Comments on Landless: E-books and great writing

meika said: The team, the social media is the filt...

2009-12-16T16:54:32.792-05:00

meika said: The team, the social media is the filter.

Exactly. Putting a book out there is the work of an hour. Having it take off and actual reach more than pure vanity press-type distribution, i.e. bought by people who are not your family and/or friends, you need to have a social circle to assist in spreading word of mouth. A sine qua non here is writing that is actually, well, good.

Bye bye publishing houses.

Perhaps not gone entirely, but they will exist as the editors and PR people that can improve and publicize a manuscript.

oh, and good books are produced by a group of peop...

2009-12-15T20:04:33.901-05:00

oh, and good books are produced by a group of people, there might be one writer, but to bring them to market takes a team.

The team, the social media is the filter.

Bye bye publishing houses. (And Good riddance to Rupert Murdoch I say).

ISBNs are a bad idea, firstly because they are a m...

2009-12-15T20:02:35.050-05:00

ISBNs are a bad idea, firstly because they are a misnomer, they are really publisher number with a print-run suffix for each book.

A real book ID number system has yet to be developed.

ISBNs are old tech thinking, designed for old-style print publishing, and mostly for the convienence of the publishing houses themselves.

The same book from two different publishers will have completely different numbers. Bad design.

The fact that they cost money for "administration" shows how silly they are.

Trev: I'm reminded of comments from people bemoani...

2009-12-15T15:35:15.816-05:00

Trev: I'm reminded of comments from people bemoaning the loss of tactile interaction, and deliberate thinking, etc. when going from a typewriter to a computer. Much of the dissatisfaction of the traditionalists will fade with the passing of the generational torch, and flipping screens will be as natural as turning pages.

Speaking of the form factor of e-readers, a fascinating study of the form factor of the book (pages, binding, spines, hard covers, etc.) is "The Book on the Bookshelf" by Henry Petroski. There are a lot of insights to be had in trying to predict what e-readers will look like in 20 years.

Change is always interesting. Over the last couple...

2009-12-15T15:07:26.709-05:00

Change is always interesting. Over the last couple days (Mon & Tues), I have seen several posts on the topic of ebooks and publishing. They make me nervous - I published a wee ebook Sunday afternoon.

I readily admit it's a Beta, perhaps even Alpha product. Truth is, I wanted to find out what it was like to go through the process, learn the technology, and plain and simple see what happens. Nothing gets done if you wait for perfection.

The idea that change is happening so rapidly is an important one. Innovation in products is most readily accepted when it closely resembles the existing form of the product. The fact that eReaders more closely resemble laptops or tablet computers is, I believe, alienating to traditionalists. Is the value a book the story, or is it the ink and paper?

The market is too large and too varied for a single solution, methinks.

Eva: I think there is a mindset that "real" books ...

2009-12-15T14:06:53.948-05:00

Eva: I think there is a mindset that "real" books still come on paper. I think that will have to change. The economics of processing and distributing thousands of tons of paper in order to put content into peoples hands is just crazy compared to the alternative.

Sarah: I agree, the mid-list as we know it will swell up like a star at the end of its life. It may continue like that, with a million authors each making a thousand dollars (rather than ten thousand authors making ten thousand each). At the high end will still be the blockbusters. At the low end, the mass of people who publish unedited, low-quality books will expand dramatically.

I could slap a book up onto Amazon's Kindle download service right now; that doesn't mean it would be worth buying, even a $0.99.

Eva I think that at the moment this is a developin...

2009-12-15T12:42:38.828-05:00

Eva I think that at the moment this is a developing market so some people will think that it isn't properly published but this number is growing smaller.

You can buy ISBNs and I think there are places you can get like single ones from resellers rather than having to buy a bundle. ISBNs just mean that the work can be referred to and searched/found easily - it does not denote quality.

Tony - I think that the amount of work people will have avalible means that groups will emerge - so instead of having over night success or even a slow climb to super stardom will no longer happen. There will be more medium level stuff - some of which may indeed gain a large following but it will be more akin to 1800's interlectualism than the media circus of today.

thankyou for posting

Saffy

One of the things that worries me is the e-book pu...

2009-12-15T12:21:34.608-05:00

One of the things that worries me is the e-book publisher who eschews ISBN numbers. One such publisher is interested in one of my books - but I'm afraid that it will be regarded as 'crap' of it doesn't have an ISBN. I also feel if I publish my book as an e-book it won't have the same status as a 'properly' published book. Does anyone have an opinion on this?