Fan Wu on e-books for The Ploughshares Blog

Guest blogger Fan Wu comments on the rise of e-books on The Plougshares Blog:
E-books? E-books! by Fan Wu

Fan and I are of the same mind. We can't stop the popularity of e-books and changes in the publishing industry, but we don't have to join them either. They'll pull my books from my cold, dead hands.

"The harmonies of bound books are like the flowers of the field." - Hilaire Belloc

the end of the dust jacket

"When I was a ten-year-old book worm and used to kiss the dust jacket pictures of authors as if they were icons, it used to amaze me that these remote people could provoke me to love." - Erica Jong

While I won't admit to kissing author photos on a book jacket, I will admit to staring in wonderment at an author or two's book jacket photo the way one might stare at the yearbook picture of the popular kid in high school, the kid you wish you hung out with, the kid you wanted to be. I suppose dusk jackets will go the way of bookstores at some point. E-book readers don't need dusk jackets. Do they even come with front cover art and author photos?

Layoffs at Borders Headquarters

Read the Publishers Weekly article - click here.
Layoffs at Borders Headquarters

I can't help but wonder if the recent announcement of more layoffs with Borders is a direct result of recent increases in e-book sales. Everytime I bring up e-books with my writer friends I hear the same thing, commonly surmized by the idiom "You can't fight progress." Also, I can't help but wonder if the salespeople at the big book chains realize when they push the e-readers on their walkin customers, their got-in-a-car-drove-themselves-to-an-actual-bookstore-to-buy-a-book customers, if they realize they're helping put themselves out of a job.

Bye-bye bookstores. We'll miss you.

Riggio: Barnes & Noble to Become E-Commerce Retailer

Riggio: Barnes & Noble to Become E-Commerce Retailer: "Barnes & Noble CEO Steve Riggio gave the most detailedaccount of how ..."

I'm not against progress. I'm not a technophobe. Yet, it bothers me that Barnes & Noble is projecting that e-books will soon become the dominate form of sale on new books and that their profit margin is greater with e-books than with print books.

Publishing and book-selling are businesses and the bottomline drives businesses. This is a concern to me both as someone working to break into the business as a writer and as a reader. As a writer, I worry that authors are getting squeezed in terms of contracts and royalities. As retailers scramble to grab market share, the push to offer e-books at lower and lower prics (the Wal-mart model) becomes greater. Consider the recent fight between Macmillan and Amazon over e-book pricing. As a reader, I don't want print books to go away. I want to hold books in my hand, flip through the pages, turn the book over to look at the author's picture. I want to go into a bookstore and circle the "new release" table like a shark circles prey. Which book shall I devour next?

In truth, I'm hoping e-books will end up a trendy fad and go the way of the Jay Leno Prime Time Show, a bad idea no matter the cost savings, no matter the bottomline.

Defining "In Book Form" and E-books

Tensions are building between Random House and the Authors Guild with Markus Dohle's recent letter to agents, concerning the rights to reprinting backlist books in e-book form.



Authors Guild Calls Dohle Letter "Regrettable and Unhelpful"
By Jim Milliot -- Publishers Weekly, 12/15/2009 7:50:00 AM

Random House chairman Markus Dohle may have sent this letter to agents in the spirit of collaboration, but that isn’t how the Authors Guild is seeing it. In a message sent to its members this morning, the Guild said it was “regrettable and unhelpful that Random House has chosen to try to intimidate authors and agents over these old book contracts.” The Guild rejected RH’s argument that its older contracts that grant rights to publish “in book form” or “in all editions” is a grant of electronic rights. (The Guild has no problem with RH’s interpretation of more recent backlist contracts since over the last 10 years electronic rights have been licensed with print rights).

Read the entire article at the link above.

I'm not sure I can blame publishers for trying to claim rights to publish a book in any form they can, existing or not-yet existing, in perpetuity under the guise of the "in book form" clause. If I were them, I'd probably try it, too. However, I take exception to the notion that e-books can be considered a printing "in book form." A book is words printed on paper and held in one's hands. I don't understand their logic for e-books, bits and bytes transmitted electronically into a computer, even if the hardware is flat and shaped to resemble a book. An e-book isn't a book, anymore than an e-zine is a magazine, the picture of an apple is an apple, or paying an escort for "the girlfriend" experience makes her your girlfriend.

Even if Random House could win the "in book form" argument, it's sort of prickish for a publishing house to hold onto rights for technology not-yet invented or specifically named in past contracts. What if they decide not to publish a backlisted book in e-book form? The author and agent can't sell the rights to anyone else. Does that mean that in the future the the rights to any non-existent, non-imagined form of publishing exclusively belongs to the publisher? I would suggest in light of Random House's letter, authors and agents tighten the language of book contracts. Though, I guess this is good news for the lawyers. They're needed now more than ever.