My experience with the university bindery was over twenty years ago, but I think they only charged like $20 to sew the pages and make lovely leather covers for the books. Assuming prices have doubled, and the publisher would want $10 for the rights to print a single book, you’d be able to get a leather-bound one-off for about $50.

Still far too rich for the casual reader, but if paper books become simply collector’s items it might be possible. I know some Nora Roberts fans who would almost certainly buy a complete set of matching ultra-premium volumes to display in their living rooms. . . And no, I’m neither joking nor trying to insult Nora Roberts, her fans are just that dedicated!

Still, I’m not jumping on this particular grenade. Lets wait and see what happens with e-books and digital editions.

I still think pure one-offs manual labor of loves, for a hefty prize, like the Crown Duel book I linked to – are likely not to upset the apple cart of author or publisher.

Anything else…. well, maybe if you made a lulu.com for extremely well-crafted editions and offered authors to upload their manuscripts (and therefore implicitly granting permission) – but instead of 25 dollars the book is 100 dollars due to craft and material and maybe illustrations or whatever….

The only time I consider the quality, style and types of binding, artwork, and other aspects of shelf-worthiness is when buying picture books. Otherwise, I’m all about the story.

I really think this is a matter of individual taste. Many books I own and keep not only for the content–that’s number one–but also because I like the way books look on the shelves in my home. Another aspect of the decor and style of my house.

Again, I don’t think one has to whack at print in order the celebrate one’s own preference and appreciation for e–or visa versa. (And lurid’s a pretty harsh term.)

Nora

Yes…I’ll without a doubt admit I do often pick-up a book to consider for purchase based on whether or not the cover and packaging attracts me.

UNLESS…the author is an auto-buy for me…then I could care less what the book “looks” like.

And even if the cover doesn’t grab me, I’ll definitely still buy the book if the STORY sounds wonderful, and I know either from past experiences or my research that this is a terrific author.

For me, the heart of buying a book is the STORY and the AUTHOR.

I’m sooooo very proud to have no space left on my bookcases and ready to buy a fifth case. It’s all about supporting the authors I love and those brand new ones I can’t wait to explore.

I love that people who come to my home can “see” who I’m reading…and love that they’ll go buy and support that author because they’ve seen those books on my shelf. I’m not sure that would happen if I were reading primarily digital…in my home anyway…I wouldn’t drag out my e-reader and have my company browse the contents. But when they walk through my office, they “see” the books on my shelves and “see” the piles I’ve pulled to read next.

So yes…a book’s cover and packaging can attract a reader…but for this chick, it’s all about the STORY and the AUTHOR. I’m proud to hve shelves busting with books and can’t wait to buy my next list and find a place to shelve them.

Thanks for such an interesting post.

Sexy, Sassy, Smart Reading Wishes — D. D. Scott
http://www.DDScott.com
http://twitter.com/ddscottromcom

Ebooks solve my space[1], organization, cost and availability problems all in one fell swoop. The problems specific to e-formats (georestrictions, DRM, hard disk failure and file corruption) have easily-implemented workarounds.

And my Sony Reader is a joy forever, for reasons which I’ll not go into (in case I inundate you all with gushy drooly text).

-

[1] the clutter stops growing but will not go away because I still can’t bring myself to dispose of p-books for which I have an electronic equivalent.

While I love the accessibility and storage issues, it’s negated by the file corruption I faced earlier when my computer files were destroyed and I lost all the ebooks I had stored. Since then I’ve had little call to keep my ereader in use, and have found that the battery life leaves a lot to be desired. I can read like crazy through 800 page paperbacks with just a light, but I found I had to charge my Sony 2 times through that book at more than 5 hours per charge.

And I discovered that the cost of my re-buying all the books I had in paperback that are keepers would be about 3x the cost of the paperbacks themselves. I can go to my local UBS and get them for $3-7 or pay 2-4x as much for the ebooks. And since I don’t travel extensively it just doesn’t make sense for my situation.

I’m back to where I started. Boxes piled up, walls covered in bookshelves and piles on every counter I have. And while that’s enough to give me a slight panic attack I can always go through and find my books after much searching, with no chance that my computer has wiped them out with no way to retrieve.

As for the quality issue, I agree that most paperbacks are made to be disposable. Even hardcovers that were sewn in before are now glued and not worth the extra costs. I find that older books were made to stand the test of time which only makes me appreciate UBS’s more.

And the special edition books that feature the incredible quality now are beyond my budget. I can’t even begin to afford leather bound or hand sewn with reinforced covers. I can’t even justify the costs to myself for getting those editions on my most re-read books. It’s just easier on me and the checkbook to continue buying those disposable paperbacks…which makes the publishers happy I guess.

I understand that times are changing and technology advancing with it but e-books are just not my thing. I put off reading the e-books on my TBB list just because I hate staring at a screen when I’m reading. I already stare at a computer 12+ hours a day x5 for work so to read books on a screen too after work does my eyes no good — and it’s after work that I have time for reading since I have a 3-hour commute round-trip.

any avid reader ends up storing piles of books everywhere, under cabinets, beds and tables.

So true! My bed is up on risers to accommodate boxes of books.

I’m a dedicated e-reader evangelist on a personal level, but I do understand the access concerns surrounding declining print sales. I have a friend who works for the VSO and one of the things she always asks for is story books for her kids.

While I believe that in the future, for economic, access, space and possibly green reasons ebooks will be the standard, I don’t see it happening for a good long while. And I hope it doesn’t happen too soon, because there are an awful lot of people out there who can’t afford e-access.

From what I understand about library purchases, whether in the US or here in Europe, most libraries try to get popular genre novels in special library binding and not in mmpb

In my (admittedly limited) experience in the UK, libraries will tend to have a few copies of Mills & Boons in hardback, but the vast majority of them are paperbacks. I have a feeling that Robert Hale pretty much only release their novels in hardback, but the imported US single-title romances I’ve seen over here have mostly been in paperback. Little Black Dress do have hardback editions of at least some of the novels they publish, but I’ve yet to see one, since all the LBD books I’ve seen in the library have been paperbacks.

Not so. “Library binding” is almost exclusively restricted to children’s books (some graphic novels, which are VERY cheaply bound, also can receive this treatment), and is usually not worth the extra money. Discounts offered by library distributors are directly tied to size of print runs. Therefore, I can often buy two or three regularly bound copies of a title, for the same price as one specially bound one.

I order materials in regular hardback when I can; most genre fiction I get in mmp. A great deal of genre material that my patrons would like (m/m romance, for example) is pretty much available ONLY in epub, and I can’t get at all.

Please please not I am not at all opposed to e-publishing. I think it is wonderful. The more formats materials are available in, the better as far as I am concerned.

I just want to make it clear that some people’s reservations about “the end of traditional print publishing” stems from genuine concerns beyond a Luddite fetish for the smell and feel of print.

Thanks,

RJ

In conclusion, I suspect that mmpb is not the preferred version of a library book (and then there’s the fact that library patrons like reading new books when they come out and not when the mmpb version comes out a year later) and therefore your idea of “no cheap print version = libraries will have problems” doesn’t make sense to me.

um, gee, wha…?

-bowerbird

“My belief is that in the future, digital books will be the default and print books will be a higher quality collectible, ones that even I would be interested in buying and placing on a shelf”

and the basic consensus on the comments that this is a Good Thing (and if not, it’s All The Publishers’ Fault)

I am perfectly aware of library e-books and downloadables. My library subscribes to both Netlibrary and OverDrive. They are fine for a very very small niche audience. Here are the problems:

1. Hardware. E-readers and laptops are expensive. A relatively tiny portion of our sevice population owns them. Many of those that own them do not have the high-speed internet connections that make downloading feasible.

2. Software. While public internet connections make it possible for much of the population to use these devices for e-mail, research, etc., there is simply neither the time, capacity, or software (remember, each of these downloadable networks requires you to download your own software, which is often not feasible on public computers) to allow patrons to read.

3. Ability to loan. I doubt very much that you folks are aware of the legal and technical hassles that libraries and content providers go through to make it possible to *loan* e-books. While it is certainly possible that these can be overcome, none of the e-book providers I have talked to have shown the slightest interest in doing so. Put bluntly, the business model of e-publishers is expressly set up against it. The business model of mainstream publishers treats e-publishing as a fringe side issue — more as advertising for their “main business” than anything else — and if it should change to become their principal business, it is far more likely to be modelled on that of the existing e-publishers.

Mind you, I don’t disagree that print books may very well become a luxury item in the next twenty years or so. The example of the newspaper industry and the recorded music industry leads me to suspect that this is more likely than not.

But news and music have a long standing existing “broadcast” alternative that make it possible for the less economically and technologically advantaged to have access, even if in a significantly degraded form. The closest broadcast analog for books is the public library, which very much depends on physical ownership of the medium.

But the affordability of libraries is heavily dependent upon economies of scale permitting that physical format to remain relatively cheap. The popularity of e-music and e-video is already beginning to have an impact — slight, but significant — upon the ability of libraries to offer these formats. (You should hear my AV librarian rant about how difficult it is to obtain physical copies of certain important and popular recordings!)

I worry a great deal about a future where ebooks are the default publishing format. I worry about the patrons I serve, who live mostly in poor and isolated areas. These are the people who have been badly served by the recent mandate on digital television broadcasting, for example, and in that case the Federal government forced regulations (much against the protests of industry lobbyists) to try and ensure their continued access.

There is simply no commercial incentive for publishers to change their business practices in order to ensure that these people will continue to have access to materials. To simply blithely assert that “printed books are not going away any time soon” does not address the very real issues involved.