In case you worry, I’m really a lot better today, but we need to go and pick up Cedar Sanderson from the airport for the workshop… so, I need to be clean and ready to go in a few minutes, and this AND blogging won’t fit into my early morning.
I was talking to Kevin J. Anderson the other day and he was telling me that most people are missing how big the ebook thing was, because even our “old” books largely haven’t been seen outside the states.
The eBook Invasion—Taking over the World One Text File at a Time
The world is about to explode—and I mean that in the best possible way. A major change is happening right now in international reading and book-buying. For most people, this is occurring under the radar, but it’s big.
A friend in the computer gaming industry sees the same thing from her perspective: Tablet and smartphone games/apps are already booming in the US, Europe, and Asia—but those devices are just starting to catch on internationally. The market hasn’t reached its peak yet, not by a long shot. In fact, international smartphone and tablet use is where the US market was several years ago.
Think way back to, say, 2010 and consider how the US market has boomed in such a short time: Droids, iPads, iPhones, Galaxy Tablets, Slates, Nexus, and countless clones are ubiquitous. One-third of American adults have tablets and over half own a smartphone.
And the potential market in Asia could be even larger. According to my insider friend, the gaming industry is holding its breath, waiting for the Asian market to reach a critical mass when everyone has a smartphone or tablet—and therefore become potential customers for games and apps. It’s going to happen soon, and then sales will explode.
You see where I’m going with this?
A Slow Start
EBook sales in the US burbled along for years, even decades, barely a blip on anyone’s tracking sheets. High-tech prophets talked about the coming revolution, how electronic text would take the place of words printed on paper. Eventually, we stopped listening because people simply didn’t want to read books on their computer screen.
In 2002, Tor Books released the electronic version of my novel with Brian Herbert, Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. Their electronic-rights person called me one afternoon, extremely excited to tell me that The Butlerian Jihad was the #1 bestselling eBook title in the nation, and it had held that position for the entire month! That sounded like great news—until I asked him how many we had sold. His voice held an undertone of awe: “Three hundred copies total!”
Well, that novel ended up selling over 140,000 copies in hardcover, and many more than that in paperback. From that point, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to electronic books.
But when portable reading devices finally became inexpensive enough, usable enough, and (let’s admit it) cool enough—that’s when eBooks took off. And it happened with astonishing speed, taking many in the publishing industry by surprise, even though they had been thinking about electronic books for a long time.
Suddenly, everybody wanted a Kindle, a Kobo, a Nook, a Sony e-reader or similar device for Christmas or a birthday. And as soon as the proud new owners had their own little toys, they loaded up their libraries, often with public-domain classics of literature (which they never actually read) or grabbing the complete works of their favorite writers.
Indie authors, fed up with traditional publishers or too impatient to wait for a deal to appear after years of submissions, decided to put up their own titles, charging 99¢ for the novel they had slaved over for years.
Authors like myself, with a substantial backlist of out-of-print titles that no traditional publisher wanted to reissue, released eBook versions . . . and stared amazed at the sales figures that rolled in. And no wonder—for years, my established fan base had no way of reading my older books except to hunt them down in a used bookstore, and now they suddenly had access to dozens of novels they had heard of but could never find. All for five bucks or less.
Enter the next phase: Today, it’s no longer even necessary to own a dedicated Kobo, Nook, Sony e-Reader, or Kindle device. If you have a tablet or smartphone for other uses, all you need is an app. You have an iPhone? You have an eReader. iPad? EReader.
Read the whole thing here, and I’ll answer comments as I can over the day.
According To Hoyt 
I’ll admit to being skeptical when the first e-readers came out. Pay good money for something that doesn’t exist other than a data file? But then my lovely bride got me a Kindle one year, and I was hooked…
I still worry whether, if in a civilizational crash, the transition to e-books won’t hinder reconstruction. But I doubt we’ll end up with something like the dark ages described in ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’, where people burned everything with writing on it they could get their hands on…
(And to show how thoroughly we’re embedded in the future – I couldn’t remember the title of the book, but I googled up ‘illuminated circuit diagram fiction’ – and it was mentioned in the first entry. Yay, living in the future!)
It takes time for innovations to fade into the background and become mainstream, and in time so routine that we don’t even notice them. – but I think that time’s getting shorter and shorter.
And that’s fine by me.
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It’s a common enough fear that I know a lot of folks who are stockpiling anything they find worthwhile as hardcopies– I think Mr. Lileks of lileks.com mentioned that he prints out stuff he REALLY wants to save, though he jokes about being obsessive.
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e-books hindering or helping the rebuild, hard to say.
on the one hand, data files require working computers.
on the other hand, it’s a LOT easier to protect a kindle than it is to protect the many shelves worth of paper books that would be the equivalent.
given that you can fairly easily rig up a 5v power source to charge a kindle/tablet from, unless the crash is EMP based, I expect that there will be good supply of working equipment around.
And while the current high-speed, always-on Internet is likely to take a hit, text files are still relatively small, and determined people can build a network out of the most unlikely things, so some form of Internet is almost certinly going to be around for a long while.
now, I just need to go get a complete copy of the Grantville Gazette tech discussions archives and stash it on a few machines :-)
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Very interesting. Glad to hear that you’re doing better!
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Speaking of the prophets, back in 1992, “Commander Rick” of Canada’s Prisoners of Gravity did a show on eBooks. It was surprisingly prescient considering it was two decades ago. They called them “Cyberbooks” at the time. Here’s the first of three parts.
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It’s very funny to watch an old-school author’s eyes light up when you start talking royalties, and they find out that the $4 Kindle version of a forgotten back-catalog book of theirs will yield more actual money than a $15 hardcover sale used to.
Heck, if someone can rely on selling ten thousand total copies of each new book at $6 a pop (what the big publishers considered a profitless loser), they can actually make a decent living on a one-new-title-a-year schedule. Or enough from one re-release of an out of print gem to buy a car. Or a house.
…and the royalties never stop. For as long as you feel like keeping a title on the market, it can keep selling, with the profits showing up automagically in your bank account. In the past, if a book only sold 50 copies a month, it would be remaindered and off the market in no time. Nowadays, it’s “that book pays my utilities every month, forever.”
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Well, if you’re the first in a political argument to accuse the other side of Naziism, they have a name for that (sorry, still on first cup – brain isn’t working, much less memory).
and the same goes for other subjects.
What term can be used about someone who is the first to make refferal to Heinlein? A RAHist?
Anyway, IN the Rolling Stones he makes the comment that, the Stone family was old-fashioned in that they liked books they could actually feel, hold in their hands and smell the paper. There might have been another citation, but see the parenthetical statement above.
As time goes on I find myself even more amazed at his ability to see trends and possible outcomes.
But I’ve also wondered, as did Jerry Lawson above, what effect having texts as digits instead of ink might have if there is a world-wide disaster. Paper and ink is a mature technology, and all a person needs in order to read them is the ability to read. You don’t need special devices, nor electricity, nor an internet connected to informational sources. It’s all there, in your hands. Need more information? Check the footnotes, the appendix or the reference notes.
I LIKE my tablet. It’s especially handy when waiting in doctors offices. Having access to several thousand novels when I desire is nice – so long as the power holds up.
But I’m also acutely aware of the shortcomings as well.
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Heinlein is one among a number of authors who predicted some form of electronic storage for books in the future (or, in some cases, the past, by a previous civilization that was lost – usually one that spawned civilization on Earth).
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You ought to see the amount of technology it takes to MAKE one of those mature-technology books. The investment necessary has fallen to under a ten-thousandth of what it was before the digital revolution in the graphic arts, and the capital investment necessary to make an e-book is another order of magnitue smaller.
But that “big iron” technology is more than a generation obsolete at this time. Sure, you could print a book using Gutenberg’s press, but would you want to?
At a civilizational level, I suspect that it would probably be better, and possibly easier, to restore the high-tech infrastructure necessary to ebooks — or (here’s a concept) work to ensure that the collapse never comes.
Remember: YOU will not survive the Zombie Apocalypse. Don’t let it happen. IMNSVHO, it’s the Human thing to do.
M
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He said “magnitue.” ::snicker:: [/beavis]
M
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Seconded!
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The term you were looking for is “Godwin’s Law”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
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I really resisted buying an ereader until my hubby finally convinced me to get the Kindle 2nd generation. I have not gone back. In fact, except for textbooks, I don’t even buy books anymore. It didn’t change my reading because I was one of those that read three-five books a week. It did change what I carried…I was getting a hunchback from carrying heavy books. So yea, changed my life– I now have two e-readers and I bought my hubby two ereaders– one that dealt with pub files and a kindle.
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I purchased my first “ereader” because I didn’t want to continue only reading ebooks on my PC and wanted a bigger screen than what was then available in other gadgets.
I’ve currently “upgraded” to a tablet because of the larger screen (also have found myself using the other features of the tablet).
Now, I’m slowing working to replace my dead tree books with ebooks. [Smile]
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I far prefer to read deadtree books, and will usually purchase books I know I will read multiple times in deadtree format; if available. On the other hand I find myself reading more ebooks than deadtree ones these days, because of both price and availability of authors I like. They are also handy for traveling as long as you have access to a charging system for your reader.
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Travel was what first pushed me into wanting an e-reader. I was flying back to San Francisco from Munich airport after a 3 week business trip spent mostly in Serbia.
As a hard-core reader, about a third of my luggage allowance was allotted to books (not much else to do at night in the small city I’d been in, and TV was not appealing even if I could understand it). I’d saved a couple of nice thick ones for the flight back, and was hoping that they’d last the flight. Then I noticed that the man in the next seat had a Kindle. I was fascinated – easy to read, no heavier than a single paperback, and capable of holding *how* many books?
My wife got me a Kindle that year for Christmas. She was amused that I loved it, but wasn’t terribly interested until she learned that many out-of-print books she wanted to read were available for download at bargain prices. So I bought her one. Now each of our daughters has one, too.
And when we travel, we no longer worry about overweight luggage charges.
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I got my e-reader because it was cheaper than buying a dead-tree edition of Helmut von Möltke the Elder’s book about the Ottoman Empire. And then I got hooked.
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like
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When the Safari Online tech library came out, I was left wiggling on the floor because I didn’t have to carry a suitcase full of tech books on the road. All I needed was my laptop! Oh Baby, Oh Baby!!!! I’ll be in my bunk…
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I remember watching Star Trek: The Next Generation when it first came out, and marveling how advanced and futuristic their PADDs were. Now I own one.:-)
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Yes! Plus we’ve got communicators – that can double as PADDs!
I love living in the future… mostly. I keep thinking our politicians want to shove us into a dystopia where they’re the unaccountable ruling elite and we exist on their sufferance.
Then I remember “The Weapon Shops of Isher”… and smile.
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Just remember the politicians are the ones who think the internet is “a series of tubes.” Which is bad when they try to write laws about it, but good when they try to restrict us. They don’t know how.
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Apparently my old internet provider was downhill from me and had a low pressure fitting on my tube.
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*snort– well I got a kink in my internet tube the other day and it took it down for four hours.
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Mine gets clogged with cats and WoW weapons.
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Actually, if one considers how “uploading” and “downloading” speeds work, one can make an analogy using a Tube, and how much material can be pushed through it in one direction at one time.
Tho’ most techies prefer to use the Railroad Model — the “rails” are the lines through which the info “railcars” travel; and since traffic can’t travel in opposite directions on the same line…. (Many of the folks who “built the Internet” were also members of MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club; you figure it out.)
In this case: The Pol was “right for the wrong reasons”.
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I had a thought that Ayn Rand was living in the big-iron industrial period and her Atlas Shrugged reflected that view of transportation and manufacturing. Really, though, a true re-mount of that film should have made Dagny the operations manager of a internet provider conglomerate faced with net neutrality, Reardon the developer of the next generation fiber-optic communication backbone being ground into the dirt under regulations under the “commerce” clause, and Galt the developer of breakthrough 3D printing.
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*shakes a fist at the guys in charge of the Star Trek IP*
Take my money and GIVE ME A PADD STYLE INTERFACE, BLEEP IT!!!!
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I have seen what Kevin is describing with my own eyes. I have my own online store, and there is one delightful individual in Denmark who buys everything I write. (Probably to avoid the huge VAT and other unnecessary charges.) I don’t get a huge volume of sales in my store, but I can imagine having the option makes those people very happy.
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This suggests English is well on the way to becoming THE world language. Internet posting can handle multiple languages, especially with Media producers having an interest in pushing their native tongue (e.g., Deutsche Zeitungen) but there is far less interest in author/publishers offering their own work in translation. So, if you want to read Kevin J Anderson, read English.
It also suggests a need for systems allowing readers to drink from that firehose of eBooks.
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English has been on that course for the last 200 years or so. If you want to do anything interesting in business, diplomacy, science, or engineering you need to be able to work in English.
That’s why English is the #2 language (behind Mandarin) and the #1 second language on the planet.
Not bad for a pidgin arising from Norman knights trying to talk Saxon barmaids into the sack.
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English is become the lingua franca of international commerce. And, since “lingua franca” means “french tongue” when will “english language” become the phrase indicating a lingua franca?
M
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From the history of English, I’d think no.
HOW MANY phrases do we have where what we mean when we say them is totally different than what the original actually meant?
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sweetie — that’s true of every language I know.
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Then I put it down to “caused by a case of humanity” and call myself double-correct!
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Probably about the time that “French” replaces “Greek” in “That’s Greek to me.”
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To our gracious host: Have you noticed any movement in your e-book offerings internationally? I’m assuming from what I’ve read that those sorts of sales are broken out in statements. Does anybody have ideas or suggestions for how to tap that market vs. marketing to the U.S.?
I’d been thinking in terms of translations in foreign markets, expecting that the bulk of sales would be in the native language. A particularly odd blindness on my part, considering how many bookstores I’ve visited in other countries, but there it is.
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When I first bought my nook, I started off reading books from Project Gutenberg that I’d not been able to find. All six books of Dumas’ Musketeer cycle. And then the 30+ of Percy Keese Fitzhugh’s Boy Scout novels that are in the public domain.
I suppose I could have read them on my desktop or laptop, but a tablet just works so much better.
To date I’ve bought a couple of hundred ebooks (mostly SF, and mostly from Baen), and downloaded at least as many from Gutenberg. (And I’ve subscribed to Analog and Asimov’s, again.)
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After the bit in the article, I was wondering if I was the only weird one who actually reads those Project Gutenberg books.
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No – I have downloaded tons and read many from PG.
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The Dumas musketeer cycle is APPALLINGLY translated
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When the DiCaprio Iron Mask came out, I went looking for the musketeer cycle, intending to re-read them. At that time, four of the six were out of print.
Gutenberg’s choice of translation may not be the best, but they are available, which is better than being unavailable.
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Most of my WRITING books are paper – because I have them heavily annotated by the time I finish reading them, and I can stack them, and I can have a bunch of them open at once.
But mostly because the screen gives me eyestrain after a while (especially if I have a bunch of files open on it – can you have multiple Kindle books open simultaneously?), and I retreat from that by going to paper and pen/pencil for a break.
From which you can probably tell I started reading in the previous century. I currently have 7 books on two different subjects on my desk, just waiting for me to need them.
Straight reading – one page after the other – is fine electronically, but, even with the ability to highlight and annotate, paper books still have their place in my life.
Alicia
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So far I’ve found it easier to look up the spelling of a word in a dead tree dictionary. [Smile]
Your comment about having several books open for research is a very good point.
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Heh, I can beat that: 26 reference books on the desk, with three leaning against the side of the desk. All annotated in the margins or bibliographies. Yes, my work books are all dead tree, in large part because of the citation problem (can’t use e-books unless they have page numbers, real page numbers) and ease of finding pages and quotations. And then there’s all the ones that have not been digitized and probably never will.
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I got the sony 505 reader and was awesome but it broke so I got a Kobo, but I didn’t like that store front so went Amazon and have been happy so far.
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can you use a kobo reader on Amazon? Inquiring minds want to know, because I love the kobo pocket reader, but I don’t want to change to their store
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Not directly. When I want books on my kobo, I purchase them from Amazon, open up the Amazon desktop reader and download the book, then go into my Kindle folder:
C:\Users\xxx\Documents\My Kindle Content
And use Calibre to convert the files to epub.
(There is probably a simpler way, but I don’t know it yet. And it doesn’t take as long as it looks like it does.)
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I’m not sure I want to play with Calibre. The last time I tried it bit me. Pity because I really like the Kobo pocket size. I could put it in my pocket and carry it.
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Bit you? I’ve had little trouble with it. Now, I’ve never tried to add the anti-DRM add-ons to it. I run my anti-DRM programs against the Kindle files before I use Calibre.
Of course, obviously YMMV applies. [Smile]
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I can’t say as it bites me, it simply ignores me and doesn’t do what I want to. Which I am quite sure is my fault for not giving it the right commands, but then I can’t figure out what the right commands ARE. Did I ever mention that I really hate computerized instructions and help? I’m sure I could go on youtube and find a bunch of videos about using it (you can find good how-to videos on everything from changing tie-rod ends to operating obscure computer programs… if you have half a day to scroll through the dreck to find the good ones).
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I have one of the older Sony readers I bought on clearance. IT is the size of a paperback, and so small I kept dropping it with my thick fingers. Since I was teaching myself how to bind books at the time, I made a hard-cover for it in Khaki covered covers hinged with leather. It looks like an old pocket journal.
This Sony only reads the proprietary Sony format, Adobe (after a fashion), and EPub. I do love it, I can now read old books I couldn’t find for less than $75 online in hardcopy that I would be afraid would disintegrate if were to drag them out to cut firewood or pick berries.
I think there will be a market for a cheap e-reader, in the range of $40.00 or so, one that can only display text and maybe search a little, that you would not be so worried about dropping overboard or backing the truck over by accident. As IPads and such are priced, I would be terrified of taking one off asphalt.
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I think there will be a market for a cheap e-reader, in the range of $40.00 or so, one that can only display text and maybe search a little, that you would not be so worried about dropping overboard or backing the truck over by accident.
In related news, my almost-four-year-old’s “I have been a good, big help to mommy while daddy was deployed” present was a 7in tablet that was on sale for $60. (with the “run over it with a truck” insurance and tax, it went up to less than $90.)
We put kindle on it, downloaded some of the classic kid’s stuff and animal picture books, installed some “learning” aps (including Angry Birds– it’s applied math!) then turned off the wifi.
She loves it.
I’m hoping it survives to be passed on to her sister when she’s old enough to be trusted with a used, $100 netbook to learn typing.
Isn’t the future AWESOME!??!
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Man, when I was four my favorite toy was a cobbler’s kit. It was a thin piece of wood with holes in it between two blocks and pegs that you could pound through the holes with a mallet. The best part was the toy was symmetrical, so you could pound the pegs flat, flip it over, and pound some more. Kids these days…
And yes, I do view the world to have quite a few nails in it.
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By the time I was four I had a real* hammer and pounded real nails. I had also got my handsaw back that was taken away from me when I was considerably younger after I sawed the handle off the wheelbarrow.
*real in the since it was metal, and sized appropriate for a four year old, about the size of a tack hammer.
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I worked for a family-owned tree nursery for a while. When they roofed the main building they had a left-over box of roofing nails, so they gave the 5-year-old grandson a hammer, the box of nails and a chunk of oak-trunk they had kept back for a chopping block, and let him hammer until he was out of nails.
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I was fairly small (2-4 yo) when my parents were building a house. I don’t remember but am reliably informed that to keep me out from underfoot they gave me a block of wood and nails, I would sit in the yard and pound nails into the block of wood for hours. While nearby my dad pounded nails building a house.
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The main problem with a real hammer and nails is that you use up the nails. My father would have not been happy with me wanting him to buy more nails every other day. And more wood to drive them in.
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Grandad was a carpenter. I think I was making doll sized (and very bad) tables and chairs and stuff by the time I was 3. Grandad was very patient. I got the sigh and “Don’t hit your fingers, honey” And the “Yes, here’s the paint, this is how you hold the brush” :-P
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I wasn’t that coordinated at three ;-) but at seven I was embroidering handkerchiefs and sewing on a sewing machine.
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Craftsmen are not born, they are raised.
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Little Girl #2 is more like that.
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I’m so sorry to hear that.
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And I haven’t even shared many of her “Well, the shortest path is RIGHT THOUGH YOU!!!” stories yet…..
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I LOVED mine. Only problem being that I kept pounding them completely out the other side and having to put them back, after I had had it for a while.
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The Operation Baen Bulk folks were able to buy a bunch of kindles for $55 each http://obb.teddroberts.com/
the price keeps dropping, it’s going to be interesting to see how far they drop, but $40 is not unreasonable in a year or two
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somthing doesn’t ring true in the story about the butlerian jihad being the best selling book by selling only 300 copies, i mean i’m sure that any single month of webscriptions sold more that 300 copies.
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webscriptions (were they around in 2002?) probably aren’t classified as books, but rather as ezines or something.
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A couple of years ago, I bought an iPad. About three months later, I stopped buying hard copy books.
Yes, there are issues with any eReader, but I can carry a huge library with me, wherever I go. I can’t do that with hard copy books. Back when I was still travelling in sales, I’d often be away from home for a week or more. Try packing ten books into your luggage. Try keeping ten books from getting trashed when they toss your luggage into a baggage conveyer.
I think that the next five years are going to shock people.
Wayne
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Late to this convo, but the e-readers and the dead trees solve two different problems. A business traveler doesn’t want to carry dozens and dozens of dead trees. Dan Alderson couldn’t have arranged the preservation of civilization by hiding a few double-baggied kindles in his septic tank.
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> Dan Alderson couldn’t have arranged the preservation of civilization by hiding a few double-baggied kindles in his septic tank.
why not? just add a solar panel or crank charger to power them
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