Saturday, January 12, 2013

Gifting yourself

Let me clarify. The newest book publishing model -- shortened version -- is ebook to hardback, as in "Fifty Shades of Grey". Yes, "Fifty Shades of Grey" also has all the steps in between: ebook to print on demand book, print on demand book to mass print softcover, mass print softcover (Vintage Books) to mass print hardcover (Random House). But if you shorten that evolution, you've got ebook to hardcover, digital to analog. NOT the usual: Analog to digital. How different (reversed) from the past can you be? First of all launching a major international book (which has sold 65 million copies) as an ebook on an obscure Australian website is pretty unexpected. And then after 18 months of downloading, deciding to print the book and sell that iteration, is surprising. Yes, ebook-to-hardback is way more radical than ebook to print on demand book, which when "Fifty Shades of Grey" was first launched in 2011 was radical enough. How many other authors in this world would like to go from ebook to hardback? Or, more importantly, how many readers in this world would like to go from ebook to hardback? In my opinion, more and more. It's like gifting yourself the memory of a prized experience. It's the newest (and safest, and most likely to succeed) book publishing model.

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