There’s a broad spectrum of readers who still prefer a print book—from young children just beginning their reading lives to young adults, and so on. Many readers avoid ebooks as a consequence. The situation is similar in the music industry where stereophiles still like their LPs even though the dynamic range and frequency range of CDs far surpass them—they just prefer analog to digital (or maybe don’t know the “sampling theorem”?). Many people also like to give print books as presents to their family and friends who are readers too.

From the authors’ and publishers’ point of view, this means there’s a market for print books, ebooks, and audiobooks. Many readers “read” in all these formats. That drives up book production costs if an author or publisher wants to cover the entire book market.

The ebook has the lowest cost, but it’s still significant. It only needs a cover, for example, and that’s used more as a display icon that can attract the potential reader. A print book needs front and back covers and a spine. The ebook is a computer file often less than a megabyte in length. A print book’s innards are ink and paper, and cost is often determined by the quality of both along with printing the cover on thicker stock. It’s therefore reasonable that a print book costs more. (What’s not reasonable occurs when a publisher charges almost as much for the ebook version as the print version. The Big Five often do this.)

There are print books where I can’t imagine ever using an ebook version. Take Isaacson’s Leonardo da Vinci (I recently reviewed it for Bookpleasures). Thick paper was used because of the many reproductions. It’s not a coffee-table book either—the text, nearly 1000 pages of it, far surpasses the space for the reproductions—is essential to the book. Other books requiring print versions are most science and technology textbooks.

But I write fiction. While I recognize that some readers prefer print, I’m a mongrel with both indie and small press books. For the former, I pay for the production costs—editing, formatting, and cover art—so adding a print version more than doubles my cost. (The same is true for any publisher, but for traditional publishers, the publisher pays because they pay for salaries and benefits for the production staff.) I’ve added print versions for a few of my indie novels, but that extra cost doesn’t seem to be justified by sales. The big personal advantage of a print version is that I can use it in my book events (it’s hard to sign an ebook—there’s software to do so, either before or after publishing, I suppose, but writing a little message for the reader or the intended recipient seems impossible). I don’t need all of them to have print versions for that.  None of my indie print books are in bookstores either (they don’t like indies), but they are in libraries because I’ve donated them.

Bookstores shun small presses too, not just indie authors. Small presses used to get their books in bookstores, but Ingram has changed its policies and only allows book returns for publishers with large book production runs, which is never the case for indies and also rarely the case for small presses.

Is this a Big Five conspiracy with Ingram as willing accomplice? Maybe. I prefer to see it as small presses facing the same problems indies face: they’re facing increasing production, distribution, and storage costs in the industry. If authors want to publish with a small press, they should choose one with a large catalog. Costs are reduced the larger the production scale, and with a large catalog the small press has more royalties to pay for those production costs. However, the larger the traditional publisher, the bigger the queue there is for your book to get published. Tradeoffs abound.

Of course, those readers who want print versions lose out because these circumstances imply that it’s costly for any publisher, indie author, small press, or Big Five, to publish a print version, even an all paper trade paperback version (hardbound versions are super expensive). They might consider that all that paper kills woodland forests too, but then there’s the toxic materials contained in discarded e-readers, tablets, and laptops to contend with too, if we want to get in an ecological debate. Those latter costs are rarely considered by any publisher, but should we give up reading and literacy because of environmental concerns? (I’d think the print versions are worst for the environment because forests are Gaia’s lungs, but I’ve yet to see any studies on the subject.)

The bottom line: readers and writers must understand the industry and know what it takes to put a book in their hands. Readers should never limit themselves to Big Five books, and writers should recognize the trade-offs between indie, small press, and Big Five publishers.

***

Great Spring Thaw Sale. Every two weeks, with one week overlap, starting April 1, one of my books will be on sale at Smashwords (the overlap means that there are usually two books on sale). (Yes, it’s been going on…sorry about that, but it was announced on my Home page and elsewhere.) Take advantage of this to download some entertaining spring reading. Each ebook will be on sale for $1.99, regardless of the normal retail price. Access my author page for the entire list of ebooks. (Remember, Smashwords offers ALL ebook formats, including mobi format for Kindles.) Use the coupon code for the ebook on checkout.

In libris libertas!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 17th, 2018 at 3:30 am and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.