’ve got it and I’m not sure how it could’ve been avoided but there’s no need to gloat and talk about books by how cheap one is next to the other as if the content is irrelevant. Also, it would’ve been cool to see a few people fighting to save Kong’s son as he went under even though he was the 8 million pound gorilla in the room that people finally did see and forthwith dispatched cuz they couldn’t measure up.
I just re-read “Dune”; best SF short-story weighing in at over 200,000 words ever published and a quote from the book that goes “be prepared to appreciate what you meet” as applied to epub has been shockingly misunderstood. Epublicans think of themselves as the Fremen hiding from the evil Imperium until their day in the sun and I think of them more like the Jenny Craig-less museum Fremen, waiting for their day to emerge, throw off the concept of editing and hideously over-soul a song ala Christina Aguilera and the Lemmings.
*sigh*
Every time some one talks about writing or SF you show up. You’ve got about 50 different sock puppets and it’s the same odious paeans to your own brilliance and discernment. “Jack Vance is the greatest writer who ever lived and if you like anything I think is bad you’re an idiot.”
Please, please just go find a few like minded friends and sit around smelling your own smug and leave the rest of us alone.
I apologize: I didn’t realize there was a board-certified iconoclast on the premises. I’m not going to change who I like to satisfy your sense of order nor would I admire someone who changed their favorite authors every week to seem what? Cool, flexible? What was your point?
My favorite authors don’t change. But then, I don’t mind adding to them either.
Also wasn’t asking you to change who you like.
My point was you have no respect for anyone else, and seem to be the final arbiter of good taste. At least in the little bubble universe you call home.
Meanwhile back here on planet consensus reality reasonable people figure they can disagree on what they personally like without insisting that what others like is bad because they happen to dislike it.
My point was that I find you arrogant, sir, smug and condescending.
In short, you are small-minded and parochial.
I do have respect for “someone else.” I also have respect for the notion of an expert. Are you going to let just anyone build your house: maybe out of sheer hubris and confidence? That’ll stand a long time.
Writing skills and creativity are just as real as building a house. Just because they reside in the land of the unseen and are not easily grasped is no reason to throw the idea out wholesale. We’d all laugh at the idea of any given audience member jumping up on stage during a concert given by a pianist and saying “Hey, no problem”; so why this weird idea about anyone being able to jump on the writing stage?
Anyway, I don’t find you any insulting term that comes to mind – we just disagree. So I have an over developed sense of fair play – so what? I hate “Ender’s Game.” I hate the attention it’s received. I am amused that no one ever defends it from an artistic, historical or writing point of view. I see it’s attention on lists as of 2012 as a watershed moment for SF and not a good one. You find that smug – okay. I find the novel as stinko as Michael Jackson and just as creepy.
I like a lot more authors than Vance – I just use him cuz he may be the finest prose stylist of the 20th century in America and I have to see moronic concepts like video game playing kids spanking each other who it amazingly turns out, are smarter than adults and killed off all those smelly aliens the bads stupids adults scratched and scratched their heads over.
Well, break times over – gotta get back to the fork lift; I’m writing the greatest novel prolly ever written. It’s about a dragon who’s a ultra-ironic mercenary and wears those giants boots and has a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher that goes “whooosh” and “bhammmmmmmm!”
I do have respect for “someone else.” I also have respect for the notion of an expert. Are you going to let just anyone build your house: maybe out of sheer hubris and confidence? That’ll stand a long time.
Apparently you’re letting others build your house — these so-called “experts.”
Me, I build my own house. As a professional writer for going on 20 years I know something about the craft. I like what I like. I need no “expert” to tell me what’s good and what’s not. Who is more of an expert in what I will enjoy than me?
And isn’t that why we read? For enjoyment? If don’t enjoy what you read then why bother?
You like Jack Vance, good on ya. I happen to like Scott Card’s work. Ender’s Game remains one of my all time favorite books and I rate it among the top two or three SF books ever written. I have my reasons, which I will not get into here, as that’s not what the thread was about in the first place.
You don’t like his work, good on ya. Your opinion, you’re entitled. Just as I am entitled to mine. What you are not entitled to do is insult other’s equally valid opinions out of some smug sense of imagined superior knowledge.
So yes, I find you arrogant sir.
Among the top 2 or 3 SF books ever written? No one could possible defend that point of view, not even Daniel Webster playing Devil’s Advocate. It’s an extremely revealing comment and does in fact make me feel smug in a worthless sort of way and explains a lot.
Don’t ever go around Bradbury when he’s wearing that fireman’s helmet and has that paintball gun; he’s kinda moody nowadays. I’d make up a list of writers turning over in their graves right now but my computer might crash; it only has one terabyte.
Anyway I’m not using my real name anymore; I don’t think anyone likes me.
Your problem, Fail, is that you refuse to accept that there are other fans of sci-fi and fantasy, and that they have the right to opinions that differ from yours.
Ender’s Game is consistently rated as one of the top books by those fans, but you refuse to accept that, because you can’t accept that the opinions of People Other Than YOU have any validity.
So, that’s why so many of us also hold the opinion that you’re a smug, arrogant person. We hold that opinion based on the available evidence, which is ample.
No CV, you don’t get it: you don’t get that some people know art and most don’t. In fact “open competition” does take away; it evens the playing field and confuses the issues and lets people who essentially don’t know anything about the language of constructing art and literature decide who will be popular. We don’t need Nielson Ratings in SF.
The ones who hate the authoritative voice and the true meritocracy are those who fear they don’t measure up, those who know they would’ve been no where and no one under John Campbell. Tell me what great novelists have been found in this new American Idol scenario for SF and then tell me the great SF that came about as the result of one authoritative voice alone, John Campbell.
Look at what John Szarkowski single-handedly did at MOMA. Would we even know Shore, Meyerowitz or Eggleston? What would’ve happened to Asimov, Van Vogt, Heinlein and Kuttner/Moore in your great democracy?
No one who says “Ender’s Game” is a great novel has any business being involved in writing; I could name 100 SF novels more deserving off the top of my head. Even the supremely obscure “Fury” from 1947 by Kuttner with a nod from his wife Moore is a more inventive SF novel more than 3 decades earlier. Like it or not there are people who know what they’re talking about and the idea that, for example, a man like Sam Moskowitz is just another face in the crowd is laughable.
The problem is that we have no Moskowitz today. But if we did he’d be shouted down by the “I’m okay, you’re okay, everything’s okay” crowd who at once hide amongst, celebrate and even worship mediocrity like juvenile SF novels no better than Hogworts in space. You want Ma and Pa Kettle sorting out your playing field, you got it. And no, I have no respect for anyone’s judgement which puts “Ender’s Game” anywhere near “Nightwings,” “The Mote In God’s Eye,” “Infinity Beach,” “The Demolished Man,” “Pandora’s Star,” “The Time Machine,” “The Last Castle,” and scores more.
Is it entirely lost on you why a one-off one-hit-wonder occupies such a lofty position or why Card has never produced one work as good, or why he had to resort to silly sequels to keep alive – next will be “Son of Ender” and “Ender’s Son at the Earth’s Core.” Where is this genius’s body of work? Was it sublime inspiration or kids responding to kids plus video games?
People like you are presiding over the destruction of a genre not its revival and so please start coming up with those names emerging from your new paradigm compared to those that stunned a literary genre in only a few years from 1939 to 1946. I already knew that people know what they like, that’s obvious, but do they know what’s good? If this concept is so worthless why try and learn anything from anybody that’s not nuts and bolts and in any way lies in the realm of our minds? Let me know when West Point starts teaching tactics based on favorite ones by top 100 lists and when we will start building statues of lemmings and ants. What a crazy irony this crowd supports SF blogs; what do they write about on those blogs, how everything’s great! Offend me, please, just to know someone has an opinion about something that doesn’t amount to some politically correct stance to offend the least amount of your potential clientele.
Art appreciation; appreciate it. I have Adeleophobia and Ender’s Gameophobia.
See, there you go proving my point again.
I like something you don’t like, therefore you tell me “you don’t understand,” which means that my opinion has no validity to you — which is just what I said. Every time you post you’re reconfirming my statements, for which I thank you.
The rest of your rant was full of the same smug arrogance that you’ve displayed throughout this discussion.
And you missed the initials of my nom du cyber. But that’s what I’d expect from someone like you.
By the way, Fail, there is a word for authors that refuse to write things that people want to read.
That word is broke.
If you want to sell books, you have to write things that people want to read.
Even the great author Agatha Christie (who I am sure you’ll turn your nose up at because I called her great) came to hate her detective Hercule Poirot, in 1930 declaring him “insufferable,” and in 1960 declaring him a “”detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep” (reminds me of someone) but she kept writing Poirot books because that’s what the readers wanted.
Did you ever notice that in Herbert’s Terminology of the Imperium at the back of “Dune” he slips in “Holjance Vohnbrook” under “Krimskell Fiber?”
That’s right, that’s Vance. Herbert was a smug moron too. I’d like to see an MTV Celebrity Deathmatch with Herbert VS. Card. And then Winehouse VS. Adele. And Holiday VS. Aguilera. And then Reynolds VS. a “Big Dumb Object” that shrinks on his head til it’s the size of a “Small Dumb Object.” And H.P. Lovecraft VS. Michael Jackson.
If we’re all experts and iconoclasts then there is no such thing and I’ll happily be one of the guards of the Bastille who decides to open fire on the great unwashed who see freedom in the equal opportunity to gut art just like a fish.
And in the midst of Fail Burton’s lengthy and incoherent rant we find the core of his (or her, or its) issues. Someone thinks they should belong to the elite and is terrified that open competition would take away their chance. Said someone also suffers from a bad case of oikophobia, and totally fails to appreciate that today’s great art, literature and music was once that horrible thing (by its lights) known as “popular”. A fair chunk of the classics are still popular.
Great art, be it books, photography, music, or any other creative endeavor, speaks to the general population as well as the elite. Great art doesn’t need guards at the Bastille protecting it from the Great Unwashed – because the Great Unwashed like it.
Nono, Kate you don’t get it, if it’s Great Art(tm) no one is allowed to like it.
Oh, Great Art (there’s an “f” missing in there somewhere, I’m sure) isn’t the same as great art. Great Art is declared as such by the Elites who are the Guardians of all the is Right And Proper. Great art isn’t nearly so prestigious – it’s just the stuff that calls to people from every walk of life.
Of the two, I’d rather have the stuff that speaks to me. The rest I don’t have room for on my Kindle, no matter how much room is left in memory… if ya know what I mean.
In history people have been conspicuously directed to great art. If it was left up to people from every walk of life Van Gogh would be unknown unless you think trading paintings for potatoes a success story.
Jeez Fail, what version of history did they teach you?
All through the history I’ve picked up (usually primary or secondary sources – particularly translations of primary sources) there’s a nice long trend of the elites trying to restrict all the arts to the things they deemed “acceptable”.
Never heard of Verdi’s battles with the censors? Oscar Wilde’s ongoing “issues” with the British Government? How about Shostakovich having to apologize because his music didn’t meet the USSR’s diktats?
Real art is subversive, even when it’s not trying to do anything more than entertain or look pretty. Elite-approved “Arte” is not.
I may have touched the nerve of an uplifted dolphin on the good ship “John Denver.”
Speaking of Brin, whose presence at Salon for morons speaks volumes, why do none of his lists ever mention Peter Hamilton? I guess I can see why readers would ignore a man capable of writing dramitic sequences virtually unheard of in the last 30 years in favor of diddling around for 300 pages in narrativeless Hyperion/Jordan-style ramblings in meadows while everyone waits for something to actually happen but not why a writer wouldn’t praise the guy.
But we have the super-ironic sarcastic anti-heroical, anti-ironical, sarcasm/irony of “Snowcrash” to ease us through this middle passage when hard pressed.
Anyway, good luck with “American Science Fiction Writer”; I’ll definitely vote for any Kiss Me Shrews that appear who drag out some useless stereotype and flog it into the ground until it’s lifeless husk can yield no more verbs. Let me guess: you’re an Adele fan – oh, I knew it. That explains a lot.
Hmmm… someone with pretensions of being a literary critic who can’t spell “dramatic”?
Here’s a hint. Get Firefox. It spellchecks for you.
I can spell that word; I just didn’t want to.
Right. That’s why you didn’t even bother to specify the word “dramatic” in your reply.
You’re not fooling anyone, except perhaps yourself. And that is honestly very sad to behold.
Eye wooduv speled et korrckly bhut eye wuz destraktet bye ah kloud owt mye windoh.
Here’s the thing, Fail — was ever a commenter so aptly named? Is your nickname Epic? — fortunately people like me — before you come back and point out I wouldn’t know art if it bit me in the fleshy part of the calf, I was taught A’t for six years of college — who have degrees in Modern Literature have learned that most of what distinguishes “A’t” (Kate is right, there’s an F missing) from “entertainment” and “low brow” is a bunch of double talk and gobledigook. At least if you’re talking about relatively recent art where “artistic value” is picked by “fits the elite political prejudices.” I can tell you why ANYTHING from a Disney comic to (Oh, heavens, another load of Fail — Bless Me Ultima, which my kids were forced to read in school) is “art”. I’m good at lying. That’s why I write fiction for a living.
If what you say is true and people were “guided” to “great art” for generations, then the process is broken and has been broken for well over a hundred years. For one, let me tell you, Fail! in Shakespeare’s time “Great Art” for which there were codified standards was theater in the French manner, in which messengers came on stage to announce anything the slightest bit disturbing. No blood, no fights, took place on stage. And Shakespeare — and please, please, please, let’s not get into conspiracy theories about his identity, okay? — was a vaguely literate but not a LITERARY man who nevertheless became … THE playwright we hear about from that time period. Yes, he was successful early enough. That’s because if you read what was going on at the time, you’d see he was the only one NOT as boring as War and Peace.
Shakespeare, and the rather shady theatrical establishment of the time, in fact went around the elites by going straight to the people — and THEN got taken up by the elites. Which is what you’ll see more and more with indie publishing.
Art — GREAT Art, even — is a thing with no smell, no taste and nothing more than “survives generations” as its test. I can guarantee a lot of the darlings of SF won’t. And a lot of self-published and indie published people will. Will Vance? Who the heck knows? You CAN’T know. So your fear that people in the future will think your tastes bad? (Or do you fear it now?)is something you should see a professional for.
I don’t know art, but I know what I like. I don’t CARE about art. I care passionately about stories that touch the reader and the reader’s life. I’ll continue reading — oh, yeah, and writing — what I like.
Most ADULT human beings, not obsessed with what people think about them and status markers, learn early on that de gustibus non est disputandum. Only cases of arrested development continue only liking what “experts” say is good, and live in fear of others making fun of their tastes. Which is why they make fun of “popular” things, because this makes them “speshul” and “important” — in their own minds.
And you, Fail? You can go on… doing nothing except making status-marker noises. Which in the end guarantees Epic Fail.
But Fail, the reason van Gogh was selling paintings for potatoes was that he wasn’t considered Great Art
People hated Gutenberg for many of the same reasons.
I still hate Gutenberg: I hope he gets myopia neuralgia or whatever the hell it is.
Books. Hah! What a joke. They’re made from trees that are killed. They smell funny too. Kindles don’t smell; except when I accidentally drop them in the bathtub.
Believe it or not, in the early days of the Kindle, someone interviewed Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO), and he said that he puts his Kindle in a gallon zip-top bag for reading in the bath.
Not sure how that would work with the touch-sensitive screens on some of the newer Kindles like the Fire, tho.
Fail,
You’re an arrogant, SOB. It’s your way or the highway. Personally, I like Anne McCaffrey. And before you say she’s a fantasy author, she didn’t think so. But, I also like other authors, and read a wide variety of genres. But, like I’ve stated, I only read e-books, due to my disability, and it’s opened doors that would have not opened if the Kindle had not been invented. Or if Conservative Wanderer hadn’t shown the Kindle to me (Yep, it’s HIS fault). I would still be reading, but not as much… certainly not at the rate of a book a day (or more). And only in bed.
And with the availability of free books, I’m able to sample a variety of authors and pick up new favorites. I’ve probably broadened my author base by 500% in the last 6 months alone.
Dead tree books do not invoke the feelings to me that you give to them. I HATE dead-tree books, because I physically can’t handle them. Do I want to see them go away? No… because *I* am the one with the problem. I LOVE going into bookstores and looking at books and reading the backcovers and exploring the shelves looking for something new to read. I’d spend HOURS at Borders and make lists of books to pick up. When I didn’t have an e-reader, I spent hundreds on books (they loved me at my local Borders), and when I got my Kindle, they still understood.
I’ve been a Kindle user for years… before that, like Conservative Wanderer, using a Palm device… but the Kindle really opened up things for me.
I am physically disabled. With dead-tree books, when I turn the page, there’s an 85% chance I will drop the book. It got to the point I would only read books in bed, because I was tired of getting out of my wheelchair to pick up books I dropped when I turned the page. With the Kindle, I didn’t have that problem. I just hit the button, and the page advanced, and no dropping of the book. I currently have nearly 1000 books in my Kindle library. With the Kindle, the disabled can enjoy ebooks as readily as the non-disabled can enjoy dead-tree books. It’s opened up many possibilities.
Like Conservative Wanderer, I pick up free books, and yeah, a lot of them aren’t worth the space they take up in my Kindle, but some are… but I haven’t paid more than $9.99 for a book. That might seem excessive, given paperback prices, but that’s rare. Mostly, I pay $2.99 or less.
I will only buy dead-tree books now if they are for my husband (who doesn’t have a Kindle), or as gifts. Otherwise, I buy ebooks.
I can’t see an argument for the proposition that paper books are headed for extinction. They have their place, just as eBooks do. That place won’t vanish any time soon.
I’m an independent writer myself. I appreciate the new channels that make it possible for me to offer my entertainments to the public, without first having to please a gatekeeper. I buy and read independently published fiction as well, nearly always in eBook form; there’s a convenience to it that’s hard to beat. But I’m also a technologist and researcher, and the books I buy for those purposes are almost always printed on paper: once again, for convenience, as it’s extremely difficult to make use of two reference books simultaneously on a single eReader.
In that cleavage, we can see that there are niches for both sorts of publication. Of course, as the ePublishing channels become more accepted, there will be effects on all of publishing: on reader preferences, on pricing, on genre distribution, on associated institutions and trades, and so on. But however those effects might sort themselves out, I expect the availability of both forms of publication to last well beyond the easily foreseeable future.
It’s interesting that the SciFi writers are the ones with indigestion since in my mind they benefit the most from Kindle and ebooks. Most good SciFi is written in series and most good authors have a couple of good series. The worst thing in the world for a reader is to discover an author or series somewhere in the middle. Time and money must be invested in finding the previous books in order to fully enjoy the newest book. Those earlier volumes are not always readily available in the bookstore and more than once, they’ve been out of print. And to be frank, the costs of SciFi hard copies tend to be higher than other fiction. With Kindle, it is relatively simple to locate and purchase Series in order and read an authors earlier works. Since I’ve been addicted to my Kindle for several years now, I find that I read a much higher volume of all fiction in general and SciFi in particular than I used to.
On top of that – with Amazon’s algorithms that target advertising for new volumes to previous purchasers of an author or genre, they provide a pretty good service.
As for the guy who can’t get comfortable with a Kindle, I’m still trying to figure that out – there’s just not anywhere I can’t sit down and enjoy mine.
You bring up a good point about series, and the Kindle — and Amazon’s policies — have given independent sci-fi/fantasy authors a great tool for getting readers’ attention.
I’ve seen many independent authors put the first book of a series up for free. That allows people to see if they like the series, and if they do, they usually go ahead and purchase the rest of the books.
Try getting a brick-and-mortar bookstore to let you put your dead-tree book up for free… heck, try getting that idea past your traditional dead-tree publisher!
Actually, one of the complaints in the running controversy is that SFWA did this without bothering to actually ask the membership.
Have you actually asked anyone at SFWA about that? That sounds totally off the wall. AC Crispin is a friend… and I’m curious. I might ask her – because this sounds really weird. Anything to sell more books would be a good thing, I’d think.
I’m hearing the same thing from the writers I know Dana, no one asked them, the SWFA just jumped in with both feet without knowing the facts.
Well, this SFWA member didn’t hear anything about it from SFWA. For that matter, nothing’s been said yet. So clearly it wasn’t considered important enough to ask the general membership.
Dana, I’m not a SFWAn, I heard about this second hand. I’ll ping some of the folks who are SFWAns and who mentioned it.
Is it just me, or does the dog in this classic Looney Toons cartoon remind anyone of someone who’s been making a lot of noise in this thread?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi4gEJX1Ryc
Hey Epic Fail, looks like a self published hack has been nominated for a Prometheus award.
http://www.otherwheregazette.com/2012/03/05/ric-lockes-temporary-duty-chicken-soup-for-the-sf-soul/
Damn those independent-minded writers for proving you wrong all over the place!