One of the joys - and also problems - of books is that they are physical objects, which means they take up space. Taking up space has a cost in today’s crowded world. To get a book from its publisher to you, the reader, requires it to be printed, stored and distributed to the book shops - with all the associated printing presses, paper, bindings, warehousing and transport and fuel costs that are involved. Where a book is globally distributed, you also need to factor in the air fuel and freighting costs and The carbon footprint implications of that. On top of it all, the bookshops where we, the readers, go to finally get our hands on the book have to cover the cost of their premises - and you can imagine how much that could be in the centre of a major city like London: which inevitably means that they can never stock all the books ever published. In addition, there’s the army of people to pay for - from the literary agents to the editors and sales and marketing team to the printers and truck drivers and warehouse workers and bookshop staff. All this huge economic machinery is supported by the humble book, scribbled by a little lone writer in his/ her garrett. Let’s say that each book is sold at an average of 10 per unit. That is an awful lot of books each author must sell to give the publisher and distributor and book shop a return on all those costs.
Which is why in today’s market, it is usually the populist mega-sellers that will be taken on by the agents, publishers and book retailers. The result is that it is increasingly difficult for an unknown writer to be published and authors who are doing only moderately well (the Mid Listers) are finding themselves being dropped. The keepers of the machinery cannot risk poor sales - it’s a business after all.
My recent exploration into ebooks has got me thinking: can they offer new opportunities for writers and publishers so that there is less reliance on this clunky, inefficient process?
OK, the technology of the dedicated ebook reader isn’t quite there yet with a number of functions that still need to be fine-tuned. They are also really too expensive for mass appeal to consumers at the moment. There are also too many conflicting formats - like the early day of videotape where there were the incompatible formats of VHS and Betamax. And, yes, as Margaret Atwood pointed out at the Frankfurt Book Fair recently, you can’t read an e-book in the bath.*
But let’s say, in a few years time, they manage to improve the technology and we have ultra-portable e-readers with great screens that are easy on the eye, pages turn easily and quickly and the price falls to something sensible. Let’s say they come to an agreed format so we can read any ebook on any e-reader or device. And there’s a waterproofing accessory (as there is for iPods) so you can take your e-reader into the bath or swimming pool. At the point, it will be more likely that the average non-techie consumer will buy an e- reader in the way that many people now have an iPod or mp3 player and this will make the market for ebooks truly sustainable.
In this context, I think these might be some of the opportunities for writers and publishers:
# Many writers are already today trying out self-publishing, especially if they are having difficulty getting their work accepted through the conventional publishing process. As I’ve reported on elsewhere on this blog, self-publishing can mean that you end up with boxes of your books piled up in your house, which you are then responsible for distributing to bookshops or selling directly to your readers. Self-publishing your work as an ebook cuts out those storage and distribution problems - your ebook can be easily downloaded direct by your readers either from your website or an online store like Amazon. In fact, Amazon.com in the US already offers a service to authors for creating an ebook that can be sold direct from the Amazon site to readers using the Amazon Kindle ereader device. Another company Yudu offers a service to authors to create multimedia ebooks. I haven’t tried either service - if you have, or if you’ve published your book as an ebook, please do add a comment and tell me about your experience.
# The problem for any self-published author is getting noticed - whether your work is published as a physical object or an ebook. Marketing your ebook is going to be the biggest time commitment you are likely to have to factor in. However, strategic use of social media and other online platforms as well as the traditional methods of flogging a book will all help. The advantage of the ebook format is that you can give away the first chapter easily by email or pdf as a free sample to entice your readers.
# Physical books typically have a shelf life of around 6 months, after which the bookshops send them back to the publisher for pulping or to be sold at the discount stores. This is to make way for new titles and is entirely due to the limitations of space in the retail units. Ebooks take up very little digital space and can be made available forever online. Publishers can take advantage of what author Chris Anderson called The Long Tail but maintaining books in e-format so that they can reap the profit from occasional sales into the distant future - with many backlist titles continually building up, the long tail principle indicates that the sum total of the occasional sale of individual titles will add up to quite a lot. This will help the Mid Listers who may find their books all out of stock in the conventional publishing cycle and who may also be able remain profitable for the publishers since the cost of maintaining their physical books is taken out of the cost-benefit equation.
# Physical books will never disappear, in the way the CDs are still around in spite of music downloads - and in fact, vinyl records are even making a comeback. If publishers move towards issuing any book in both physical and e-format, it will be immediately available for the two different kinds of consumer and in the long term, the ebook will remain purchasable even when the stock of the physical one runs out.
# At the moment, ebooks are electronic versions of books written for paper. As the electronic medium itself becomes more sustainable, can its strengths be exploited by writers to create texts that are multi-layered, multi-linked and multi-media? Blogs incorporate links to other blogs or websites, pictures, audio or video within the text of the particular blog post. Can ebooks evolve the nature of writing so that it encompasses a wider experience beyond the immediate text through including links and other multi-media? For factual books, this is could potentially add to their usefulness in e-format by enabling the reader to click on a link to go direct to the cited reference, for example. For fiction, it might lead to, say, the floor plan of a building being made available in a thriller if the protagonist is looking at a floor plan in contemplation of carrying out a heist in the building. Or could jazz music be incorporated to evoke the mood in a noir detective story set in the 1940s?
# In the way that DVDS include bonus features around a movie, could ebooks include similar special items such as an interview with the author, research notes along the lines of “The Making of….” and other location, historical or background information, especially where the novel is set against the backdrop of real events or an interesting locale?
# Purists might argue that this is not what reading books is all about - but all you need to do is look at the popularity of the Harry Potter franchise, or even the Jane Austen one where there’s the book but around it, there are the movies, the spin-off books, the museums, the memorabilia, the TV series, the location tours etc. It is clear that fans of book based stories want to carry on living the experience in other ways and to offer multi-media and other “added value” features can make that ebook an attractive option to its physical counterpart.
# Do writers in the future need to see themselves not as merely text-bound narrators but as multi-media storytellers? Personally, I think this is a potentially exciting time for a writer who is able to embrace the multi-format style of telling their story. An interesting and highly profitable experiment in multi-format, multi-media narrative has already played out through the franchise of The Matrix - the full arc of the story encompasses the three movies as well the video game versions and film shorts. You can enjoy each separate medium without knowing anything about the storylines going on the other media but if you watch the movies, play the games and take in the short films, you get a deeper, richer experience of the world of The Matrix and its characters. I’m not saying that the humble ebook necessarily can take on a highly complex and sophisticated Hollywood narrative such as The Matrix project - I think that knowing that such a form of storytelling has been a huge success for the creators of The Matrix can inspire writers to play with how to convey their message via new and different media.
The one thing I haven’t mentioned is copyright, DRM (Digital Rights Management) or a viable business model for ebooks, especially multi-media ones. These issues are going to be key to the success of not only the attractiveness of the eformat to content creators but also to consumers embracing the medium. I haven’t analysed these aspects in sufficient detail to say more than that, at this stage, and there are greater experts than me grappling with this complex problem out there who have yet to solve it! All I would say is that ebooks offer exciting creative and commercial possibilities for writers and publishers and many of the problematic issues are likely to be resolved over time and through trial and error - as with the adaptiation of any new technology.
Photo: from iliadreader.co.uk product page
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When I visit someone’s home, I can’t help but checkout the books on their shelves. Often, I find that with very good friends, we have many books and interests in common. But what is the most interesting is when I visit the home of someone that I get on pretty well with and like a lot but there’s just something that I can’t put my finger on - for some reason, we do not connect at a very deep level and I just have a sense that we’ll never be the best of friends. When I visit their home, it all becomes clear - they do not have a single book in their home, apart from maybe a few cookery books or travel guides. In my house, every single room, including the hallway is full of books - and I’ve just given a whole pile to Oxfam to make space for new books. 
