SFWA Bulletin on e-books and POD books
This is a thread where I'm going to start posting summaries of articles on e-publishing and POD publishing from the magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a writers' organization. http://www.sfwa.org/bulletin/ These articles aren't online; later ones I summarize will be. * "Electronic Piracy," by Stephen Goldin (Fall 1999) Goldin says that literary piracy is a centuries-old problem and that, while it's likely to grow, it's not a serious threat, because the real serious threat comes from black marketers, who simply aren't interested in books. * "Print-on-Demand Books Could Help and Injure Writers," by James W. Fiscus (Fall 1999) A well-balanced article on the pros and cons of POD publishing. Fiscus concludes, "Traditional publishing houses will be able to keep books in print longer, meaning more money for authors but also threatening their ability to gain a reversion of rights when books go out of print. The most important aspect of print-on-demand may well be on the structure of the industry itself, opening the doors to small publishing houses, giving them the opportunity to compete with the major publishers." The article also talks about preservation issues. * * * "We think that both xerography and offset lithography are stable media," said Randy Silverman, Preservation Librarian at the University of Utah's Marriott Library, and that they will last as long as the paper. With acid-free paper, that can be for several hundred years. (Silverman limited his comment to black and white images, noting that color lithography is stable and while there are stable color techniques for xerography, he is not familiar with them.) For the xerographic image to be stable, however the printer must be operating at the proper temperature and pressure.
Randy Silverman warned that xerographic printing is more susceptible to abrasion than is offset printing. In addition, toner can be re-heated and become soft if the book becomes too hot. "The toner will melt while lithography will not."
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Fiscus tried the experiment of leaving a POD book in a car on the hot day. He concluded that it weathered as well as a non-POD book would under such circumstances.
* "Freebooting Rebooting," by Glenn Hauman (Fall 2000)
Hauman was the publisher of Biblio Bytes, which gave away books for free and paid for itself by advertising. Not surprisingly, he thinks that paid electronic content isn't likely to fly well with Internet readers. He also says that e-publication is a threat to publishers. He's rather gleeful about this. To quote him:
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The author doesn't see a dime from pirated e-books? Folks, there are a lot of us who don't see much from the traditional publications either.
If you get big enough - say, King or Grisham sized - you stop taking those terms from the publisher. You dictate the terms, and I do mean dictate - in those cases the publisher ends up working for the author, instead of the other way around. The book stays in print. It stays listed. And your readership can get access to your books. The dangerous question is, "Why wait? What have publishers done for you lately?"
Some authors have begun to do exactly this. Richard Curtis realized early that if authors don't need publishers, they aren't going to need agents either, and as a result has begun to reposition his business as something akin to a manager. With his company, E-rights, working on electronic and print-on-demand version for a number of his authors, he's preparing for a future where authors act as their own small businesses, and they hire the help they need.
This is a thread where I'm going to start posting summaries of articles on e-publishing and POD publishing from the magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a writers' organization. http://www.sfwa.org/bulletin/ These articles aren't online; later ones I summarize will be. * "Electronic Piracy," by Stephen Goldin (Fall 1999) Goldin says that literary piracy is a centuries-old problem and that, while it's likely to grow, it's not a serious threat, because the real serious threat comes from black marketers, who simply aren't interested in books. * "Print-on-Demand Books Could Help and Injure Writers," by James W. Fiscus (Fall 1999) A well-balanced article on the pros and cons of POD publishing. Fiscus concludes, "Traditional publishing houses will be able to keep books in print longer, meaning more money for authors but also threatening their ability to gain a reversion of rights when books go out of print. The most important aspect of print-on-demand may well be on the structure of the industry itself, opening the doors to small publishing houses, giving them the opportunity to compete with the major publishers." The article also talks about preservation issues. * * * "We think that both xerography