E-Books as a Means to Revolution

In the past I've written about the E-Book Revolution as well as some of my thoughts on owning digital vs physical books. I'm still doing a lot of thinking on the subject and I think I may have come up with a pro for the Revolution.

The publishing industry, like most big businesses these days, is corrupt. There's no doubt about it. You have publishers swindling authors by paying them much less than they deserve, only to turn it around and charge way more than they should, then, on top of that, you have book sellers--both the so called "brick and mortar" as well as online retailers--upping the price again for profit. Of course, the publishing industry is not nearly as far gone as the music industry, or even that of the movie industry, but I feel like it's effects are far more devastating, both to the consumer as well as the author.

I am not an author myself, but working in a bookstore as well as reading author's blogs I feel like I have enough information to make a reasonable opinion of the situation. Authors spend months or years in a creative fever trying to write a book. They have to deal with their own criticisms, writers block, plot holes, and a whole host of other mentally challenging obstacles before the next step. Revision. They revise, revise, and revise again; tweaking, changing, adding before they have finally come up with something they're proud of, I've heard it likened to a child even. So they package it up and send it out to the world and wait, and wait, and wait before.. Rejection. As far as I can tell many authors to hit it big first off, but even if they pass that big hurtle, they're still stuck with "We at *insert publishing company here* are very interested in your book. We'll take a chance on you for $xxx.xx and a publishing run of xxxx copies..." and so on. Now sometimes the author will get the price they were expecting, but many times they're shortchanged, cheated, and robbed. I mean after they have spent so much time, money, and emotional well being on their work and yet the publishing company wants to offer you that much? This is where it can get shitty, if indeed they have put out a written a damn good book, they have been paid x amount of money to get it going, and only get x% of the profits as well, but because the author decided to settle for the publishing companies numbers they'll be getting all the profit. Now generally if the author hit it big they'll offer more for next book and so on, but this is where the major snag comes in because if the author does indeed keep writing those best sellers, publishers expect more books out of them. More than likely the author has to sign a contract stating that they'll write x number of books per year for x amount of money and this kills the creativity. Deadlines, stress, and nagging editors harass them at every turn, and generally the first book they wrote was with all their heart, now they just get things out on paper so they can meet the deadlines.

I've seen it happen, great authors like Nora Roberts, James Patterson, Danielle Steele, and Nelson DeMille just to name a few. Their first books were amazing, fantastic, one of a kind; the publishing company they signed up with saw this potential and dragged them into a binding contract. Now look at them, Patterson and Roberts alone put out 5-6 books a year and guess what? They are what I like to call "cookie cutter plots". Change the city, change the character names, and use the twist you had in your fourth book, and make this character fall in love with this one, and generally leave the plot as is. The reason these books continue to be popular is because consumers want to believe that because these authors were great at one time, then they must have it in them to be so again. Another reason is that once a publishing company finds something that "works" they do not want you to move away from it, the author may put in something more original, but instead of taking that chance again they edit it to look just like your last 8 books. Profit, profit, profit.

Naturally those authors I mentioned are successful and probably have a good deal of money, but do they have as much as they deserve? I don't think so honestly. It's all well and good that the publishing world is a business like any other, but I never have felt that businesses should screw over their employees. Books are especially touchy I think because, after all, none of the people who actually work at the publishing company can actually write worth a damn. So it would make sense to me that the author would be treated like a god, but no. Instead big wigs at the company make tons of money off authors' intellectual creativity and merely toss a sliver of that profit back to the author. They then decide pretty much everything about the book that isn't actual writing, they pick the cover artist, they pick what size to publish it in, they pick how many and how long to publish it, and then they merely ask what the author thinks--usually not so much. I believe that authors can escape this rat race with e-books.

As much as it pains me to see paper books are on their way out. Sure it won't be for a while, it might not even completely happen, but working at a bookstore I've noticed how much our sales have declined yet how much amazons e-book sales have jumped. There is a silver lining here, though, and that is for the authors which in turn will lead to the readers as well. Right now we have the Kindle, the Sony E-Reader, and the Nook out on the market with 50+ more already in development. Now is the time when authors can break away from the greed and the corruption of the publishing companies! So far Sony, Amazon, and B&N are arguing over prices of an e-book, they're also arguing with the publishers about those prices. If you haven't heard already, our dear friends over at Amazon want to monopolize e-books and e-book prices so much so that they pulled all of their books from the major publisher Macmillan over such a dispute. Check out the article over here. This whole incident has other publishers getting a little nervous; as well they should, because why exactly does an author even need a publisher for e-books? Amazons trying to market it so that authors sell their books directly to them, this is a baaaad idea though. What authors should realize from this little dispute is that the power is now in their hands again. Instead of going through a publisher or even an online retail like Amazon, Sony, or Borders, authors now have the chance to sell their own books! This may not seem like much right now, but shit, think about it! James Patterson is an international bestseller, if he were to say hey *insert publisher here* go fuck yourselves I'm going to sell my own books, what could they actually do? They'll probably beg and plead for him to stay, but anyone with business sense would realize that he'd make a much bigger profit from selling them on his own. I mean really, he could hire a freelance editor, and then when he finishes his book why even bother with taking only x amount of the profit when he could put it up on his website and make 100% of the profit. It wouldn't be hard, he'd still sell a ton of books because he could price them as low as he wants and still make a hearty profit, and because he is already a huge international author he wouldn't even need the advertising from the publishing companies--which I believe is their only real use these days.

I know the appeal of a solid book, but I can't help but see the possibility of completely changing the publishing world. Unfortunately, because in print books still make up the largest portion of sales for an author, one or two authors wouldn't be able to accomplish this it has to be a group effort, it has to a bunch of the big name authors coming together and sticking it to the man. You get James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Clive Cussler, Dan Brown, Orson Scott Card, Stephanie Meyer, Stephen King, and a few other big names and the publishing industry would be crippled! Now with that many big names going independent it wouldn't take long for younger more green authors to follow suit, and soon publishing companies will have two options: Completely gut and reorganize their industry or loose buckets and buckets of money, if not go out of business all together. Sure they might fight, but they would have no real cards in their hand, sure they might have the rights to certain books for a certain amount of time, but that won't be enough. People want new books by these authors not the same thing they've already read. How would the new publishing world look? Well for one authors would have complete rights to their books, no "we'll take a chance on you and buy your book from you for x number of years", the publishers get the privilege of putting their name on the book, that way authors can sell paper books in major retailers as well as put their e-books up on their own website for their pure profit. Next authors should get at least 50% of the profits, I know that publishing paper books is not cheap, but it is not so expensive that you can get away with an 80% : 20% publisher : author ratio. This in turn will mean that publishers will have to restructure their prices to be more reasonable in terms of what it costs them to print the book and what they charge for it. Somehow I don't think it costs even $20 a book for hardcovers and yet publishers list the price at $25+ per book. Sadly I can't seem to find any accurate information on how much publishers actually make because of this, but I feel like they can lower the prices of all of the books. This will also mean that instead of keeping a book under hardcover for a full year (or more) will fade away. Most books do not last a full year in hardcover with even decent sales, what they should do is put books up for 3 months, if sales are good, up it to a maximum of 6 months and then send the book to paperback.

The next thing this restructure will do is stop the rampant corruption that has filled the publishing world. Most people don't know, but the New York Times Bestseller List is a load of shit. Yes that's right, a load of shit. Why you ask? Because publishers contact Borders or Barnes and Nobel and say "hey for $xxxx I want you to get everyone in your company to market this book" this is all under the table by the way. I've seen it done. Just looking at the NYT Bestseller list this week 4 of the top 10 are best sellers because of Borders, which may not seem like a lot, but you have to take into account that 4 others are on the list because of their movies. That leaves 2 books that made the top ten because of being well written. 2% that's wretched. Of course it's not always through bookstores that they do this, many publishers send their books to Oprah, hmm I wonder why? Every Single One of her "recommendations" has been number one on the best seller list. Why is this important? Because many, many, many people only buy books if they have a NYT Bestseller stamps on them. They won't look at books that have won actual awards--which you might notice are hardly ever on the NYT list--they won't touch anything but these books because they think that if everyone else is buying it, it must be good. Nope, actually employees at Borders and B&N are told you have to sell this many of this book, and if they don't their hours get cut, which means the store loses money, which means that everyone working at these retailers has become sharks because without hours, no money, no money, no food, no food, death. Furthermore employees actually get in trouble with their management if they don't sell these books. It doesn't matter if the books actually suck, it doesn't matter who the customer is, you have to try your hardest to sell these books even if it's not something even related to what the customers purchase. You could be a big buff biker who only reads hunting books we will still recommend things like Twilight to you. You have to note as well that we booksellers and even the management do not know where the corporate offices pull these books out of their ass, and when we ask they say "oh we just liked it". Right. If they had actually even read the back of these books we're forced to sell they would know that they are not very good, nor do they actually appeal to a wide variety of people, this and the fact that they all hit the NYT list makes me believe publishers have money that isn't accounted for. If the structure was reset, though, publishing companies would have to consult with authors before they do anything with that author's book. Now sure, there are going to be some greedy authors out there, but generally I think authors want to make the List off their own skills, not because a thousand borders around the country are forcing it on hapless customers. Even if it's just a foolish fairytale that's what I believe.

I don't know if it will ever happen, but I think now is the time for something to happen if it will. Authors have to strike against the publishers before they all fall in line together and it becomes practically suicide to market your own books. You wrote the book. You put in the time for it. You sweat blood and tears for your books, take a stand, and take back what is actually yours! Publishers nor book retailers have no write to set the price of your e-book, they aren't doing anything with it in terms of supplies, they may market it a bit, but most authors have a huge following already on their website! It wouldn't even be hard; e-books are merely a text document that you can put up on your website with hardly any cost to yourself. Lastly, you don't want your fans to be screwed do you? We're your life blood, we only put up with publishing companies because of the huge monopoly they have over your works. Now is the time to take matters into your own hands!

Physical vs. Digital Books

I remember back in February I made a post about the e-book revolution that is going on and I mentioned something to the nature of "I like to own my books". Well recently Sony came out with two new additions to the e-reader family: The Pocket edition, and the Touch edition. Both relatively cheap, I mean if $199 and $299 respectively is ever cheap and I am again examining my preferences. Certainly the e-readers are still too expensive, for me anyway, have too much other crap going on--I really don't want internet on my book, sorry guys--and the e-ink has this horribly obnoxious function where when you turn a page it flashes the entire screen black. Sure it's not very long, but on every e-reader I've tried I notice it. Now I've hear "oh you get used to it", but come on I can turn a page in a real book and not suffer any sort of annoying flash. We are at the point technologically that this should not be an issue. Old computers did this, but we can now sit at a computer for hours and not have any eye strain nor any flashes. When, and if, this ever gets fixed I might be more inclined to buy one, but until then it's just another thing that turns me off.

That was a bit of an aside, but back to what I was saying. I see these e-readers more and more and one of the big advertisements is that you can store XXX amount of books on the e-reader itself, and then store your other books right on your hard drive. Saves space, convenient, and takes the hassle out of moving books all around.. but I just don't like the idea. Technology is fallible and thus far I have over 300 books in my library, one lighting strike, one virus, one user error and all that would be gone.. Ouch.. I've heard that some places, Amazon?, let you redownload the book as many times as you'd like after you buy it, but I don't know how valid that is. It seems like a rather easy way to pirate books if that's the case, but I don't really know. But either way it's a scary thought. Whereas someone can break into my house, steal all sorts of stuff, but generally speaking they're not going to go for the books. The only thing I have to worry about when I'm not home is fire, water damage, and the occasional animal attack, and only fire will really kill off my collection. Sure you can back things up and copy things and save things, but really how secure are electronic things? For how much I love my books: Not enough. That's one reason I'd rather own a material copy. Another I think is perhaps how I grew up. Back when I was a kid we didn't have cell phones, computers, ipods, or much in the ways of electronics. Game Boys and walkmans were about all we had going on so, understandably, I never put much stock into electronics, but kids these days have cell phones, ipods, and complete internet access starting in elementary school or earlier at home! Maybe material objects aren't as important to younger generations as they are to me, I mean, I'm at the point where I think CDs are kinda a waste, I haven't bought one in years and years and years, so undoubtedly kids a mere 3 years younger might be okay with digital copies of things.

Two perfectly logical reasons right there, but those just don't seem to cut it either. I don't know why, but reading things on a computer screen just isn't satisfying, not to mention the pure raw sex appeal a loaded book case has. So honestly I don't know why I want books, they're expensive, they're heavy, they take up loads of space, but.. but.. I love them. I look over at my bookshelf and smile to myself thinking of all the adventures I've been on from the various spines, the color and the magic they add to my room, so I guess logically speaking it would be better not to own them. I'd save money, maybe--there's still the whole issue of just what you're paying for--save space, and it certainly is more environmentally friendly to not buy paper books, but.. I don't know.

I will say this though: I think e-readers do have a place in our society in the schools and in table top role playing. For schools, oh man, I wish upon every star that I could have a Kindle-DX loaded up with all my textbooks, and all my future textbooks! There would have to be some negotiation on price because while the content is obviously valuable, a large part of the cost of a text book comes from the actual publishing of the book, hard backs, full color, pictures, etc. etc. All books/textbooks start out in word (or some other program) and thus it's a few clicks of a button to put them up on the internet and seriously should not cost as much. What the value of someones book is, is much too hairy of a topic to cover. Some authors spend years and years perfecting their books, others spend a week writing it and then publishing it *cough Nora fucking Roberts cough*. Are those two books equal? Ehhhhh I don't even wanna touch that topic. The second thing was pointed out to me by my friend and coworker Diego, he's a classic gamer, not the type that uses consoles but the D&D table top gamer. Basically, if you've never looked into D&D or anything, you have to buy lots of heavy hardcover books filled with info about spells and stats and other intense things so putting something like that onto an e-reader would make sense. Instead of carting 20+ books over to play a game you can just have them all loaded onto your e-reader and even ctrl-f specifics. I'm sure there are other things that it would be useful for as a professional, the DMV-IV-TR, there's a book of building codes that's a beast, electrical codes that's also beastly, but for a casual non-traveling reader it doesn't fit.

*sigh* that was one of the most horribly rambling posts I've done in a while. But it kinda straightened things out in my mind, so thanks for bearing with me. If anyone owns an e-reader and wants to fill me in on some of the gaps in my knowledge feel free. Other uses and pros, cons, etc. Comments are appreciated!

E-Book Revolution

The digital reader scene first hit my radar back in December '07 when Sony partnered up with Borders to sell their brand new Reader Digital Book--don't look at me, I think it's a terrible name too--soon after I heard about the Kindle made by Amazon (this one is of the Kindle 2 since they took down the link to the first edition). I'm not going to lie, I've been avoiding the whole idea of e-books since I first heard about them. Usually I'm pretty open to new technologies, I had one of the original iPods, got the Nintendo Game Cube, Wii, and DS all when they first came out, not to mention the first Google phone, but electronic books? It just doesn't sit well with me.

As you all should know by now, I'm probably one of the biggest bookworms out there. So intuitively I should be excited for such a revolution to take place, I mean come on, combine technology and books, it should be heaven! At the same time, though, I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to certain things in my life, not many mind you, but a few. One of them, the biggest I'd say, is books. I love, love, love opening a new book, turning the pages, really experiencing the book. Where is that with one of these e-readers? Sure you can hold 20+ books at once all in the palm of your hand, but where's the actual interaction between you and the book? It's not even just new books I love, I absolutely adore the worn down, well read half falling apart of really old books. Some of my favorite novels I have are from before I was born! Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master by Raymond E. Feist are pretty much falling apart on me. Master's back cover has come off completely--this does make me quite dismayed to be honest--and both of the spines are so worn from handling that you can hardly read the spine. And the smell, ah the smell. It might be weird to you guys, but working at Borders combines two of my absolute favorite smells, coffee and new books. When I buy a brand new book I usually open it up, close my eyes, and just run my thumb over the pages so they fan right into my nose!

My weird fetishes aside, I feel that by making books completely digital we're going to lose something humans have had for hundreds of years! Now I can't really bag on the whole thing either. I like to think that I try to be environmentally friendly, but lets face it, I probably have trees worth of paper just sitting on my shelves. Not to mention, as much as I love seeing my books on display, they take up loads of room. Also, from what research I've done, digital books are cheaper than their paper brethren, this makes sense since, after all, there aren't really any materials being used, and with the amount of memory we now have on computers, even a 500 page novel doesn't take much space. Of course, if you know where to look, you can get e-books for free. This is where it gets kind of iffy for me; ethically speaking I have no problem downloading music and even the occasional movie or two, but I don't know how I'd feel downloading books. It might be hypocritical on my end, so sue me I think writing a book takes much more time, effort and passion than that of a pop song or movie. And, unlike movie stars or rock stars, authors don't make nearly as much money, nor does the majority of their profits go to greedy labels. The publishers do get a cut, it's true, but it's not rape like the music industry. And, as a matter of opinion, but authors are much more humble than their media cousins, there are of course exceptions--J.K. Rowling--but the majority I can think of that aren't Opera whores or publishing whores, are pretty cool. I'll be honest, I've downloaded two books in my life time, one was Snow Crash because I was reading it at work and could not wait to find out what happened, the other was Twilight. In my defense, after I finished Snow Crash I bought it, and honestly I couldn't get through 100 pages of Twilight. Besides Stephanie Meyer is now way richer than she should be so one fluke download probably didn't hurt her much.

Ha I just thought of something, with my wide reader base, I'm sure I'll somehow get screwed and have the bored FBI agent browse my blog. If you guys don't here from me in over a month you'll know what happened!

The other downside that I've seen from these digital readers is that they're becoming more than just readers. Okay, so we live in a digital age, and most people can't live without their email or internet connection, but reading is the last refuge against the technological onslaught! People are suppose to curl up in bed or by the fire with their book and just relax, take a break from the almost overly connected world, escape! Alas both the Kindle and the Sony Reader are connected synced to the net, which is okay if all it is is to buy books, but they also have browsers. This isn't so bad for those people out there that go and read blogs and such for their news, but I dunno it just feels.. wrong. Not to mention both readers come equipped with a whole host of other features, such as mp3 capabilities, image storage, even access to radio, and I'm sure it won't be long til both are sporting a camera. When I sit down to read I want to sit down and read, not listen to music, look at pictures, or browse the internet I mean come on! Because of all this extra baggage both the Kindle and the Sony Reader fucking expensive! The Kindle rings in at a whopping $359 and the Sony Reader at a cool $399! Fuck you guys, Ipods are cheaper than that AND have more storage good lord. Everyone says that they pay for themselves quickly, this may be true after a while. I have a hard time justifying burying a $25 brand new hardcover, this is just ridiculous since you'll be at $400 BEFORE you get any books. The other problem with the pricing is that the books really aren't that great of a deal.

Lets take a look, a new mass market paperback book--that's the small ones for all you non-booknerds--is $7.99 in the store. On the Kindle you can get the same book, for $6.19 if its new, if it's somewhat older, but not too old mind you, you can go down to around $3.15. Sounds like a good deal, but consider a used book. Shit you can get most new, bestsellers at a used book store for around $2-$3 easy.. with the advent of these e-books there will never be that cheap a book again! I guess the real savings come in for hardcovers, a brand new hardcover in store will run you anywhere from $20-$35 depending on the content, a fiction usually averages out at $25.99, young adult at $19.99, and non-fiction upwards of $30. On the Kindle, brand spanking new "hardcovers" are only $9.99 from what I can tell, going up or down from there depending on the price. Once again this seems like an amazing deal, but the reason you spend that extra $15-$20 bucks on a hardcover is because you're getting a hardcover, as an e-book there's no difference between a book that's 5 years old and a book that came out this week. It's all text! So what exactly are you paying for? The fact that it's new? Brand new music on iTunes costs the same as music from the 80's and they take up more space. So really are you saving money by buying e-books? Seems more like saving space, and even then, I don't know anyone who hates the way books look on shelves, it's just one of those things everyone inherently likes. It reminds us of old times, of piece and quite, of dare I say sophistication! Granted I think it would be damn cool to have all your books in a neat little folder on your computer, saves space, saves hassle, but wtf are you suppose to do when your computer crashes. I will bet money that neither Amazon nor Sony will let you re-download the book, there'd be way too much fraud. "Oh hey, I uh, my uh computer crashed, I had like, 1000 books, can you give them back to me?" No way pal. If you think about it, books are really hard to get rid of, they're hard to move around, take up a whole hell of a lot of space, and they're heavy, it's really unlikely that you'll lose your entire library.

Now one thing I do support is what Google is doing. They're scanning in, or at least trying to, every single book ever made. It'll take ages and ages, but they have the resources and the security to back up these books that are deteriorating. Whats more is that they're letting people have these books for free. A lot of them aren't the most brand new, or best sellers right now, but you can go to books.google.com and search for books and then download them. They even have a mobile site for you psychopaths that think reading a novel on a cell phone is a good idea: books.google.com/m.

So really I don't know what to think. I love to read, and I think it's a really cool idea to have multiple books on an e-reader or computer, but I don't think it's worth the price. On the one hand you don't have the hassle of carrying books onto planes or having them take up a bunch of space in your house, but on the other they're easily lost and the reader itself is damn expensive. Not to mention all the bells and whistles that are attached to these readers, a book is a book.. not an mp3 player or photo gallery.

For now, I think it's safe to say that I won't be investing in either the Kindle or the Sony Reader, maybe if something comes out that's cheaper and really basic I'll consider it. Even then, though, I don't know how into it I will be, it's always been my dream to have a whole room that's just a library in my house.. but if there really is an e-book revolution, print books may go extinct. We'll see what the future holds I suppose.