A little humor for your Tuesday

From Cracked.com: "8 Unexpected Downsides of the Switch to E-books"

#3: How will people open secret passageways? Seriously, if you can't pull a cleverly titled book out of a bookcase to get it to swing open, what else are you going to do? You have to put an artifact in a slot or push a really obvious wooden carving every time? Boy, that is going to get old fast.

50 Million Shades of Grey

I'm not even going to describe what 50 Shades of Grey is-- if you don't know already by all the controversy, hype, and love surrounding it, you can read about it here on Amazon-- but this is to repeat what a lot of people have already heard, which is that E.L. James, the author, is estimated to have made somewhere in the area of $50 million from sales and rights.

Besides the actual e-book content, there is quite a bit to interest in these figures. First, her sales are split almost evenly between paperbacks and ebooks-- 9.8 million and 9.6 million, respectively. Some people have commented that, due to the nature of the subject matter, a lot of people prefer reading her books on their ereaders because no one can tell what they're reading just by looking at them, which may account for some elevated sales of ebooks. Another factor is the fact that her paperbacks and ebooks came out at the same time in the US, allowing people to freely choose which format they wanted to read in. One look at Amazon will tell you that a Kindle edition of 50 Shades is selling for $9.99 and paperback is selling for $9.57. As we have seen in the ebook pricing struggle being waged with the Department of Justice, for a while now publishers have frequently staggered the publishing so that hardcovers were available for weeks or months before ebooks, and once the ebook was published (for example at $12.99 or $14.99) the paperback would be available at a much lower price (maybe $7.99).

Perhaps the most astonishing fact in the E.L. James figures, however, is the speed at which her sales have exploded. All of these sales occurred over the past six months. To put it in perspective, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series (consisting of four books) didn't reach those figures for three years.

It will be very interesting to see whether or not her sales have plateaued in the coming months, as well as if publishers begin to revise their schedules perhaps to mimic her simultaneous ebook/paperback editions. Also, I guess, if there is suddenly a dearth of erotica in mainstream publishing. That would be pretty interesting, too.

Get in line with Dante, Keats, and Shakespeare.

Guys, remember when all the monastic copyists got mad because the Gutenberg press became more popular than them?

Project Gutenberg, one of my best friends and also the website that existed even before the Amazon Kindle for giving away free post-copyright books, has now added a digital self-publishing portal. They're calling it the "Author's Community Cloud Library," and it seems that as long as you are willing to post your content for free, you get to upload whatever you want. From what I can tell it requires that the uploader have also already formatted the book for digital download, as opposed to the Kindle site which will provide some rudimentary formatting for you.

While I don't think it will take off like the Amazon self-publishing portal (you can't get paid by Gutenberg, after all), I can see it becoming useful for some niche groups. Academic writers looking for publication and exposure, I think, will find the writer's community interesting, and also authors who are still in some discovery/early writing stages. It's definitely limited in what it offers, but I think people looking for someone to download (probably more erudite/academic texts, too, as opposed to the commercial popularity of Kindle publishing) and give any feedback or commentary will find it worth a second look.

Where are the stats on how often people use their tablets in the bathroom?

According to an illuminating list put out by The Economist (12 stats that matter to digital publishing):

• More than a third of US adults are expected to own a tablet by 2014.
• iPad users look at 40 pages of content (unspecified whether web or book) on average per use.
• The Financial Times has approximately 305,000 print subscribers and 285,000 digital subscribers.

Guess people still aren't reading, though, huh? Maybe we need to revise that line of thinking.

Which side are you on?

I really enjoyed writer and publisher Bob Mayer's article over at Digital Book World: The Great Publishing Wars of 2012. While negativity over the future of publishing and literature has been ongoing for decades now, it seems to have increased since the Department of Justice brought suit against five of the top six publishers for price fixing and colluding. Mayer's opinion piece is refreshingly positive and confident about the future of publishing. His article is very concise and well-written, so rather than quoting and commenting here, I suggest clicking on my link above and going over to DBW to read and enjoy.

In just a few paragraphs, he raises some of the most important questions facing publishing today:

• Must either traditional or digital publishing "triumph" over the other? What does it mean for publishing when people are taking "sides" against each other?
• Will either of these "sides" ultimately triumph? Or is this a futile struggle that is ultimately damaging to publishing?
• What can people in the publishing field do now to succeed in a very tenuous industry?

You can listen to the terrific song "Which Side Are You On?" by the Dropkick Murphys while reading...

My eReader is judging me for not finishing "The Mill on the Floss".

If you have a Kindle, you may already have been aware of what the Guardian reported this week: ereader companies are collecting information on your reading habits.

Knowing which passages prompt a book to be thrown aside, which books are read at high speed and which are dipped in and out of is likely to be even more useful, and Humphrey believes this knowledge could eventually affect what's published.

As mentioned in the article, ebooksellers have yet to use or sell the information. Also, while it's not discussed in the article, the data that they can collect only pertains to the sellers' proprietary books-- if you have PDF files on your Kindle or Nook, for example, they are not tracking which items you have and where you leave off in those documents.

It's not the first time that reading habits have been studied without readers' knowing it. In recent memory, the Patriot Act was passed to allow federal agents to track public library users. The Guardian article goes so far as to cite the ever-popular Big Brother of Orwell's 1984 when describing insidious data tracking. Some people-- including some booksellers-- are coming out strongly against collecting reader data as an invasion of privacy. Others-- perhaps very interestingly the publishers-- see the data for its possibilities in improving the market for the reader. If people are buying one book and stopping a quarter of the way through, in the future a publishing house might reconsider purchasing another book from that same author. From another side, authors might fear this kind of data tracking-- if a threshold number of people aren't reading the book all the wall through, their publishing deals might be in jeopardy-- or welcome it, if the data can better direct their editing to better please their audience.

How do you feel knowing that Amazon and other ebooksellers are aggregating data about your reading habits? How do you see this kind of information being used in the future?

eReaders don't want you to read eBooks.

You guys, I love the internet!

I went on the Atlantic website to read an article about Amazon this week and found a link to another article responding to this piece from the New York Times: "Finding your book interrupted... by the tablet you read it on."

It is such a good article. Citing a single survey of publishers showing that a decreasing number believed that multipurpose tablets were ideal for reading ebooks, and a few quotes from publishers and general readers, the article tells us that it is harder than ever to pay attention to what you're reading because tablets offer too many distractions. Those minxy iPads and Kindle Fires "tempt" us with too many more interesting apps and emails and other alternatives to book reading. While they quote one reader who finds the struggle to pay attention to a book a kind of welcome challenge, and one publisher who thinks multipurpose tablets encourage ebooks for people who might not normally purchase a single-purpose ereader, the general sentiment is that tablets make it too hard to get into the "reading experience."

While the comments section of the article, as well as the Atlantic piece of hilarity: "Books on paper fight analog distractions," point out that this is not the most scientific of behavioral findings, there are a number of commentators (and the subjects from the NYT article) who are strongly on the side that tablets are too distracting. That reading is not the "same immersive experience" on a digital reader as it is in paper, etc. As I continue to follow publishing news, I find it's the same argument in the comments sections over and over: "I like books on paper that I can touch/I like being able to carry a thousand books in my hand." So, I encourage you to go over and watch the eternal argument play out.

But my favorite part of this is the guy that they're quoting saying that his tablet is too distracting for reading, saying he gets distracted by all the apps, which are just "beg[ging] you to review them all the time."

What?!?

Is that a thing? Do people spend hours and hours reviewing apps? Is that a popular activity of which I have been mercifully ignorant for years? I have a Kindle, and iPhone, a PC, etc., I feel like I am "with it," so to speak. I am unaware of this "app reviewing" black hole that people get sucked into. I mean, what happens when you start reviewing "review" apps? Like when you review the Yelp app? And then someone reviews your review of that review app? Okay, maybe this could be interesting...

See, I feel like that is not a real thing. I feel like maybe he means "using" his apps, or "reading" emails. And I think that miss-spoken phrase is symptomatic of the problem with this article, which is that some people are going to read books all the way through and some people are going to get distracted. Some people are going to prioritize their tablet so that they're not jumping from app to app, and some people are going to get distracted "reviewing" all of them. And sometimes you're one of those people, and sometimes you're the other; everyone gets distracted when they're reading, whether its on an iPad or a paperback book. Everyone gets distracted when they're working, when they're talking on the phone, and even when they're driving. I got distracted from reading one article by reading another article, which distracted me from writing one blog post to writing an entirely separate blog post. It's the "immersive experience" of life, and perhaps, ultimately, not the most newsworthy of news items.

Happy Friday, guys!

Surviving 451

There are a lot of articles out now lamenting the demise of paperback and printed books. A very vocal sector of those in publishing, as well as general readers, do not want to let go of the aesthetics of printed books, nor the sense-memories associated with them, and as such there are plenty of passionate essays in praise of print.

Finally, there is one in praise of ebook aesthetics. Or rather, the lack thereof. Eloquent and without reproach for print-purists, I highly recommend reading this brief article-- "Ebooks Can't Burn"-- over at the New York Review of Books. I don’t think I’ve seen any other piece that lauds the simplicity of ebooks quite like Tim Parks does here—if any of you readers out there have recommendations for articles in this vein, please comment with links as I would love to read more.

I will be expanding on ebook and print book aesthetics and the unending “preference” battle on Monday. Until then, have a nice weekend!

Jonathan Franzen does not want you to read his books.

At least, not on your ereader, anyway. I think he wants you to read his critically-acclaimed novel Freedom, but only if you buy the hardcover version currently list priced at $28 USD on Amazon. I think that’s what he was trying to say in his talk at the Hay Festival, covered by The Telegraph two weeks ago.

Jonathan Franzen is all about the glue in the binding and the touch of finger oils on paper. In his recent interview, he says that eBooks are detrimental to society because they have been “conned” into existence by “the capitalists.” Paperback books—apparently published by non-capitalist, non-mega publisher Farrar, Straus& Giroux—are better because, “Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.”

Unless, as a helpful commenter pointed out at The Guardian, you have too many errors in your traditionally published, professionally edited novel that printed an 80,000 first run—then it is entirely necessary to destroy 80,000 books and reprint them. An ebook, which would have necessitated a simple re-download for a corrected version, delivered straight to your Kindle or Nook, just doesn’t have that sense of the language being “just right.”

The Guardian article on Franzen’s comments has curated a rather hilarious lot of commentators who point out a lot of the inconsistencies in his argument, and I recommend checking it out. How does he “take the game card out of his computer” anyway? If you have ever identified the “game card” in your computer, please drop a line in the comments below so I can take it out of mine, too.

This is not the first time Franzen has failed to understand common technology, nor criticize his readership and meal ticket.

Jonathan Franzen also does not want Oprah Winfrey to read his books… Correction, he did not want Oprah Winfrey to read his books, until his first inclusion in Oprah’s Book Club resulted in millions of sales. After that it was okay to appear on her show and have millions of people praise him. But when his National Book Award-winning novel The Corrections was first selected to be in the club, Franzen famously denounced the program and the readers he believed he would get from the inclusion. He waited until after his book had already been featured on Oprah in October 2001, and then afterwards, in an interview with NPR said the following (read the full interview here):

"So much of reading is sustained in this country, I think, by the fact that women read while men are off golfing or watching football on TV or playing with their flight simulator...I continue to believe that, and now, I'm actually at the point with this book that I worry...I had some hope of actually reaching a male audience….”

Which is to say that Jonathan Frazen does not really care if women read his book—men are the true mark of a reading society, and if you don’t have them, then you don’t have much of anything. Millions in the bank, yes. But otherwise it sounds like a typical First World Problem to me.

Of course, he was gracious enough to appear on Oprah when Freedom came around a few years later. Time magazine had already called him the Great American Novelist, and he had received plenty of criticism for his remarks about the female of the species and for his treatment of someone trying to honor his work. Check out some good soundbites from the Oprah interview on Flavorwire.

So if Franzen has an established behavior of saying something inflammatory and later retracting it, what do you think is going to happen over the next several years, as ebooks do, in fact, become the dominant form of publishing?

The icing on the cake of last month’s very strange talk is that Jonathan Franzen claimed he would rather be dead than live in a world where ebooks are the dominant form of publishing. Not to get too dramatic about it or anything.

Do you think statements like these, from a hyper popular author, have any effect on public perception of ebooks?