Blog post by publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin:
I had a chance this week to chat with a very smart person who works for a company that does a lot of business with book publishers. Some things articulated themselves in that conversation — one of my favorite collaborators, Mark Bide, has often observed that we “learn a lot by talking” — that seemed worth repeating for public consumption (while preserving the anonymity of my fellow conversationalist.)
Our conversation articulated five things worth repeating:
Future Of E Books
As a publisher from 1948 to the present and as a writer, currently a columnist, and owner of a very small publishing company, AND AS AN EBOOK USER, I’d like to add my remarks to the furor…I recently bought 15,000 EBooks to download in my KOBO for $8.00, they on a single disk and indexed.
Of course all of these are in the public domain but I as an insatible one- a day book reader for my long life, can assure you there are enough new and re-read in 15M books to last me a while!
Meanwhile, for my small publishing company CABELL HOUSE BOOKS I can take in an Ms. on disk, appraise it, and if readable and marketable, have it ready for EBOOKS in a week with no other editors than my wife and my self. Then it goes to my website She-Books or HE- Books or a third e market and sells for a limited price on disk, perhaps $9.95 at the most. For Luddists, I will print in my print-shop limited editions according to the demand and need. They will be EXPENSIVE.
I think the whole publishing industry if it survives at all will follow my suite and do the same…most will dismiss staff excepting a skeleton crew for EBOOK plus small expensive printings for the Luddists.
My self as READER and not as publisher calls up several books and reads them in tandem, returning to each as I like, and carrying a thousand of them in my KoBo. As BETTER machines appear ( I today converted to one that downloads without wires) I will buy them and use them.
I smile to think of the dilemma of huge houses(my first job was editor at Prentice Hall in 1957) which must face the facts. Gutenberg is smiling in that heaven above his print=house site in Alsace!
BILL COBBS [email protected]