And don’t start me on the DRM thing. DRM software pretty much guarantees a book won’t be accessible via a screenreader, and my resources are rather limited, so I don’t like surprises like that.

Well, it’s funny to me. Obviously authors have vested interest in having their digital rights protected; I’m a reader, so lines like that are humor, not a challenge to my chosen profession.

(Also, as my boyfriend pointed out, “Well, there are probably more people who enjoy electric nipple clamps.” I’m sure even writers get annoyed when their computer becomes ‘de-authorized’ and all of a sudden none of their iTunes songs work properly.)

I read ebooks from the library quite often; to me it’s a nice, easy way of getting a recently new book without having to get up off my rear end. Sometimes I get hard copies. Sometimes not. I have gotten annoyed with the apparent randomness of what gets put into e format and what doesn’t, though.

My life as a Content Provider, sigh.

I tried to restrain myself, but the fangirlitis overcame me. The Curse of Chalion is one of my favorite books. I could listen to the Lloyd James audio version pretty much indefinitely.

I was struck by comments by Jane and Anji about buying e copies of print books I already own.

I do this. I like ebooks, but I prefer print books. It’s an aesthetic, reader experience thing for me. Currently, I only buy ebooks as a second, convenience copy or when e is the only published format. If one of my favorite epublished books comes out in print, I’ll likely buy a print copy.
I expect and plan that my library will last for my lifetime, so I’m very reluctant to rely on ebooks to build it. Barring a nature disaster, print books endure whereas ebooks are vulnerable to hard drive failures and hardware/software obsoleteness. I’ve already lost some early DRMed ebooks when the publisher folded.

“I do not buy that eBooks are small potatoes bull crap that I keep hearing. If that were so, I do not believe smart people would be so involved and I see some very smart people doing eBooks.”

So, I went back through my actual numbers from Baen and Fictionwise from the first half of this year. I find that for roughly the same list my treebooks outsell my e-books by 20:1.

These are actual numbers, not an opinion.

Yes, more people are starting to read e-books, a discernible demographic shift. But meanwhile, Fictionwise, for an example, is adding a blistering 200+ titles a *week* to their list. 10,000 books a year, atop all the older titles. A boom time for readers; certainly a boom time for Fictionwise (these would be the smart people mentioned), who collects 60% of the bucks for every download sold, regardless of what it is or who wrote it. Each individual writer’s market share, however, may be expected to decline as titles are added; a much thinner slice out of a much larger pie. Because in addition to the hard limit of 24/7 on customers’ reading time, books must compete with all the other entertainment out there — DVDs, TV, games, the Net itself.

My life as a Content Provider, sigh.

Make no mistake, I’m very happy to get that 5% numbers hike. But for most writers, e-books are not going to save the farm.

Ta, L.

The one and only thing I miss of paper books, is the ability to flip back to a previous passage if i need to remind myself of something. Trying to flip back along a status bar and hit the right “page” for that “oh yeah, that's who that guy is” moment is much more difficult.

I’ve been using the Annotate function to add a bookmark for favorite sequences or places I want to be able to flip back to easily. Much better than the status bar.

Thanks for the PDF suggestion! Although I doubt it works with DRMed PDF files.

The MobiReader desktop reader will convert PDF files to MobiPocket files; you just click and hold and drag it over. I find it useful when I’m reading something in PDF online and want to take it with me. Adobe reader on my Palm TX handheld, well, I just don’t like it. I’ve never tried it with a PDF file that was purchased though, so I don’t know if there would be any DRM issues there. There are also programs that will convert MS Lit files to HTML, which can also be dragged over to the Mobipocket desktop and converted. Now, as to the legal and ethical rightness of all this format-hopping, I count myself blissfully ignorant. I figure once I purchase the book, it’s mine for personal use as I see fit, outside of sharing it.

I read just about everything in ebook format if I can, too. It’s so much easier than paper books, and with a lot of covers, especially erotica from Ellora’s Cave, Loose Id, and that ilk, a lot less embarrassing. I find the books I want, get them into Mobipocket, hit the hot sync button, and slip my Palm into my back pocket on my way out the door. No worrying about which of the two or three books I’m reading at the time to make room for in my bag, no second guessing myself if my mood turns and the one I want is at home, and I can literally whip out a library’s worth of books from my pocket any time I get a free minute to read. If it weren’t for the fact that some of the books I really look forward to aren’t in ebook format as soon as they’re published, I’d probably never pick up a paper book again. The one and only thing I miss of paper books, is the ability to flip back to a previous passage if i need to remind myself of something. Trying to flip back along a status bar and hit the right “page” for that “oh yeah, that’s who that guy is” moment is much more difficult.

I do not buy that eBooks are small potatoes bull crap that I keep hearing. If that were so, I do not believe smart people would be so involved and I see some very smart people doing eBooks.

Hey, if Penguin does not want to play, quit giving them access to the playground! Let someone who knows what they are doing and is not promoting some idiotic “big adventure” when people are already doing this shit. Penguin is only insulting their own authors with this crap. Take the big kitchen knife and start slicing and dicing the rights. Cut the idiots out.

Well, I can’t speak for every author in the world, but I can tell you, in a general sense, that the answer is probably:

Money.

How the rights get sold is something that gets worked out between publisher and agent. A good agent will try to hang on to as much as possible, but some things are just not negotiable. And there are other things that can be fought, but will not gain you a whole lot, financially.

If you have a hypothetical contract from Big New York Publisher, with a huge advance, it might be in the best interest of the author to give up the e-rights and take the cash. If B NY P: doesn't plan to exercise the e-rights, but will take the deal off the table if you fight for them?

Then you can go elsewhere.

But e-sales are still a small piece of the pie. If you go with a smaller publisher, you will probably lose sales numbers and the guaranteed income from the big advance from B NY P. You gain ‘the high moral ground.' But you end up working as a greeter at Wal-mart, because you really wanted to keep the e-rights, which are growing, but which are still small potatoes, compared to print rights.

The high moral ground isn't worth much, if you need to feed the kids, and replace the brakes on the van. Writing is a job (with irregular and unpredictable income), and there are bills to be paid (all too regular, and probably increasing).

The majority of writers, if the are lucky enough to get one, are not going to turn down a juicy contract from B NY P, over rights to e-sales. For the most part, writers do not pick the publisher. The publisher picks them. If a writer A turns them down, they will find someone else to write books, and Writer A can get a day job. They do not care. There are more writers than publishers.

If writer B is lucky enough to have a choice of publishers, then his/her agent is going to be looking at the whole package, and going for the best deal, even if it loses the e-rights. Limiting your rights to a project in exchange for money, is something you do the minute you sign a contract. It's just a question of which rights, and how much they'll pay you.

But when you hear agents shunning Penguin because of their policy on e-books, then you know that the audience has increased to the point that there is serious money involved.

Well I am not a demanding person like that. But… if the publisher made a public stance like Penguin does to NOT publish eBooks properly then why would I sell them eBook rights.

They do not simply deserve rights to something they do not support and business is business. If they have issues with eBooks, no eBooks rights for them.

But, my guess is that when you want your book published, demanding the ebook be released isn’t high on the negotiation table, particularly when ebook sales are “pizza money.”

Why don’t established authors make this a sticking point in their contracts? I would want to be available in eBook or I would take that part of the publishing rights to say a Samhain or Loose-Id so that it was handled better than the traditional publisher who cannot be bothered with eBooks like Penguin.

Latest word from my dear friend inside Verizon is Nokia is unleashing an iPhone killer PDA. There is always hope this might be the eBook reader to have. Oh get this, new buzz word… infotainment system.

I was struck by comments by Jane and Anji about buying e copies of print books I already own. In the aftermath of Cory Doctorow’s article on releasing ebooks to generate pbook sales, Teleread.org posted a survey:

Love a free Creative Commons e-book? What are the chances you’ll buy a p-edition?

I wanted to answer: Never, but I might buy the ebook to support the author. The Teleread response was:

Never. What a sucker—giving a book away! If it’s any good, people shouldn’t be able to get it free in any form.

So I didn’t answer the survey but I’ve always thought that Teleread got the question backwards. Love a p-book, what are the chances that you will buy the e-edition? Since Harper-Collins is committing some resources to digitizing their back-list, they must be betting that there are a number of old and new readers who will purchase the e-edition.

I’m still searching for the perfect ebook reader and I HAVEN’T made sense of all the technology yet. BUT I’m willing to sit and read them at my computer. I love the books coming out from Samhain and I’m published with The Wild Rose Press, so I read a lot of small press stuff.

I was just researching pdas again (It’s Christmas list time) and I still can’t figure out what I need to take all my pdf versions of the 100+ ebooks I have and put them onto a small reader to take to bed with me. But I’m going to keep looking.