“Digital books will most commonly be referred to as “books,” not ebooks,” Says Mark Coker of Smashwords. For the rest of his predictions about the publishing industry in 2020 click HERE http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/publishing/smashwords_book_publishing_10_years_in_the_future_147705.asp.
Here’s hoping that in another ten years all publishers will have the memo on this. I just had to drop a seminar because the key text is not available in digital format and the closest print copy is on reserve in a library 40 miles away. This means I can check out the book out for two hour periods but can’t remove it from the library. In these type of situations, photocopying is usually the solution, but to add insult to injury the only copy machine in said library is broken. I actually drove the 80 mile round trip for two days before I gave up. I’ve been making use of Kindle and the Barnes and Noble e-reader for the past few classes and got used to the convenience of being able to buy my etexts on the day of first class, so the idea that I would have to do a cross country paper chase to find this book caught me unawares. I am not talking about an ancient manuscript on delicate parchment bound by crumbling leather. This book has a 2005 copyright and the publisher obviously has the electronic files sitting in their computers but neglected to make a digital version for sale – a process that would take one of their editors a few hours to create in the worst case scenario and a few minutes if a clean conversion is possible. Furthermore the publisher gets to double their profit margin each time they can sidestep printing, binding and shipping costs and sell an ebook. So all in all it makes no sense at all for a publisher to be so clueless about industry trends that they are passing up on good money from willing customers, and all I have to say is “wake up!”
Filed under: Books, ebooks, future of publishing
