The thing to be aware of with the invention of e-paper is that it will bring about a radical shift in the balance of power in printed media. The immense resources required to physically print, promote and distribute a novel have always necessitated that authors rely on publishers for a large part of the process of getting their work sold. As a result they also have to settle for a tiny portion of the profit from subsequent sales (and that's only if the publisher deems their work to be worthy of publishing at all).
So here is a an old question from the heady days of the early internet: What happens when all anyone needs to have their writing published is access to the internet, and the entire publishing cycle from creation to world-wide promotion is executed from a spare bedroom?
Lets be clear: the reason books are not read from web sites today is because reading from a CRT or LCD display is just not comfortable enough. That's where e-paper comes in, a light, flexible, high contrast, non-illuminated, low power display device that closely replicates the experience of reading a static printed page, a technology that makes reading electronic documents a pleasure rather than an eye-straining chore. Granted this technology is not quite there yet but it is well on the way.
Publishing a novel on the internet is likely to be no more convoluted than publishing a blog. But getting a work promoted and actually sold on the internet will still require a resource that is in short supply even there – that precious resource is attention. Just as current publishers are also a promotional service if only by virtue of their selection of works, so the eBook sellers will act as trusted filters for the mass of available material. The process of buying these books is likely to be something very similar to Amazon only when a volume is purchased it is delivered immediately with no other human interaction. The publishing industry of the future is likely to involve only the staff required to operate and maintain a web site and it's servers.
And this is where the power shift comes in. Until now publishes commanded the royalties passed on to the authors because it was clearly necessary to reimburse them for the resources they employ. But when the sale of a few dozen copies of a new novel at current prices can pay for an entire month of high-bandwidth web hosting it's rather more difficult to argue such liberties (a quick experiment and calculation suggests that a 1000Gb transfer limit is enough for around 3-4 million downloads of text-only novels in a compressed format). At say €5 per download this form of publishing could involve a profit margin that would turn your average socialist into a corporate butt-monkey overnight. So with these massive profits and minimal work on the part of the publisher do we think authors will be happy with a hundred thousand Euro and the usual percentages in royalties?
What authors will realise is that the publishing process itself has become extraordinarily streamlined and as a result they are doing the vast majority of the work involved in the industry. They will not only want to see a far greater return for that work but will, importantly, want far greater control of their creations. New works will no longer be bought or even controlled by publishers they will be merely be distributed by them and it is they that will receive the smaller percentage of the profits from these sales.
It's likely that old-style publishers moving into the online market will try to enforce their pre-existing contract scheme. They will fail. Entrepreneurs will quickly realise that for a lower profit margin and more flexible contracts (more akin to a hosting policy than a publishing deal) they will draw more writers and will gain the pick of every crop, and all of this with an outlay that is both microscopic and scalable and can even be dropped instantaneously with no serious collateral damage. In fact all they need is the technical know-how and the world of publishing will belong to them.
That's the bottom line. In this New World Order of literature it is the authors who have everything to gain while still doing the same thing they have always done, and the publishers who will lose everything to their quicker, brighter descendants.
It's going to get very messy for while, it could even rival the world of online music sales for ferocity and general mayhem. But for those left standing, there is going to be a hell of a lot of money to be made.
For now I'll leave you to imagine for yourselves how e-paper is going to change the world of newspapers, magazines and comics...
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tarmle) wrote,
Lets be clear: the reason books are not read from web sites today is because reading from a CRT or LCD display is just not comfortable enough. That's where e-paper comes in, a light, flexible, high contrast, non-illuminated, low power display device that closely replicates the experience of reading a static printed page, a technology that makes reading electronic documents a pleasure rather than an eye-straining chore. Granted this technology is not quite there yet but it is well on the way.
And this is where the power shift comes in. Until now publishes commanded the royalties passed on to the authors because it was clearly necessary to reimburse them for the resources they employ. But when the sale of a few dozen copies of a new novel at current prices can pay for an entire month of high-bandwidth web hosting it's rather more difficult to argue such liberties (a quick experiment and calculation suggests that a 1000Gb transfer limit is enough for around 3-4 million downloads of text-only novels in a compressed format). At say €5 per download this form of publishing could involve a profit margin that would turn your average socialist into a corporate butt-monkey overnight. So with these massive profits and minimal work on the part of the publisher do we think authors will be happy with a hundred thousand Euro and the usual percentages in royalties?
