subject: Book Publishing - jobs and more jobs [print this page] Book Publishing - jobs and more jobs Book Publishing - jobs and more jobs
There's a lot of doom and gloom in the book industry. Publishers are cutting back on staff, bookshops are closing and those that remain are placing increasing reliance on blockbuster titles and a few well-established authors - often dead. We are told that people aren't reading as much as they used to and the ebook is a threat to basic standards.
The ebook is not a threat it's a lifesaver!
You can't expect people to rush out and pay $25 for a novel they will read in an evening. Bring the price below $10 and you stand a chance. Economists call it "price elasticity of demand" and it's surprising we've not heard more about it.
The ebook can be produced and delivered at a price people can afford. What's more, the new technology enables images to be included at low cost. In short, the ebook has the potential to be both cheaper and superior to its paper counterpart.
This means jobs and more jobs!
There will be more good books by more good authors and they will need to be edited, formatted and marketed. Forget about the bad books that the ebook revolution will bring. Think about the good books and the opportunities they offer.
More editors will be needed and more effort will be required for formatting if images are to be included. Promotion will be different but will still require people: books don't promote themselves.
To date, most ebooks are little more than paper books in digital form. The use of images has hardy been exploited. It is bound to come. Images add meaning and ambience to text.
In principle, authors could acquire the images themselves and do all the necessary formatting. In my experience, this is not a viable option. Too much time and effort is involved. Far better to pay others to do it.
I recently converted one of my paperbacks (Curtin Express) to epub format. I'm a keen photographer and took and photoshoped the necessary images. After considerable effort and frustration I got the now heavily illustrated book into PDF format.
My next trick was to try for epub. This versatile format enables text and images to be displayed on screens of different sizes. Chastened by my experience with PDF, I gave up when I encountered my first problem and paid someone else to do it ... an author needs time to write.
Curtin Express retailed at $25 as a paperback. The ebook has just gone on sale at Amazon for $3. It is illustrated by over 130 photographs. Readers can see the forbidding terrain that my young hero battles as he flees from his pursuers - not just read about it. The electronic version is a superior product at a far lower price. Yet, despite this very low (opening) price, my royalties are not significantly less than when the novel was published as a paperback.
To see what I mean, go to:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004J8HRIW and judge for yourself
