I wonder how many book purchases are impulse buys because a reader saw it whilst browsing in a store.
I know I’ve done it.
I know I’ve done it.
2022 book releases
- Thread starter Enterprise1701
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I harp on this in large part because I've too often been told that it's okay to pirate ebooks because they're just electronic files and not physical objects. As though, again, a book's cover price is really just to cover the cost of the paper and ink.
A different context, I know, and not at all what Elwro was suggesting, of course, but, alas, the idea is out there that somehow ebooks don't really cost publishers much to produce, so I push back against it whenever I get the chance.
A different context, I know, and not at all what Elwro was suggesting, of course, but, alas, the idea is out there that somehow ebooks don't really cost publishers much to produce, so I push back against it whenever I get the chance.
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I wonder -- if someone got hold of their credit card numbers and emptied their accounts, would they think it was okay because it was just electronic money rather than paper?
My own problem with e-books is two-fold:
1. With an e-book, you are tied to a technological device as a middleman.
2. With an e-book, if that device fails or is replaced, you're screwed.
Which is to say, I have at least two DTI titles on my cheap-ass tablet. Which will soon be replaced by a Chromebook, because it was nearly useless when I bought it, and it's damn-near totally useless now.
Which is also to say, if I ever manage to get my novel into publishable shape, and I'm unable to work out a practical means of issuing a print edition without going to a subsidy house (unlikely, given that [1] I do spend my Saturdays docenting at a printing museum, [2] it's not all that much trouble to convert a PDF into either offset plates or photopolymer, and [3] with photopolymer, I could run it on a Windmill, without having to learn how to run an offset press [and keep the ink and fountain etch in balance]), then I would release it as a PDF under the GFDL (with the entire contents declared "invariant") before I would permit it to be released in any proprietary e-book format with DRM of any kind.
1. With an e-book, you are tied to a technological device as a middleman.
2. With an e-book, if that device fails or is replaced, you're screwed.
Which is to say, I have at least two DTI titles on my cheap-ass tablet. Which will soon be replaced by a Chromebook, because it was nearly useless when I bought it, and it's damn-near totally useless now.
Which is also to say, if I ever manage to get my novel into publishable shape, and I'm unable to work out a practical means of issuing a print edition without going to a subsidy house (unlikely, given that [1] I do spend my Saturdays docenting at a printing museum, [2] it's not all that much trouble to convert a PDF into either offset plates or photopolymer, and [3] with photopolymer, I could run it on a Windmill, without having to learn how to run an offset press [and keep the ink and fountain etch in balance]), then I would release it as a PDF under the GFDL (with the entire contents declared "invariant") before I would permit it to be released in any proprietary e-book format with DRM of any kind.
I find myself thinking about a humorous piracy deterrent spot that I've seen on some DVDs: somebody has just finished making an unauthorized copy of a DVD, and walks out the door to find his vehicle stolen from out of his driveway. Cut to the vehicle thieves, talking among themselves, and echoing the very sentiments the IP thief used to justify his acts.
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Don't most e-book vendors allow you to access the book on more than one device? I've been able to read Kindle titles on both my laptop and my phone (though Kindle has stopped working on my laptop for some reason; did it stop supporting Windows 7 like MS Office did?).
But I'm still mad at myself for losing access to my old Strange New Worlds e-books. When their format became obsolete due to the company going out of business, they let us know in advance and gave us a window to get them converted for free to a new format, but I kept putting it off and forgot about it until it was too late.
So yeah, e-books have problems, but so do print books. You can lose them, you can get them wet, they can turn brown due to acids in the paper, the pages can come loose from the spine, etc. No format is perfect.
That reminds me: I also have the e-book-only SNW (the one in which the "prize" for contest winners involved a vanity subsidy division of S&S that I'd never heard of) on my tablet.
And I'm sure there must be a way to transfer them elsewhere.
Meanwhile, all my copies of the "real" SNW books are physical copies. Just as my entire library of recorded music and my entire library of recorded video is on physical media.
(That cheap-ass tablet has gotten so bad, BTW, that it's quicker and easier to browse the web from my CLAMSHELL cell-phone.)
And I'm sure there must be a way to transfer them elsewhere.
Meanwhile, all my copies of the "real" SNW books are physical copies. Just as my entire library of recorded music and my entire library of recorded video is on physical media.
(That cheap-ass tablet has gotten so bad, BTW, that it's quicker and easier to browse the web from my CLAMSHELL cell-phone.)
Bingo. In experience, people who would NEVER consider shoplifting a paperback from a bookstore will think nothing of pirating an ebook -- and may even take offense at the suggestion that the two acts are comparable.
"Are you calling me a thief? I've never shoplifted in my life! Ebooks are different . . . ."
Oh, yeah, it's amazing the fights you can get into online over this. Mention you don't pirate digital products -- books, movies, games, music -- and people are immediately tripping over themselves to justify it and in fact to position themselves as heroes for standing up to corporate greed and also, hey, it's a net good because it leads to more word of mouth and because many who pirate are simply trying before buying. It's like stepping into bizarro world.
I will state for the record that I am just as fervent about the Fair Use Doctrine as I am about copyright. And that (as much as I've fantasized about acquiring the rights to the 1939 MGM Wizard of Oz, for the express and exclusive purpose of suppressing it) I condemn the misuse of intellectual property law for the purpose of suppressing the intellectual property in question (it's rare in real life, but it happens).
Speaking of shipping, one thing I'm surprised that never seems to come up in the ebook discussions is the environmental impact. Not only do you lessen the demand for paper, but the distribution of physical copies across the face of the planet presumably burns fossil fuels and increases the carbon footprint vs. an all-digital distribution. The publishing companies might not save that much money from a digital distribution model, but you'd think if they touted the environmental benefits more, they might get more buy-in (and generate goodwill) from environmentally-conscious consumers, in addition to, you know, actually helping the planet.
This finally clicked for me intuitively when I considered that you could get enough paper (heavier, higher quality paper, in fact) to make eight or so MMPBs in the form of a ream of printer paper for a few bucks at any office supply store.
And it's even cheaper per copy when you buy enough paper to print thousands. Like I said, economies of scale.
Thanks for stressing that it was *not* what I suggested :-) I've just been told at my comic book store that the paper shortage in America has led even big guys like Marvel to print the bare minimum of copies to satisfy the preorderers. (Yes, of course, I'm aware of the fact that my store wants me to put in a preorder at their place ;-).) Since my city is a, uh, cultural hub, I have two friends working at publishers and they too say paper is a big problem. Going digital would seem to alleviate at least this issue.
Somehow it didn't occur to me that publishers would take this as an opportunity to pay the authors less. (Because, well, fewer sales, but also lower production costs?... I honestly thought this should balance out and allow to author to be paid 'normally'.) Apologies if my post came across as insensitive.
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Y'know, given that Simon & Schuster did put out To Lose the Earth a few months after the incompatible Picard season 1, I idly wonder if they would actually have the guts to still release Seek a Newer World and The Hazard of Concealing at this point.
Speaking of, has anyone else noticed that annoyingly, the Memory Alpha page for Kelvin Timeline novels doesn't mention these two anywhere? There is not even a specific category for the four Kelvin novels. It took me a while to remember what the titles were and figure out which novels (The Face of the Unknown and No Time Like the Past) received elements cannibalised by their authors from the cancelled ones.
Speaking of, has anyone else noticed that annoyingly, the Memory Alpha page for Kelvin Timeline novels doesn't mention these two anywhere? There is not even a specific category for the four Kelvin novels. It took me a while to remember what the titles were and figure out which novels (The Face of the Unknown and No Time Like the Past) received elements cannibalised by their authors from the cancelled ones.
I'd rather they didn't, where Seek is concerned. It wasn't nearly as good as The Face of the Unknown, and TFOTU has all the best parts of it anyway (except for one bit that ended up in The Captain's Oath instead).
I think the fact that those novels were cannbalized for later titles is probably a bigger issue than their being incompatible with anything per se. I assume that’s why they weren’t just published when the other two trunk novels from the reboot timeline were.
You may want to look for an older version of the Kindle software online, like 1.17, that works on Windows 7 and "downgrade" to that. You will have to change the options to prevent Amazon from auto-updating. It will work fine with new purchases.
In any event, I'm not terribly fond of ebook exclusives, but I do wonder about potential other formats. For instance, tordotcom seems to have had success with their line of original novellas -- including Una McCormack's The Undefeated -- and I think that would be a neat format to explore. Similar to the size of the old Bantam originals or even slightly shorter. Bite-sized, punchier adventures that offer the "episode experience" but don't require as much of a time investment if they're not your cup of tea. I for one would love to see a mix of heftier adventures with shorter ones.
But that's exactly what the e-book exclusives were. And what are stories publised online on Tor-dot-com if not e-books?
