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E-books spell doom

25.07.08

A rise in the popularity of electronic books will spell the end for publishers, according to Toby Young, author of the bestselling How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, reports VNU Net.

Young claimed that the change will come about because the electronic format allows established authors to publish the books themselves. "They can upload them onto their websites and charge people to download them onto their e-book readers," he said. "And instead of taking 10 to 15 per cent of the purchase price, which is the position authors are in at the moment, they will be able to take 100 per cent of the retail price and cut publishers and agents out of the equation completely."

Young, who was speaking as an official ambassador for the Sony Reader.

VNU Net

waterstone's Sony digitisation e books Sony Reader

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By Morva Shepley

He wishes! As far as I can see, online and POD publishing means that authors do a lot of work writing, and preparing mss and building up publicity for it before it comes to the attention of publishing houses. The reason writers hope for this attention is because of economies of scale which come into play when a publisher prints their book: Masses of books, masses of sales. Also, you're forgetting books which are made just for the sheer beauty of them, costly books which only a publishing house could hope to make their money back on. Ciao Morva Shepley MorvaHouse.Blogspot.com

27 Jul 08 03:26

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By FZ

While I don't deny that the balance of power will change, I think Toby Young is too quick to write off publishers. As far as I can see, a publisher's task is not merely to print a book and send it to a bookshop. Desiging covers (will there still be covers in an e-world?), copy editing, marketing and publicity, entering for literary prizes and a host of other tasks are carried out by publishers. Even if an established author could do all this more cheaply than a publisher, an author should still use a publisher because of Ricardo's principle of comparitive advantage. According to Wikipedia: David Ricardo explained it clearly in his 1817 book On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation in an example involving England and Portugal. In Portugal it is possible to produce both wine and cloth with less work than it takes in England. However the relative costs of producing those two goods are different in the two countries. In England it is very hard to produce wine, and only moderately difficult to produce cloth. In Portugal both are easy to produce. Therefore while it is cheaper to produce cloth in Portugal than England, it is cheaper still for Portugal to produce excess wine, and trade that for English cloth. And conversely England benefits from this trade because its cost for producing cloth has not changed but it can now get wine at a cheaper cost, closer to the cost of cloth.

28 Jul 08 10:51

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By Sridhar

If you are using Ricardo's Principle of Comparative Advantage, competition opens up to every publishing services in the English Speaking World. It will be interesting to see who has the advantage.

28 Jul 08 11:48

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By Jack London

Authors will be able to have much more control and take a bigger slice of the pie for sure.. but remember they'll also have to look after marketing, publicity and editorial.. a new website coming soon from digital edition provider YUDU.com will allow authors to publish ebooks for free and sell them for a fraction of the cost incurred in the traditional publishing model... this gives readers more choice - no longer at mercy of the weak trashy and celeb driven publishing programmes offered by the big guys.. and a chance for authors who don't have a voice and for small and niche publishers to reach audiences and create revenues otherwise inaccessible.

08 Aug 08 10:34

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By June Austin

Sounds good to me Jack - about time imho ! I will make a note of that web address now, although my book is already available as an e-book anyway, via my publishers website.

08 Aug 08 21:45

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