A sample:
MR: Red Lemonade allows people to view free of charge complete manuscripts of books you have for sale. You’ve mentioned that having access to the full text online will help readers make up their minds and commit to buying a hard copy. This view differs from a general reluctance of publishers to post complete works online.
RN: Exactly. With the vast majority of books, the problem that most people have is they don’t know whether it’s going to be worth their time to read it. There are a tiny handful of books, in the case of each person, where they can be sure they want to read them. The reality is that I don’t think, in fact, there are a huge number of people reading our books for free online that have made a decision about whether to buy it. I mean there is probably a small number that are doing it for that reason and that number may increase, but I believe the number is smaller than has occurred to people because publishers refuse to do it. But what we’ve very clearly demonstrated by putting it for free online is that reading the book online has absolutely no negative impact on sales. Why in fact would it?
Food for thought…
2 users commented in " The future of bookdom… "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThat’s very interesting. I have already gone through two discussions about the future of books in two of my classes. The majority of them concluded that e-books are the future, but the profit an author receives from their works has gone down due to the fact that publishing is much easier to access.
I think that in reality what will happen is that without the great monolithic publishing houses hoarding the talent and turning away extremely capable authors in favor of more salable authors… in the end there will be far fewer J.K. Rowlings or Steven King type authors who make millions (or billions) of dollars off of massive bestsellers promoted with worldwide book tours and Madison Avenue advertising campaigns.
But on the other hand there will be far more authors whose material reaches readers across the world who enjoy the work of that author, an author that in the “old days” would never have had anything written see the light of day.
I might just end up thinking the new model is actually a better one.
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