![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI saw a link to this article on the local paper's website this morning, about the just-announced decision by marketing guru Seth Godin to go entirely e-book for the remainder of his publishing:
I've decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way. 12 for 12 and I'm done. I like the people, but I can't abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don't usually visit to buy something they don't usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that's hard to spread ... I really don't think the process is worth the effort that it now takes to make it work. I can reach 10 or 50 times as many people electronically. No, it's not 'better', but it's different. So while I'm not sure what format my writing will take, I'm not planning on it being the 1907 version of hardcover publishing any longer.
I've known Seth for a long time. His father was a client early in my career and his mother became a good friend of both Eleanor's and mine through our mutual love of art (she managed the gallery shop at the Albright). I've bought, been given or read many of his books, and this news now brings him to the forefront of discussion again.
While I'm okay with his conclusion, I'm not sure how much I agree with how he got there. Even in an all-e publishing universe, there will still be deadlines, pushes around release dates, readers being forced into unfamiliar routines to get their material. Just an absence of ink, brick and mortar- and likely to be followed by an absence of jobs, of talent, of know-how. I really wish we could find a way to lose an appropriate part of that first group without putting the second group at risk.
Then there's the QL737.P98 in the room that nobody's really discussing. How will the Seths of this world, but also the more mercenary authors in it, find a way to work libraries into their e-distribution? Will they be given disposable copies to transfer to borrowers' readers for fixed time periods? And where will those readers come from? In theory, it could end the concept of an "overdue" book with the stroke of a line of code, as the copy could simply vanish from the reader at the end of the reading period. (But then, doing so will also put an end to fines- a significant source of library revenue and one of the most reasonable and completely voluntary forms of taxation ever invented by man.)
I just hope he's not suggesting that libraries are part of the 1907 legacy we need to get away from- because, if anything in these difficult times, we need to be more supportive of common reading efforts, not less so.
I've decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way. 12 for 12 and I'm done. I like the people, but I can't abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don't usually visit to buy something they don't usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that's hard to spread ... I really don't think the process is worth the effort that it now takes to make it work. I can reach 10 or 50 times as many people electronically. No, it's not 'better', but it's different. So while I'm not sure what format my writing will take, I'm not planning on it being the 1907 version of hardcover publishing any longer.
I've known Seth for a long time. His father was a client early in my career and his mother became a good friend of both Eleanor's and mine through our mutual love of art (she managed the gallery shop at the Albright). I've bought, been given or read many of his books, and this news now brings him to the forefront of discussion again.
While I'm okay with his conclusion, I'm not sure how much I agree with how he got there. Even in an all-e publishing universe, there will still be deadlines, pushes around release dates, readers being forced into unfamiliar routines to get their material. Just an absence of ink, brick and mortar- and likely to be followed by an absence of jobs, of talent, of know-how. I really wish we could find a way to lose an appropriate part of that first group without putting the second group at risk.
Then there's the QL737.P98 in the room that nobody's really discussing. How will the Seths of this world, but also the more mercenary authors in it, find a way to work libraries into their e-distribution? Will they be given disposable copies to transfer to borrowers' readers for fixed time periods? And where will those readers come from? In theory, it could end the concept of an "overdue" book with the stroke of a line of code, as the copy could simply vanish from the reader at the end of the reading period. (But then, doing so will also put an end to fines- a significant source of library revenue and one of the most reasonable and completely voluntary forms of taxation ever invented by man.)
I just hope he's not suggesting that libraries are part of the 1907 legacy we need to get away from- because, if anything in these difficult times, we need to be more supportive of common reading efforts, not less so.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-08-29 05:18 pm (UTC)And yeah, I have the same problem: I want to be able to borrow that book from a library, and I do a lot of online reading and print copies are important to me. I'm moving a lot of periodical material at my library to online-only as part of a broader policy shift, and for the most part it works okay, but our empty periodicals shelves are so sad.
Maybe there's going to be room in the market for writers who go e-only to sign away print-on-demand rights to a particular vendor, so that libraries can still obtain print copies. I sure hope so, because while academic journals make sense in e-only format, I don't find myself reading novels online and I'm not feeling like starting.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-30 03:12 pm (UTC)ARGH.
You're right; deadlines will still be there. You still have to pay editors and designers. It's DIFFERENT, but it's not BETTER...and it's different in fewer ways than Godin seems to think. I can say that with absolute certainty, looking at it from the inside.
As for libraries - some have Kindles that they load with books and loan out. That's about as far as I've seen it go thus far.