| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
Are you part of it? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
i.e.: things being sold for free or nearly free and enticingly easy to purchase, as a lost leader for goodness know what ... the new door-to door (now screen-to-screen) salesmen, any ebook-culture exploiters ... plagiarists, pirates, privacy-trawlers et al? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I don't understand the question. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
Just that it is so simple now to produce something to sell or buy at little or no cost, with just one click of uploading or downloading - it seems be having a detrimental effect on our culture. Or am I wrong? | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
I'm not sure it's any worse than it used to be, Des - it's just different. Do you remember the days of free plastic toys in cereal boxes? Or cigarette cards? Or those cards they used to do in tea packets? It's not really any different, is it? It's just that it's done in a different way, perhaps? They're all enticements to purchase - and we're all suckers for a freebie. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.123.7 |
...as a lost leader for goodness know what ... What, like David Cameron? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Des, you're like a dog with a bone. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
There are various facets to what is going on. And this is a new one just emerging, as far as I can see. During my life, I normally don't let go, until important matters are sorted out one way or another in my mind (personal matters as well public ones). Hence my recent reviews of ebooks. Hence my: 'am I wrong?' above | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.188.106 |
"things being sold for free or nearly free and enticingly easy to purchase, as a lost leader for goodness know what ..." You say this as if it's a bad thing, Des. Gee, which would I prefer, spending $30 on a hardback of a book I know I'll read precisely once, or spending (probably) considerably less on an electronic version? As for the easy to purchase part: hmm, I live 55 miles from the nearest bookstore, which is a small branch of a national chain that gives more and more floor space, every time I visit, to scented candles and gourmet tea and high-end greeting cards, and less and less floor space to books. Which means I'm unlikely to find the book I'm looking for. So if I want a certain book, I can drive 110 miles round trip (spending about $35 on gas in the process) and hope they have it (or, being computer savvy, I can check the store's website and see if they have it in stock in the Kamloops branch before I make the trip). So they don't have it in 'Loops. Okay, well, I can order it from the store's online site (or from another online bookseller). Unless I spend over a certain amount, the online discount will be more than negated by the postage cost. And then, because I live in an area which is only 200 miles from Vancouver but is (I suspect) officially designated by Canada Post as 'the back of beyond', I'll wait anywhere up to ten days for the book to arrive. (No exaggeration; my mother, who lives in Ashcroft, mailed a card to her sister living in Vancouver. The card left here on a Monday, and arrived in Vancouver four days later, on the Friday of the same week. Someone could have walked it there faster.) With an electronic book, however, I can see a book I want, and have it right here, ready to read, in much less than the time it's taken me to write this post. How this could be construed as a negative is beyond me. Indeed, it strikes me that it would encourage more book buying, not less. Because as far as people in the western world are concerned, it's all about the convenience. "the new door-to door (now screen-to-screen) salesmen, any ebook-culture exploiters ... plagiarists, pirates, privacy-trawlers et al?" Des, some people are going to exploit anything if they think they can make a quick buck or two in the process. I'm not really very knowledegable about the music scene, but I've heard of things called bootlegs, and I gather these have been circulated for several decades now, beginning long, loooong before music was available in electronic format. If anyone wants to focus on the negative aspects of electronic books, fine, there's certainly more than enough to go at; but simultaneously to ignore the many positives is naive at best, wilfully obtuse at worst. | ||
| Matthew_fell (Matthew_fell) Username: Matthew_fell Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.188.106 |
Purely from a publisher's viewpoint: I'm not going to disclose sales figures because, frankly, they're none of your business. What I will say is that since our first eBook was released in mid-November, we've sold far more than we would have sold hardbacks in four or five times the time. That's good for our business, and it's good for the authors concerned, because rather than living in hope that they may see a royalty on an expensive, slow-selling hardback edition, we can tell them for certain that if they keep selling steadily in eBook, the royalty payment will be a regular thing. And given the promotion we can give electronically, in all kinds of electronic outlets, we can do a far more successful job of advertising their electronic work than we can their hardback. It speaks for itself. And the buyers who tell me: 'I have a copy of A PLEASING TERROR on the shelf, but it's so nice I don't really want to handle it to read, so it's great that there is now a eBook available' are also telling me something. If you don't like eBooks, fine. Don't bother with them. But I can tell you that they're here to stay. | ||
| Matthew_fell (Matthew_fell) Username: Matthew_fell Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.188.106 |
There is also the added benefit to writers that we're far more likely to consider eBook-ing a collection than we are to consider investing several thousand dollars into a hardback that will sit around for some years. Who's the loser where the eBook is concerned? The die-hard naysayers, that's who. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.85.235 |
I just downloaded an album - THE TWIN PEAKS ARCHIVE - from DavidLynch.com. It consists of 123 unreleased tracks by Angelo Badalamenti totaling 5 hours 48 minutes. It cost $60 and I think that's a vast improvement on the pre-internet era where these things might never have surfaced at all. Before these tracks were released I used bootlegs. Now that they are released and at a reasonable price I'm glad to buy them directly from the artist. When these things are done right in the long tail of the internet, it can enable everyone to win. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
Thanks. Fair enough. I'm sure you're right that ebooks are here to stay. I was really talking about the free-for-all that the new culture seems to be encouraging even further, something that seems increasingly to diminish or obscure the straightforward advantages you're talking about. (I did not need to know about sales figures; I did not ask for them, so wonder that I need to be told they're "none of my business"). | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.110.248 |
Des - I think it's just because everyone is so poor and we're trying desperately to fight, LOTR-like, for the last remaining coins. These are frightening times. We watched a friend try to kick her broken car door closed for nearly half an hour the other day outside the supermarket.It was like a comedy, but she would not have afforded to have it either towed away or fixed. To have to have done either would have been nightmarish for her. I think Ebooks - the best of them will see print eventually, and they will be the *good* books, the books that deserve to last, the ones people will want to revisit. But Des I understand your fears - I had them myself. But i've mulled and mulled ant think things will be ok. Facing a monitor while thinking about it makes it worse somehow, though, but going into the dining room where you can hear the wind and the birds on the roof through the chimney it somehow feels more ok. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.110.248 |
BTW I miss cereal freebies.  | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.110.248 |
I hope people can be nice to people who are scared of change. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.110.248 |
I have to say, Des did not start the thread as sharply as some people have responded to it. But then that's the net for you. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.148 |
I agree with all the posts you just made, Tony. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.5.35.232 |
I was pretty wary of ebooks at first, but I changed my mind when I unexpectedly happened to see one of my earlier books on the shelf in a bookshop in a neighbouring town. I was chuffed to bits, but then, six months later, was back in the same shop - and the same book was still there (same crease on the spine). Compared to that, the sales of my ebooks - while too modest to ever make me a millionaire, have at least been regular and continual. It makes me wonder if the high street bookshop thing is a tad overrated. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.209.11.133 |
My wife bought me a Kindle for Christmas. I've been steadily purchasing books and short stories since then and reading them on my Kindle. I've taken a chance on a few writers previously unknown to me, writers whom otherwise I possibly wouldn't have risked buying their books. I've also downloaded several books which I WOULD have purchased in print format anyway, and I've read them too. I can see the attraction of Ebooks as a writer - the reach is so much larger. So if I was a best-selling writer, I'd be keen. But I'm not a best-selling writer. And I can definitely see the attraction of Ebooks from a publisher's point of view, for exactly the same reason. So if I was a publisher, I'd be keen. But I'm not a publisher. And I can see the attraction of Ebooks from the vanity-writer's point of view, someone who wants to think of themself as a writer but isn't prepared to learn the necessary skills required to become a published writer. So if I was a vanity-writer, I'd be keen. But I'm not a vanity-writer. So I suppose I'm just a reader. But not one of those books I've read on my Kindle has been as enjoyable as reading an actual book. Advocates of eBooks say it's the text itself, not the medium, that makes the difference. I'm not so sure about that. Do I enjoy listening to MP3 music from my laptop just as well as I would playing a vinyl record (or even a CD)? Of course not. It makes the product feel less somehow. I'll continue to keep downloading onto my Kindle and I'll keep reading. Arguably more than I did before, because the immediate access is very appealing. But somehow it feels not quite as enjoyable. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.209.11.133 |
I should also add that I own an MP3 player, and I listen to music on that. I've got thousands of CDs on it. But it's rubbish compared to taking a CD out and putting it in my player and playing the album through from start to finish. I realise these things progress - that's life, I suppose - but, in my mind at least, there are more cons than pros. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.110.134 |
Thanks, Proto. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
An interesting brief article here: http://www.ligotti.net/showpost.php?p=76794&postcount=26 | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.2.114.230 |
Down with this sort of thing. (Careful now). | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
That makes me a fetishist too - and a proud one, at that!  | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
(Careful now). ------------- Not sure why that's in brackets. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.123.7 |
...and it should really be the other way around!  | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.4.146.163 |
Pedant. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
Tap end | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
That article brought to mind this Tumblr collection, Des: http://theartofgooglebooks.tumblr.com/ Some preserving the "found art" of Google Books mis-takes. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.158.58.16 |
Thanks for that, Craig. Particularly liked "the shadow of something that once lived in a book." | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I liked that one too! Given that tagline, the image was instantly unsettling.... | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.180.123.7 |
Pedant. i'll see your pedant and raise you a paediatrician. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 81.153.249.1 |
More interesting stuff here: http://www.ligotti.net/showpost.php?p=76866&postcount=35 | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
Wait - this thread is about ebooks too? Aaarrgh! *flees* | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.59.249 |
'I have a copy of A PLEASING TERROR on the shelf, but it's so nice I don't really want to handle it to read' I know the feeling. I own four or five Ash Tree books and I'm so scared the covers will get soiled or discoloured I keep them in the little cardboard box I received them in. Honest! |