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books, ebooks, and publishing
Feb. 24th, 2006 10:59 amLast year the Australian publishing industry had its worst year in ages. I wonder if the crunch may be coming sooner rather than later with the paper book publishing industry. There will have to be a move to electronic books at some point as paper costs and fuel costs force the price of paper-based books ever upward. And of course as prices go up reader numbers will drop. The rise in book prices will at first be masked by the big book publishers using cheap facilities in 3rd world countries to print stuff (this is already happening), but that only buys a little time.
As far as I can see, the only thing that can save the book publishing industry is ebooks, but they have been a commercial failure all around the world because publishers are so scared of new technology that they encumber it with all manner of locks. I have bought several electronic books, and after a number of close calls where I almost got locked out of the books I'd bought and paid for, I have become quite wary of them and extremely reluctant to buy them.
The problem is greed and it shows up in two ways. First publishers don't want anybody to share electronic books with anybody else so they put complex locks on the books. Secondly they vastly overcharge for ebooks (I guess they think we're idiots and won't notice).
So now, given that electronic books have not taken off in the way they expected, publishers think the audience isn't there. Admittedly things will start to pick up more when we have cheap handheld machines on which to read the books, but it is a bit of a chicken-egg problem. If the machines are expensive the market for ebooks will remain small and while the market is small nobody is going to make cheap ebook readers. And while this whole attitude persists of considering the audience as the problem instead of the solution it will take longer than it needs to.
The worst part of the problem is that publishers feel compelled to encrypt and lock ebooks so that people don't share them. They never seem to realise that sharing is how most of us find out about books. How many times have you read a book because a friend has put their copy in your hands and said "You must read this!" or because you've stumbled across something in a library, or in a secondhand bookshop? (Yes, you pay for a book in a secondhand bookshop, but the publisher doesn't get a cent of it.) How many books would you have read if they were chained to your friends' bookshelves or if libraries and secondhand bookshops didn't exist? Sharing is not a bad thing it is good. It is the most powerful advertising medium that books have.
Lastly, there is another change that is coming up and I think publishers don't even want to look at it because they feel it threatens everything they stand for. This is a peculiar time. There are more artists, writiers and musicians than ever before. Many excellent creators simply place their work online for free. How can a publisher hope to compete with this flood of often high quality work? My own feeling is that it is impossible to compete with it. The only way to survive is to facilitate it. You don't fight the wave, you ride it. My advice to publishers is to become filters so that people who want to find great books can pay a small amount to be pointed in the right direction. It is then imperative that the majority of that payment be sent to the author -- and it should not be the paltry 10% or 8% that they currently allow. At the moment the creators seem to be the least valued part of the chain. That must change.
As far as I can see, the only thing that can save the book publishing industry is ebooks, but they have been a commercial failure all around the world because publishers are so scared of new technology that they encumber it with all manner of locks. I have bought several electronic books, and after a number of close calls where I almost got locked out of the books I'd bought and paid for, I have become quite wary of them and extremely reluctant to buy them.
The problem is greed and it shows up in two ways. First publishers don't want anybody to share electronic books with anybody else so they put complex locks on the books. Secondly they vastly overcharge for ebooks (I guess they think we're idiots and won't notice).
So now, given that electronic books have not taken off in the way they expected, publishers think the audience isn't there. Admittedly things will start to pick up more when we have cheap handheld machines on which to read the books, but it is a bit of a chicken-egg problem. If the machines are expensive the market for ebooks will remain small and while the market is small nobody is going to make cheap ebook readers. And while this whole attitude persists of considering the audience as the problem instead of the solution it will take longer than it needs to.
The worst part of the problem is that publishers feel compelled to encrypt and lock ebooks so that people don't share them. They never seem to realise that sharing is how most of us find out about books. How many times have you read a book because a friend has put their copy in your hands and said "You must read this!" or because you've stumbled across something in a library, or in a secondhand bookshop? (Yes, you pay for a book in a secondhand bookshop, but the publisher doesn't get a cent of it.) How many books would you have read if they were chained to your friends' bookshelves or if libraries and secondhand bookshops didn't exist? Sharing is not a bad thing it is good. It is the most powerful advertising medium that books have.
Lastly, there is another change that is coming up and I think publishers don't even want to look at it because they feel it threatens everything they stand for. This is a peculiar time. There are more artists, writiers and musicians than ever before. Many excellent creators simply place their work online for free. How can a publisher hope to compete with this flood of often high quality work? My own feeling is that it is impossible to compete with it. The only way to survive is to facilitate it. You don't fight the wave, you ride it. My advice to publishers is to become filters so that people who want to find great books can pay a small amount to be pointed in the right direction. It is then imperative that the majority of that payment be sent to the author -- and it should not be the paltry 10% or 8% that they currently allow. At the moment the creators seem to be the least valued part of the chain. That must change.