It’s been an astonishing year in digital publishing!
What’s happening behind the scenes of those appealing e-books on your new e-reader? Look at events occurring right this minute in the chaotic world of reading:
- Authors and publishers are arguing — “What do you mean, you pay authors only a 25% royalty? My book is priced at only 99 cents!”
- Publishers are suing each other — “Hold it. You can’t publish that book as an e-book.” “Oh yes I can.”
- E-book publisher pricing tactics are being investigated — Is Apple getting commissions from publishers over e-book pricing for iPad? Is that illegal? The Justice Department will let you know.
- Authors are bypassing publishers (or are they?) because it’s the “age of self-publishing” — But authors must now deal with editing, formatting, cover art, metadata, and marketing by themselves.
- Publishers are thinking up new ways to steer the money back toward themselves — *Charging* patrons to borrow public library books will make it more inconvenient to borrow from the library instead of buying from the publishers.
But changing times = new ideas, too!
- Hybrid Books — Use the QR code on the print book to access extra material about the book, including gorgeous color images that would be too expensive to print
- Make the print books really beautiful — One new direction for publishers is creating books that are also art objects
- Tell your friends! — Now there are many, many ways to tell the world about books you liked (e.g., the Goodreads app, which works with most e-devices). The more people you tell, the happier you will make the entire reading community!
Thanks for this post that sums the situation up, Sue! Things are moving fast with technology, but about e-books publishers are still reacting with the mentality described in The Man in the White Suit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_White_Suit)
Isabelle.
Thank you for this awesome summary. It’s the “wild west” in the world of e-books–what a crazy, exciting time!