Let's also print

Smashwords has been the leader for indie, ebook publishing for several years. Now Draft2Digital wants to end that, and, Good Reader puts some perspective on the development. Visit the Draft2digital website and see what you think. Draft2Digital is a free service and only when a new ebook sells on one of the online retailer sites does Draft2Digital make money, approximately 10 percent. It's unclear whether you can also print these books? If the new author can't also print, the new author is leaving money on the table.

Saving ourselves

Nearly everyone has a favorite book, or a book that for some possibly transitional period of their life, led the way. That's why books are different from other commodities -- they actually save people's (spiritual) lives. So what about all those books that have done this for generations past. Are all of them inappropriate, useless, not applicable? Probably not. Thus backlists of currently out-of-print books can be valuable. But would someone just want an ebook of a lifesaver book, probably not. That's where ebooks and print books go together like peas and carrots. Get the ebook and then order a printed copy. Read Publisher's Weekly's fascinating look at out-of-print books revisiting as ebooks. Basically about half the out-of-print books studied had come back as ebooks. That's a good start at saving ourselves. Quoting: "Looking through PW’s archives at the top 25 bestselling books of both 1992 and 1982 in fiction and nonfiction (100 titles total), we found 56 books that had Kindle e-book editions."

Going Dutch

From all around the world, I think you'll be reading more reports like this one in Publishing Perspectives: "The National Library of the Netherlands (KB) and Google Netherlands, which began in 2011 to digitize 160,000 books from the library’s collection, yesterday announced that 80,000 of those titles have been scanned and are now available to the public. . . The digitized books are 'full text' searchable and available for free through Google Books as well as the web service boeken.kb.nl." I know for instance that the British Library is doing a similar thing. And libraries throughout the world should be following suit. Back to the Netherlands. So if you want to read a book in Dutch, you're in luck. You'll be as they say "Going Dutch" with a little help from Google.

Going Dutch

From all around the world, I think you'll be reading more reports like this one in Publishing Perspectives: "The National Library of the Netherlands (KB) and Google Netherlands, which began in 2011 to digitize 160,000 books from the library’s collection, yesterday announced that 80,000 of those titles have been scanned and are now available to the public. . . The digitized books are 'full text' searchable and available for free through Google Books as well as the web service boeken.kb.nl." I know for instance that the British Library is doing a similar thing. So if you soon want to read a national book in Dutch, you'll be in luck. You'll be as they say "Going Dutch" with a little help from Google.

Having your cake. . .

A printed book is a very personal item. I have books that are 40 years old, collected during my 20s when I had the first chance -- after the force-fed experience of high school and college -- to read what I really wanted to, slowly and completely personally (with no concern with accepted interpretation). Electronic books are public events. I belong to a church book group now. We read and email each other as we read the book so that as we are reading the book, we are thinking of each other and actually communicating with each other. I would want to experience both with an important book: the personal and the public. However, it would be impossible to have a public experience efficiently with a printed book. And it would be weird to have a totally private experience with an electronic book. However, buying the electronic and print rights to the same book at the same time would be like having your cake and eating it too. Why can't we do that?

Darwin ebooks

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." That's according to Charles Darwin. Applying this concept to the ebook revolution, one might immediately jump on the bandwagon. But evolution does not work from a whiteboard like that. It utilizes given props -- such as printed books -- and changes them only so slightly into ebooks. Only over time does the evolution culminate. Sometime in the far future, the nature of a book will have changed. Mutated. Become a new species. But only then. Not now.

Readers choosing

Salon Magazine has a fascinating article on the ebook/print book faceoff. The article by Laura Miller makes many points including: "New self-publishing enterprises are a godsend for traditional publishers because they can take much of the uncertainty out of signing a new author." Inherent in that observation may be a scenario by which many authors are "somewhat" successful at publishing their book electronically, so that a few can rise to the surface and be snatched up by New York publishing companies, like E.L. James ("50 Shades of Grey"), Amanda Hocking and now Hugh Howie ("Wool). The article points out that the growth of ebooks has slowed, and that three times as many people say they prefer print books to electronic books. The one reality the article overlooks is the reality of acceptance that the two media are here to stay -- together -- and there should be no nostalgia for one (print) or euphoria for the other (electronic). Once the two are wedded, so that you buy both the ebook and the print book rights together, reader choice will finally have arrived so that after the book has been consumed the reader can choose the incarnation he or she desires in perpetuity.

Kells alive

This may be the moment I truly turn electronic. Years ago I took my family to Dublin to view the Book of Kells, because I am a design and printing fanatic. Totally out of character, I bought a the tourist's book of the Book of Kells and brought it back to America with me. I have stashed it away in my meager library, but recently as I threw a lot of my books out in an effort to "consolidate" I threw out that wonderful book. Today I discovered that the book is available online: http://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/home/index.php?DRIS_ID=MS58_003v

Ebooks' Tower of Babel

In the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, people woke up one morning and began to talk to each other as usual, but could no longer understand each other. In the global expansion of ebooks, that is what the world is waking up to today. France and Germany, in particular, with their strong history of book culture, has resisted Google's attempts at, in its own words,"organizing the knowledge of the world". They have taken Google to court, and started their own digitization projects -- Gallica, Europeana and Libreka -- according to O'Reilly's "The Global Ebook Market:Current Conditions and Future Projections", which is downloadable for free here: http://search.oreilly.com/?q=global+ebook+market&x=22&y=15 . What is the future of digital reading and learning? A patchwork of different formats, devices and accesses. You can't help but sense, as you read this wonderfully comprehensive report, that the very real execution of ebook globalization will be the opposite of a one-world dream, the hope of all globalists. What is the opposite of being a globalist? Let's say being a globalister. Then, a globalister is someone who knows that the example of the Tower of Babel applies to the worldwide expansion of digital communication.

All books may be ebooks first

Jamie Fiocco, Co-owner of FlyLeaf Books in Chapel Hill, N.C., explains in a Media Shift video that although it’s not a perfect analogy, the current discussion about whether ebooks will put print books out of business is like the discussion 250 years ago about whether photography would force painters to retire. Check out what she says: “When the camera came out painting didn’t go away. It will be a different thing selling print books, but this industry has been evolving the last 20 years.” Watch the video: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2012/12/video-can-print-and-e-books-coexist356.html There are two very likely scenarios for print books of the future. Both envision a book’s first incarnation to be electronic. So ebooks may become the first, most inexpensive way to put a book out, to see if it has legs. Then after the book has proven itself with myriads of downloads, then 1. Some people who have truly loved the ebook might want a personalized printed copy as a unique keepsake. 2. Or, the opposite. (And we already have examples of this opposite scenario.) A book starts out as an ebook, gathers an audience, and then the author gets signed by a large publisher and myriads of copies of the book are printed for the public to buy. Witness 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James, which started out as an epub and print on demand book and evolved into a book carried by Vintage Books, which was founded by Alfred A. Knopf. On the same video, Land Arnold, the other co-owner of Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, N.C., at first likens the epub/print book dialectic to I-tunes music vs. album collections, but observes that the two situations are not parallel because a book is a longer commitment of time than a song. So, by inference, one can’t imagine ebooks replacing print books the way I-tunes music totally eviscerated albums. What do you think?