Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Internet

Publishing-Online or "Dead Tree" Format? 195

Posted by Cliff from the either-or-neither-nor-why-not-try-both? dept.
aliastnb asks "I'm currently about halfway through writing my first novel. After the release of books to the net by such people as Stephen King, I'm wondering if it might be worth my while to cut out the middleman, ie the publisher and release the book online. Trouble is, I'd like to be able to get some sort of reward for my efforts, ie minimise the amount of unpaid-for copies made of the book, and release it to a multi-platform environment - not just Windows software but Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc. Are these goals mutually exclusive and should I therefore approach a conventional publisher, or is there a way for me to satisfy them all?" When it comes to publishing, why limit yourself? There is a "writer's rule" that I've heard from both Emmett and Roblimo recently that "Anything worth selling once is worth selling three times." -- along that vein, why not offer your work in both formats and find out which way is better for you?
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Publishing-Online or "Dead Tree" Format? More

Publishing-Online or "Dead Tree" Format?

Comments Filter:
  • Sell it as a dead-tree book, then release it as a textfile over the Internet. This'd be an ideal example to show that people will still buy books even when they can get the content for free. Or, you might try selling it online initially, but don't expect any of the 'secure e-books' to be actually secure against piracy. I.e., don't expect to make money off of the digital version, though you might.

  • wonders for the soul (Score:3)

    by Tei'ehm Teuw ( 191740 ) on Friday June 02, 2000 @06:29AM (#1030125)
    I love the net, I love the access to information and all that that means. I could stay logged in all day at times. However, short and to the point. There is something about sitting down with a good hard cover book, and slowing the pace down by reading. A couple of hours in a nice chair, a good book, and a little peace of mind does wonders for the soul.
  • Well. If you publish it online. That makes giving the book away to friends easier. Thus if you figure out any way to charge for it that is useless. Secondly Exclusivlye Publishing Online isn't Wise. Everyone wants Hard copies why? A 12 hour bus ride with no computer means I can't read your book. And Most people don't have flat screens hooked up to the wall across from their toilet either, so reading in the bathroom is gonna be tough. And no one wants to print out 200 300 pages =)
  • A friend of mine recently was wondering something similar. He's working on an RPG and was thinking of releasing it online, but as I was telling him there's little way of preventing it to spread once its out there.

    One possible idea is to have a donation form on your website. Tell people the book is free but if you like it please give me what you feel its worth so I can produce more in the future. I'd be interested to know how many people, and how much would be donated.

    Though currently paper books are still huge, and will be for a long time still, you might be able to release in both formats and still make enough from the paper copies to not really care if a small amount of people (relative to anyone who can get paper books) are copying it around online.

  • Poetry online:
    Like flowers, more lovely for
    Its impermanence...

  • Do NOT make digital versions available (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02, 2000 @06:30AM (#1030129)

    It's funny that you mentioned Stephen King's latest book. You are probably aware that the book reading program was cracked, and pirate ASCII copies of the book have been available on many sites for free. And I'm sure you've noticed all the articles about how enraged many artists are that Napster allows people to rip them off because copying of mp3 files simply cannot be controlled. Do you want this to happen? Once your book is in a digital format, you have no way of stopping it's unlimited distribution.

    Bottom line: Stick with paper.
  • if/when publishing your book electronically. judging by the usual response to the napster/mp3/metallica thing on /. you will probably find lots of folks getting a copy of your book that they didn't pay for. <sarcasm>after all, it is a natural right right to download electronic books, music, art, etc. for free, isn't it?</sarcasm>
  • Well, either of these formats would give you the most platforms for the buck. I guess the problem them becomes how to profit from it. I suppose that you could simply have a pay-per-download approach, but that wouldn't eliminate passingof already-downloaded copies around.

    I guess you'll need to develop a PGP-capable PDF viewer ;)

  • People need stuff to read on travel, and not all of them are going to read it as an e-book, and not all of them are going to download it online. If you want to read the broadest audience, publish as a book first, so you get "Bestseller" status, or something along those lines. Then put out the e-book and website. Hype that it was so good, you want to give it away. If you want to make money along with that, smack your users in the face with some banners.

  • Who is going to download your book? (Score:3)

    by georgeha ( 43752 ) on Friday June 02, 2000 @06:32AM (#1030133) Homepage
    Everyone knows who Steven King is, and when he put his book on the web there were innnumerable puff pieces about it, letting everyone know.

    Who is going to know about your book, and where to download it?

    Publishers still control the physical distribution network, and the means of advertising a work, don't be too hasty to count them out.

    George
  • Ah, this is true, but anyone(including myself) who has used Microsoft Reader(tm) on a pocket pc can vouch for the fact that it's ALMOST as good as the real thing. Almost...

  • PDF format, copy protection, etc (Score:3)

    by elflord ( 9269 ) on Friday June 02, 2000 @06:33AM (#1030135) Homepage
    first, I'd suggest using PDF format if you want it to be readable on any platform.

    As for "cutting out the middleman", by all means go for it -- but here's a question -- why not release through a publisher *AND* online ? Of course, you'll need to insist that the publisher allow you to distribute it online.

    As for copy protection, I don't know. You could use some kind of encrypt/decrypt thing, or you could just send it by email if the file isn't too big. There comes a point though when you simply have to be prepared to assume that your customers are reasonably honest.

  • yeah, it's better to wake and find your book fell on the floor than it is to wake and find your laptop fell on the floor...
    "Leave the gun, take the canoli."
  • Use latex/tex to typeset your book, then you can generate just about any useful format you might need. Cross platform and all other such goodness is, of course, available.

    For publishing, if your a first author interested in self publishing you might be interested in doing a net search for micropublishers. You can do short runs for those who want the paper on the bus and electronic for other folks.

    The python doc, for example, is available from http://www.toexcel.com/bookstore/

  • I'm all for on-line publication, it's a great way for new writers to get noticed, which can LEAD TO getting publishing deals. So, you could start out with some on-line-only books, and see where it takes you!
  • Personally, i enjoy sitting in my reading chair wit a nice, big, hardback book in my hand. I don't even buy paperbacks if there is a hard back available. Its something about the weight of the book, the sturdiness of the binding, seeing all your books, all lined up...

    I've tried reading on the computer. I don't like it.

    I love my Palm IIIxe to death, but I don't like reading books on it either.

    Maybe I'm a purist, maybe I'm backward.. mabye I'm just obsessive-compulsive (you should see the organization in my antique glass-paneled bookshelf). Whatever the reason, I like the printed tree-killing books.

    Publish on the internet, publish on the Palm. But don't skip the real thing.

    wish
    ---
    $ su
    who are you?
    $ whoami
    whoami: no login associated with uid 1010.

    • writer ponders wrong

      question. should spend time on book.

      too much internet.

  • A paper version is going to sit on shelves in the store, and people will see it. A web-only version will only be noticed if you advertise (banner ads = $$$ ; spam = bad karma) or if you manage a word-of-mouth campaign.

    Besides, many people who access a web version are going to end up printing it, and you won't have saved any trees.


    Christopher A. Bohn
  • To publish on the internet and try to stop copies being distributed is a lost cause, as Microsoft so very recently found out.

    The problem is, no matter which way you distribute your text, the user will in one way or another be able to copy it, either directly, copy & paste etc. etc. It's a fact of computers.

    As i see it, you have two options:
    1. Have each "user" pay for the right to login to a website, where they can read the text.

      Disadvantages: User/Pass combinations can be distributed, not portable, can still be copied with Copy & Paste and a webbrowser.

      Advantages: You keep control of the text, and can disable accounts if abuse is detected.
    2. Create a propriatery e-book format that with a hidden serial number in it, and maybe even an "expiry date" or some such in it.

      Disadvantages: Takes time & coding experience to create the reader, propriatry, needs to be ported about, many users probably unwilling to use a peice of software for the one peice of text.

      Advantages: Copies will be easier to track, can be disabled with clever programing if abuse detected, can write the reader not to allow Copy & Paste.


    3. Personally, i don't see either option as being very atractive. If you want to make a profit from the book, dead tree is possibly the only way to go at the moment.

  • Many publishers would like to get into online publishing but the problem is how does defend against piracy? It is *really* difficult to defend yourself against. After all, HTML or plain text files are trivial to reproduce. *Any* file that can be downloaded from your site may be hijack for another.

    The flexibility and ubiquity of the web allow you to be published world wide instantly. It provides no mechanisms to protect your Intellectual Property. If this concerns you, you should stick to paper.

    Of course, I'd encourage you to publish your book for free. The exposure that a successful e-book will give should make your negotiations easier when dealing with publishers. This assumes you are confident in your abilities to produce more successful content. :-)

  • Not that this really answers your question.. But I can tell you that I personally would never purchase a book to read online... I read PDF/HOWTO's/whitepapers/knowledgebases/etc all day long.. if I want to read a book.. I'll pay the extra 9 bucks (even 20! or more!) to have something i can flip through.. and something I can throw in my backpack (I don't care what kind of electronic device I have, Its still not as versatile as a paper book). Now.. SELLING it online might be good.. sort of bypassing the distributor.. but that would all depend on how good of a marketer you are.. Even then, if its your first book (not sure if you said it was or not), do it the regular ways.. you'll be much smarter in the long run.
  • Do what ESR did [tuxedo.org] with the jargon file... He released it both on paper and electronically. Sales don't seem to do too badly, either, as I've seen it in print many times. Plus if you make it good enough, people will want a physical copy just for sentimental purposes.

    As for the format, I'd suggest LaTeX. You can then use that to create Postscript, PDF, HTML, text, and whatever else you desire.

  • So true, I've never felt confortable reading any text on the net for more than ten minutes or so, and when I get a good book I want to hide somwhere for ten hours to read it...

    And what about "toilet books". You know, that great books that you read whilst engaging in bodily functions. I don't think many people are going to want their laptop/palmtop/e-book to be faced with that environment :)

  • ...why not offer your work in both formats and find out which way is better for you?

    Most publishers buy exclusive rights to a book before they will publish it. Aside from publishing rights, it can also include movie and magazine rights. They usually either buy the rights for a period of time (10 years, plus option to renew) or forever. They will preclude your independant publishing of the novel in any medium, including internet.

    If you want to publish in both formats, you'll either need to find a publisher which already does this, or publish it yourself in both formats (quite an expensive venture, and often not as much real world exposure).

    -Adam

    It's pretty funny, actually. It all started when I thought that inflammable was the opposite of flammable...

  • Publishers are not just tree processors. You're going to run into the same problem that the people on mp3.com run into... no promotion. Who is going to know who you are? It takes expertise and most of all, big $$$ to create a demand for an unknown author.

    There is a reason that publishers (and record companies...) get a big cut. They are taking a big risk by publishing you. It's way more likely that your book will crater rather than being even a modest success. That big cut is paying for the failures.

    So ask yourself this question: If I self-publish, how am I going to get anyone to read my book? I know for me, I am much more likely to read a new author that has been published by a "real" publisher. At least I know that has gone through a few levels of crap filtering.


    --

  • First, try traditional publishers. You need to reach these guys first, because they have all kinds of licensing and contractual restrictions. If your book is all over the internet before you even mail a copy to these guys, they'll just turn you down unless you're God.

    If you get a deal with a traditional publisher (that's a big IF) then you play by their rules. If they don't want the book online, it won't be.

    Next, if your publisher allows it or if you didn't get a deal, put your book online using an existing online distributor (like that FatBrain subsidiary whose name escapes me). These guys will normally handle for-pay stuff, so your file will be an encrypted PDF or the like. This file should have a TOC, an index, be nicely typeset and paginated for easy printing.

    Then put your book online as a raw textfile, with no pagination, no index, no TOC and no typesetting. This file will be available for free, and coincidentally covers your cross-platform requirement.

    This way, people that want to check your stuff out have a free text file that's a nightmare to read but easily available. People that decide to read you in-depth have a for-pay file that's easy on the eyes, and generally approachable. You could also make a regular postscript or DVI available on request for people who already bought the PDF -- that way you're cross-platform, and you still get paid.

    But remember: all of this hinges on whether or not you get a deal with a traditional publisher. If you do, you MUST play by their rules or they'll ruin you.

    . . . of course, I could be wrong.

  • check out http://www.lisnews.com/search.php3?topic=EPublicat ions We have about 100 articles from all over on the pros and cons of epublishing.
  • Self publishing was traditionally regarded as a *bad thing*. Before the advent of the net, there were only really a couple of ways to publish your own works - you went to a vanity publisher (who charged you loads of money for the privilege of having your book on their list) or you printed it up yourself and hawked it mail order.

    This was generally frowned upon by people who did "real" publishing, though it's worth noting that the 'zine scene that sparked off with the advent of cheap copying techniques in the 60's has been a flourishing part of the counterculture ever since and some people still make their crust in this way.

    The rise of email and the web threw up a whole range of new techniques for publishing work. It's what first attracted me to the web and the huge amount of zines and online material available show how popular a technique this is for distributing information.

    I guess the answer to the original question is - can you get published by a "real" publisher. i.e. one who will give you money for your work and spend money on advertising, publicity, quality printing etc? If so, you'll definitely want to see what they think of your plans to publish online as well. You may find they are dead against it (in which case, if you are completely for it, you'll probably end up in an argument), otherwise, you'll need to examine their contract.

    If you publish the material on the net before you get a dead-trees contract, then you run the risk of devaluing your work in the eyes of a publisher. Of course, whether you have actually devalued the work, or added value to it by releasing on the net is extremely debateable, but it's pretty much a sure bet that a publisher will see it as a negative thing (after all, potential customers will have already seen the work without paying).

    Of course, if you have no publisher, then there's a good chance that web publishing may be your only chance to get your work released - in which case you'll find quite a few different options for publishing electronic books online in a form where you will be paid per download - but that's another story...


    "Give the anarchist a cigarette"
  • I think that digital books hardly have any substance - its a text file on your computer, and not the same. The whole point of reading a book either from the library or buying it, is to get the whole experience. If you really want to put something on the net - I recall someone who put the first couple chapters on the net, thus enticing people to go buy it once they're hooked. You could combine this with a digital copy and a hardcover. It might just work.
  • This reminds me of a story by RMS [gnu.org].
  • How do you plan on releasing it digitally? Perhaps *gulp* encrypt the content and use the DMCA as protection from decryption?
  • Perhaps he could make a living selling support
  • Adobe provides tools to encrypt PDFs and then tie them so they will not be viewable on any machine other than that of the key buyer's. Look for "PDF Merchant" on their web site.

  • PDF files are pretty much platform indedendent. A possible solution would be to use PHP to output the document in PDF format with the user's information encrypted into the file. That way illegal copies/redistributions could be tracked to their source. The licencing terms for the book could provide liability against abusers and you could warn then before they download about the possibility of being busted this way.

    OpenEbook [openebook.org] is trying to set a standard for publishing documents across multiple platforms. Though it wong prevent copying/redistribution it may allow the document to be read actoss multiple platforms.

    PGP may be a security method. Once you decide on a easily distributible format you need a method of having an unlock key for only people who pay.

  • depends a lot on how good you are, and what else you've got to write. Think about South Park: released on the net, didn't make any money, but set them up for success because fans were hungry for more. But not everyone can expect to achieve that sort of success.

    The game in ordinary publishing is that you get an advance for your next book and you live on the money. Your book never earns enough to pay back the advance, but if it sells well enough, they'll give you another advance on your next book. The internet will not necessarily help to get you on that escalator, unless you manage to release it in a way that catches people's attention: Blair Witch Project, for example.

    yeah, I know, I'm using movie examples. It'd be tougher for a book, but I wanted to illustrate how PR and word of mouth work to establish your identity or brandname with "buzz".

  • Your `writer's rule' is also the 12th rule of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition:

    Anything worth selling is worth selling for twice.
  • This is sad but true. I personally support free software, but it was still nice that the little guys were trying to make money without being sucked into yet another giant [microsoft.com] faceless [netscape.com] corporation [sun.com].

    Personally, I wouldn't want to make my living off of the free software [quadium.net] I write. I think it would create too much of a conflict of interest for me. It would be nice, though, if there was a better way to encourage (voluntary) profits for free software developers. Right now, at least, "libre" == "gratis".

  • So? When I want or need to slow down and don't have a dead tree book handy I whip out my 'PalmOS device' (a Handspring Visor) and read softcopy I have queued up for reading. A chair and a good book make a nice romantic image like a nice bubblebath. But a rock to sit on and a teeny LCD can be better than a book. Especially looking at the current NYT best seller list. :P It all depends on what you're reading.
  • Check out http://www.baen.com/ for a publisher who seems to "get-it."

    Authors post their drafts to the web site, a chapter at a time.
    People who subscribe to the site can read anything on the site. When
    the paper book is published, the final book is made available online
    (I would suspect there would be some delay). Readers get first
    viewing of a book, they can e-mail the author with comments, and the
    publishers get some early marketing data about how well the book might
    sell.
  • Bits are free.
    Atoms cost money.

  • Well, having written that subject line, when you phrase it as "dead trees", books sound a little more cruel.

    Anyway, to repeat what others have said, I much prefer reading a book in printed format. There really is something to be said for sitting down in a comfy chair with a good book and reading for a while. There's also something to be said for being able to walk into a book store and browse. Bookstores are great, used bookstores even better


  • paper.
    For a simple, but perhaps irrational reason: a book can be cherished. It can be loved, annotated, stained with strawberry juice on a picnic, passed to a friend. It can decorate a room, be read on a train, in a bath, on the beach. It can be imbued with memories, and stained by its (and the reader's) lives.

    It's your first novel. Let it be something you can hold.

    Leave the pseudopolitical posturing, or the false economy of self publishing for a later work.
  • Do what ESR did

    ... and rip off of everyone else who wrote the Jargon File before ESR even knew what the hell a computer was?

    Touché. But at least he didn't pull an "embrace and extend", selling it in paper form and then disallowing its redistribution. I'm pretty sure he credits the appropriate people in the foreward, and it's not a bad thing to have it available for the general public. Although I had basically learned the hacker ethic by myself, finding this book in my local library was my first introduction to the larger community. I still browse it online from time to time.

    Before ESR, it was Guy Steele, who you might know as the author of both CLtL2 and the JLS (or some Java book, I forget which).

    All bow to the great Quux!

  • Ok, everybody reading this who is halfway through their first novel, raise your hand? How many of those will ever see the light of day? If you'd said that you have several published already, and were considering branching out on your own to self publish, I might take it more seriously. But what you just said is pretty equivalent to "Hey, I have an idea for a program, which company do you think I should sell it to in order to make the most money?" Worry about it when you have something to sell.
  • I think the natural choice for distributing written works such as novels is HTML. You end up with a file that is negligibly larger than the equivalent text file, but have some control of formatting. Everyone has a web browser.
  • You may be interressed in reading the The Street Performer Protocol, that allow artist to be rewarded in a world where copyright are abolished. http://www.counterpane.com/street_ performer.html [counterpane.com]

  • Publish the first couple of chapters and then tell people you'll publish the remaining ones when you get a certain amount of money. Keep a counter of how much money you have on your site. If you can't publish, make sure you return the money to people who gave it to you, and go to a dead-tree publisher.

    When you get the amount of money you're asking for, still charge a small fee per download. People who gave you money and registered with an e-mail address get it mailed to them for free. A lot of people would prefer to download it from you for $2-$10 than copy it from a friend. Don't encourage, or discourage copying. Just make it clear that you need money to keep on publishing stuff.

    Copyright is largely dead. If you publish online, you have to accept this as a fact of life and work around it. People want books and stories. It'll all work out in the end.

    As far as format goes... Don't use PDF. That's silly for a book unless it has lots of figures and tables in it. Use HTML or XML. That way, even someone with a PDA can probably read it.

  • I like paper too, but King's not a good example though. King himself stated that he made much more off that 67 page story than he could have via traditional methods (eg. magazine, collection, novella). Just because it was cracked doesn't mean he will never make another cent off it either.

    I don't think that publishing exclusivly in digital format is the best way, but you may reach new audiences (even if some don't pay). I agree with the sentiment that you shouldn't limit your means of distribution.

    lalas

  • If you wish to publish through traditional channels your publisher has to be convinced he may make profit on it * and have the exclusive right to do so.*

    This is only right and proper. They have to invest millions to get the book printed and distributed. Of course you hope they promote the living hell out of it too, don't you? Ok, more investment from the publisher.

    To compound this the risk of taking on a new unknown author is tremendous. The publisher knows that no matter what he personally thinks of your book its odds are slim.

    Steven King is money in the bank, even his latest work stinks. Publishers know this and compete for his business, you are in the opposite position, even if you have written the Great American Novel.

    So, why should a publisher take the risk of publishing you on line? He certainly won't take on your book if YOU publish it online, it simply won't be allowed. You'll have to convince them to do it, take whatever check and royalties you might see, and walk away and let the publisher do his business.

    Given all the above you'll also find that any publisher taking on a new author will demand the rights to the next book. This reduces a certain amount of risk. If your first book does hit they know that they really get their payback on the second which they can sell easier and cheaper.

    If you plan to self publish and take on all the expenses and risks that that entails you can do anything you want.

    If you want a traditional dead tree publishing deal it isn't your choice, and won't be your choice on your next book either.

    Get to the point that Steven King is at and then you can start making some of these choices yourself.
  • As a writer myself, I had considered the option of publishing online, based on the same impetus. The thing I quickly realized is that the publishing game, should you desire to be in any way successful, is not unlike high school: The popular people were the ones that got everything they wanted.

    There are thousands of books that have been published on the net over the years that we have never (and likely will never) hear about. The ones we know of are from already famous authors. The publishing company is right now as neccessary to the book industry as the record company is to the music industry. To really be able to do what you want, you have to find a company that will let you publish at least once and then go from there. Publishing to the net will make your novel unseen and unpublishable, as no company will want a second hand book until you reach a certain level of popularity.

  • I suggest posting the book online first, so that you can get a feel for how people are responding to it. You could even use this as a means of testing your book. You could get some reader reactions and possibly make some changes before actually approaching a publisher. Also, if your book becomes popular with net readers, it may make it easier for you to approach a publisher, as they will see that you have a marketable product. I'd suggest Abika.com [abika.com] as I know they are pretty good with this sort of thing.
  • I run a very large fanfic searchable fan fiction archive (FFML Mini-Archive [tripod.com]) that contains just shy of 15,000 anime-related stories in plain text format. The popularity of this site (~50,000 pageviews/month) has led me to thinking about what would be useful in order to succeed in selling original stories on a similar site.

    To start with, it would help to get a large group of authors together for a single site. I have the advantage that my site archives a fiction-writing mailing list, so I have new content most days and a ready audience of the readers of the mailing list. An original site would probably need some sort of advertising and enough content to keep people coming back.

    Large sections of the text should be made freely viewable. Nobody wants to pay money for a book that they know nothing about. The amount that is free depends on your subject matter: if you are writing programming guides, your chapters are fairly self-contained, so you might want to offer the table of contents and maybe 1/3 of the book for free; if you are writing fiction, you can offer 1/2 to 3/4 of the book for free, since if you get the reader hooked, they will pay a larger amount to find out what happens :)

    Keep you prices down. They won't have a nicely bound hardback, so don't charge them those sorts of prices. I would be hard-pressed to justify more than $2 per download, and would recommend $1 as a more reasonable price.

    Have a convenient method of payment. This was the bane of shareware; nobody will ever send you money if you only provide a mailing address and require a check or money order. You need to either accept credit card payment or some equivalent instant payment option (PayPal.com [hhtp] has had some good press; I've never checked them out, so I have no idea)

    Don't quit your day job. You won't make money at this very quickly, and unless you're very good, you won't make much money at all. Even authors who get published and are available at every bookstore in the country don't tend to get rich, and you won't have the advantage of shelf space or beautiful cover art. Your readership will only increase with your reputation as an author and that sort of thing happens slowly.

    After all that, if anyone is still interested, let me know and I'll put a writeup of their site/book on my website for free. Due to the nature of my subject (anime fanfiction), I am not allowed to profit from my site, but I would love to help someone else profit from their works. I get about 1,500 unique visitors a day who are looking for reading material, and quite a few would also be interested in publishing their original works somewhere that they could get paid from.

  • He has writers block dreams of future when book done hopeless optimist

  • One way to do it might be to publish the first few chapters on your Web site, and offer the full novel via email for a modest sum.

    Alternatively, you could offer the entire novel for download, but post a notice that writing the book was hard work, and you expect a payment of about $X from anyone who reads the book and enjoys it. Note that if enough people enjoyed your work enough to send you $X (where X is maybe 1-3, since they're paying all of the printing and binding costs), it would encourage you to write additional works. You could, for example, set a base fee of $1, and ask for $2 if the reader found the novel to be very good and $3 if the reader found the novel to be excellent.

    Alternatively, you could charge per download. That's the simplest, most straightforward and most traditional way to do it.

    Don't forget that a printed novel will likely be (legally) read by many more people than copies of it are sold. People borrow novels from their friends and from their public libraries all the time. If you publish your novel electronically, soome people will undoubtedly make copies for their friends, but I don't think that this kind of copying will actually have a significant effect on sales, assuming that most of the people who receive "pirated" copies of your novel would have simply, legally, borrowed the original from their friend or the library had it been in print.

    The only singificant threat to your power to control the distribution of your work is if someone posts the work publically. If you opt for the "pay per download or email" model, this may work against you, and you may want to be vigilant about enforcing your copyright. OTOH, if you choose the "please pay me if you enjoyed this" method, you are implicitly betting that people will reward you because they liked your work and want to show their appreciation and encourage further writings. In that case, it would be to your advantage to have your work as widely distributed as possible.

  • If you would like to reduce the risk of having your book spread across the internet, you could consider using an "on-line" publisher. People who use electronic book readers connect directly to the publisher's network (with the book's built-in modem) where they can browse, purchase and download books from a selection of titles. Authors who would like to make their work free on the internet should consider adding it to an on-line library [upenn.edu].

  • Why not use the MP3.com/CDnow.com model? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    MP3.com and CDnow (used to) allow you to buy a cd online and then instantly have access to the streaming audio version of the cd while your cd was in transit. You could allow people to order the book from the publisher's website and at the same time give them a text or encrypted copy to read if they choose while they wait for the hardcover. In fact, I think all kinds of e-commerce companies should do this. I would certainly buy more things online if they did.

  • Re:Postscript of PDF (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > I guess the problem them becomes how to profit from it.

    Sell it to people. Take their credit card number before they download it.

    > I suppose that you could simply have a pay-per-download approach, but that wouldn't
    > eliminate passingof already-downloaded copies around.

    Any possible alternative amounts to telling your customers that you consider them to be criminals. This makes them hate you and not want to buy your book.

    Instead, tell your customers that you do not fundamentally distrust them, and that you want them to buy it. If your book is good, enough people will.

    (You'll want to of course include some sort of blurb/introduction/first chapter for free so that people actually know what they are buying)
  • If I buy a book, and want to give it to someone else when I am finished so that they can read it, I can because it is mine. How can this be applied to a file I downloaded, and how can you copyright protect it? I suppose that if I only let one person at a time borrow the file, then it would be ok, but this seems to be something that will turn into another Napster Nightmare to control and regulate.

    Perhaps we need a new copyright law for electronic media. New ideas on how to sell the content and new pricing structures that reflect the risk that someone takes today to publically release their information. Any ideas that would be fair to both the consumer and the originator?
  • Go with a publishing house first. They'll give you one of three choices (if they accept it):

    1. they'll publish it if they expect to make money (good for you. you can get paid to write.)

    2. they'll invite you to "share the risk", and ask you to pay part of the publishing costs. (translation, one person here thinks it'll make money, and no one else does. if you put up part of the money, and it fails, you're out money. if it sells, we'll both profit)

    3. vanity press. you pay for everything. very popular amongst some U professors (who require the book for their class)

    Go with a publishing house now. Give short stories away for free. That's the teaser. that gets you an audience. The publishing company then covers the cost of promoting you.

    don't rule out serializing it for a magazine, or turning it into a short story for some other publication. if you get paid now, up front, you can then run your own web site where you can make things available, notify fans of new works, publish stuff that would get read (but not commercially published). other things++
  • If you are going to release in multiple formats, you need to make sure that each type of media adds value to the product.

    The chairman of the company that I work for released his book free online [photo.net], and as a dead-trees book [amazon.com].

    Apparently, the online version has not hurt the sales of the print edition. The two versions of the book offer a profoundly different reading experience.

    The print version adds value by being printed on easy-to-read glossy paper, and by having interesting photographs scattered throughout. No monitor is as easy on the eyes.

    On the other hand, the online version is frequently updated, and provides people with an easy way to reference passages via online searches. Many people who start reading the book online eventually buy the print version. In that sense, it could be considered an effective marketing tool. (Though convincing a publishing house that this is the case may be problematic.)

    docwolf

  • Yes, totally. But *not* with a hard-cover. The things are bulky and expensive, and delay the release of the small, affordable version. This is one of my pet bugbears - why won't publishers allow people to make the *choice* as to which format they want their books in? It's pay through the nose for a format I don't want, or wait 1-2 years to read exactly the same material. I'm not going to buy hardbacks, not now, not ever, and I'm sure I'm not the only one - what sales would they be losing by releasing both formats simultaneously?

    Rant over, weekend time, I'm going home...
    Tim.

  • Haiku (Score:1)

    by 575 ( 195442 )
    The book now written
    Publish to bits or paper...
    Depends, does it suck?
  • I wrote a techinical manual and published it myself. Instead of the 50 cents the publisher would have given me I got $70 a copy. Coarse if your book is in the $10/copy zone, I would think the printing/shipping costs might be the biggest issue. There are plenty of websites that will advertise and sell your book for a percentage ofthe profit. -d-ale>
  • If you wanted to publish it yourself, check out http://www.bookzilla.com/ [bookzilla.com].

    You get to keep all the rights and deal with the marketing yourself. We can print anything up to about 400-500 pages. If you buy a few hundred copies, we can work out a custom cover design.

  • I dont know about the rest of you guys, but I always prefer a good solid book as opposed to a big bulky monitor; You'll never be able to sit on your couch, relax, and read a good computer screen book there; lets face it, even a laptop screen is not as easy to read as a paperback novel. Even with new portable electronic books, I still think the feel, the texture, the tactile response and aroma of the book is better. Merely my opinions...


    --------------------------------------------
  • If he is illiterate, I guess that would make viewing Slashdot a rather boring activity.

  • I've written (and had published) a lot of material, in just about any format. Atoms or bits, it doesn't much matter--folks will pay for compelling content.

    Two years ago I decided I was fed up with the traditional publishing racket and figured I could do it at least as bad as the big presses. After all, I'd just spent three years in arbitration with one of them.

    The single biggest factor that's almost always overlooked is marketing. How are you going to let people know about your masterpiece? All in all it's a pretty sleazy process and not much fun at all, at least for me.

    Here's a couple of articles I wrote a few years ago about the publishing industry and why it sucks so hard:

    Way New Publishing [farces.com]

    Way New Publishing Part 2 [farces.com]

    State of the Publishing 1999 [farces.com]

    As a result, I self-published my latest book and simultaneously in print and on the web:

    Information Eclipse [farces.com]

  • Possible solution to the problem of people reading the book and not paying for it:

    • Publish only the first few chapters online.


    This will get people interested enough in the book to buy the real version (especially if you have a "click here to order the book" link).

    Possible solution to portability:

    • Release the electronically published chapters in PDF format (prettiest), HTML format (looks decent), or plain text format (ugly and not fully portable).


    The drawback to PDF is that PDF files tend to be huge and you'll be stuck paying for the software to write the PDF file (only the reader is free). The good news is that plain text shouldn't be that big, and the reader probably isn't horribly expensive. Also, this will far and away give the prettiest looking output.

    The drawback to HTML is that it's a moderate pain to write portably (don't to "save as HTML" from Word; find someone who knows how to write HTML that looks good on all platforms and hire them to do it). It also doesn't look spectacular. However, it looks good enough for most purposes if written well, and can be viewed absolutely anywhere.

    The drawback to text is that it looks ugly and that you'll have a hard time supporting all of [Windows, Mac, Unix]. Windows uses CRLF for line breaks, Mac uses CR, and Unix uses LF. On the plus side, text converters for these forms are abundant, and producing the text in the first place is fairly easy ("save as text" usually works adequately).

    As another reader points out, your main problem will probably be advertising. Electronic publication is probably best viewed as a supplement to conventional publishing instead of a replacement, unless you're well enough known that "click here to order" traffic through your web site will be enough to sustain you.
  • It is notoriously hard to get a book published.

    But I'd try that first. The publisher's marketing channel is still the best way to get money for writing.

    Unfortunately, you probably won't get a publisher. You aren't a commodity like Stephen King.

    Once you put the book out in digital format, you've blown the most salable right. Now, you might be able to promote it enough to make a publisher notice and offer to buy the remaining rights, but the chances are slim.

    Multiple platform downloadable formats that aren't easy to pirate are kind of a contradiction. Sure, it is probably possible, but very difficult and likely to annoy the customers. I work for a software company, and our copy-protection system is the single biggest source of tech support calls.

    What might work is to make a value-added CD. Fill a CD with your book, including illustrations, and maybe a sound file of you reading it. The point is, the CD ends up with too much content to be a reasonable download. Sure, some people might copy it, but burning a CD is enough of a chore that a significant number of people would rather pay. Burning a CD seems to trigger the concience in some people who wouldn't think twice about sharing a file over the net.


    Our secret is gamma-irradiated cow manure
    Mitsubishi ad
  • What do you intend to do with the rights? I would assume you'd retain the the rights for quite some time, but is there any point where you would be willing to hand the rights over to the public domain?

    Personally, I intend to hold onto any rights that I have until I die. At that point, it's PD for my stuff. Copywrite law is too prohibitive at the moment to allow creative adaptations -- or even verbatim reproductions once the author's deceased. The DMCA obviously complicates this also.

    ---
    script-fu: hash bang slash bin bash
  • Absolutely. Getting a first-time novel picked up by a publishing house is quite rare. Going into the publishing business yourself, count on an expenditure of $30,000 to get you 5,000 and a place with a distributor. Distributors get around 55% of the gross, by the way.

    I've had an idea in the back of by head about using php to publish a book online with pure html. Javascript menus at the top of the page allows the viewer to select the font, font size, etc.

    The server throws the selected attributes, then the text of the book a chapter at a time with <pre>.

    The real problem with formats like glassbook and pdf is they have a fixed size and aspect ratio, which is unsuitable for on-screen reading.

    My advice is to publish the book on the web, which might garner attention from a decent agent or publishing house. Don't go into the publishing business to showcase your single book. It takes at least five titles per year for any publishing house to make a go.

  • There area many ways to publish to the web. The most popular I know of it HTML and then pdf.

    HTML is okay if it is one or two pages or less than 10. Since this is a book, I'd recommend against this format.

    If you have Windows or Mac you can get a tool called Framemaker or Pagemaker/PageMill? and have the book entered in it. You can then easily convert or save it as a pdf file or postscript file. YOu can also edit it and have pictures in it too. By using pdf format you can save much if not all of the layout of the book so that in the future if you want a printed copy you can have that too. Also pdf can give you the cross platform compatiblity that you want. Adobe pdf viewer is available on Windows, Mac, Solaris, Linux and many other platforms as well. I believe in fact that this may be a "standard" format and that there are other pdf viewers that are open source that run on just about any platform.

    On a personal note, I like the idea of releasing books on the web, because it makes putting them in handheld devices so much easier.

    send flames > /dev/null

  • I hope someone moderates that up, it almost brought a tear to my eye.

    There is something about holding, smelling, folding a book that the electronic counterparts just cannot replace.

    Hell, even in Star Trek II what does Kirk get for his birthday? An old fashioned, bound copy of A Tale of Two Cities ( No information on if it was replicated or not though :) ). So I agree, publish it on paper, then if it is successful, maybe then publish it online.

    A lazy, rainy day, a recliner, and an old fashioned bound book, what else comes closer to heaven?
  • But that was steven king, who also had the money and backing to get the word out that the book was out there... So people did buy it who were true fans... but if you're an unknown, you'll pretty much have to trust that people will get the cracked version and then hope that they decide to pay...

    Plus, the with the submitters question about a cross platform format covering Windows, Mac, BeOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux (i think all those were mentioned)... I can't think of anything that'd be secure across all those platforms. PDF would function on all of those, but (I know I'll get a drubbing for this, but:) as far as securely publishing the file, it seems that a closed-source solution would be best. Why?

    For one, it could have any means of exporting the data closed off. If it were an opensource solution than any developer could add code to enable saving without the encryption, which would basically defeat the entire purpose.

    But as someone else said here... Witnessing Naptster, SDMI, Steven King's ebook, and the numerous security sites, it should be common wisdom that if you don't want something freely proliferating, don't put it on the net... Likewise if you want to be sure that you'll be paid for your creations.
  • "don't expect to make money off of the digital version, though you might."

    In the present business world for publishing, I am surpised anyone could any money off of pure digital releshes. Stephen King could do it, well, cause he doesnt need money (at least he should wait until I catch up) and generates his own hype for being Stephen King (thats Mr. King to you buddy).

    But, I think the present business model will change. I does not make full use of technology available and no I dont mean e-books. Like the situation the music industry is facing, the book world is going to face changes in distribution, marketing, selling, and tons of other stuff that I dont know about.

    Right now its going to be tuff to make money in digital formts, but I think that will change soon as giant computers take over the world.

    --|2
  • The publisher performs useful services.

    • Editing and Advice. Some writers don't need it but most do.
    • Book Design and Typography. A well designed book is more attractive and easier to read.
    • Reputation. I know that certain publishers consistently publish good books and I am more likely to take a chance on a book published by someone I trust.

  • People are right to be pointing out that this is very similar to the issue many musicians have with Napster and the like. Of course, the difference is, character recognition scanners aren't yet as advanced as sound recording technology, so you can probably expect that your book won't get "ripped" and put on the internet against your will. Yet.

    People are also right to point out that many people feel there's something special about an actual, physical book that's superior to staring at a screen. Plus, books are still much more portable than laptops.

    But what I haven't seen anyone say yet is that there are a whole lot of people out there who don't have computers or internet access yet, but might still want to read. If you think your book might appeal to that audience, you're not doing yourself (or them) any favors by releasing it exclusively online.

    Of course, if you really wanted to release it in a "multi-platform" format, there's always good ol' ASCII text. Or HTML. But then you'd have to put up banner ads to make money off it, like someone pointed out. Which is, to be fair, a real possibility.

  • Seriously - publishers aren't dopes. They've lots of experience at selling folks material and making a profit for themselves (and some for their authors.)

    Do you see any of them running into online-publishing? No. Why not? IP rights. Copying. Insufficient mass of readers. Nasty format: how many folks want to sit at a desk reading anything that takes a significent amount of time? How many books do you see printed in 8.5"x11" or A4 format? Lack of control: no numbers for the best-seller lists, no metrics for comparing popularity, no 2nd & 3rd reprints...

    Furthermore there are entire libraries of free stuff out there that folks are ignoring (see Project Guttenberg) and you expect your for-cost story will make a splash? If that were so we'd be swamped by chain-mails of expired-copyright texts. I don't know about you but except for my cousin Bob's drunken email ramblings about "The Greys" I haven't gotten any books emailed to me lately.

    Heck, the Stephen King thing was a publicity stunt and aside from a rash of piracy it's probably one of his least *read* stories ever. Few folks can get the kind of press he did and even then I doubt he made as much money as he could of with other mediums.

    My advice? Write. Sweat blood. Try like mad to find a reptutable publisher. Listen to their editors and do as they tell you. Release the book in the traditionial (marginally profitable) fashion. Move on.

  • I'll start by saying that you don't want to minimize the number of unpaid for copies, you want to maximize the number of copies that make you money. Those aren't the same thing.

    I'm a little unsure of how much income you'd make, by, for instance, putting it all up on a multipage web site with banner ads. If you could get enough page views it might be worth it (apparently [wilsonweb.com] you need around 30 page views to make a dollar - beats me if that's accurate.)

    Personally, I prefer to read my books on paper, but I have been know to kill a few hours reading things on the internet. You might want to make the book available for download in multiple formats (pdf, plaintext, whatever) in addition to having the whole thing available online in html. That way, people could read the whole thing - and generate page views, or they could download it. I'd only put a few chapters online at a time, so that people would have to return - but I wouldn't make it so anyone had to wait more than a week to download the entire thing.

    Of course, this would probably work better once your site develops some brand recognition, and you have multiple works availble. Possibly even works by other authors, and/or in various genres. Add in an online order form for getting the deadtree editions, and some Venture Capital, who knows?

  • I believe O' Reilly began its publishing career by printing and binding documents available for free from software sources. Things like the X11 manuals. It wasn't until later that they started printing original material. Even now a lot of their material is available for free on the internet for anyone who wants to read it.

    The fact is, a printed and bound version of a book that you use a lot is cheaper than downloading a digital version and printing it on your own printer.

    And don't forget the vanity thing. An author can do a book tour and autograph copies of the book for his or her fans. But you can't autograph a laptop. Whitout doesn't work well either. And for swatting flies, forget it.

    If people like the book they will buy a printed copy.

  • Timothy Lord, Steve Killen (from freshmeat), and I all live close to one another and have been known to (GASP!) trade copies of books back and forth.

    What's worse, we've all been known to patronize dens of print piracy called "used bookstores" and have been spotted skulking around an infamous spot full of books that can be read as freely as commie-style GPL software that we fondly call a "public library."

    We are evil!

    - Robin

  • "Getting a first-time novel picked up by a publishing house is quite rare. Going into the publishing business yourself, count on an expenditure of $30,000 to get you 5,000 and a place with a distributor."

    $30,000 or $99 through Iuniverse.com [iuniverse.com] and your distributers are Amazon.com [amazon.com], Barnes & Noble Online [bn.com], and any bookstore that orders from the Ingram catalog in whatever size runs they want. The books are printed on demand and available as quickly as most other books. Limited to 6" x 9" paperback format, but that's not much of a restriction. You may not be on the shelves in the local Borders by default, but no other publishing method guarantees that either. I've seen several of the titles published in this program on endcaps in my local B&N.

    LetterJ

  • I think the natural choice for distributing written works such as novels is HTML. You end up with a file that is negligibly larger than the equivalent text file, but have some control of formatting. Everyone has a web browser.

    Definitely. I've put up quite a few of my travel stories [www.iki.fi] up on the net. Travel writing is practically impossible to sell and so I haven't even tried, but on the Net, with no advertising other than a few search engine submissions, I've gotten thousands of readers and lots of feedback. Write a really good story, like Philip Greenspun [photo.net], and you'll get hundreds of thousands.

    Philip also explains why he isn't a writer [photo.net] and why the Net is far better medium than dead trees. Excellent reading.

    Cheers,
    -j.

  • Hey, I'd buy it if it seems good, but you're not exactly approaching the right audience if you're actually looking to be compensated for your work. He might champion the community, but why do you think Tim O'Reilly so rarely releases a book in HTML format? It's incredibly easy to transform documents which comform to the DTD they use into HTML. Who wouldn't want to be able to get a complete HTML version of all the ORA titles that they own for easy searching? It's obvious that people would want this, it's so easy to do, so it makes you wonder if Tim doesn't really trust the community not to pass his dough-winning products the way they do with MP3s. Where's the love, Tim?

    Oh yeah, and when you make that eBook, an MS Reader version would be good, too, 'cause it rocks the house on PDAs.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • I posted this in the thread on Metallica, it applies here as well.. I would add to the below the following - A recipricative editorial process - you edit three pieces of similar length in a similar genre and in return three people edit yours. You give feedback, those with consistently high feedback (and who begin totransform non-selling authors to selling authors) can begin to charge for their services (ie a percentage of profits, or flat fee...). Similar relationships can be worked out for art work- although it may be less relevant to online versions...

    Here is my original statement in regards to music, replace music with books, Record companies with publishers etc.

    Lars mentioned the single download of a nonsigned artist, and the fact that he feels that a small band could never make it without the record industry. However, with a reputation manager, and shared interest manager, his point could quickly be invalidated. Ie, I go through a slection chart listing my likes, dislikes, yada yada, just as is done with amazon. Then, each song can be rated by the individual similar to slashdot, with an added field for additional comments (and possibly multiple rating categories.) This would allow a method for finding quality music by relatively unknowns. Giving them the full power of network effects/pulbicity without the costs.

    LetterRip

  • You are making some common mistakes here. The first is that cutting out the middleman is a good thing. Ask most any shareware author, or someone in a local band, and find out how much money there really is in getting people to buy something from an unknown. Getting something distributed outside of your own meager means is a huge, huge boon.

    Second, there is a reason that publishers reject manuscripts. Sometimes they are wrong. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance being a famous example of a book that was rejected dozens of times before becoming a bestseller. But often they are right. Just because you think something is great and worth reading doesn't mean that it is. You are asking web surfers to be your editor, and to read your story with the foreknowledge that it may be downright lousy. This can work, if you are very good at what you do, just as many bands act as their own producers, but most people need someone else in the loop, especially early on.

    Third, you need the experience of going through a true editing and publishing process in order to gain experience. Playing music in your bedroom is completely different than trying to put a CD together. In effect, you're just going to put a tape recorder in your bedroom and give the result to the world.

    Finally, the web is becoming very full of garbage and this is making people cynical. There are endless home pages of poetry from high school girls. There are sites for pseudo-companies, complete with faux press releases and corporate titles, put together by some junior high kids who decide to put together a software developer. A site with some guy hawking his Great American Unpublished Novel isn't going to garner much confidence or attention.

    Attempting to get published is still the way to go.
  • One of the very first self-published books I ran across on the web was Halcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers [dadgum.com]. It was released back in 1997. I remember reading about it in a number of places, including Wired. It might be worthwhile to talk to the author and see how it turned out.

    Maybe there are other examples of this kind?
  • Not having said what your book is about, I assume it is some kind of technical reference/tutorial. In that case, I suggest you stick to dead tree format for the time being. This is for the simple reason that unless someone big like Amazon or FatBrain is going to sponser you, you're not going to get the necessary press for others to find your book and buy it online. At least with dead tree format, people who browse bookshelves (and a lot of people still do -- the B&N across the street from my apartment is always busy) are at least likely to see your book and can browse through it to find out whether it works for them or not.



    Taking myself as an example, I'm relatively unknown. When I wrote Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide [planetoid.org], I had no way of getting anyone to visit my web site and download my book unless I spent a lot of time and money doing the advertising. In the end, it was better that I let my publisher take care of that. Being placed on the shelves has given me a lot more visibility than I could have gotten anywhere else. (Short of a Slashdot review... Hint hint. ;-))



    Final note: If you are doing a technical book, don't forget that in a situation where the reader is trying to do the task that you're guiding them through, having a hardcopy is crucial. If the OS is crashing or their viewer is being a pain, or they simply don't have the screen space to both view your book and do the work, having the book in electronic format does them no good.



    Once a few more big names go electronic with PDA type devices, we'll start seeing some more interesting options. Until then... Well, recycle old books! (Please, never throw away an old book. Donate it to your local library. At the very least, they can sell it at their used book sale and get some much needed money out of it!)



    -Steve

  • The digital version won't make money until there's a cheap(not a Laptop price), convenient, portable, high-resolution solution in the market. Like a electronic book that can download something like a .pdf file and make it easy on the eyes and able to sit in the bathroom for 1 week without losing all its power. Imagine the fun of sharing libraries a la Napster, not that Napster will be legal then.
  • I think the basic idea of any system is to make it difficult for an "honest" person to steal. Even though ebook was cracked, once this sort of thing will be less commonplace when it widely used. The few ebook hackers will get busted and people will weigh getting a well formatted document for $2.00 against getting busted for copying difficult to read text.

    The PHP method is nice because writing the program would be simple (PDF,XML and encryption support built in) and implementing it on a shared server very simple since its just another PHP script.

    Ebooks in general aren't going to kill real paperbooks anyhow IMHO because they have yet to solve the problem of reading in the bathtub.

  • wow, a very cool service. This would be all I would ask for anyway. If it's in books in print and Ingram's database, it's trivial for any bookstore to order copies. So if people like it, the spreading word will translate into real sales. You can tout it on our home page and point people at amazon for instant ordering. I'm really quite impressed, this is publishing in the internet age. Or would be if they were offering electronic versions for sale. :)

    Unfortunately, they require that you sign over exclusive rights to the work for print, electronic, and subsidiary publication. The royalty schedule seems reasonable to me (20% for print 50% for electronic-how does this compare with traditional publisher contracts?) but that's more than I'd personally want to give up. Free software bias and all that.

    Publisher's co-op anyone? How much do these on-demand print-and-bind machines cost?

  • Don't worry about fancy copy protection mechanism. Don't limit your consumer base by only releasing in a format like PDF that can only be read on a desktop PC.

    Sell subscriptions to your book. Release a chapter every week, or every month. Release the first chapter or two for free. The free chapters give people a chance to decide if they really want to read this or not and hopefully gets them hooked.

    If you charged $5 for the subscription and released a chapter per month I'm sure plenty of people would sign up. I would!

    I like to read books on my PDAs and my laptop. I'll never buy an on-line book in an proprietary file format. I need to be able to convert it to any format, perhaps obscure, that is appropriate for me. I also need to know that in 10 years I'll still be able to read the file. Some brain dead format like PDF or e-book might not be around in 10 years and the software from today may not run on computing platforms available in the future. Plain text, xml, or HTML are nice.

    I've bought ever CD-ROM that O'Reilly has put out. They got it right the first time. Just put the books in HTML (doesn't cost a lot in technology investment for them) and the readers will convert it to whatever format they need.

  • (I was going to post this as an "AskSlashdot"...but here's as good of a place as any....)

    The problem with the original question is that it's posted as an either/or option. Unfortunately, we deal with a mix of electronic and printed documents -- and you're like me you've paid for some of them in both formats.

    My "AskSlashdot" is this:

    1. Is there a cost-effective way of moving existing dead-tree documents into either HTML, PDF, or another searchable mixed text and graphics format?

    I'll buy new documents in electronic *searchable* format when I can. For example, O'Reilly's Networking Bookshelf [oreilly.com] is easily worth the price I paid since I can now search it -- and everything else I have -- easily.

    Yet, I have a four foot wide stack of technical documents and books that just isn't going to come with me on each plane trip. I'm not going to get rid of them -- they are still valuable -- but I have this creeping feeling that they would be more useful if they were searchable all the time...not just when I think of a specific text.

    The available tools for capturing paper and converting it into searchable PDFs is costly, and is geared toward corporations that can justify the costs by the number of users. To me, a per-use licence of Adobe's Capture --

    1. Adobe Capture - Prices [adobe.com]

      Adobe Capture - Features [adobe.com]

    -- is just not cost effective.

    If the document is already a text document -- even if it's in some wordprocessor I don't use -- generating PDF files is easy and cheap;

    Print a document to a Postscript file, or create one. For example a simple text document is trivial;

    1. enscript file.txt -p file.ps

    Convert the resulting Postscript file to PDF;

    1. ps2pdf file.ps file.pdf

    Converting a paper document to PDF is also easy. Just scan the image and use tiff2ps or jpeg2ps to create the Post script file. The only problem is that the resulting PDF is a bitmap image and isn't searchable.

    So, if you want it done, you're back to paying Adobe for Capture or some other nearly as expensive method.

    Tell me I'm wrong...please!

    Other references: PDF utilities on Freshmeat [freshmeat.net].

  • Yes, thats what Euclid thought too when he wrote Elements.

    Er, I think there was a wee bit less competition back then when there was probably an average of about 10 books published per year.

    The fact is, we are overwhelmed with information in today's society. There is no way we can even read 1/1000th of all the information that is available to us at any given time. To rise above all that noise is extremely difficult. In fact, one could say that it's remarkable that anyone rises above it.

    --

  • People are going to want to read your book on paper if they like it. Releasing the whole book online is a good way to expose people to your ideas; if people like what they see, they'll buy your book.

    A simple example from a government office should illustrate my point: a pamphlet was being sold for about $10 via the mail, but wasn't getting many orders. The administration decided to put the text online for free, and the next year, they had ten times as many sales of the paper document.

    I myself am writing a book on MP3s (very slowly, mind you) and have published the first two chapters online [weekly.org] in HTML format. As I write chapters, I'll be posting them to my website and then when I'm all done I'm going to sell a print version. Fundamentally, it's going to be a while before a sufficiently compelling non-paper solution comes into existance.

    For another example of this in action, take Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning was the Command Line" which he released as ASCII text to the Net for free redistribution and simultaneously put up for sale in bookstores. I can't speak for the sales of the book, but I know that I bought a copy as did quite a few of my friends.

    So release your book online in HTML format and sell it in paper version as well. Don't worry, if your content is good, you'll find an audience. =) And remember, it's not about minimizing the number of people who read your book without paying for it; it's about maximizing the amount of money you make. There's a big difference there; those two goals may very well be in opposition to each other.

    David E. Weekly [weekly.org]

  • I think it has been demonstrated that free distribution of PDF via the net of rapidly evolving versions concurrent with a for-fee version that is bound and sold as a book can be done.

    I'm thinking here of Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java, for example.

    They used to be over here [xoom.com], for example.

    I originally downloaded the monstrous PDF file and viewed some of it on-line, but didn't seriously consider printing it out myself because:

    • it takes a long time
    • I do a poorer job binding and packaging x00 pages of 8.5x11 paper than a real publisher.
    • the versions released on the net were typically 0.9x rather than 1.x
    • I felt enough goodwill toward the author, who is not obviously in it just for the money, that I opted to pay what I felt a reasonable price for the published and bound work rather than actively subverting a source of his livelihood.
    • I really do like a bathroom book.

    I don't know how much of hit on profitability, if any, that Bruce E. takes using this approach. I'm certain that some folks that could not afford the in-print book but really wanted it have burned some trees and toner, and that some folks that could afford the book have opted for the looo...budget lifestyle, but I have to believe that he's sold copies of his book. I fervently hope that no one has been sleazy enough to download the PDF and republish the work for further sale.

    On the other side, the free web access may have provided some nice publicity and advertising that could have helped improve sales compared to not doing the net distro route.

    All this does is to suggest that traveling both roads has been done in the past. Maybe it would work for you, too.

  • I've put all my fiction on-line, here [jasmine.org.uk] and, more interestingly, here [jasmine.org.uk]. People read it, and (occasionally) people write to me and tell me what they thought of it - which I get a hell of a kick out of.

    Yes, probably, I could have got some of it published. But it would be a lot of hassle, and would have meant going through a process of being rejected again and again (which is not very good for the self confidence), and I would have been lucky to earn more than a few hundred pounds as a result. Very, very few people make a living out of writing fiction. The way I write it, because I'm not under pressure and don't have deadlines, I enjoy writing. It isn't a job. And I have plenty of time to write software, which I also enjoy and which pays far better.

  • Acrobat reader which is all need for this purpose is available for - lets see 1. Windows (all) 2. Mac 3. Linux 4. HP 5. AIX 6. Solaris 7. BeOS 8. Java - the list grows

    Unfortunately, this leaves out most handheld computers such as my Palm IIIx. What if I want to read my copy while I'm on a park bench, on a bus, or on the can? Also, it leaves out any emerging free operating system that can't run the proprietary Acrobat binaries. (There are truly Free viewers for the PDF file format that work on many of these platforms and could be ported to all bust the worst handhelds, but it's likely they wouldn't be able to support a security-by-obscurity access control method such as Acrobat Merchant without breaking it at the same time.)

  • A thought just occurred to me. Put the file in ASCII with html or something like that if you really want formatting, and then when someone buys it from a web site, get a their public PGP key from them (if they don't have one give them the link for PGPi or something along these lines) encrypt it then have them download. Yeah after they decrypt it then can freely distribute it but so what? Anything you do will be cracked eventually and this way the most of the first to download will be honest. Just a thought.
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • And online retailers can afford to offer a full cover shot of everything they sell. Ain't that handy.

    And yes, a lot of books are impulse buys, mainly because they're near the cashier. But that's unlikely to be the market our questioner is trying to break into. For the most part that's just cheesy romances and the odd books by a big name like King.

    For most authors they publish the only thing the publisher does is provide cover art and distribution, maybe accompanied by a blurb in the companies promotional literature.

    There's nothing there you couldn't do on your own by setting up a webpage, hiring an artist from the net, and sending links to appropriate news sites (Slashdot if it's a techo-thriller, Blue's News if it's about a space marine, etc)

    The problem is in selling the book. I think the best way is digital coins, small e-cash. If you use a 'secure' format hundreds of people will crack it and pirate it just to prove that your secure program isn't. And there is *no* way to provide content and completely protect it from being stripped from the viewer.

    If I downloaded an e-book and someone asked for $5 for it... well, maybe, if it was good and I wanted to read it again. But then with the cost of an international money order and a stamp to get it to their country... Then my time to do all this. Not worth it for anything short of one of my all-time favorites.

    But, if they could suggest a decent price like $1, plus $.50 for every time I though I might reread it in the next two years (2-3 for a really good book) and there was a nice secure way for me to just click a button and pay them... Hell yeah.

    And if the book had a link to their site, you could distribute the book to others and they would have the same trivially easy option of tossing a buck or two the author's way.

    The reason I don't register more shareware is the same, I don't use it enough for the $15 they want, or if I do, I don't feel it's worth the hassle and/or I don't want to use my CC on the net. If I could just toss them $5 or whatever nice and easy, I would.

    And before you scoff at $2 or so for downloading a book, think of the cut the author gets, 100%. Sure they have to pay for webspace and all, but if it's not part of a contract, they get to shop around for the best deal instead of simply getting 10% and being told it's really a good deal.

Slashdot Top Deals

I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

Close