There May Be Cheese
There is more to this new HarperCollins publishing model, I'm sure. Maybe a lot more, maybe not a whole lot. One of my problems is that I don't trust them. Or credit card banks, mortgage companies, oil conglomerates or anyone else where there are too few companies competing for business. Market forces don't work the way they're supposed to when you have an oligopoly.
I've still yet to figure out why the G broke up AT&T and then allowed the Baby Bells to gradually re-merge. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, and he's better known as a dead writer than as a management guru, business is a competition of fraud. And he wrote that twenty years before the Civil War.
Apparently the new HarperCollins is considering offering free e- and audio books to the purchasers of their hardcovers. I like this idea: I read physical books but I also read e-books to rehabilitate my surgically repaired eye. I originally began this process by reading large-print books but I didn't want to build a library of them. If it was a book I thought I was going to like (and why else read it?) I wanted a "normal" copy. I switched to a Sony Reader which allows me to read thousands of public domain books--they don't cost me a dime. My book purchases are confined right where I want them: at conventional books.
It would be preferable to read the same book in both a hardcover and e-book format at the same time. I don't know that it would be compelling (an audio book doesn't do much for me -- they'd be good if I were driving long distances like I used to, but only if they were books I didn't want to actually read) but it would be convenient. And if they came with DRM embedded or were perceived to be an actual threat to the manufacture of real books, then I'd avoid them at all costs.
Is this paranoia? Quite possibly. If physical books ever actually go away, I'd like it to be because there is truly no market for them. My cold, unrelenting, blue steel fear is that the few companies that make up commercial publishing will declare that readers no longer want paper books, they want e-books (or f-books or g-books), and that's what they'll get. I've met too many people that have told me that books will soon be obsolete. Why? I ask them. Simply because we have the technology? There's not improvement here, just an option for a technological change. I'm afraid of publishing fiats and self-fulfilling prophecies.
Publish better books. Sell them at more reasonable prices. Sell e-books for a buck. All of these things would make more readers. More readers would make a better market. Wringing more money out of the existing customer base won't do this, nor will changing whether royalties are paid or books are sold on consignment. They could, in a way, but I don't think they're that enlightened. Instead of "giving them what they want," I feel like I'm listening to a multi-millionaire politician tell me what I as a citizen want. Ultimately I'm afraid they'd simply sell fewer books.
My world is very small. In many ways I wish it were smaller. I just want it to hold books and libraries and stories and writers and all the vicarious thrills and bits of knowledge and wisdom and adventure and mystery... I now buy used books the way I used to buy new books. They're about the same price as what I used to pay (especially with shipping) which means I can actually afford them. I'm already too far down the downhill slope.
I've still yet to figure out why the G broke up AT&T and then allowed the Baby Bells to gradually re-merge. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, and he's better known as a dead writer than as a management guru, business is a competition of fraud. And he wrote that twenty years before the Civil War.
Apparently the new HarperCollins is considering offering free e- and audio books to the purchasers of their hardcovers. I like this idea: I read physical books but I also read e-books to rehabilitate my surgically repaired eye. I originally began this process by reading large-print books but I didn't want to build a library of them. If it was a book I thought I was going to like (and why else read it?) I wanted a "normal" copy. I switched to a Sony Reader which allows me to read thousands of public domain books--they don't cost me a dime. My book purchases are confined right where I want them: at conventional books.
It would be preferable to read the same book in both a hardcover and e-book format at the same time. I don't know that it would be compelling (an audio book doesn't do much for me -- they'd be good if I were driving long distances like I used to, but only if they were books I didn't want to actually read) but it would be convenient. And if they came with DRM embedded or were perceived to be an actual threat to the manufacture of real books, then I'd avoid them at all costs.
Is this paranoia? Quite possibly. If physical books ever actually go away, I'd like it to be because there is truly no market for them. My cold, unrelenting, blue steel fear is that the few companies that make up commercial publishing will declare that readers no longer want paper books, they want e-books (or f-books or g-books), and that's what they'll get. I've met too many people that have told me that books will soon be obsolete. Why? I ask them. Simply because we have the technology? There's not improvement here, just an option for a technological change. I'm afraid of publishing fiats and self-fulfilling prophecies.
Publish better books. Sell them at more reasonable prices. Sell e-books for a buck. All of these things would make more readers. More readers would make a better market. Wringing more money out of the existing customer base won't do this, nor will changing whether royalties are paid or books are sold on consignment. They could, in a way, but I don't think they're that enlightened. Instead of "giving them what they want," I feel like I'm listening to a multi-millionaire politician tell me what I as a citizen want. Ultimately I'm afraid they'd simply sell fewer books.
My world is very small. In many ways I wish it were smaller. I just want it to hold books and libraries and stories and writers and all the vicarious thrills and bits of knowledge and wisdom and adventure and mystery... I now buy used books the way I used to buy new books. They're about the same price as what I used to pay (especially with shipping) which means I can actually afford them. I'm already too far down the downhill slope.
posted by Rick Ollerman at 1:21 PM
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