re: piracy thread

>>
>> I don't see it that way. I think ebooks will wipe out POD for most
>> trade uses. Non-trade books are a different matter entirely, of
>> course, but they almost always are.
>>
>>
>> Marion Gropen
>>
>

Brenna Lyons:
> Maybe I misread you here (my apologies, if I did), but I disagree. I  
> believe
> affordable POD and e-books combined will replace mass market.
>
> The NY conglomerate system is broken.

Maybe. Maybe not. They're still pretty good at mass market publishing,  
and at producing the high-stakes, high dollar texts and references.  
They're also, far and away, the main users of POD printing.

> I understand that they want to keep it going, and they want to keep  
> hard bound for the library and book club
> markets, if nothing else, but a system like the one I suggested more  
> than five years ago would eliminate a large portion of stripping/ 
> returns, waste in printing, warehousing, and shipping.

> What is that system? Get POD printers, like the Espresso, in the book
> stores.

I'm afraid that the economics just don't work very well, even for the  
high-speed POD printers, for most books. But for the EBM and similar  
machines, they're even worse. I know the quoted figures, but those  
externalize a lot of expense, and end up drastically underestimating  
the all-in cost of producing a book in that system.

The programming is easy. The actual cost of having low-capacity  
distributed production facilities, leaving aside the excessive  
downtime that's likely with such complex machinery, is likely to be  
prohibitive.

  And I think it unlikely that the numbers will ever change, for a  
variety of reasons that are a little too involved for a post in any  
listserv.

At least, that's what I told the venture capitalists when they called  
to ask about the potential. I see that they didn't all listen to those  
of us on the inside of the industry, but that has been the case with a  
lot of money folks who have bought into the book business, and later  
bailed out at a loss. . . .

Sometimes the dinosaurs are right. Sometimes a comet wipes them out,  
and we start over. The e-revolution may be the comet, but I'm inclined  
to doubt it. I think it will, instead, be like a climate change that  
opens up niches for which the proto-mammals are able to compete on a  
more even basis.

(Whew, that's one stretchy metaphor!)

Marion Gropen
Gropen Associates, Inc.
By-The-Question Consulting,  Tools for Publishers, & Classes
www.GropenAssoc.com
Her blog: www.GropenAssoc.com/blog





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