Paper back books are dying but publishers are killing it themselves

Nomad Nemesis said:
so you are bitching because you can't get your book published? have you ever thought that your book might suck?

have you published anything?

you only send your 1st 3 chapters so not sure how you are wasting that much paper

also, ebooks are for queer ass hipsters.
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How did you get dubs with such a sunny disposition?
 
I imagine publishing books is a lot like making a movie, you go with safe genre topics that people usually buy, otherwise you don't make as much money/no money.
 
aldeniro78 said:
Ebooks are so much more convenient, in every way. I don't have to go to the bookstore and a lot of books are cheaper.

Plus, books are a pain in the ass.
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I moved recently. 180+ kgs of books is no fun to move around.
And the kindle is fantastic to read on, no eyestrain, comfortable to hold, holds a charge for weeks on end, it's just great. I wouldn't read on a tablet or a phone though, those screens just aren't meant for that.
 
Goodfoot said:
At the very least to throw at someone. Book costs $10 eReader $200ish
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My GF downloaded the Nook app on her phone, and now reads books off her phone. She really likes it. Most of the apps are free. I know the screens are smaller, but she got used to it real fast.
 
Yeah I got a ereader recently, it is awesome having so many books in such a small device, no eye strain either. I love the built in dictionary too, makes reading a lot quicker now.
 
sgt jumpy said:
I prefer paperbacks to ebooks, and I also think I shouldn't have to pay the full price of an ebook when digitally publishing is infinitely cheaper than on paper. If a book comes out hardback, you have to pay the same amount if you buy it digitally as if you bought the hardback. Ridiculous.
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This. No materials, no paper, no printing costs, no physical distribution, and it only takes a few hundred kilobytes of storage space on a server. If the price of the book was based on their cost plus a reasonable margin, it wouldn't bother me. If the author got a bigger piece of the pie for his works sold as e-books, it wouldn't bother me. Instead it's literally the same price as buying the physical book that had to be printed, bound, stored, and shipped out to a bookstore. That bothers me.
 
But, but, what happens when a solar flare destroys all technology, what will you read then????

Seriously, I like both. I can get ebooks easier, if you know what I mean, but with a paperback I don't have to charge it. So they both have perks.
 
I can hold an entire library worth of books on a device that fits in my hand and weighs less than a can of Coke. That fact right there makes me love e-readers. I still love actual, physical books, but they don't seem any more "real" than an ebook, at least not a new book. Sure, if you've got some old print edition of some classic that's been passed around and read by dozens of people through the years, that's one thing, but with new copies or new books?

I'll save physical books for those I'd actually want to display on my shelves (like my multiple copies of LOTR, my grandmother's hard-cover edition of the "Complete Shakespeare", etc.), and get e-books for the rest.

As far as the people going all doom and gloom about format obsolescence and not being able to power your device and therefore losing all your books, I say this. Odds are, if the format I have my books in becomes obsolete and no longer used, I'll convert my books into the best supported format, or I'll just download them in that format. If my device craps out, I'll buy a new one and load my books (backed up multiple times) onto that (takes about 10 minutes including the initial setup of the e-reader). If there's some natural/man-made disaster that renders all e-readers dead, chances are most electronic devices will be kaput and we'll have bigger things to worry about than my library being in an e-format.
 
I don't like e-books because I don't like shelling out cash for something I can't hold.
 
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i'm going to be self publishing a childrens book soon simply because i didn't want to deal with publishers, etc. This is more a project just to say i did it but it's vastly easier to just put it up online and sell it as an ebook. there will be a hard copy version but in short supply.

there's a price to pay to do it your way.
 
After I got my new phone (Samsung Note) I've bought and read a lot of books from Amazon.

Hella convenient to have my books everywhere I go. Reading from the phone feels no different then reading a small paper back book.
 
Nomad Nemesis said:
so you are bitching because you can't get your book published? have you ever thought that your book might suck?

have you published anything?

you only send your 1st 3 chapters so not sure how you are wasting that much paper

also, ebooks are for queer ass hipsters.
Click to expand...

Sells well enough on Amazon. I make more money selling Ebooks on Amazon than I would with a small publisher. I also keep most of the profit where as with a publisher they take a chunk. Also with a publishing house they make you pay the extra cost for unsold books. So basically if THEY FAIL to sell your book they take the loss out of your wages.

3 chapters x 10 every month is also a shit tonne of paper. You buy the paper, you buy the ink, you buy stamps and envelopes. Then you have to pay the return price as well. On top of that most of the time you pay the return price they don't even bother returning it so you have to decide whether to pay extra to pay for special protection so they have to to return it.

Added to that for some bizarre reason it takes most publisher 3 to 6 months to even reply to you. It's bizarre because even the few publishers who do accept emails still make you wait the same length of time. Here's the thing about that, most of them don't read beyond the synopsis and first few pages before deciding whether to reject the book or not. So really that should shorten time. Look at what I can do in the one month. I can scroll around Amazon, download, judge and leave a review for plenty of books in that same period, and I'm not even being paid for it. Yet they can't be arsed to print out a bunch of duplicate emails till 3 months? What job would you work in today where they would accept a 3-6 month waiting period to send something by post? Or hell even email. Email's even easier. As I said they read very little of the story beyond a page or the synopsis. Why does it take 3 month to return an email? Why would anyone in any industry (partnership) work with someone who takes 3 months to respond to an email.

It's not like publishers really get loads of books in every day. Only a small percentage of the local population would actually be seriously sending books in to get published. They like people to think it's a lot more, but in reality your local burger king probably got more applications today than they do query letters. Nor does it make sense for the main branch of Penguin books and a local small publisher near me to have the same waiting period to reply.
 
There is place for both of them in my world.
 
Goodfoot said:
Can't stand ebooks. Honestly paperback is the way to go. There's no DRM, you own the book outright. Its not a hard cover so you don't have to pay as much $$ or worry about the binding so much. You can throw them at people, loan them out. Having a real book is just so much better. Except when you have to move. Then books suck. But other than that, they are good.
In the future when things are shit, there will be no literature left besides what has been written down. Eventually there will be a time when there be no way to power the device you use as an ebook, the format will change and become obselete, or the books you have become considered subversive and they get remotely deleted even if somehow power and formatting issues don't come up. Keep books real!
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What if an asteroid hits the Earth and burns all the books?
 
I read so much more now that I have a kindle app on my phone, before I'd only read at home, not wanting to look like a dork carrying around a book everywhere. Now when I'm at work on the shitter I have tons of books with me
 
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