plunging in

[gfish]

I know I should stay clear of Amazonfail, but I just want to say that a publisher which can't make a profit selling $9 etexts (or $5, or $2) deserves to go bankrupt. If amortized editing and design costs are really the lion's share of a physical book, the system is deeply, deeply broken.

(Even applying design costs to the etext version is largely ridiculous. How much design work does an etext need? I'd prefer it as a raw text file anyway, but a LaTeX-generated PDF would also be just fine as well. The only reason for fancy design in the first place is to catch people's attention in a store. Etext selection and browsing is nothing like that, so why bother with it in the first place? Tradition? Snob factor? Anything that can't be seen in the scaled down image of the book cover in an Amazon listing is a complete waste of money.)

I remain unconvinced of the long-term viability of selling data as a business model. But if you want to find a way for authors to make money, don't make it even harder by trying to defend these dinosaurs at the same time.

Comments

[gfish.livejournal.com]

Editing will likely remain a paid position, yes. (Though I know people who do it for free for friends.) That doesn't mean it needs to be done by a publisher, nor does it mean that the editors working for publishers are really worth what they get paid. Can an author arrange for their own work to be properly edited? Of course, that's just a new skill needed to be successful. This may be a bad or good thing (marketing seems to be required of most new authors right now, for instance, and that often ends poorly), but it's hardly unthinkable. Lots of musicians are learning how to be recording engineers now for home recording, after all.

I was careful to explicitly not conflate editing with design. But like I said, raw text is fine. I'm dead serious, I've read dozens of books in that format. No layout needed. Or if you want to be fancy, do it up in LaTeX. Some minor markup and boom, you have some of the most perfect and beautiful typesetting ever produced. Fancy text layout is not required.

I think we have plenty of alternative filtering models to choose from, starting with the obvious word of mouth. Browsing a bookstore (that is, using the implicit filer of what managed to get published) is nice, but it's hardly the only way I choose which books to buy. I swim in a world of crap (the internet) and still find amazing pearls pretty much every day thanks to the extensive, decentralized filtering system of friends passing around links. Of all the concerns about how things will work in the new model, this worries me the least. Particularly since it's only really a problem if you're paying for the media, and, well, we've yet to see if that will really be the case.

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

*wry grins* I know people who do free editing for their friends, too. There are a few exceptions, but in general, free editing is worth what you pay for it. I've seen more than one case where the author had to fix problems put in by their editing friends, and spent hours and hours doing it.

Personally, I think the "you have to sell your work to a large publishing house in order to get published" model is about to blow away on the winds. Unfortunately, it's actively crumbling and we don't quite have anything set up to replace it yet ... but we're working on it! The model we used to create Ravens actually worked quite well ... but it was a benefit, and it didn't involve paying anyone for their work. We want a model that will do that, too!

[beaq.livejournal.com]

"nor does it mean that the editors working for publishers are really worth what they get paid"

Do you know what they're being paid? I bet that's not where any large fraction of the money I pay for a book goes, anyway.

[maribou]

I'm *thisclose* to saying "ah ha! the increase in book prices is all the HMOs' fault!!!"

somebodystopme