And personally I think you’re bang on target.

What a great post. In fact, I’m going to link it to my blog tomorrow. I’ve been reading countless blogs from agents/publishers and all but one (Nathan Bransford) speak of it in a negative manner. They all focus on the public having to go through the slush pile, etc.

Today, I saw a link in a blog to an e-book. The author was advertising her book. I somehow automatically thought that she probably wasn’t able to get an agent/publisher. But the title, cover, and back cover text were good and interesting. I think that the “she couldn’t get a publisher)“ is what agents want people to think when they hear of or see e-books. Maybe if they read this post of yours they’d calm down a little. Now I see that e-book more positively.

I started querying a lot of agents today. This is my first time and I’ve already received nice rejections from five. Oddly enough, I didn’t react to the rejections in any way. They didn’t hurt. I don’t know what that says about me, but I did decide to view rejections as a part of the process before I started querying. I suppose it’ll hurt a little if all reject me, but you, Randy, have given me a very positive look on my future as a writer. Bless you for that.

Oh, and to add a little to your text: Some e-book buyers will also want to buy their favorite books in p-form. I know of people who download movies from the internet and then go out and buy their favorite titles. I wonder if there will be service for this in the future of e-books. The current self-publishing companies only give authors a fraction of that 70% profit on e-books. I wouldn’t mind getting a fraction for the p-books though, because the p-book expenses are high.

I wonder what plans the real life stores are putting in motion to counter act this move towards e-reading.

I for one, will still buy the p-books that I love.

Question: as an aspiring author with some recognized talent, how should I approach the shifting landscape of the publishing world? Should I bide my time, hone my craft, and try to break in conventionally? Should I stick my first book out there, let it do what it wants to on the Internet (with a bit of marketing help, perhaps) and focus on the second book? Some mixture of the two?

What do you think? What do others think?

I agree to your predictions but not so sure about the time frame for such a dreadful ocurrence. Five years is perhaps too soon since individuals in general resist change.

I am an older person that love books and as collectors items will be publish on lesser quantity, I agree.

The effect that reading a lighted screen have on my eyes is detrimental to our health. In the last ten years I have lost my vision in a dramatic scale thanks to computers. Such reason is enough to have books published on paper for eternity.

Computers are fantastic but to read books on line is not to my satisfaction. Many individuals with certain age range should comply too a paper book preference.

My final opinion is love the printed word and enjoy being on line too but not to read on line.

Randy, do you have any ideas about what to do to solve our economy hardship after losing so many jobs?

Yes, the future for Publishing is going to change soon. I cannot help it but to worry about our economy.

Randy you are a great writer and love your style.

Sincerely,

Liliana Prina

It will take a bit for people’s prejudices to wear off, but hopefully the market will force them to submit to what is better for them.

As a freshman aspiring writer it makes me pause and think about how my book may be published in the future and what will be best for me.

I only offer a word of caution to those like me based on experiences as a reader: don’t try to publish an e-book too soon. I know that we don’t often get a second chance with a reader.

If they don’t like our book, they won’t try another one when our writing does improve. If we wait a little instead of rushing in, we may reap the rewards of a larger readership.

I’m glad you put this article on the blog, Randy. You may have overloaded your email account otherwise!

I have one book on Kindle, but I had to verify that I had rights, etc.

How (or who) would you recommend to publish an ebook without going through the p-book process?

This leads to a key stumbler in the post: “E-books require one other player who must be paid once by each reader: The person who makes the e-book reader.”

Of course you must recognize that there are a great many people involved in making e-book readers, from industrial designers to component manufacturers of displays and memory and circuits. Large factories assemble these in Asia, mostly in China, at very low wages in rather poor working conditions (see for example this New York Times article on suicides among workers assembling the Apple iPad: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/business/global/03foxconn.html). E-book readers are the digital equivalent of printed books. The container is different, but the content still exists separately from the container.

I’ve been collecting reports and data comparing the carbon footprint of each method of presenting content to readers and have found some superficial rhetorical commentary and some very thorough research. I began to summarize a portion, but then discovered a great new omnibus listing and links at Eco-Libris: http://www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp

As the site notes, “Are e-books greener than paper books? The debate is still going on and the final word hasn’t been said yet. Eco-Libris is following the discussion and providing you with links to articles, reports and other sources of information that address this issue.” In other words, e-book readers may not be, as the are often portrayed, Mother Nature’s best friend.

Meanwhile last night I found a presentation by Dr. Jim Taylor of the Harrison Group, Inc. at the recent DPAC conference (available for download here: http://www.dm2pro.com/downloads/20100625/download/).
Dr. Taylor’s firm did an extensive consumer survey of middle and upper class Americans about digital media consumption. Nearly half of those surveyed plan to use digital devices in part because they believe they are “more environmentally friendly.”

The e-book industry has done a great job of selling on this point, but a closer reading of the available data suggests that the environmental issue is not clear cut.

As someone who’s not quite a sophomore but no longer a freshman, I feel the need to continue my hope for conventional publication. The biggest issue I see (and I think you’re prediction is correct) is a larger pile of slush from the public to wade through. “Unfinished” and “unpolished” will become buzz words in reviews, more so than they are now.

The hardest part, as with any self-publishing, will be in marketing. Currently, a financially struggling writer has a shot – all be it a slim one – of selling their brilliant work of staggering genius in countries they’ve never heard of and cities they may never visit. Book signings, one of the more tactile marketing tools, will be a thing of the past for beginning writers because there would be no book – and I’m not about to let some nobody put ink all over my kindle.

Having a technical background, it would be all too easy for me to put my stuff out electronically before it’s totally ready, totally polished, totally able to compete, totally able to attract a raft load of readers. Having some early success with readers who love it but are not professionals would have the advantages of encouraging me and give me some indication about some reader preferences, but on the neg. side reinforce my natural laziness and grandiose delusions.

I’ll stick with aiming for the best agent and the best editor in the business and thoroughly studying the most successful books/writers in my genre.

I do hope publishers do away with returns. It’s not good for them or for authors.

I predict that these machines will combine the bookstore with the coffee shop / tavern kind of gathering place, because people who read books still like to talk about them, face-to-face, with other people who read books. And I believe such venues will proliferate.

For the other portion, the world doesn’t work that way. Cream is rejected in favour of dregs all the time. Case in point for me many years ago in the computer game software was an award winning game that failed to garner any significant sales.

The sexy (not literally sexy — superfically appealing), flavour-of-the-month offering, combined with a large marketing budget and/or better contacts (and the game software guy had made all kinds of excellent contacts) will very often give the dregs better results than cream.

That’s one reason why your blog focuses on the marketing aspect — to increase the odds that the cream will rise.

I haven’t fully digested your post, but one thing you’re saying is that the e-books will represent the long tail of the book market — lots and lots of e-books, good and bad, about all sorts of topics. There will be a living there for mid-listers, and perhaps even towards-the-bottom-listers.

Just saying…

Cheryel

You certainly have given this some thought. I feel that your predictions are very plausible, but I’m betting it takes 10 years instead of 5.

Do you remember when Stephen King tried to bypassing the whole p-book system? He charged $2 per chapter for his online e-book installments. The publishers were annoyed to say the least. I think they eventually convinced him to give it up. This kind of resistance to change, even when it might be favorable for all, slows up the transformation process. That’s why I think it might be 10 years before we notice the change you describe.

Thanks for the insight.

Some things are slow to change.

I found your predictions very interesting. About six months ago I also made a prediction concerning e-books, however, my prediction was for text books.

When you see kids lugging backpacks that weigh almost as much as they do you wonder why can’t they just use an e-reader? One book, and possibly a few workbooks for homework. The workbooks could easily be replaced as students email homework to the instructors. This was the only acceptable method to turn in work used by one of my teachers when I took courses at the local community college.

My son-in-law owns one of the largest printing business in Northern California. Among the various types of printing that he does he prints both school text books and self-published books for local authors. His view is that e-publishing replacing or reducing p-publishing won’t happen for at least twenty years.

I believe that your predictions are much closer to the mark for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to cost, efficiency and our desire to embrace new technology.

For those who believe that we aren’t eager to embrace the technology need to consider people waiting in line for days just so that they can have an I-Pad a few hours or days before anyone else.

I have a couple of thoughts here. I’m not sure eBooks have to necessarily SURPASS printed books in market share for this “Revolution” to happen. The music industry is a pretty interesting parallel to what’s happening here with the publishing world. I found a cite from May of this year that said digital music sales are only 35% of all music sales in the US, and yet, it is absolutely true that digital music has completely changed how music is consumed and sold. This is nine years after the iPod was released. Assuming that percentage is accurate, it indicates this growth of digital media is slower than we realize.

If the publishing world follows the music industry, these vast changes could happen well before eBooks reach 50% market share. I originally thought your five year prediction was too soon. I’m undecided now.

I also think mid-list authors will fare much better. EBooks won’t ever “go out of print” and don’t take up space on a shelf, so it stands to reason that mid-list authors will gain much, much more support from their backlist than they ever did. That would make supporting yourself or a family from writing much easier than it is now, if you have a dedicated following.

I also wonder if the flood of eBooks from beginners and hacks would actually “flood the market.” Wouldn’t Digital booksellers do everything they could to filter out the self-published eBooks and make eBooks from top publishers more visible? Wouldn’t you have to make a concerted effort to find the trash? It seems to me we wouldn’t be at all inundated, no more so than we are now. I’m not at all worried about that.

I do think the process of an unpublished beginner getting their book on a shelf at a bookstore will become much more nebulous and daunting (moreso than even now!), but that it might be easier to sustain your growth as a writer if you can sell books as you grow. You can now of course, but the stigma of a self-published book hasn’t yet been broken.

I look forward to the future in this regard, and I hope some of your predictions come true. But!…

…if your dream, like mine, is to have your book on a shelf in a bookstore, it might soon get a lot more difficult to achieve. The unpublished need to start working double time in order to get published, develop a presence, and get a head start on the eBook revolution. You REALLY don’t want to be lost in the crowd when things really blow up!

Did you sneak into my house and read my journal?

Concerning returns, I remember reading that the PubInd never used to allow returns, but a lawsuit about 1975-85 _required_ them to take returns. I’ll see if I can find the info. While e-books cannot be returned, per se, the cost can be refunded to unhappy customers.

Good post,
DAT

* The team of software developers who maintain the behind-the-scenes delivery of the ebooks from publisher to stores/websites/etc. Even if this is as low-tech as an intern emailing out a pdf attachment, you have to pay that person

* The team of software developers who create the stores front-end website.

* The data entry folks who keep the front-end websites stocked with books, descriptions updated, categories assigned correctly, prices listed (and updated, and sales/specials recorded)

* The system administrators who keep the publishers computer systems up, running, virus free, hacker-free, and all data backed up (can you imagine the cost to losing a hard drive containing a few million manuscripts…).

* The system administrators who keep the stores up, running, virus free, hacker free, and all data backed up.

* The ISP’s who provide the throughput and network reliability to be able to transfer manuscripts between publishers and retail outlets. No, big companies don’t use $19.99 dial up. Their broadband access is much more expensive.

Last I checked, well-trained, knowledgeable IT folks weren’t cheap.

Yes, it may be much more efficient to pay one Sys Admin who works at home in his jammies to remote into a server and run backups/maintentance/etc than it is to have a delivery truck driver and a forklift driver, and a logger etc.

But it ain’t free.

First, it doesn’t matter how great your book is e or p if no one knows it exists. Promotion and marketing for authors is going to be yet another skill they need to master, or find help with, in addition to editorial assistance.

We’re talking very basic things like how to write backcover copy that sells, how to get a quote from a bigger author, how to write a letter to reader’s groups that sucks them in and gets them to choose your book for their group, how to conduct a successful blog tour or set up a Twitter feed. All these little details that most authors in the beginning are completely unaware of, and midlist authors have had assistance with from their publishers.

I think the marketing savvy of an author will be another factor in how word spreads about an e-book, thus determining which cream rises to the top.

Second, the market’s expectations of what constitutes a bestseller is going to have to change to smaller numbers.

With the e-pub market becomming the prooving ground, I believe you are going to see the impact of long tail sales come into play (sales of more units, but because of fragmentation of the market, smaller amount of sales per individual unit). Readers will break down into smaller market segments overall, finding precisely what they want to read. This could impact p-pub authors in the fact that their overall numbers of printed units will decrease and still be considered bestsellers because expectations in the market of what constitutes a bestseller will adjust.

Thanks for the positive outlook. I agree. No matter where the slush pile shifts, there will be readers, and writers they want to read will be able to sell. It’ll just take an adjustment on everyone’s part.

Basil might have something in his comment about successful authors publishing their own books, but unless they want to completely rely on the Internet, there’s a distribution problem. I think readers will still want to buy p-books. Even if they don’t get them at the library or bookstores, many more make impulse buys at their grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations and many other places.

Ila Pal