five things, mid-week

[lagilman]

1. It's Jackie Kessler's fault... she started talking about the remake of Jaws, and asked "what's next?" My answer: A remake of The Sound of Music. With rappers.

"The hills, the hills, oh yeah the hills they are a-Live, they're alive, come on, y'all say it 'cause you know it, uh-huh, the hills are a-Live with music..."

I'd say I'm sorry but I'm really not. [I thought about going hardcore but there are delicate flowers and underage kids who read this blog...]

2. Haynes to publish Wallace & Gromit manuals!

3. "An overwhelming majority of publishers believe that e-books should be less expensive than the printed version, but only 15% support Amazon.com flat-rate of $9.99 on front-list titles". Hrm. I'd like to see it at least 25% cheaper, but people really do need to understand that e-books yes really do cost $ to produce and, perhaps more to the point, are considered along with all other editions in the overall costing of a book. Discuss in comments.

4. I am taking Senior Feline to the vet this morning. She used to be pretty good about that...not so much anymore. Pray for me...

5. After that, I will be off to see Bruuuuuce at Giants Stadium, where it is reported he will perform the entirely of "Born to Run." I have sort of mixed feelings about this, but the fact that this means I will get "Meeting Across the River" makes me a very very very happy camper. [trivia point: B2R was released on my birthday]. I may or may not Tweet the concert, depending on how crazy it gets and how cold my hands are...


and a bonus! 6th thing, to remind you that the voting is open for the feline picspam caption contest, and the open thread is still running, downstream...

Comments

[fakefrenchie.livejournal.com]

Have fun with Bruce. Don't worry about tweeting. Let the peasants wait. LOL

[chickwriter.livejournal.com]

Yay, Bruce! I saw him at the Dallas Cotton Bowl some mumbletymumble years ago. Fabulous concert. (it was the 80s)

re: #1 - OMG, I think I hate you just a little bit for this brainworm. I was taunted by songs from that show for YEARS in college b/c of my first name (Maria, duh). I had some very cruel early rising roomies. (I was a total night owl). Now, I find myself thinking things like.

Maria, that chick Maria, you know her. Trouble, she's trouble and you know it. Say Maria, uh huh, so much trouble...
(AAAAyyyyyy. I can't get this out of my head!!!!!)

::tries to immerse self in book 4 in progress and forget about musical mashups::

Sort of obligatory

[chaoticgoodnik.livejournal.com]

US Running Out of Past (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29830)

[terri-osborne.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't know which has broken my brain more this morning. The idea of tweeting the Springsteen concert, or the rap version of "Sound of Music".

Both are pretty bloody painful. I'd say don't have too much fun tonight, but I've known you for more than 5 seconds. :)

[jslinder.livejournal.com]

As per #3, I do think e-books should be less expensive (25% sounds about right for hardbacks), based on the simple fact there are no printing costs and no spoilage (returns). For a brick and mortar bookstore, you have no issues of shelf space or sunk cost (and yes, I know other than B+N, there is no good mechanism for a brick and mortar to sell ebooks yet - huge problem there)

As far as authors go, an e-book sale should count the same as any other format.

[smoemeth.livejournal.com]

Considering the utter butchery MTV Productions has just perpetrated upon "FAME" (and I say that even though my employer has a song prominently featured in it ... or should I say, a mind-numbingly cheesy remix they did without authorization of a perfectly lovely song), I can't help but think an urban modernization of "The Sound Of Music" is next.

You gotta watch out what ideas you set loose into the aether!!

[lagilman]

based on the simple fact there are no printing costs and no spoilage (returns)

"Simple?" Printing, no. But there are production costs involved in the creation of e-books -- something people seem to want to handwave over. Ebooks don't suddenly magically appear once a manuscript is handed in, so it's hard to take the argument for lower prices seriously if it's ignoring those costs, and the reasonable Business 101 need of a corporation to spread costs across all formats...

[jslinder.livejournal.com]

Well that's why I said around 25% seems reasonable. If they do want to get creative, they can discount wholesale costs at higher sales levels to reflect the fact that in general, an e-book setup is a one time sunk cost as opposed to physical printing, which is variable.

Also, as I understand it, there are many products coming on the market that take the files used to produce print versions and convert them into e-book formatting quickly and cheaply, so more cost savings could be in the works.

[lagilman]

You can convert files any of a dozen ways, but you still have the man-hours to design and proof those files. Unless you _want_ your e-book to look like someone's badly thought-out website....

[Formatting and design for a print book does not always transfer directly to electronic format, especially if it's not standard text. Production wonks can speak more knowledgeably than I about that]

[jslinder.livejournal.com]

That's where I got my info, a production wonk for children's books. As ebooks are gaining in popularity, software is popping up that does the translation much cleaner than in the past (as I understand it, some of the early Amazon attempts were basically done in Word).

Supposedly, you can feed a print file in now and get a decent looking e-format file now. If they ever come up with true standards, it will be even better.

As a kindle-holic, I do have to say that there is still progress to be made in this area, the formatting on some books is just bad (spaces mid-word, odd characters, etc). So right now, I am not sure they are spending money on proofing anyway ;)

[shui-long.livejournal.com]

Judging by the quality of some of the dead-tree books I see, they aren't spending money on proofing for any form of publication...
Converting a print file into an e-book format isn't difficult; cleaning it up to correct formatting issues demands more effort, though much of that could be substantially automated with the right tools. It still needs a check through by a human being with a trained eye, though it should be more a matter of looking for odd line-endings, paragraph spacing, correct style for headings etc, and fixing any non-translatable upper-ASCII characters that haven't been picked up automatically, rather than reading every word.
I'm not convinced that this is a substantial cost, and as e-books become a normal part of publishing it could be reduced by ensuring that the print file formatting follows sensible standards so that it's suitable for multi-format use.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Good luck to you and Sr. Feline!

ebooks

[ruford42.livejournal.com]

As to option 3 -- I think we really need to see portable readers under $100 USD first. I recently saw Sony's eReader for $250 and Amazon retails the Kindle at roughly $300 -- or at that price you could also opt for a netbook with an ereader software or an iPhone running the Kindle app...Though as I'm not planning on switching to AT&T anytime soon, egh -- and since the Kindle's source code was developed for the unix distro on the Kindle -- I don't expect a port to a Blackberry or Windows Mobile device anytime soon unfortunately.

The second issue for me is control of the content medium which I've purchased. I think AMazon allows you to register multiple Kindles to one account -- which feeds back into the unit price point for the portable reader -- and I have no idea what DRM standards the Sony device uses...though the key in both cases is how easy is it to maintain that data so that I could swap out different books or other content (such as audio books or mp3s) over time -- and how many devices would be allowed to utilize the same content -- since in my case, most of the time, whatever I read the SO wants to read and vice versa -- WIth a book, we just hand it over as one of us gets done or sets it aside until the other can pick it up then we're free to move onto the next unit...but with a $300 unit, well one person reads then waits for the second.

After the unit price, I'm OK with the 9.99 price point for a new release. I'm less OK with a unit that only displays one format -- such as the Kindle only working with Amazon's content...Too much like early iTunes or even curren iTunes DRMed content -- in that you're stuck with the Amazon or Apple software/devices to view the content...Though Amazon's Kindle took it a step further in that you couldn't use it to even read ebooks purchased from another provider since obviously Barnes & Noble doesn't sell their ebooks in Amazon's format...

So I'd want a multipurpose portable device, such as a pda or smart phone with perhaps a wider screen than what most current devices offer -- maybe 4x6 to make it closer to the portable GPS devices...since I'd want that functionality in the device as well (of course I'm willing to concede a higher price point for the multipurpose device) but then we'd also have to be exempt from retailers being able to remove content such as with the case Amazon and the 1984 fiasco. I understand the impetus to remove a work that was released without proper rights and I believe Amazon issued refund credits to all those who purchased those works...but as a geek, do not touch my data unless you want to piss me off.

THough on second thought...Even if new releases were 10-15 bucks, I think I'd still treat the vast majority of authors in the same manner -- in that I tend to wait a year for the mass market releases, although those prices seem to be creeping upwards in that it's rare I find a book that's not at least in the $6-8 without visiting a second hand bookstore...That said how much longer until book 2 of The Vineyart??? :-)

Re: ebooks

[lianneb.livejournal.com]

Sony does not tie to a device that I know of. For example, doing some tests, my mother downloaded a DRM encoded books from the library (epub format), we loaded it on both her reader and mine.

I also like that by Christmas, the Sony bookstore will have moved to epub as their default format instead of the proprietary LRF format. I consider this to be a must-do item for ebooks. I had a Rocket ebook a number of years ago and bought a number of books for it. I cannot go back and read those books now, since the RB format only works on that device. They need to settle on a global format so that if I buy a different brand of reader in a few years time, I can still read the books I bought previously on it. Don't tie me to a single reader.

That's the one thing that Sony readers have over the Kindle. Kindle currently ties you to their format for DRM encoded books. Sony will take the PDF and Epub formats from Adobe Digital Editions. Not to mention RTF files can just be dropped on without any file conversions.