The e-book format has inherent multimedia possibilities: trailers, background and reference materials, interviews, actors reciting the poems the book contains. But will these ultimately be considered enrichment of the text or just distractions from it? Perhaps these sorts of experiments will go the way of Flash splash pages and manically hyperlinked documents. In the end, the portability may be the fulcrum, the only fulcrum. Are e-books simply the paperbacks of the future, the cheapest way to publish the cheapest books for the largest number of readers?
I tend to think the last question is the most important as well as most easily answered. Sure, there will be books with ancillary bonus features, but I think people will view that kind of content as they do the bonus material that accompanies some DVDs. There will be some opportunity for authors like Mark Danielewski to take advantage of these feature in avant guard ways. But mostly, eBooks will be cheap, light, and easy to buy, just like mass market paperbacks are now.
From Charlie Stross’ blog: Why books are the length they are. An interesting read on why the coming ebook revolution will set authors free – provided that it happens soon enough that people actually still read things besides blogs and status updates.
Jim Macdonald posted a letter from Publish America over on the Making Light blog. According to this letter, authors “published” by Publish America can now have up to 5 copies of their book sent to Random House (for the mere cost of 10 copies of the author’s book).
For those who might actually think this sounds like a good idea, here’s another idea you can do at much lower cost: Finish your novel, order a copy from a POD (Print On Demand) company, and mail it to Random House yourself. A brief check tells me that it would cost $7 to print a 200 page book on Lulu. Add another $3 to mail it yourself, and another $3 to mail it to Random House for a total of $13.
The cheapest sci-fi book I see on Publish America is $12.95. If you order 10 books (the minimum order to get the extra copies sent to Random House) at 50% off (they provide a coupon code) + $1.99 shipping per book, that’s $64.75 + $19.90 = $84.65.
Do-it-yourselfers save about $70 and probably have the same chance to get their book published by Random House as the PA authors.
The Good: Amazing prose that seamlessly shifts between characters creating a distinct flavor for each whether in first-person or third. The setup of with the self-declared unreliable narrator adds a more experimental feel to it, while also adding some additional intrigue. The excellent prose is also used to make info dumps interesting, and while these dumps are helpful, they’re delayed and spaced out in a very professional, clearly thought-out manner. The writing alone in this book makes me want to read Banks’ “space-operatic” works (Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games to start with).
The Bad: Banks is guilty of proselytizing for a few causes at points during the book, the most obvious of which is the use of torture as an interrogation technique. Honestly, I could have done without pretty much the whole Philosopher character in the book (the who does the torturing). I realize he is important in a few places, but for the number of pages dedicated to him and his background, I feel like there should have been more tie-in with the book rather than just serving as a platform to say that torture is bad. But then, I’m one of those people who doesn’t really like to examine society through the lens of a future world and would rather read and write adventure (or perhaps “pulp”) style fiction.
A Final Note (on my review in general): I am not going to review books that I feel are just mediocre or otherwise not worth reading. You can feel confident that if you see a book review here, it will be because I feel the book is worth your time to read (and this comes from a self-proclaimed slow – although actually fairly average – reader). I may consider reviewing a book that I had to put down in order to warn people away from wasting their time. But there’s enough negative media in the world already, that my goals is to focus on the good books and leave others to tell you what not to read.
The story here obviously isn’t really about the book. You can click through if you want a description of thigns like plot and characters.
What really matters is that John at SFSignal says:
You can either buy the novel in various eBook formats at Smashwords for the more-than-reasonable price of $2…or, you can read it online for free.
This flies in the face of conventional wisdom that says people will not pay for what they can get for free. Will it work? The thinking is that people will pay for what they like, especially if it’s cheap enough. I’d be interested in hearing a few months from now how well this works…
I have to point out, though, that the “read it online for free” part means you have to read it on the author’s website on a really, really, really… really, really, really long web page. So, really, it’s not an experiment to see if people will pay for something they can get for free because what they get for free is not the equivalent of what they pay for. It’s more of a test of how much people are willing to punish themselves before they spend a small amount of money.
Of course, I did a quick test, and was able to get a high quality version of the book simply by copying the really (really, really, really) long web page into an Open Office Writer document. I’m pretty sure there’s a script the author could embed on the site that would prevent people from selecting and/or copying text – if he really wanted to see if people would pay for something they could read online for free.
Of course (number 2), it would also be interesting to have 2 versions and do split testing to see if you get better conversions to the pay version from the site that doesn’t allow copying, or if people would just give up and not even read the book. As Tim O’Reilly says, “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” (h/t: Cory Doctorow)
So, this is kind of cool. It will be a lot better once they have more than 3 review sites to aggregate from. I was looking at the All-Time High Scores list and was like: Cool! Easy To-Read list. Then I realized that a few – oh wait, most – of the books only have 3 reviews compiled. So maybe Caine Black Knife isn’t the #1 book of All-Time. Though it does get 4.5 stars on Amazon.
(I want to apologize in advance that this turned out longer than I’d originally intended, but if you read at an average speed, you’ll still get through it only 2-3 minutes; 12-13 minutes if you watch the accompanying video)
Publishing Point has an interview with Cory Doctorow about his new publishing experiment which involves a collection of short stories sold in what I would call the Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead model, where the bulk of the material is available for free, but special editions are available for those who want them.
I’ve embedded it here, but in case it gets taken down, there’s more below…
I think my favorite part was the advice that Cory provides near the end for aspiring writers. To summarize: Finish a book, sell it to a publisher, and then ask for advice on how to market your book. It’s great because at this point, the best way to end up like Cory Doctorow (which is what those aspiring authors asking the questions about marketing want – i.e., the ability to sell a book exclusively via Publish-On-Demand) is to do what Cory did, which was basically to sell a book to a traditional publisher. Yes, he did fight to make it available under Creative Commons, but that’s been done now, so it won’t gain an author as much notoriety as it did for Doctorow at the time.
I am still anticipating (as I’m sure many others secretly are) the first artist and/or author to gain the kind of fame that platinum artists and bestselling authors have without going through a traditional label or publisher. (Perhaps it’s been done, but since it hasn’t registered on my radar, it has yet to meet my internal criteria) The traditional problem has been that physical media had required a distribution outlet. But with digital media (and POD) becoming more prevalent every day, it’s only a matter of time before the garage band and short story author go from internet-sensation-signed-with-big-name to internet-sensation-making-living-without-big-name.
Going a bit off topic… The transition to the new model will continue to be aided by discovery engines. I continue to use the music industry because, as I’ve noted many times, I’m a slow reader, but I can listen to a lot of music, and so, once again: Lala.com. I signed on to Lala this week to discover that Dashboard Confessional and Wale both released new albums. I knew that Wale’s was coming, but didn’t really remember when. I honestly didn’t even know that Dashboard Confessional had a new album coming out. But I’m listening to it right now. Did Interscope (their label) have anything to do with that? Not really. All they did was (I’m speculating a bit): Give DC some money, make an album cover, and put them in stores. All of that is useful, but none of it helped to make me aware of the release. Lala did it all. It knows that I’ve listened to a lot of DC and so it highlighted it on my personal home page. Same with Wale (I mean, who knows how many times I’ve listened to Chillin’ already, right?).
Amazon has the same kind of information, and it will only become a stronger recommendation engine for books as more people get Kindles. Of course, if I were Amazon, I’d be working hard on making sure that anyone could read any eBook they wanted on the Kindle as long as I could verify what book they were reading. More reading data = better recommendations. My theory has always been that people who aren’t going to buy stuff aren’t going to buy stuff, so let them use whatever free media they want, and work on the people who will actually buy stuff if you make it easy enough for them. Back to Lala to finish the analogy: Dashboard Confessional’s DELUXE album is only $2.16. Compared to $9.49 for the MP3 version, I’m willing to make the sacrifice and take the restrictions that come with only being able to listen while connected to the internet because that’s $7 that I can put into my retirement account. Bam, said the lady.
The next time the question of science fiction and “mainstream acceptance” comes up, remember this answer: Who gives a shit? Because, really. Who does. Like what you like, already.
I’ve been liking what I like since middle school, and I’ve always taken flak for it, but as Scalzi makes clear, we Sci-Fi geeks take a lot less crap about liking the stuff we like now than we did when I was in middle school.
My theory follows: Back then, everyone thought of Sci-Fi geeks as Trekkies or greasy-haired Dungeon Masters because those were the only kind of stereotypes that could break through the barrier of the mainstream. Then came the Internet. And now Sci-Fi geeks don’t have to attend conventions (though obviously they still do) nor do they have to huddle in basements (though I’m sure some still do). Sci-Fi Geeks can unite on massive scales simply by logging on. And now, as we realize how many other SFGs there are who share our love for space, time travel, laser weapons, genetically modified beings, etc., we become more brave in the face of the “mainstream” and aren’t as afraid to like what we like because there’s a ton of other people who like it too.
For years, I’ve been wondering why publishers waste money on full page ads in the New York Times, featuring a picture of the book cover and a bunch of blurbs, when a much more effective ad would be a full page excerpt from the novel.
It seems that even the back cover of a book would be more effective. Sure, it’s great that people give blurbs, but honestly, I often feel like these are reciprocal back-scratching sorts of moves rather than real opinions. And they don’t really tell you what the book is about. The first thing I read when looking at a book on Amazon is the description. Then, if it sounds good, I’ll check a review that rated it highly as well as a review that rated it low. Most of the books on Amazon don’t have an excerpt available yet, or I would consider going to that as a second option (or definitely as a third option if my quick review of the reviews kept me interested).
In terms of Konrath’s experiment of putting other people’s excerpts into his books, it sounds like something I’d be interested in. I usually don’t read the excerpts if their from the same author because either I liked the book enough that I plan to read the book from which the excerpt comes anyway, or I didn’t like it enough to feel like reading an excerpt would make me want to read the next book (or another book by the author).
If it was framed, however, as books “recommended” by the author I’d just read, and there were 3-5 excerpts available to read through, I would find it fascinating. It would probably be enough for me to check out a book, even without an excerpt, if it were simply in a list of books recommended by an author I liked. Getting to read excerpts of these new books for free would fit exactly in the movie preview metaphor that Konrath came up with.
And maybe the best part of this marketing effort is that it maintains it’s utility (and perhaps increases it) as the market continues to shift more towards eBooks and away from traditional paper books.
I’ve already seen a couple thousand posts in response to this Wall Street Journal article by Lev Grossman. There’s a video here that kind of further expounds on his theory behind modern literature, which evidently can actually include novels that have plots. Who knew?
Since there’s so much else to read, I’ll try to sum up my comments in a single sentence: Grossman’s article appears to be written by someone who has been trapped by TIME magazine’s definition of “literature” for so long he didn’t realize that there books (I mean, any books) were actually written after 1930, until he read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel.
If you want more:
From me: I read another interview with Grossman where he says how he grew up obsessed with fantasy novels/series like Narnia, Lord of the Rings, etc. It’s odd, then, to think that he could be so close-minded when it comes to the idea of “good books” having good plots. I’ve always been more interested in Science Fiction myself, and while I’ll admit that I haven’t read many of the science fiction works from around the time of Narnia and Lord of the Rings, I have read quite a bit of modern scifi. While certainly not all of it can even approach what might be called “literary” I can’t help but think of Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book), The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (Bantam Spectra Book), Cryptonomicon. Yes, I realize they’re all by Neal Stephenson, but all of them are clearly plot-driven, but also written in a style that I would consider worthy of literary criticism.
Of course, the whole article could really just be a Michael Arrington-like Controversy On Purpose designed to get people to say Lev Grossman as many times as possible across the internet. If that’s the case, Bravo! Great Success!
August 10th, 2010 
fanaticalpupil 
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. Yes, I realize they’re all by Neal Stephenson, but all of them are clearly plot-driven, but also written in a style that I would consider worthy of literary criticism.
