12 ms·

Bottleneck at Printers Has Derailed Some Holiday Book Sales

53 points by danso 8y ago

marvindanig 8y ago
dead-tree books? good. i hope those printers die permanently. those dead-tree books are a lose-lose deal either way for America. we’re stuck on expensive old tech at the cost of trees, arable land and residential space when there is no longer the need to do so.
marvindanig 8y ago
printer of dead-tree books died? that's good news! i sincerely hope we get rid of rotten pulp industry completely. it leads to expensive books unnecessarily, bad legislation and terrible copyright laws and keeps modern America on its knees with its outdated technology. imo, web should be able to handle distribution and consumption both.
- mackatsol 8y ago
  Our brains are wired to treat processing information from a physical unchanging object very differently than from a slab of glass with ephemeral content on it. Words on a printed page do stick in your head better than content flowing past on a screen. I am so looking forward to the day we have some form of electronic book though! A series of e-paper pages that will make my brain feel like it's holding a 'real' book will be that day I switch. p.s. I want an electronic paper map I can fold up and stuff in a pocket, that requires little energy and still allows me to do all the pinch/zoom and tap tricks I can do on a tablet.
  - marvindanig 8y ago
    > A series of e-paper pages that will make my brain feel like it's holding a 'real' book will be that day I switch. Wouldn't that be borderline skeuomorphism? I'd want web to take over, unshackle the idea of books from hardware. > Words on a printed page do stick in your head better than content flowing past on a screen… Have you seen this: https://bubblin.io/book/bookiza-documentation-by-marvin-danig/1 https://bubblin.io/book/bookiza-documentation-by-marvin-dani... It avoids reflow and is able to scale the content correctly as well across a large swath of devices and browsers. Disclosure: I'm one of its developers and the writer.
    - XMPPwocky 8y ago
      EDIT: Apparently the book thing linked isn't actually made with the book thing? I am confused and feel like an asshole now. I strongly dislike your book thing. Why? * Animations manage to drop frames on my brand-new flagship Android phone. * Pageflip animation (subjectively) doesn't even look very good. * Can only imagine how much battery power is getting used drawing that animation. * Gesture recognition is a bit dodgy, occasionally had to swipe several times * Hijacked back button, meaning I had to search through my history to go back and find this comment to complain * Wastes a hilarious amount of previous screen real estate on negative space, especially combined with browser chrome; and because it doesn't scroll, the browser chrome is never hidden. https://postimg.cc/cg6JvZGh/12615d74 https://postimg.cc/cg6JvZGh/12615d74 Honestly really sorry to be so harsh- but at least on mobile, for me, this is perhaps the worst reading experience I could imagine- well, at least there aren't any ads. I understand that you've probably worked quite hard on this, but in its current state, for mobile, at least on my device, it's bad.
      - marvindanig 8y ago
        I looked at the metrics on my dashboard. You were trying to flip through multiple pages quickly-- as in you went in with an intent to 'surf the web capriciously' and not with an intent of really reading the book. I'm sorry that initial mindset to glance through headlines quickly will have a significant impact on your overall reading experience when it comes to books. The back button isn't hijacked either. It remembers the page you're on exactly as it is, as you progress through the book from one webpage to another. Other things like animations and page flipping etc. can be turned off, so those things are customizable but on battery thing I'll check again even I remember that the pagination interface with full animations run on 60 FPS or higher. There are probably some areas on the renderer where we can improve or may be use Houdini instead to achieve native level of performance but I'm yet to explore those paths. Unused real estate -- I agree with you here. The new iPhones are significantly longer than the previous generations, and this exacerbates the problem. But I think it's not unfixable, thanks for the feedback!
        XMPPwocky 8y ago
  - lambda 8y ago
    > Our brains are wired Any time this phrase appears in an argument it's a good indication that I can ignore the argument. Our brains are not "wired." They are pretty malleable and adaptable, and while a lot of that happens during childhood, they do remain fairly malleable throughout life. While there are neural structures that are specialized for certain tasks genetically, it is incredibly unlikely that the form of the book has had any significant evolutionary effect that would lead to some genetic predisposition for a book compared to some other form of conveying written information. Books have only existed for a couple thousand years, but originally were quite expensive to produce and only available to the wealthy; mass market production of books has only happened for a couple hundred years. There are probably reasons why many people prefer physical books to e-books, but to make a claim that it's based on some kind of "wired" preference in our brains rather than practical factors like battery life, compatibility issues, screen refresh rates, or any of a number of other simple, practical explanations is a bit extreme, and would need to be backed up with some kind of evidence. I personally don't consume much in e-book form, but the reasons are because of DRM, ecosystem lock-in, poor formatting in e-books, and the like. I actually consume a lot more content electronically than I do in dead-tree form, but it happens to be web pages and DRM-free PDFs.
    - tzs 8y ago
      > While there are neural structures that are specialized for certain tasks genetically, it is incredibly unlikely that the form of the book has had any significant evolutionary effect that would lead to some genetic predisposition for a book compared to some other form of conveying written information It's the other way around. The book isn't better because we evolved for the book. The book is better because it evolved for us. The key difference between books and e-books is that books are 3D objects giving us a sense of location for the information contained therein that varies in a consistent, logical manner as we progress through the information. This allows us to use our spatial memory, which yes, we are hard-wired to have, to help remember the information in the book. We evolved for this kind of memorization and are good at it. Here's an interesting article on this: https://www.fastcompany.com/3009366/you-wont-remember-this-article-or-anything-else-you-read-online-unless-you-pr https://www.fastcompany.com/3009366/you-wont-remember-this-a... Some papers: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883035512001127 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088303551... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002253717180066X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002253717... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01449298308914479 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0144929830891447...
- danso 8y ago
  How have e-books changed copyright laws?
  - marvindanig 8y ago
    Although on my parent comment I did not say e-books changed copyright law but assuming good-faith: Experience of gaming has been great. Experience of watching TV or movies is great. Experience of listening to music is great. Any high-end software on web has been great. But, e-books? Nope. Let's give them silly pesky files instead. Or let them buy hardware that's off the web. This is understandable because if I were on the lobbying side, I'll want to keep things like this only and send the market to believe and buy physical books instead. More control = more profit.
    - danso 8y ago
      I’m not following how the death of print books would lead to better copyright law.
      - marvindanig 8y ago
        books go native on web => ability to publish and update book on your own site just like a blog => my readers engage with me => meh copyright laws held by middlemen. ;-) you have something on your mind?
- stinkytaco 8y ago
  I work with ereaders and every so often a member of the press or community stakeholder will ask me when the book will die. My half joking response is: eventually, but not before I retire. I also have a prepared half-joke where I ask the person to think about the book like they might review a piece of technology. It's inexpensive, lightweight, durable, has a UI we've spent our whole life learning, is browsable and though not searchable, they've come up with some clever workarounds to make searching possible. It's also got a great screen resolution and the battery life is excellent. The book has a lot going for it compared to the ereader and it has a long life ahead of it.
mchannon 8y ago
As we have seen Apple (and to a lesser extent its direct competitors) bury its old-fashioned record label competitors, I think the print media industry is due for a similar (if smaller) revolution. There's probably nobody more frustrated by these sudden book shortages than the books' authors themselves. Being out of stock during the sweet spot of this year too often means the book sale will never be made. I'm working on a microbindery, which involves ultracheap one-off book runs in tiny distributed shops around the country, the operative idea being that instead of waiting six weeks for the next containerload of today's bestseller/tomorrow's pulp, whatever's out of stock can simply be knocked out in three hours and either picked up or mailed a short distance. Making a book (a real book) takes more than your $39 Deskjet, but it's not hard, or all that capital- or even labor-intensive. A single command line argument could convert a PDF to a perfect-bound novel or textbook, indistinguishable from the factories that produce books by the containerload but in massive MOQ's and haphazard sales and proof processes. Even if it costs $15 instead of $12 to print bestseller copy number n+1, that's still plenty of money left on the table if you're at the mercy of a massive 20th-century pulp mill in a different time zone, who can't be bothered with your last minute business.
- marvindanig 8y ago
  PDF is a file. Books are anything but. That’s a lazy alternative that did not succeed in 30 years. Why would that happen now?
  - mchannon 8y ago
    PDF came out 25 years ago. Replace "PDF"/"Books" with "PNG"/"Photographs", or "MP3"/"Recordings", and you'll see how well that argument went over. One should make the argument via YouTube to double the irony. A group of hipster book snobs jealously guarding their century-old first editions are welcome to their hobby, but the mass media will blow right past them as soon as the economics are favorable. What's remarkable is how much more sophisticated 35mm film and vinyl are versus the old staid book. Why now? Consumers are getting fussier (I want what's hot now, not in 8 weeks), and production equipment is getting way cheaper. Laser printing costs (even quasi-consumer-level) have plummeted to the point where equipment manufacturers have to resort to gimmickry to keep their margins positive. While all the paper textbooks you've read to date probably originated roll-to-roll, I see laser (and the flexibility it offers) finally breaking into that market.
dmazin 8y ago
The most interesting tidbit from this article: paper sales are up, ebooks are down. “Publishers’ revenues from hardcover sales rose 3.5 percent in the first 10 months of this year, while revenue from digital books fell 3 percent in the same period, according to the Association of American Publishers.”
- stinkytaco 8y ago
  Ebooks leveled off at around 30-35% of sales a few years ago and are in slight decline. I work in libraries with ebooks and though our trend is still upward, that's more about unmet demand and the curve has leveled in the past two years. I think the market for ebooks will slowly grow as the technology improves, but it's a long way from overtaking the physical book.
Eridrus 8y ago
The pro-ebook comments here are surprising. I love ebooks, but they have some real drawbacks: you can't lend them, you can't switch platforms easily, their layouts are usually pretty limited, and they often screw up diagrams, etc. I wish we could solve the problems associated with ebooks, rather than having weird tribal wars about them.
- readyp1 8y ago
  To an extent, those drawbacks can be mitigated by software, namely Calibre[0]. There may be alternatives out there, but this is the particular piece of software I use. I'll do my best to address your concerns here. (N.B. I don't develop this software, nor am I paid to advertise it; I just like it and want to demonstrate some of its features here) While most books that I own are hard-copy, I have an old Kindle Touch from 2012 that I use fairly often. I've received a bunch of gifts in eBook form over the years, and want to be able to read them on my computer and other devices. Calibre natively supports getting eBooks to and from devices such as mine[1], and there's a plugin out there (not too hard to find, but I won't name it here just in case) that automatically strips DRM from files during the import-to-library process. Of course, you can also just import files from your computer, and it will de-DRM those as well. Calibre also has a built-in content server[2] that's pretty configurable and allows you to share with friends; it essentially whips up a website that lets you both read eBooks in browser and download them in whatever formats you have. You can also have it convert between most eBook formats and more[3]; you can be as granular as you want during the conversion process, or just use a default profile that comes with the software. Of course, you can also edit any format of eBook that you've imported into your library[4]. I haven't personally tried that feature, but it looks like you'd be able to manage diagrams. I realize that this is a fair amount of work to do on the consumer side to address the problems you've brought up, but as a multi-device reader (computers big and small, Kindle, phone), it does a great job without much hassle for me. [0]https://calibre-ebook.com/ https://calibre-ebook.com/ [1]https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#device-integration https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#device-integration [2]https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/server.html https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/server.html [3]https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#id6 https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#id6 [4]https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/edit.html https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/edit.html

53 points by danso 8y ago

dead-tree books? good. i hope those printers die permanently. those dead-tree books are a lose-lose deal either way for America. we’re stuck on expensive old tech at the cost of trees, arable land and residential space when there is no longer the need to do so.

marvindanig 8y ago

printer of dead-tree books died? that's good news! i sincerely hope we get rid of rotten pulp industry completely. it leads to expensive books unnecessarily, bad legislation and terrible copyright laws and keeps modern America on its knees with its outdated technology. imo, web should be able to handle distribution and consumption both.

mackatsol 8y ago
Our brains are wired to treat processing information from a physical unchanging object very differently than from a slab of glass with ephemeral content on it. Words on a printed page do stick in your head better than content flowing past on a screen. I am so looking forward to the day we have some form of electronic book though! A series of e-paper pages that will make my brain feel like it's holding a 'real' book will be that day I switch. p.s. I want an electronic paper map I can fold up and stuff in a pocket, that requires little energy and still allows me to do all the pinch/zoom and tap tricks I can do on a tablet.
- marvindanig 8y ago
  > A series of e-paper pages that will make my brain feel like it's holding a 'real' book will be that day I switch. Wouldn't that be borderline skeuomorphism? I'd want web to take over, unshackle the idea of books from hardware. > Words on a printed page do stick in your head better than content flowing past on a screen… Have you seen this: https://bubblin.io/book/bookiza-documentation-by-marvin-danig/1 https://bubblin.io/book/bookiza-documentation-by-marvin-dani... It avoids reflow and is able to scale the content correctly as well across a large swath of devices and browsers. Disclosure: I'm one of its developers and the writer.
  - XMPPwocky 8y ago
    EDIT: Apparently the book thing linked isn't actually made with the book thing? I am confused and feel like an asshole now. I strongly dislike your book thing. Why? * Animations manage to drop frames on my brand-new flagship Android phone. * Pageflip animation (subjectively) doesn't even look very good. * Can only imagine how much battery power is getting used drawing that animation. * Gesture recognition is a bit dodgy, occasionally had to swipe several times * Hijacked back button, meaning I had to search through my history to go back and find this comment to complain * Wastes a hilarious amount of previous screen real estate on negative space, especially combined with browser chrome; and because it doesn't scroll, the browser chrome is never hidden. https://postimg.cc/cg6JvZGh/12615d74 https://postimg.cc/cg6JvZGh/12615d74 Honestly really sorry to be so harsh- but at least on mobile, for me, this is perhaps the worst reading experience I could imagine- well, at least there aren't any ads. I understand that you've probably worked quite hard on this, but in its current state, for mobile, at least on my device, it's bad.
    - marvindanig 8y ago
      I looked at the metrics on my dashboard. You were trying to flip through multiple pages quickly-- as in you went in with an intent to 'surf the web capriciously' and not with an intent of really reading the book. I'm sorry that initial mindset to glance through headlines quickly will have a significant impact on your overall reading experience when it comes to books. The back button isn't hijacked either. It remembers the page you're on exactly as it is, as you progress through the book from one webpage to another. Other things like animations and page flipping etc. can be turned off, so those things are customizable but on battery thing I'll check again even I remember that the pagination interface with full animations run on 60 FPS or higher. There are probably some areas on the renderer where we can improve or may be use Houdini instead to achieve native level of performance but I'm yet to explore those paths. Unused real estate -- I agree with you here. The new iPhones are significantly longer than the previous generations, and this exacerbates the problem. But I think it's not unfixable, thanks for the feedback!
      - XMPPwocky 8y ago
- lambda 8y ago
  > Our brains are wired Any time this phrase appears in an argument it's a good indication that I can ignore the argument. Our brains are not "wired." They are pretty malleable and adaptable, and while a lot of that happens during childhood, they do remain fairly malleable throughout life. While there are neural structures that are specialized for certain tasks genetically, it is incredibly unlikely that the form of the book has had any significant evolutionary effect that would lead to some genetic predisposition for a book compared to some other form of conveying written information. Books have only existed for a couple thousand years, but originally were quite expensive to produce and only available to the wealthy; mass market production of books has only happened for a couple hundred years. There are probably reasons why many people prefer physical books to e-books, but to make a claim that it's based on some kind of "wired" preference in our brains rather than practical factors like battery life, compatibility issues, screen refresh rates, or any of a number of other simple, practical explanations is a bit extreme, and would need to be backed up with some kind of evidence. I personally don't consume much in e-book form, but the reasons are because of DRM, ecosystem lock-in, poor formatting in e-books, and the like. I actually consume a lot more content electronically than I do in dead-tree form, but it happens to be web pages and DRM-free PDFs.
  - tzs 8y ago
    > While there are neural structures that are specialized for certain tasks genetically, it is incredibly unlikely that the form of the book has had any significant evolutionary effect that would lead to some genetic predisposition for a book compared to some other form of conveying written information It's the other way around. The book isn't better because we evolved for the book. The book is better because it evolved for us. The key difference between books and e-books is that books are 3D objects giving us a sense of location for the information contained therein that varies in a consistent, logical manner as we progress through the information. This allows us to use our spatial memory, which yes, we are hard-wired to have, to help remember the information in the book. We evolved for this kind of memorization and are good at it. Here's an interesting article on this: https://www.fastcompany.com/3009366/you-wont-remember-this-article-or-anything-else-you-read-online-unless-you-pr https://www.fastcompany.com/3009366/you-wont-remember-this-a... Some papers: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883035512001127 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088303551... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002253717180066X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002253717... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01449298308914479 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0144929830891447...
danso 8y ago
How have e-books changed copyright laws?
- marvindanig 8y ago
  Although on my parent comment I did not say e-books changed copyright law but assuming good-faith: Experience of gaming has been great. Experience of watching TV or movies is great. Experience of listening to music is great. Any high-end software on web has been great. But, e-books? Nope. Let's give them silly pesky files instead. Or let them buy hardware that's off the web. This is understandable because if I were on the lobbying side, I'll want to keep things like this only and send the market to believe and buy physical books instead. More control = more profit.
  - danso 8y ago
    I’m not following how the death of print books would lead to better copyright law.
    - marvindanig 8y ago
      books go native on web => ability to publish and update book on your own site just like a blog => my readers engage with me => meh copyright laws held by middlemen. ;-) you have something on your mind?
stinkytaco 8y ago
I work with ereaders and every so often a member of the press or community stakeholder will ask me when the book will die. My half joking response is: eventually, but not before I retire. I also have a prepared half-joke where I ask the person to think about the book like they might review a piece of technology. It's inexpensive, lightweight, durable, has a UI we've spent our whole life learning, is browsable and though not searchable, they've come up with some clever workarounds to make searching possible. It's also got a great screen resolution and the battery life is excellent. The book has a lot going for it compared to the ereader and it has a long life ahead of it.

mchannon 8y ago

As we have seen Apple (and to a lesser extent its direct competitors) bury its old-fashioned record label competitors, I think the print media industry is due for a similar (if smaller) revolution. There's probably nobody more frustrated by these sudden book shortages than the books' authors themselves. Being out of stock during the sweet spot of this year too often means the book sale will never be made. I'm working on a microbindery, which involves ultracheap one-off book runs in tiny distributed shops around the country, the operative idea being that instead of waiting six weeks for the next containerload of today's bestseller/tomorrow's pulp, whatever's out of stock can simply be knocked out in three hours and either picked up or mailed a short distance. Making a book (a real book) takes more than your $39 Deskjet, but it's not hard, or all that capital- or even labor-intensive. A single command line argument could convert a PDF to a perfect-bound novel or textbook, indistinguishable from the factories that produce books by the containerload but in massive MOQ's and haphazard sales and proof processes. Even if it costs $15 instead of $12 to print bestseller copy number n+1, that's still plenty of money left on the table if you're at the mercy of a massive 20th-century pulp mill in a different time zone, who can't be bothered with your last minute business.

marvindanig 8y ago
PDF is a file. Books are anything but. That’s a lazy alternative that did not succeed in 30 years. Why would that happen now?
- mchannon 8y ago
  PDF came out 25 years ago. Replace "PDF"/"Books" with "PNG"/"Photographs", or "MP3"/"Recordings", and you'll see how well that argument went over. One should make the argument via YouTube to double the irony. A group of hipster book snobs jealously guarding their century-old first editions are welcome to their hobby, but the mass media will blow right past them as soon as the economics are favorable. What's remarkable is how much more sophisticated 35mm film and vinyl are versus the old staid book. Why now? Consumers are getting fussier (I want what's hot now, not in 8 weeks), and production equipment is getting way cheaper. Laser printing costs (even quasi-consumer-level) have plummeted to the point where equipment manufacturers have to resort to gimmickry to keep their margins positive. While all the paper textbooks you've read to date probably originated roll-to-roll, I see laser (and the flexibility it offers) finally breaking into that market.

dmazin 8y ago

The most interesting tidbit from this article: paper sales are up, ebooks are down. “Publishers’ revenues from hardcover sales rose 3.5 percent in the first 10 months of this year, while revenue from digital books fell 3 percent in the same period, according to the Association of American Publishers.”

stinkytaco 8y ago
Ebooks leveled off at around 30-35% of sales a few years ago and are in slight decline. I work in libraries with ebooks and though our trend is still upward, that's more about unmet demand and the curve has leveled in the past two years. I think the market for ebooks will slowly grow as the technology improves, but it's a long way from overtaking the physical book.

Eridrus 8y ago

The pro-ebook comments here are surprising. I love ebooks, but they have some real drawbacks: you can't lend them, you can't switch platforms easily, their layouts are usually pretty limited, and they often screw up diagrams, etc. I wish we could solve the problems associated with ebooks, rather than having weird tribal wars about them.

readyp1 8y ago
To an extent, those drawbacks can be mitigated by software, namely Calibre[0]. There may be alternatives out there, but this is the particular piece of software I use. I'll do my best to address your concerns here. (N.B. I don't develop this software, nor am I paid to advertise it; I just like it and want to demonstrate some of its features here) While most books that I own are hard-copy, I have an old Kindle Touch from 2012 that I use fairly often. I've received a bunch of gifts in eBook form over the years, and want to be able to read them on my computer and other devices. Calibre natively supports getting eBooks to and from devices such as mine[1], and there's a plugin out there (not too hard to find, but I won't name it here just in case) that automatically strips DRM from files during the import-to-library process. Of course, you can also just import files from your computer, and it will de-DRM those as well. Calibre also has a built-in content server[2] that's pretty configurable and allows you to share with friends; it essentially whips up a website that lets you both read eBooks in browser and download them in whatever formats you have. You can also have it convert between most eBook formats and more[3]; you can be as granular as you want during the conversion process, or just use a default profile that comes with the software. Of course, you can also edit any format of eBook that you've imported into your library[4]. I haven't personally tried that feature, but it looks like you'd be able to manage diagrams. I realize that this is a fair amount of work to do on the consumer side to address the problems you've brought up, but as a multi-device reader (computers big and small, Kindle, phone), it does a great job without much hassle for me. [0]https://calibre-ebook.com/ https://calibre-ebook.com/ [1]https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#device-integration https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#device-integration [2]https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/server.html https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/server.html [3]https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#id6 https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/faq.html#id6 [4]https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/edit.html https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/edit.html