One effect of digital books that I don't remember seeing discussed anywhere

[womzilla]

Several (many?) major publishers have mass-market paperback public domain lines. These books don't generate a lot of revenue each, since they're usually sold very inexpensively, but they also don't cost a lot to make, and they are capable of selling a great many copies each. (I don't think I'm giving away any secrets when I mention that Tor Books's 1992 edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula sold significantly more copies than Signet's novelization of the movie, Fred Saberhagen's Bram Stoker's Dracula.)

However, as reading e-books becomes more of the everyday habit of reading, what happens to these public domain lines? I can't imagine they'll go away completely, not for a very long time--but they'll definitely be hurt. It's hard to compete with free.

Comments

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Some guys who are trying to compete with free (http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/154567.html). Very badly.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

As I commented on your page, I think these are the same people who are also flooding the market with print-on-demand Wikipedia pages.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

This causes me to meditate on what "flooding the market" means.

A printed copy of the Wikipedia page on Watermelons is available, along with jillions of sister titles. So if you count by books listed for sale, the market is flooded.

But if scarcely anybody buys such books, their potential existence does not increase the total sales of the world's books by much. So that's not a flood, it's a trickle.

Do you have any inkling (does anybody?) what the actual sales are for these long-tail POD publishers? I ask because you're more hip to publishing than I.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I mean that there are such a proliferation of titles that they jam up searches on both bn.com and amazon.com, especially on more obscure searches.

[washa-way.livejournal.com]

Nothing against Saberhagen, but I think I'd have to view the success of a novel over its movie's novelization as proof of some cosmic justice.

[wendyblackheart.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I just bought a bunch of those public domain title lines. I've been remiss on both my reading of classics, and my pleasure reading that requires actual thinking (school will do that...)

I think that, while nothing beats free, I'd rather have a real book in my hands any day. I like touch them, and hold them, and write in some of them and make notations. I like the smell of ink and paper.

And likely, there will be people like me around for a long time yet.

A librarian friend of mine pointed out, when I mentioned another person we knew had said that in ten years, books would be DOOOOOMED, that aside from carvings on stone tablets, books have been the best form of preserving information there is - especially considering how faulty and fussy computers can be.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt there will be many people who prefer paper over e-reader for a long time to come, and as such I'm sure there will be some paper copies of all the canonical works of western literature for a long time. (I note that B&N has a huge public domain reprint line, too.) But if the numbers drop from 100,000 paper copies of Wuthering Heights sold every year to 10,000 because 90% of the youth of America would rather read on their iKindookreader, that makes it a lot less feasible to publish *any* copies of Wuthering Heights for the mass market.

[wendyblackheart.livejournal.com]

That also assumes that the youth of America even *wants* to read Wuthering Heights. Hell, when we read it in school, only 4 of us actually finished the book....everyone else was confused that there was more plot after Catherine died.

Unless they start to severely drop the price on these e-readers, then the fact that books are free online is moot, unless people enjoy reading a novel while sitting at the computer. (The only time I've ever *wanted* an ereader was actually while reading novel length fan fic, because I do hate sitting here to read long things.) Its still cheaper and easier to buy a 5 dollar copy of Wuthering Heights than to get an ereader and download it. For now.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

The kids who are growing up today thinking of e-mail as geezer technology are going to take e-reading for granted. There are e-reader softwares for all the smartphones, which are becoming more and more common, as well as laptops and netbooks. And for the iPad, of course, which is probably going to be as ubiquitous in two years as the iPod was two years ago.

Also, the dedicated readersare in a price war now, with prices down 40-50%--the nook, the Kobo and the Sony Touch all have versions for ~$150, and the cheapest Kindle is now $10 less than that. I think they're going to be very popular Christmas gifts, and you can fill up on PD books for free once you have one. They might even get cheap enough that schools start issuing them to students.

[wendyblackheart.livejournal.com]

Damn. I'm behind the times. I thought they were much more expensive! (Though I'm also just behind the times. I have no lap top, nor desire for one, nor a smart phone (though I wants it!) or any of that. Also, I use a pc.)

I'm half tempted, half resentful of them, I think...though I felt this way about the iPod, and now I freaking love mine. So we'll see what happens. Considering I'm 26, I'm always a bit resentful and distrustful about new technology, especially when it relates to books. I'm not sure why. Probably due to my weird attachment to books and libraries.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

There's quite a gamut of free PD books out there. PG probably has the best-groomed of the lot. Archive.org has the most awful, apparently scanned by a robot without anybody ever looking at the resultant mess. Columns give the software fits. Footnotes cause seismic waves that take whole pages to resolve.

Even many of the low-cost editions seem never to have been edited. I chose the Sony because it could deal with .txt and .rtf as well as .pdf and some proprietary formats, and I've been improving my ability to quickly convert a PG book (which often has inexplicable line returns and spaces in place of tabs) into something I can read and enjoy.

[jimhenley.livejournal.com]

I'm always open to paying a little money for a pub-domain e-text that I am confident has been well-edited. (Correct formatting; well-proofread etc.) It's hard, though, ex ante, to know if a given e-edition of a PD work has those features.