Wired weighs in with some thoughts on the future of book publishing.
Author: Anders Monsen (Page 22 of 82)
Over at Strange Horizons Martin Lewis reviews a book about 101 novels from a formative period of my sf readership. I’ll have to check it out. Don’t read this article on iOS, though, as it appears to hide all links and titles.
Nexus, a novel by Ramez Naam, currently sits on a stack of to-read books in my study. Screen rights have been acquired by Paramount. Another novel I am sure will be adopted or bought (if it hasn’t already happened), is Daniel Suarez’s thriller, Kill Decision, which is very cinematic.
Via Slate, news about an essay RLS wrote slagging the fiction of his day, possibly written around 1881.
Caveat author. If you’re selling books through Amazon in a niche market, watch out as your royalties might drop.
Paid or free, both have value. Now some investors are noticing the profit potential in paid courses.
Another article about the push to create (er, patent) a market for used electronic books.
I’ve been to Waterstones in several UK cities. They have an awesome selection of books, and great specials. Alas, in the US, bookstores are disappearing in many cities. Borders is gone, Barnes & Noble on shaky ground. If you live in a big city there might be a store somewhere. Then again, I’m in the 10th biggest city and there are few book stores. When I lived in Austin I went to sf book stories all the time. These are now closed, and here there are none with large sf selections. So, sadly, I buy from Amazon, as driving 20 minutes to a bookstore and not finding what I want is frustrating. But if I lived in the UK I’d shop at Waterstones even if they didn’t add cool stuff in books to lure people away from Amazon. Because nothing beats a good physical book store.
I haven’t heard of Hugh Howey’s novel Wool, but what’s more interesting is how he managed to keep his electronic rights and make himself a lot of money, while also selling print rights to a major publisher. Most publishers demand exclusive rights, and according to SFWA, in the case of Random House’s imprint Hydra and Alibi, seem unreasonable and predatory.
Every author should seek to protect their interests, as publishing companies are rightly concerned about how they can make more money.
This will become more important as electronic books and music squeeze out physical content. How do you sell back any electronic music or books that you bought? Both Amazon and Apple are exploring methods for a marketplace in electronic content. Fearing market dominance, many people are worried about what will happen, citing the low cost of used books on the internet.
Scott Turow, the best-selling novelist and president of the Authors Guild, sees immediate peril in the prospect of a secondhand digital thrift shop. “The resale of e-books would send the price of new books crashing,” he said. “Who would want to be the sucker who buys the book at full price when a week later everyone else can buy it for a penny?”
This long article at the NY Times, covers copyrights and patents involved in such a prospect. How sad, when there is no patent involved in opening a used book store. The issue of paying royalties on used books is always a sticky one, though. But should someone have to be paid every time their content is sold and resold?
