one last before I go...

[lagilman]

Lots of discussion across the blogosphere about What's Wrong with Publishing, How Publishing Is/Isn't Dying, etc and What it All Means.

To that I can only say what I've been saying about the economy all along: it didn't get broken overnight, and if it were easy to fix -- a simple matter of changing A for B -- it would have been don already. Really. TBTB? They're not stupid, most of them. Venal, short-sighted, and stuck in a previous generation, maybe, but not stupid. And none of them want to lose their jobs (or answer to corporate head-choppers) for screwing the pooch if they can avoid it.

So what's the answer? Damned if I know. Got some ideas.

-Telling shareholders to take their narrow profit margin and be happy with it, damn it.
-Adapting faster to new technology.
-Bringing prices back into line with reality -- I love me some books, but even for my addicted-to authors, $25-30 is a lot to shell out. Give me a $12 trade paperback and I'll go away happy. A $6 mass market, likewise. Yes, I know what production costs are. See points 1 and 2.
-creating a single industry-wide format for e-books, by god, and telling manufacturers to create readers around that, rather than scattering their focus.
-Creating a new delivery system -- I used to think that direct-from-publisher sales were a bad idea, because it limited reader access. Now I'm not so sure -- if you can skip around from imprint to imprint via websites to look at what's available, is that any better/worse than a bookstore? And that way every title could be showcased, not just what a buyer thinks will sell. On the other hand, that puts a lot of people in the chain of events out of work, too. So...



Meanwhile, all I can do is keep on keeping on. 38 pages and one rather major comment to hammer into better shape, and HARD MAGIC is done. I've rescheduled my dinner plans [pity the person keeping company with a writer on deadline!] and plan to hit fini by the time I sleep. That may not be until dawn, but...

Comments

[filamena.livejournal.com]

-creating a single industry-wide format for e-books, by god, and telling manufacturers to create readers around that, rather than scattering their focus.

This please. This very yes. I WANT to get into Ebooks for any number on nerd reasons, but it's all too confusing and it doesn't seem like the technology is where is should be yet. ($300 for a kindle? Really? Die in a fire.)

[lagilman]

I suspect I'd be willing to spend $300 for a Kindle if I could buy my books from anywhere, not just Amazon. Or at least one or two places, other than Amazon...

(the 'not working outside the USA' thing irks the hell out of me, too.)

[otterdance.livejournal.com]

When I got into the business in 1995, my agent warned me that the market was getting tight. A long process, indeed. I like your plan, especially about telling the shareholders to get real. But that seems to be a problem in every industry now. After watching the Detroit Three wriggling around with Congress, I feel the need for a shower and a Jimmy Stewart film binge for a dose of decency.

[otterdance.livejournal.com]

As for the e-reader, I have one on my iPhone that scrolls. It's good at first, but then I begin to get a little motion sick. The crawl on CNN does the same thing to me.

[lagilman]

Yeah -- I can read short fiction on my G1 phone, and I was able to do small bites of novels on my palm, but...

I'm going to try and kit up my EEE as an e-book reader. The screen's about the size of a trade paperback, anyway...