Tag: ebooks

The power in book recommendations

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books> ebooks

There’s been a lot of talk recently about just how hard it is for ebook sellers to duplicate the experience of book recommendations that independent bookshops and libraries provide. Earlier this week, I experienced again for myself just how powerful a personal recommendation can be.

The latest entry in Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling series was released on May 31. Kiss of Snow was her first hardcover release after 9 paperbacks. I pre-ordered the book from B&N, and, joy of joys, it automatically downloaded to my iPad a little after midnight on 5/31. There’s convenience for you! But I first started reading the series after the third book because a friend recommended it to me. She knew I read paranormal romance, and was pretty sure I would like the series. So, even though I had looked at the first book, Slave to Sensation, in the bookstore more than once, based on her personal recommendation I bought the book. And my friend was absolutely correct. I did love the book, and every single one since including the latest, which I devoured in between unpacking boxes earlier this week.

I am a subscriber to the Yahoo Group “Letters of Mary”, which is a list devoted to the works that Laurie R. King has written about Mary Russell and her husband Sherlock Holmes. The first book in the series is The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. (If this sounds interesting, read this post for more details about the series) Among the discussion in the Group, one of the more prolific authors uses a quote from Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache as her sig, “He…told him the four sentences that lead to wisdom. *I’m sorry. I was wrong. I need help. I don’t know.* He’d never forgotten them and when he took over as Chief Inspector, Gamache passed them on to each and every one of his agents. Some took them to heart, some forgot them immediately. That was their choice.” The quote is from the latest book in the series, Bury Your Dead, which recently won the Agatha Award for Best Novel of 2010. But at the time I kept seeing the quote, the book hadn’t won the award yet, it just caught my interest. Even though I had never met the person who used it as her sig, I respected her work in the group enough to take it as a recommendation of the series of books. The series, starting with Still Life, is really, really good. It is one of those mysteries where you start to wonder about the body count in the small town, but the character of Chief Inspector Gamache is definitely worth getting to know. I’m just sorry I have to wait until the end of August for A Trick of the Light, which is the next and seventh book in the series.

L.E. Modesitt’s Imager is a book that I practically shoved at people. A lot of fantasy series are coming-of-age stories. In this particular case, although the hero does come into his power, it is specifically not a coming-of-age story–the protagonist is already an adult, although just barely. It was one of the things about the book I liked quite a bit. So, I recommended it, over and over. A friend in the next office at my LPOW read fantasy, I knew he liked Ray Feist’s Magician series, so I convinced him to read this. We ended up practically fighting over the library’s copies of books 2 and 3 of the series, Imager’s Challenge and Imager’s Portfolio, and had endless conversations about how we thought the story ought to go. He also started reading the rest of Modesitt’s books (there are LOTS) which I haven’t gotten around to yet. I will definitely read Scholar, the next Imager book, in November.

My point is that a significant number of book purchases came from three recommendations. My friend told me to read one Nalini Singh book. I ended up buying 10 so far since the series is still ongoing. One person on the “Letters of Mary” group effectively recommends the Louise Penny books in her sig file, and because of that, Galen and I have both read all 6 books in the series so far, and have continued to recommend them to others. I read Imager, recommended it to at least two other people, and I know one has read all of the Imager series, and the other has started reading all of Modesitt’s work, which consists of 56 books and rising according to Wikipedia.

Book recommending is a virtuous circle, the trick is in figuring out how to start it.

BEA, Google and the future of books

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books> ebooks

In other news this week, Book Expo America (BEA) has been happening in New York City. And the hot topic for the week has been–surprise–ebooks! That’s not to say that the usual business of the show, the distribution of galleys for upcoming books, particularly lit fic, did not occur, but the biggest buzz seems to have been around the topics of ebooks and ebook selling, and how to replicate the experience of bookstore handselling in an increasingly ereader- and online-driven world.

Books, whether print books or ebooks, are sold in only a few ways. You have read the author previously, and you like their work, so you buy the next one. (Baen books exploits this by giving away the first couple of ebooks in their authors’ series for free in the Baen Free Library.) The book appears on a bestseller list, so you know that other people are reading and recommending it, so it might be worth reading. A friend or colleague recommends it, otherwise known as “word-of-mouth”. You go to a bookstore and someone there recommends it, known as “handselling”. Librarians also hand0-recommend books. Last, you go to a “bricks and mortar” bookstore and browse the shelves where you see the book, find the cover interesting, read the cover blurb, and decide to take a chance and buy the book.

According to the reports from BEA, that last one, the serendipitous discovery, is also the way that most people decide to purchase ebooks as well. My favorite comment was a quote from David Steinberger, the CEO of Perseus. He said that, “What e-book sellers have now, is a system that’s ‘good for hunters, but not as good for gatherers’: it’s easy to find a book if you know what you’re looking for, but the virtual world offers nothing for the casual browser comparable to the bricks-and-mortar experience.”

However, for the ebook producers, the revolution is a positive one. Sales are up. In fact, the mid-list sales are particularly up. Those hunters that Steinberger referred to are finding more of the stuff they are hunting for, because all those predictions about the long tail are not just working, but the long tail is even longer than predicted. And when hunters have the entire world to hunt in, niche publications turn out to have an even better chance of finding their audiences.

But that gets back to the question, “how do they know?” How does a new author get buzz? Amazon reported earlier this month, and the New York Times article about BEA echoed it today, that owners of ereaders buy more books. But how do they, how do we, decide which books to buy?

In the Publishers Weekly article about BEA, Tom Turvey, Google’s own director of strategic partnerships,  asked why “all book recommendation engines suck before answering his own question: “there isn’t an algorithm that can compete with a competent, real-life bookseller.” Something that could easily be added here is a competent, real-life librarian.

There are a lot of long-term issues here all the way around. Independent bookstores do a terrific job of handselling, but their ability to link into ebook selling is lagging behind. They can partner with Google Books (Powell’s Bookstore does) but Google doesn’t allow the independents to advertise, at least not yet. However, discovery on the Google bookstore is less than optimal, as I have discovered myself. If I know what I want, it works fine. If I’m browsing from my iPad, I use Barnes and Noble–their bricks and mortar experience helps a lot.

Part of the BEA story was that children’s books have not seriously moved toward ebooks as yet. Picture books just don’t lend themselves to the format, and if the goal is to read with a child, cuddling up with the kid on your lap to read from an ereader while looking at the pictures together just doesn’t work yet.

Another piece of the BEA story concerned regional availability. The publishers are still hung up on the idea that some books can only be sold in certain parts of the world, even when that world is online. There was some understanding that this concept’s days are numbered. I sincerely hope so. In the bad old days, meaning pre-amazon.co.uk, Terry Pratchett’s books used to come out 6 months earlier in the UK than they did in the US. I don’t know how much revenue his US publisher lost to the UK the first couple of years after it became relatively easy for fans to simply order the new book from amazon.co.uk if you were willing to have it shipped. But the 6 month delay nonsense stopped pretty quickly. If I am willing to pay for an ebook, and an ebook exists in English, and is available for sale in Canada or Australia or the UK, but is not available for sale in the US, my first question is going to be why can’t I buy it here? My second question is going to be how can I solve this problem?

One last interesting possibility. Google threw out a teaser that they might rent ebooks a la Netflix. Is that the good news, or the bad news?

The hits to the book just keep on coming

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Amazon> ebooks

There  have been a lot of announcements this week that have made an awful lot of folks in an awful lot of places sound like Chicken Little announcing that, “the sky is falling, the sky is falling!”

In Publisher’s Weekly, there was a report that ebook sales were up 169% in January and February 2011 over previous year sales, and that March was also up 145.7%. In real money, for the first quarter of 2011, e-book sales were up 159.8%, to $233.1 million for the 16 publishers who report figures to the American Association of Publishers (AAP). And mass market paperback sales were only $123.3 million for the first quarter for the same group. Still money I’d like to have in my pocket, but the trend line is pretty clear.

Also yesterday, Amazon announced that sales of Kindle books have outstripped sales of hardcover and paperbooks combined.  For every 100 print books that they sell, they sell 105 Kindle books. And Amazon was very clear in the announcement that they meant sell, not give away.  Free Kindle books were not included in that 105 number, only actual sales. It does seem to include sales of Kindle books where there is no print edition, but that would be perfectly fair, since the print sales would include books where there is no Kindle edition. As Amazon points out, the Kindle was only introduced in November 2007. This revolution has happened in only 3.5 years.  Gutenberg must be absolutely spinning in his grave.

Ironically, the place I first saw the announcement was on aarlist2, a yahoo group that discusses romance novels. And most of the commentary was negative.  This is ironic because the romance genre readership as a whole has embraced electronic publishing, and there are several publishing houses that are e-only. Harlequin‘s entire current catalog is published simultaneously in epub and print, and they have an imprint (Carina Press) that is e-only.

Which brings me to the third announcement of the week. Early in the week, Library Journal and NetGalley announced that LJ would be including reviews of ebook only releases in Xpress Reviews, starting with romance.  Romance ebooks are the hottest genre among ebook readers in public libraries.  At my LPOW, romance ebook circulation was double-plus the next nearest contending genre. Anything I purchased circulated, and the hotter, the better. But without any review source whatsoever, I was purchasing based on tiny blurbs in OverDrive. It was pretty much guesswork. Getting something out there in the review space should be a good thing. (Full disclosure, I am one of the reviewers for LJ)

As a side note to the Amazon announcement, they also touted that the new Kindle with Special Offers, in other words, the Kindle with lots of advertisements, is now the best selling Kindle on the market. In order to save $25, people are willing to have ads pushed at them with their books. Indefinitely. There is an article in the latest issue of Fast Company about Morgan Spurlock’s new movie. The article is called, “I’m with the brand,” and it’s all about how product placement works in movies and TV. This new Kindle is just more of the same, except it’s not just a one hour TV show or a two hour movie, it’s every book ever read on it. I’d pay an extra $50 to be let out. But then, that’s why I bought an iPad. I only have to gaze at the little Apple every once in a while.

Reading is a solitary pursuit

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books> ebooks

Reading is generally a solitary pursuit, but there are exceptions. I started to write that people who love to read generally learned by being read to as a child. I realized that the other way of learning to love reading is by using books as a way of retreating from the world. Losing yourself in books can become a very safe haven for a child who is lonely, bullied, or just plain different in some way. A lot of us who read science fiction and fantasy probably came to it that way.

Audiobooks are not necessarily a solitary experience. Anyone within earshot can listen. This is particularly true on long car trips. But not everyone enjoys listening to a book. I can’t drive long distance without one, and I prefer not to drive anywhere familiar without, not even for fifteen minutes. Yes, there’s radio. NPR talk is good. Classical music puts me to sleep. I love Classic Rock, but the thing about Classic Rock is that they’re not making any more of it, and I already own what I like. I’d rather have someone tell me a story, and there we are, back to audiobooks.

But reading a book is something one generally does alone.  There are some notable exceptions. For example, neither of us is allowed to read Terry Pratchett in bed.  Sir Terry is simply too laugh-out-loud funny. Laughing out loud is detrimental to the good night’s sleep of the party on the other side of the bed. Even a suppressed laugh, if there are enough of them, is problematic at 2 or 3 am.

Reading on an iPad in the wee hours has some advantages. It provides its own light.  This is much better than a bedside lamp.  This is good. But last night, one of the unintended consequences of sharing ebooks turned up.

As the collection has been weeded, we have sold as many books as possible to Powell’s Books in Oregon. This has built us a nice credit balance, which can be used online at Google Books. This is pretty terrific. Since Galen and I “married” our book collections a long time ago, we fully intended to share the credit balance, without worrying about whose books generated how much of it. But the whole balance happened to be tied to his Gmail account. So, the Google Books account also got tied to his Gmail account, which is, of course, not shared.

Back in the olden days of print books only, sharing a credit account like this would be easy. We’d each order books until it was gone. A book is a book. Some we would both read, like the Hunger Games, or Native Star by M.K. Hobson, and some only one of us would read. But it wouldn’t matter.  Now it matters.  The credit account can only be tied to one Google identity at a time. So we’re going to have to switch it back and forth to use it. It’s a nuisance that doesn’t exist with “dead tree” books.  And yes, we will pass the iPads back and forth. And we’ll set up a new account at Powell’s for the next batch of books we sell.

What amazes me most is that the “olden days” when we set this account up are less than three years ago.

Are eTBRs easier to forget?

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books> ebooks


A thread in rec.arts.sf.written that was discussing the merits of ereaders vs. “dead tree” books raised some interesting corollary questions that don’t seem to have anything to do with the technology per se.  They seem more like unintended consequences.

Bookshelves have inherent browsability. Many people commented on the pleasure involved in just looking at the books they have, and seeing what is available to read, or re-read. I know that’s true for me. Also, there’s the added benefit of thinking that Galen might like something, and knowing that I have it and can simply go to the shelf and pull it out, even at 2 am. He can read it or not, because it’s already here. John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War is a book I know I introduced him to, because I had the whole series on hand. Likewise, Tanya Huff’s Valor series. Not all my introductions go that well, but when it works, it really works. There’s just something about handing someone a book that you know they will absolutely love, and then watching them just absorb it, and by absorbed by it, that is simply marvelous.

Handing over my Nook doesn’t quite have the same feel to it. It only contains my B&N stuff, not the rest of my ebooks on my iPad. And it duplicates everything–so it includes all the trashy romance novels, not just the book I want to give Galen to read.  I’m not sure who is going to be more embarrassed!

And, as someone on the list pointed out, it is much easier to lose your TBR list on an ereader than it is in the “flesh”.  A physical TBR pile has weight and heft–it piles up–sometimes literally.  My remaining “dead tree” TBR pile takes up three bookcases, plus the 200 or so books that were interfiled during the last move we made. And it continues to increase in my B&N wishlist, since that’s where I keep it.

But my ereader TBR list is even more invisible. The Locus Awards finalists were announced last week.  Connie Willis duology Blackout/All Clear was nominated Best Science Fiction Novel, and it was already moving up my TBR list after having been nominated for the Hugo last month. Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest book, Under Heaven, was nominated for Best Fantasy Novel, and it has been hiding on my Nook and then my iPad for over a year. I usually read him as soon as his stuff comes out, but the ebook was too easily buried compared to a physical object.

I’m discovering that the less obvious a TBR is, the more likely it is to wind up on a back burner. My library books get read first because they have the highest nuisance value. I do not mean that in any negative way, merely that there are so many built-in reminders. I keep them easily visible on the kitchen counter, so I don’t lose track of them. They have to be renewed, and I can only renew them so many times. If someone else wants them, I can’t renew them at all. Of course, any library books from here are going to have to be shipped back if I haven’t finished them before we move, and I’ll have to pay for shipping. Physical books that are on countertops are more in the way, and are more likely to get read next. Books in those TBR bookcases in the living room just cry out “read us first!”. The TBR bookcase in the Florida Room is “out of sight” and therefore, “out of mind”.  The TBRs that got interfiled have blended into the books I have already read.  Finding out there were over 200 of them was quite a shock.  The eTBRs are just a tiny part of my iPad. Compared to all the other books clamoring for my attention, they’re almost invisible.

So many books, so little time.

Will ebooks kill print books?

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | ebooks

What a question!

This is the title of a very provocative essay by John Dvorak recently posted on PCmag.com.  His premise is that ebooks will serve as a sampling device for print books, and that publishers, in spite of their current “chickens crying that the sky is falling” behavior, will not just survive, but actually become more profitable in the long run.

Why?  Because as been noted in multiple sources already, including Amazon, ebook purchasers buy more ebooks.  It’s less expensive than a hardback for the consumer, and it’s way easier.  Then there’s that instant gratification factor.  People who want to read something NOW, get the ebook. 

But Dvorak’s contention is that collectors and book lovers will pick up a print version for the books they really, really want to own.  In other words, that people will use the ebook as a sampling service.  That some categories, like beach reading, may switch to mostly electronic, but types where a person will collect or want to refer back, book lovers will actually purchase a print copy of something they truly love after they have read it in electronic.

This is an extension of the library borrowing phenomenon, where library users sample an author by borrowing the book from the library, then if they like the book, start buying.  Bookstores locate themselves near libraries by this logic. One of my FPOWs had two major bookstores plunk themselves down within two blocks of its main library for this very reason.

Also, very few old technologies really get killed by new ones.  The old ones just morph and find a new niche.  CDs did not kill LPs, actually LPs are on the rise again.  Now 8-track is pretty dead, and cassette looks like it’s going the way of the dinosaur.  But radio found a niche of its own.  TV didn’t kill movies, although the economy may be another thing.  But that’s not one technology wiping out another, that’s something different entirely.  The Great Recession is wrecking havoc all over the place.

But speaking of old technologies that never die–I was directed to the Dvorak piece by a link from rec.arts.sf.written.  This is the linear descendant of a Usenet news group devoted to the discussion of written science fiction.  It is now a Google group, but it has been active since practically the dawn of Internet time.  And it’s still going strong.  And still acting on it’s original purpose, the discussion of written science fiction.  Yes, it digresses.  But no more than any other discussion by any other group of somewhat like-minded individuals. And the link to Dvorak’s essay isn’t much of a digression.  Whether written SF will be available in ebook only or print or both is pretty much on topic, and, the whole concept was presaged in Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, which is very much SF.

But widespread email and RSS feeds and Facebook haven’t killed Usenet.  The new technologies did not wipe out all trace of the old.  The useful and relevant parts adapted and carried on.  In fact, the amount of Usenet traffic has steadily increased in the past 15 years.  Ebooks most likely won’t wipe out print books either.  As one of the rec.arts.sf folks pointed out, endpaper maps on a Kindle are sheer torture.  They are better on an iPad, but then, it’s easy to be better than absolutely putrid.  The technology for ebook readers and iPads will get better, but my big illustrated Lord of the Rings and complete annotated Sherlock Holmes canon are still better in print form.  And probably will be for quite a while.

A visit to Murphyspace

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | ebooks> house hunting

Yesterday, the latest Sookie Stackhouse book by Charlaine Harris was released.  I wanted to read it.  So, of course, I bought it from B&N and tried to download it to by iPad into my Nook app.  No go.  Then I realized that the other two books I had purchased on Monday weren’t there either.  Uh Oh!  I tried downloading them again, and they wanted to open in any available app except Nook.  I thought, “Okay, fine,” and downloaded them into the Overdrive app.  Since Overdrive released a native iPad app, it’s a perfectly good ebook reader.  I regularly use it for epub titles I purchase from places that don’t have an app of their own. (I use Bluefire for PDFs)

Meanwhile, everything looked like it downloaded to Overdrive, but the book wouldn’t open.  And did I mention that I had reached insomnia point by the time I figured out that the book wasn’t actually there?  Also, my iPad suddenly decided it had no network.  Our house has two wireless networks, and I have 3G on the iPad.  If my iPad drops off the net, it’s seriously unwell.  But at post-midnight, I wasn’t going to look into it too deeply, especially since every time I left the bedroom to investigate, the cats all started thinking that I might be willing to play with them, or at least provide lap space.  But really, I was just getting more and more annoyed, and less and less sleepy.

Brilliance is generally in short supply at that hour of the night.  I just wanted to start my book!  I resorted to my trusty Nook.  Yes, the real thing.  It still had a charge after more than a week unplugged, and it found the 3G network just fine.  I downloaded Dead Reckoning and settled in for a couple of chapters.

But my misbehaving iPad was still a problem this morning.  At least it found a network in the morning.  Maybe it needed a night’s sleep more than I did, but that didn’t solve any of the problems with the Nook app.  I guessed that the iPad needed a serious update, probably something to do with Apple getting hinky about apps wanting to sell things without the iStore getting a cut, or a move in that direction.  And so the fun began.  It refused to update.  Four times.  The update kept losing the network, somewhere in the middle of the hour-plus download.  I discovered that not only does the watched pot never boil, neither does the watched update. I shut everything down except the upload and moved to my laptop. Then I left the house!  It finally updated while I was out.

For anyone thinking that print books don’t do this, print books also don’t let you decide to purchase the book at midnight, and keep downloading to alternate devices until one of them finally decides to play ball.  Midnight cravings for particular treats can’t be satisfied until the next day.  Whether they should be, well, your mileage may vary.

Murphy wasn’t done with me yet.  Late this morning I called the property management company about the house we were hoping to rent in Atlanta.  The owner is suddenly not so sure about renting to four cats.  Last week, when we were there and could keep looking, it was okay.  This week, he’s not so sure.  Unless we get a “yes” by tomorrow, we’re going back to Atlanta this weekend to find a house.  Second verse, same as the first.

Murphy is laughing at us.

Snowball careening downhill–look out below!

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Amazon> ebooks> OverDrive

In the April 27 Industry News from Publisher’s Weekly, Amazon reported that sales in their ebook division jumped 63% in the first quarter of 2011.  That was pretty much their good news.   Their bad news, underlaying a certain amount of spin, was that even though revenues were up across the board, their actual income was down.  What’s up with that?  Amazon is investing in even more technology and more infrastructure to meet ever-increasing demands.

According to the report, Kindle owners are larger-volume ebook buyers than non-Kindle owners.  That can’t be a surprise, considering that Kindle owners are locked into purchasing ebooks from Amazon.  This is a marketing strategy that is older than dirt, after all.  The earlier version went something like this: “the razor is cheap, it’s the blades that are expensive.”  The new, cheaper advertising-supported Kindle is being released early in order to take even greater advantage of this.

Amazon’s recent announcement that they will provide Kindle format ebooks via Overdrive is also part of this strategy.  Up until this week, Kindle owners couldn’t borrow ebooks from their libraries.  Now, they know they will soon be able to, for an admittedly undefined value of soon.  This eliminates a clear advantage that Barnes and Noble’s Nook had.  However, to recap the latest round of the ereader wars, B&N just announced a major upgrade to the color Nook that pushes it way above just an ereader.  The review of the new color Nook in this morning’s USA Today shows that the new Color Nook is more of a baby Android powered iPad than just an ereader.

But back to the point about Kindles, what this means is, more reasons for people to buy Kindles or fewer reasons for people not to buy Kindles, so, more Kindles out there.  And Kindle owners buy more ebooks from Amazon than non-Kindle owners, however else they might get their ebooks.  The announcement about the Amazon/Overdrive deal got an amazing amount of press for something relating to libraries, but it was all related to the fact that the name “Amazon” was in it.  Amazon got a lot of mindshare out of something that will probably cost them next to nothing.

It’s also clear from the sheer numbers that ebook buyers actually buy more books than print book buyers.  No surprise there.  If you are sitting in an airport, shopping for ebooks before your flight, guessing what you’ll like, there is a certain amount of glee at the sheer ease of purchasing without having to think of carrying the things.  There are other factors.  Ebooks are still generally cheaper than hardcovers, Michael Connelly notwithstanding.  There is also the instant gratification factor that simply can’t be underestimated.

What does this mean for libraries?  Just Amazon saying that Kindle users would be able to borrow ebooks from libraries generated huge press, even without specifics.  Demand for ebooks, which is already huge, is going to skyrocket.  The amount of general interest press that covered the Amazon announcement showed that ebooks and ereaders have reached well beyond techies and young people and whatever early adopter market people might have thought and spread well into general users everywhere.  For anyone who doubts this, next time you travel, while you are at the airport waiting for your flight, just look around at the number of people reading on ereaders or iPads vs. “dead tree” books.  The percentage will be 1/3 or more.

Many public libraries have the collection philosophy “give ’em what they want”.  It is due to that philosophy that we have invested heavily in best selling fiction, and moved as deeply as we have into AV material.  But ebooks seem like a whole new ball game in some ways.  Especially since we are trying to divide a budget pie that is shrinking into an increasing number of pieces, and ebooks are just another piece.  The same title is now demanded in print, large print, audiobook, ebook, and eaudio, and multiple copies of each.  Meanwhile the demands for DVDs, music and children’s material certainly have not gone away.  Because ebooks are new, it can seem simplest not to invest, or not to invest a lot, to say that there isn’t enough demand in the community, or that the library can’t afford it. Or that people still want print books, not ebooks.  But if you build a good ebook collection, they will come.  It takes time and money.  Unfortunately, those are the two commodities no library seems to have enough of these days.

However, the demand for ebooks is like the proverbial snowball rolling down the hill and picking up speed, as well as rocks and twigs, as it rolls down.  If your library has that philosophy of “give ’em what they want”, then ebooks are looking more and more like what a significant segment of the public wants. The trick will be smoothing the rocks and twigs out of that snowball as we give it to them.

Why I’m willing to pay for ebooks

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | ebooks

Please don’t get me wrong, I like to get things for free as much as the next person.  But the word free has multiple meanings.  Free as in kittens, or free as in beer being two well-known examples.  Free kittens usually have long-term ancillary costs, such as food, vet bills, love, grief, scratched furniture, frayed electrical cords, aggravation, additional rent or security deposits, etc., etc., etc.  I am intimately familiar with this particular definition of “free”.  Free beer is free, unless you buy the next round.  But beer, well, someone gives you a beer, you drink it, it’s over.

Should ebooks be free because there are no costs to print, warehouse and transport them?  Ebooks don’t require a physical bookstore with rent and light bills and heating and A/C to sell them.  So they should be free, right?

What goes into the creation of a book?  Not the container, the content.  The book has to be written.  That’s a creative process on the part of the writer, or writers.  Whether the book is printed or electronic, the actual creation doesn’t change for the creator.  They have to invest time in that creation, whether it’s invention, research, or a combination of the two.  If the reading public desires more, the authors need to be compensated for their time, otherwise, they will have to find a different way to make a living.  There are people who write their first book, or first couple of books, in their spare time from a day job that pays the bills.  But they write a lot fewer books than folks whose full time job is writing.

There are other parts of the process that would still need to go on, even in an all ebook world.  Editing is important!  Editing doesn’t have anything to do with whether a book is print or electronic, it has to do with making a book better.  Everyone who reads a popular authors’ work over time can tell exactly when that author stopped being edited.  The books get longer, and they are less “tight” and not quite as good.  I call it “describing the wallpaper”.

Crystal Dragon coverDragon Variation coverBooks sell better with covers.  Library books circulate better with covers.  Ebooks will probably sell better with good cover art.  A quote from science fiction editor Lou Anders in the January issue of Locus Magazine probably said it best. “I won’t buy a book with a crappy cover, and I am finding I won’t buy an e-book with one either.  E-books need to have compelling cover art…”   A picture really is worth a thousand words.  While there is a print edition, the print cover is used to sell the ebook.  When there is no print edition, the publisher has to create cover art.  Good cover art sells books.  Cover art is produced by artists, who are also creators who need to get paid for their work.

One of the things that has turned into a brave new world for everyone is promoting books, especially works by new authors.  How does anyone decide to spend money on someone they’ve never heard of?  It turns out that people are browsing “bricks and mortar” bookstores but buying ebooks.  We look, we touch, we click.  It turns out that Barnes and Noble had a really great idea when they allowed Nook users to browse the entire bn.com while they were inside a B&N store, just like you can sit and read any book on the shelf, as long as you don’t leave the store.  Sampling is good.

Books sell a lot by word of mouth.  I like a book, I tell everyone I know.  Blogs and lists and Facebook multiply that effect.  But how to get that ball rolling?  Different channels of promotion have been created.  Publishers need people to work those channels.  It’s an investment in keeping the company in business, so that it can, in turn, discover new writers, and promote them, which feeds my addiction to reading.

But I expect to pay less for an ebook than a hardcover, and so do most people.  Instinctually, the fact that there is no thing that I can hold, no physical piece that has to be toted and shipped and stacked and stocked, means that it should cost less than a hardback.  Also, I can re-sell or give a hardback (or paperback) away when I’m done.  An ebook still feels slightly ephemeral.  And Amazon or B&N can take it away without my consent if things go awry, and Amazon has done this in one famous case. (1984 anyone?)  When Michael Connelly’s latest best seller, The Fifth Witness, initially cost more on the Kindle than it did as a hardcover, Amazon users revolted by giving the book one star reviews and vowing to either wait or purchase it in hardcover elsewhere.  The Kindle price has since dropped below the hardcover price.

I’m willing to pay for the creative process.  I want more books that I want to read, and I expect to pay for that privilege.  One way of voting for which books I want to read more of is with money.  But not an unreasonable amount of money.  If I buy an ebook, I’m not willing to pay for the storage costs of the print book, since I didn’t purchase that and I’m not getting the benefits that go with buying a physical item.

Free ebooks make great teasers.  The freebies exist as introductions to new authors, or series.  They are designed to get me hooked, so that I will then purchase more books by the same author.  It is supposed to be a win-win.  If I don’t like the book, I’ve lost nothing but a little time.  If I like it, I’ll buy more, and the author and publisher win.  But I am willing to pay.

Whither used books?

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | books

Over the weekend, the great weeding project of 2011 finally got started.  This is a fairly daunting task, as this is an 1,800 sq. ft house, and there are books in every room except the laundry room.  At least, I’m pretty sure there are no books in the laundry room.  When we moved here, we rented a house this size in order to finally have enough room to shelve all the books.  And, we still didn’t make it past the letter R.

In about a day and a half, Galen and I went through 935 books, shifted over 600, and boxed over 300.  The process temporarily halted at the late, and sometimes great, Robert A. Heinlein. 

Library Thing LogoWe’ve added everything to Library Thing, whether we’ve kept it or not, and tagged it appropriately, hence the statistics.  (If anyone is interested in our process, just ask)  The fascinating thing about the listings has been the automatic suggestions that the collection has generated.  So many of the suggestions are books that we do have, they are just later in the alphabet.  But the others, well, just what I needed, a neat new toy to play with that will generate even more TBRs. 

The question about what to do with the books we have weeded, and why we are weeding them, circles back to the questions about the aftermarket of used books in general.  These are books.  They are still readable, and someone can still get still get lost in them.  But how do we effectively get rid of this many?  And what happens to used book stores and sales in the future, when more and more readers like us read ebooks instead of paper.  The news last week showed that ebooks sold more than print books in February.  We, the reading public, have reached the tipping point.

The Friends of the Library here is having their semi-annual book sale this weekend.  It is a five-day event that will probably bring in over $150,000 for the group.  They are extremely successful, rightfully so, and fund literacy projects in the community in addition to the work they do with the local library.  What happens to groups like this in 3-5 years when readers no longer have book collections to donate?  People will still want books to read, but where will those books come from?  I suspect I am like many ebook readers, in that what I am interested in is the content and not the container.  But I can’t re-sell or donate my used ebooks when I am done with them.  The long term implications of this trend are staggering.

Powells LogoMeanwhile, we have a “metric buttload” of books to get rid of, and it’s growing nightly.  The local used book store will only give cash for hardcovers and trade paperbacks, with a store credit for mass market paperbacks.  While I understand their position, since we are leaving for Atlanta in six weeks, a store credit doesn’t help much.  Powell’s Books in Portland, OR will buy books online based on the ISBN.  Admittedly, Powell’s is also giving a store credit, but the store is online, so it is much easier to spend.  And they now do ebooks through the Google bookstore.  We still haven’t used the credit from last time, but we’re going to do that again. With the addition of the ebook option, the credit won’t last long.

Book Mooch logoI’m also going to try Book Mooch for some of what Powell’s doesn’t take.  This is a service where you get credit for listing your books, and you pay shipping to send the book to the person who wants it, and get credit for that transaction, too.  In return, I can receive books I want from other people, based on my accumulated credit.  A friend recommends this service, so I’m interested in trying it, especially for the long term possibilities.  There are just too many books in the short term to deal with the shipping charges–success might be it’s own punishment!

We will not throw any books away.  Whatever we can’t send to Powell’s or doesn’t look like a candidate to be Mooched will go to the Friends of the Library as soon as they re-open for donations.  It takes them a little while to recuperate after one of their sales extravaganzas.

I thought it would make it easier to pass along some of these books if I just kept a record of what I had read, but it isn’t.  Even reduced by a third, this will still be a big personal library.  And I recognize that some of these books are ones that I won’t pick up again, and that there is someone out there who will enjoy them if I let them go.  But damn, it’s hard.