eBooks and eArticles

[edwest]

Originally Posted by JaganP

I am big supporter of eBooks. I have two ebooks on sale on Amazon and they have done fairly well (about a 100 copies each) in my opinion. They go for cheap and the research I have done in those two ebooks is not stuff you find in other books or online. So for what its worth, the buyer has a niche article/ebook at a relatively cheap price.

And there is no dealing with publishers and rejections. Yes not everyone has a Kindle or a Kindle app on their phone /PC but someday there will be lesser resistance to the ebook reader - especially with the proliferation of tablet pcs.

Speaking as someone who works for a publishing company, manuscripts are never rejected for no reason. The most common reason? They are badly written. The next reason is that they are poorly presented and not thought out well. One thing we tell our authors is "do your research," which is time consuming, but must be done. The fact is, most only do a little.

My company would go out of business in 30 days if we only sold about 100 copies of two books each.

Since I have access to actual book trade information, the acceptance level for e-readers is dropping. From January 2012:

"A study presented by book marketing firm Verso Advertising at Digital Book World last week finds that 15.8 percent of book buyers already own an e-reader — that figure has doubled since 2010. But 51.8 percent of book buyers say they are “not at all likely” to purchase one in the next 12 months. That is up from 40 percent in 2009."

Finally, and I am addressing this to all authors, the e-book market is being glutted with junk. I refuse to pay even 99 cents for junk.

A good publisher can be your friend, guide and mentor. However, I know that some view the publisher as the enemy. There should be actual cooperation between publishers and authors, but I do know authors that don't think this can be the case. Publishers bring their knowledge and experience to a manuscript that they consider publishable.



Best,
Ed

[AndreasB]

That's true for Nokia.

All the best

Andreas

[Jukka Juutinen]

Mine is a Samsung...;-)

[AndreasB]

Of course the E-Book market is full of junk. But so's the printed book market. That's just a fact of life. It's a case of caveat emptor. Would I buy an e-book from Andrew if it was about a topic I'm interested in? Without even reading the flap text, yes. Would I buy the same book from A.N.Other? Probably not.

On the sales potential, since a publisher would let me have only a very small share of the sales income, for me as an author (if money were my object), 100 sales at EUR 10 a shot maybe as valuable as a contract for 10% of the sales revenue with a publisher. More importantly, it would mean I would get to use a lot of pictures from archives for free, rather than having to pay for them (e.g. UK National Archives).

All the best

Andreas

[Jukka Juutinen]

How do you get photos for free from archives if you self-publish in E-format, but not if it is published commercially?

[AndreasB]

Originally Posted by Jukka Juutinen

How do you get photos for free from archives if you self-publish in E-format, but not if it is published commercially?

National Archives UK don't charge you for a print run of less than 200 units.

All the best

Andreas

[edwest]

A few more points:

1) Publishers exist for another reason: to earn a reputation. I recently tried a new publisher, finished the book, and was amazed at its lack of completeness and lack of depth. The author had some information I was looking for, so it was not a total loss, but would I buy the next promised book from this author and company? No, I would not. I am much more likely to buy from a publisher that has earned a reputation for readability, accuracy and presentation.

2) Amazon takes a cut of each e-book sold. From their site:

1-1. How are royalties calculated?
If you select the 35 percent royalty option, your royalty will be 35 percent of your list price for each unit sold. If you select the 70 percent royalty option, your royalty will be 70 percent of the list price (but if we sell at a lower price to match a competitor’s price for a digital or physical edition of the book or our price for a physical edition of the book, you will receive 70 percent of our sale price) for each eligible book sold to U.S. customers, net delivery costs, and 35 percent of the list price for each unit sold to customers residing outside the 70% territories listed above.


Finally, I would like to repeat. I am not against e-books and e-articles. I simply won't buy anything electronic. I would write/e-mail to the author/publisher and request a printed version - even unbound sheets - and pay what they asked, including shipping.



Best,
Ed

[Andrew Arthy]

Hi,

This is a belated thank you to everyone who participated in the thread. Morten and I followed it with great interest, and it gave us a lot to think about.

We are going to press ahead with the eArticles idea, and have enlisted some well known authors and researchers to contribute their work to the Air War Publications site. We'll have the first articles online later this year.

All the best,
Andrew & Morten

Air War Publications - www.airwarpublications.com

[Nick Beale]

This is interesting about the merits (or lack of) conventional publishing, online publishing and self-publishing.

[Csaba B. Stenge]

Originally Posted by Andrew Arthy

We are going to press ahead with the eArticles idea, and have enlisted some well known authors and researchers to contribute their work to the Air War Publications site. We'll have the first articles online later this year.

In my opinion, there would be a viable option to start a kind of eMagazine, instead of publishing separate eArticles. Definitely there is a place in the market for a quality aviation history magazine (quarterly, bimonthly) with meticulously researched and written (footnotes, etc) materials.