Re: The Seven Types Of Pirate

From: "Brenna Lyons" 
<snip>
>Sigh. Kirk, this system was created before the Internet. It's outdated. It
>doesn't have to be this way anymore, and holding onto this system is only
>hurting conglomerate press. They are using ebooks to shore up the disastrous
>print market (don't look at gross sales...look at the bottom line), when
>changes to the way they do business would alleviate a lot of their problems.

This raises two points additional to the business model matter. 

Whatever the experience of the big players, the print market is along way from disasterous. I have pointed out elswhere that in the current climate the industry's headline figures show a robust resistance to the downturn. 

You touch on the real matter with the  conglomerates. It is not their model, but he way they now make business and publishing decisions. They have lost touch with the customer, and with suppliers - including authors. What I think they are proving, if unintentionally, is that you cannot treat publishing like just another business with products to sell, and where costs can be shaved repeatedly and continuously. 

>Indie press is proof of that (where none of what you hold dear exists), and
>if the NY contracts changed...well, it's that simple. POD and ebooks have
>made the old system obsolete, and they could save a lot of money by updating
>the existing system.

If you weren't trying to prove the superiority of indies you would be arguing something that I could agree with. That there are successful new ways for small publishers and writers that reflect the rise of bookseller publishers in the 1940s and 1950s. Many of the imprints swallowed into the NY borgs started then as one man operations selling mainly from their own bookshops, often with a mail order side. These too benefitted from technological changes and lowered input prices.

>
>Yes, translations would be a different subject, and I never said they
>wouldn't. But there is no reason, these days, not to simply use the indie
>contract and approach and to release books in English language worldwide.
>The more they drag their feet, the more dissatisfied readers across the pond
>get and the more their old system falters.
>
>What I see WRONG is holding onto a broken system.
>
>Brenna

But the system is not broken. That it would be wrong for you, I accept. Your decision, your business model. And it is arrogant in the extreme to assume, for a business that has more variations than a lifetime will allow to examine, you can assert 'There is no reason...' behind decisions that go against your belief.

Ebooks bring an interesting variation into publishing, but they don't really introduce a new system. Certainly they look an important new marketing tool. And their biggest benefit is that they appear to have brought a whole new phalanx of readers. 

Joseph




------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------
Post a message:   ebook-community [[at]] *
Unsubscribe:      ebook-community-unsubscribe [[at]] *
Switch to digest: ebook-community-digest [[at]] *
Switch to normal: ebook-community-normal [[at]] *
Put mail on hold: ebook-community-nomail [[at]] *
Administrator:    ebook-community-owner [[at]] *

(* == yahoogroups.com)
-------------------------------------------------------Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    [email protected] 
    ebook-community-fullfeatured-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    ebook-community-unsubscribe-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/