The Word Cloud

9 Comments

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  by Barry Walsh 1 year ago

  Agreed Harry but although change is inevitable - and, I suspect, in this instance necessary - something will be lost. Yesterday I got 100 pages into the wonderful Cairo Trilogy by Mahfouz. It's a fat, 1300-page library hardback with an elegant bookmark ribbon attached. Propping it at an angle to read on my kitchen table, along with with several cuppas and my notebook, it felt like 'premier league' reading that ebooks (which I've read too) cannot match.
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  by Debi 1 year ago

  Real Life bookshops are not only being hit by the read-on-screen technology, but also by Amazon and other online stores. But they're still selling real books, alongside the e-versions and will continue to do so for a long time. I think we're still a long way from losing the experience of holding and reading a real book. The pendulum will carry on swinging, but when it comes to rest it will be somewhere between the extremes. I'm sure that the next generation will still have access to the magical reading experience PK describes, they'll just have more choice.
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  by Mighty Jock 1 year ago

  You know it is depressing news. I want to be a published author as much as anyone, but i'm also responsible, in my own way, for the problems as are most of us. I cannot remember the last time i bought a book in a book shop. In fact i'm, ashamedly, guilty of browsing bookshops (when waiting for friends etc) seeing a book i fancy and taking a pic on my iphone so i can buy it cheaper online later.
  
  I'm also an avid fan of my kindle. I have to say i have never read a pirated kindle book (really, genuinely and honestly) but they are there, i had a friend at work give me a disc of around 3000 novels just the other day. I think for me, the books on the kindle are cheap enough that it isn't worth the risk. But with Michael Connelly's 'the Fifth Witness' being more on kindle (£9.99) than in paper (currently £8.54 on amazon) it's no suprise that people are using pirates. And it's hard to see where the overheads are that would drive the kindle price.
  
  So it's a bit of a confusion. On one hand i want top see my name in print and work long and hard to try and achieve that and on the other i am a fickle consumer, who like most, looks for the cheapest deal i can get and adds to thwarting my own ambition :-(. Either way, it's all putting a squeeze on booksellers and i think within a few years, paper books that are non 'academic' or text books etc will be a specialist item, sold in specialist stores or print on demand. They may read better and feel better, but didn't vynal sound better??
  
  Just my tuppence worth
  
  Jock
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  by dgaughran 1 year ago

  @Jock
  
  The "overheads" are nothing to do with the Kindle price (and the cost of producing an e-book is minimal anyway).
  
  Since The Agency Agreement, the royalty split between Amazon and the publishers has been fixed at 70/30 (i.e. Amazon keeps 30% of the price and the publisher gets the rest, then pays the author). As part of this agreement, Amazon is not allowed to discount e-books and sell them at a loss (like they do for print books), so we can, at times, be left with the ridiculous situation where hardbacks can be cheaper than e-books.
  
  Amazon is keen to drop the prices of e-books (and to use its huge size to undercut its competitors and put them out of business), whereas publishers are, in vain I fear, trying to hold back the digital tide with artificially high prices. So, Amazon is delighted with this customer anger (which it has helped to manufacture), as it will ultimately have a downward pressure on e-book prices.
  
  The publishers' high-price policy only pisses off their customers, and encourages piracy (and doesn't do much for authors either).
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  by Harry 1 year ago

  Hold on - artificially high prices?
  
  The average pro author earns £13,000 a year. (That's about 3 times more than the average author, but clearly enough the average author doesn't earn enough to live on so can't be a pro.)
  
  Publishers earn much more, but are still not particularly well paid.
  
  A few bestselling authors earn loads, but they are very much the exceptions.
  
  So artificially high prices? I don't think so. I think that's just the price of what it takes to produce a book and pay people meagrely for doing so.
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  by Gerilyn 1 year ago

  It's a sign of the times: people have less money: less disposable income, so shop harder for bargains. The ebook and Amazon no doubt have played their parts but it's not just book shops that are closing; a lot of high street shops are being hit. There isn't enough money in the country's economy. I could begin a huge political rant now- but I wont. this blog is about Waterstones and it's sad news to hear they're possibly closing two thirds of their shops.
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  by Caducean Whisks 1 year ago

  I wonder about the '3,000 novels on a disk' thingy - is it really such a threat?
  I buy large numbers of books - always have - but the thought of 3,000 in one go would make me swoon and wave the white flag. I do tend to block-buy, perhaps 3 or 5 when I'm in a book-buying mood, so that as I finish one, I'll never be stuck for the next one to read. Each that I buy, is carefully selected one by one - I read the back cover, the reviews (and note the authors of the reviews), and the first paragraph or two, and see if we like each other. This is part of the pleasure.
  I don't think I'd want 3,000 in one go even if they were free. How could you possibly read them all? It would be like Christmas every day - far too much, nothing special.
  Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I wonder if many people who want a job lot, aren't readers at all - they're the people who buy books by the yard to decorate their homes.
  FTAOD, I'm not including you, Jock - nor anyone else on the Cloud as we are all, patently, readers.
  I feel that these 3,000 books will never get read (how many years would it take, anyway?) and so are they really a threat? Because if you've bought them once, would you ever buy another set of 3,000? So is it a sustainable market?
  The target market, surely, is people who don't read much - people who don't buy books anyway? Therefore - is it really a threat to the existing paper book market? Or a different market altogether?
  I don't intend any offence to anybody - I know little about such things; I'm just musing out loud and trying to learn.
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  by BlueDiamondMist 1 year ago

  It will be such a shame if so many shops have to close but at least there will still be some open (not very cheery but a positive none the less).
  
  I personally only purchased my books from my local book shop until they closed on Christmas Eve, now I purchase them from Waterstones. It's my way of doing my bit for the book shops.
  
  Anyway, I absolutely hate the idea of reading on a Kindle so for me I am happy to pay a higher price for my books although I don't think that price is the sole factor here. My friend reads lots and lots and then lots more. She loves to read and when she's finished one book she opens another. She recently bought a Kindle and when I asked her if it was because of the price of books she said no. It was because it is much quicker and easier to just download them. Fair point.
  
  So I don't think that the price of books is a particular problem, but we do live in a world where everyone wants things now and it seems that this could be one of the main reasons that downloading books has now become so fashionable.
  
  To be honest, I don't think that books are on the way out (I hope not!) but at least people are still reading. Wouldn't it be awful if books and ebooks were no longer selling because no one wanted to read anymore? We should be thankful that this isn't the case.
  
  I do still feel very sad when I walk past the empty shop in town where my book shop used to be . . .
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  by Vanessa 1 year ago

  I have recently started editing on an iPad and it's a dream...granted I did not buy it, it was a present...lucky me....but this could be the future for writers as well as readers...certainly speeds things up, does for me anyway.
  
  As for reading, nothing can replace the feel of a real book. Reading on this device is okay, but just not the same...I don't know why...there is a certain accomplishment about turning physical pages...
  
  But, anything that gets more people to read is great...I sometimes get embarrassed to say that I read a lot, not everyone does...but if you stand outside a school at pickup time you'll see an awful lot of mums that do ...a huge Market of woman wanting to read whilst they look after there kids...and guess what most of them have read, yep, Twilight. I feel like it's a club, you're either in or out...it
  
  So, it's as much about the book, author, story as it is about selling books. The good stories will always do well, the issue is do you have to make a movie from it for everyone to hear about it. Sadly, I think that is the only way to get a big hit. But, I may be wrong??
  
  I love books and movies...the future for me, is buying them both at the same time...at a discount...or having music sold alongside a book, to compliment it...that would be great. Knave all three soundtracks from twilight, and even though I have tired of the book and films for now, the music stays with me, I listen to it practically every day.
  
  I would love to publish my books, but I accept that money, and exceptional skill, are required to get a hit!! And a movie deal...