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Charlie Stross on Common Misconceptions About Publishing: Ebooks
- patio11 16y agoI get this a lot from dedicated ebook readers: "I don't care about formatting and design in ebooks!" I think this is a peculiar kind of brain damage or mental scarring... As someone who shares this "brain damage", these lines puts me in the mood of a designer who, seeing objective statistical evidence that his redesign was outperformed by the older, uglier website, dismisses the metrics and rants about art for a few hours.
- petercooper 16y agoExcept, the most significant layout and typography issues involved in book design and usability have been studied. A basic example would be in the use of fully justified text versus ragged right: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1286700 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1286700 .. that topic not scream "design" to you, but it's all part of producing a high quality book. So are choosing the right typeface(s), the right text size(s), page layout, and more. Authors and book designers who have high production values aren't all arty-farty designers who just want things to look cool. To many, just getting it right objectively (versus the subjectiveness of design as "art") is important, and there are ways and means of doing that. For example, the average Edward Tufte book shows a high level of attention to detail in matters of underlying design and usability, rather than pure aesthetics. Readers should care about book formatting and design at a basic usability and readability level. You might not want pompously "designed" books, sure, but having easily read type in a usable layout is paramount (in the sense that a Web surfer wouldn't like to read beige text on a yellow background). Sadly, it seems not to be as big an issue as it could be as the jaw-droppingly bad typography on the Kindle demonstrates: http://redubllc.com/2009/01/a-typographic-critique-of-the-kindle/ http://redubllc.com/2009/01/a-typographic-critique-of-the-ki... - http://qwan.org/2009/05/17/kindle-typography-goes-craptacular/ http://qwan.org/2009/05/17/kindle-typography-goes-craptacula... - http://www.teleread.org/2009/05/05/kindle-page-layout-and-typography/ http://www.teleread.org/2009/05/05/kindle-page-layout-and-ty... (and oh so many more)
- ptomato 16y agoBecause performance metrics are the only things that matter.
- RevRal 16y agoMostly because I can just throw them onto my portable device, I'll almost always prefer a plain text file over a pdf.
- ahoyhere 16y agoDefined "outperform." I love your writing, so I know you know better than that. What if you get more signups for your email newsletter - but fewer conversions to customers down the line? What if you make more sales, but they incur more support over the 12 mos? Or are simply more stupid/more annoying/more rude? What if you make more sales, but they don't USE the product? Or use it effectively, to its fullest extent? (Whether or not they bug you about it.) What if you just, flat out, get customers who don't support your values/the direction you want to take your business? Science never stops. More is not better, necessarily - call no man happy until he is dead, and call no additional customer good until the relationship is at its complete and utter end. And just because people say they don't care about book design, doesn't mean that's actually how they behave. And just because they behave a certain way now, doesn't mean they wouldn't behave differently, offered a superior solution. And just because they think they there's no difference, doesn't mean they don't actually experience the book better given (as another commentor said) a provably superior product in terms of readability. Simplifying it as artsy fartsy prissiness, and wielding just-one-step "science" as a weapon, is doing everyone, and everything, a disfavor.
- MWinther 16y agoI don't agree that the reason people think an e-book is worth less is overvaluating the cost of paper and ink. People feel that an e-book is worth less than a paper book because the physical experience of handling a book is worth more than the experience of reading a book on a computer or e-reader screen. The e-book has other advantages, but we're not used to those and thus it feels to many people like they're getting less. Also, I believe that the author under-estimates other values inherent in a physical book, such as the ability to lend it to someone else, at least as long as DRM is the norm.
- jacoblyles 16y agoI dislike the experience of reading a physical book. I tried to read a textbook while I ate lunch today but I couldn't because it kept flipping shut on me. Books require one hand (or a heavy object) to constantly hold them open in order for them to be readable unless you're in the middle section of the book. The alternative is to crease the spine, which will hurt the book's resale value. So I gave up trying to read the book at lunch and read something on my iPhone instead. Also, I dislike lugging around the bulk of books or multiple books. I really can't wait until someone releases an eInk reader that can handle academic books and PDFs. I might get impatient and buy an iPad. But I suppose there are some people that fetishize the smell of wood pulp and who love signaling how smart they are to the world with shelves of impressive-looking unread books, and who therefore overlook a reading experience that is superior in every other way.
- MWinther 16y agoI don't think people preferring reading physical books necessarily do so because it signals anything to anyone, just as people preferring the e-book experience don't necessarily do so because it signals that they're tech savvy and can afford new cool stuff.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mos1 16y agoBut I suppose there are some people that fetishize the smell of wood pulp and who love signaling how smart they are to the world with shelves of impressive-looking unread books, and who therefore overlook a reading experience that is superior in every other way. I'm a voracious reader, and have an iPad, a Kindle, and shelves of (mostly read) books. Out-of-print -- with e-books, that means it's really out of print. With a traditional book, it means you need to talk to a used book store. Used -- you can't save money by buying your e-books used. Nor can you sell them if you decide they have no further value to you. Unanticipated Reading -- e-books are great for unanticipated delays where you brought an e-book device, but didn't bring a book. Outdoor use -- you can take a paperback up a mountain, onto a lake, or into the jungle knowing that if it gets wet your losses are capped at $25, and if you fall down, it won't be damaged. With the e-book, a fall or weather could result in expensive damage. Travel -- the paperback book doesn't need to be charged, doesn't need a power plug converter, works during takeoff and landing, and doesn't immediately mark you as a person who is worth robbing. Portability -- you can carry a lot more e-books than books. Search -- e-books are great for reference texts, where you intend to do a lot of searching for content, rather than linear reading. paper indexes are good, but not as powerful. Markup -- e-books have a 'highlight' capability, and some note capabilities that seem like they'd work nicely in an academic context, but I generally prefer my system of post-it notes, scribbles in the margin, and underlines, which doesn't cleanly translate to e-books. Disaster Recovery -- e-books are replaced from backups, or not at all. books are replaced by homeowners insurance payout. Public Image -- my iPad and Kindle both mark me as an early adopter tech guy. a book likely says nothing about me, unless the person looking has an opinion about the title in question. Permanence -- I'm relatively confident that my paper library will endure for as long as there's somebody who values the content of the books. I'm not confident my e-book library will be usable in 10 years. (between DRM, format incompatibility, and accidental data loss.) Images -- books currently beat e-books pretty solidly when it comes to imagery. I can't really imagine getting a Photography book as an e-book at this point in time. Visual ease -- e-books let you adjust the font, but paper books are often (though not always) easier to read. ---- Or maybe e-books are superior in every single way, and I only buy books to fetishize the smell of wood pulp, whilst filling shelves to signal to my wife, kids, pets and good friends that I'm intelligent. sigh
- jacquesm 16y agoThat piece completely turns my intuition about how the writing world works on its head. I always thought that writers wrote books, editors trimmed them and publishers sold them. I never thought that publishing an e-book required as much work as a 'regular' book, other than the removal of the printer, but it does make sense. In a way it's a pity, but maybe this could be cured by writers hiring free-lance editors and marketing on a performance basis?
- thunk 16y agoI think the problem as it currently stands with hiring your own copy editors and marketers and cover artists etc. is the enormous amount of time you spend essentially replicating what publishers already do. That's a lot of time spent not writing, crammed into authors' already busy schedules, which means they put out fewer books, which means Bad. But I do think that's a huge opportunity for startups that ease the pain of decentrallized book production.
- mechanical_fish 16y agowriters hiring free-lance editors and marketing on a performance basis? This idea is a common trap for newbie writers. A very very common trap. To the point that there are an absolute plethora of scam artists lying in wait to "accept" your manuscript in exchange for a fee, "edit" it in exchange for another fee, send it to Lulu.com for you in exchange for a fee, get it listed by Amazon for a fee, and "market" it for a fee. The non-solution of self-publishing was discussed at length during the "amazonfail" incident a few months back. Here's a novelist on the subject: http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/563086.html http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/563086.html
- jacquesm 16y agoA bit like the music industry then, the people that 'nail' fresh meat arriving in Nashville.
- joubert 16y agoInteresting. I wonder if it doesn't make sense then for an authhor and editor, when they work on an ebook together, share the revenue, instead of an upfront split? That way, both are incentivized to put the best work out there.
- donaq 16y agoMy prediction is this: ebooks will kill the mass market paperback distribution channel. Hmm. I usually prefer to read paperback novels than their ebook counterparts, the main reason being that there's a barrier to reading something I don't know about and then looking it up on wikipedia and hey, there goes 30 minutes of link following, after which there's a 50% chance I don't return to the book. I wonder how many readers are like me?
- jbrennan 16y agoeBook readers have a clock and a dictionary. Paper is dead to me.
- joubert 16y agoEven though editorial, typesetting, and publicity costs may be comparable between ebooks and physical books, the ebook medium overcomes the problem of inventory costs, which, I understand from author friends are substantial. Many books go out of print every year because, although there are still willing buyers, the cost of producing lower volumes and keeping warehouses stocked outweighs the benefits in the traditional book publishing model. I'm also surprised the author of this piece implies (?) the cost of setting up and maintaining a physical press is basically zero. Swish offices on 6th Ave would possibly also be less necessary in an ebook-dominated world where there is a more direct line between authors and their readers (customers).
- URSpider94 16y agoThere are a lot of data points on the web for these costs, here's one example: http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-costs.html http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-cost... So, for a mass-market hardback book, printing costs represent about 10% of the list price, less than just about any other component. Certainly, eliminating the printing costs alone would not knock a dramatic amount off of the consumer price of the book, assuming, that is, that book pricing is based on a "cost-plus" model, which it clearly is not.
- URSpider94 16y agoThere is an interesting meta-discussion going on here, over whether content curators add value. Most of the hackers that I've met tend to believe that they would prefer to latch onto a raw content stream, then filter and format it to their liking. No surprise -- that is the way of hackers, after all. However, I do think that it's a conceptual mistake to assume that the public at large would like to filter their own content. Even music sales, which are pretty far down the road towards an openly accessible market, are still driven by the major and minor labels. For books, I see an even stronger incentive to keep paying others to filter our content. Reading is a big investment, time-wise -- when people curl up with a book, e- or paper, they want to know that it's going to be worth their time. And, yes, they probably want it to be nicely typeset and proofread as well.
- ahoyhere 16y agoAs Shirky writes, abundance breaks more things than scarcity. Books included. In the age of constant, uninterrupted information, quality filters will be king. That's why people want news readers that automatically bubble up good shit (badly). That's why people follow others on Twitter who give good link. That's why, in theory, we use HN.
- joubert 16y agoI think there are many books out there that aren't exactly masterpieces, put out there by big publishers. Conversely, works that are big commercial successes were for a long time shunned by publishers (JK Rowling). Perhaps user reviews & ratings, and previewing books would be a good enough filter? I mean people can already publish anything they want for free online, and non-techies seem perfectly capable in filtering out.
- icefox 16y agoPublishing is an industry full of turmoil at the moment it seems like, what opportunities are being presented as a result of this?
- ahk 16y agoAuthors like Stross or Scalzi need to see this bit about "Learned Helplessness" here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness Their attitude of publishers being all-powerful is one that needs to die.
- EdwardCoffin 16y agoI'm not sure how to interpret this. I get the sense that you believe that Stross and Scalzi are rationalizing what you believe is learned helplessness on their part? If so, that isn't what I believe they are saying. I think that Stross is mostly expressing that publishers contribute significantly more to the bookmaking process than most people think, and that these contributions are actually useful.
- ahk 16y agoWhat they have said and are saying is that the publishers are so powerful that they, the content creators, don't even get a say in setting prices or demanding better returns, because that's the way it's always been done. Any requests to them to stand up for their readers (like the recent pubisher price control mechanisms on ebooks or DRM schemes or region controls) results in a "Haha, you're kidding right? We have zero control over what the publishers do with our output". I'm saying, the publishers have nowhere to go if you dont write the books. The relationship is a total inverse of what it should be. Even music artists, normally thought to be clueless/careless on real world matters, are already taking big stances on DRM and their ability to distribute/sell etc and sticking up for their fans. The writers' backwardness (and plain old ludditism) in this regard is mighty strange.
- joubert 16y agoI agree with you. That's why I co-founded Fifobooks, a new DRM-free ebook marketplace, where authors: - retain all the rights to their work - maintain full editorial control - set the price at which their ebooks are sold, and keep the majority of the revenue - there is no fee to publish - nonexclusive
- Raphael 16y agoHe forgot my favorite book formats of all, HTML and plain text.
- joubert 16y agoEpub, arguably the universal ebook format, is really just a fancy zip-based Package of html resources. IBM has a nice guide for hackers about creating an epub file: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/tutorials/x-epubtut/index.html http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/tutorials/x-epubtut/in...
- ableal 16y agoTwo mostly factual items: - E-ink readers seem to be coming down in price - Borders will be selling the 6 inch Kobo for 150 USD ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1328438 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1328438 ). There are also various recent, cheaper, models with 5-inch e-ink screens, but same 800x600 pixels, which I think will do fine for fiction. - Elsewhere in these comments, jacoblyles said "I really can't wait until someone releases an eInk reader that can handle academic books and PDFs". In my opinion, the 10-inch e-ink readers do an acceptable job. I have a KindleDX, and PDFs of books, papers and theses can be read sequentially fine. Skipping around and jotting annotations are not so convenient ... Handy overview of devices: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_Reader_Matrix
- ahoyhere 16y agoI have the Kindle DX also, and it's too low contrast and the type on most academic papers (that I read) is far too small. I'm 25, so it's not as if it's my eyesight that's the problem. On the other hand, reading them on my iPad with a tool like iAnnotate, I can not only make the text bigger, but mark the PDFs up with highlights, boxes, and notes (which are PDF format standards -- not special to the app itself). And transfer them over wifi.