Soon-To-Be-Forgotten(?) Book Friday

I've been thinking a great deal about ebooks lately, and not just because of the bizarre decision on which Clare commented in depth yesterday. Here's my question: why is it I seem to be surrounded by hyperbole about ebooks being the death of print books? Yes, the place of printed books will probably change, but no one seems to be talking about the oh-so-cool possibilities. No, no, it's all about the fact that soon we will have nothing to hold in our hands. (I've blogged about this before, so if you're bored, you can stop. I won't take offense.)

I don't believe that will happen. I don't believe that the book-as-object will disappear. I've spent a lot of time reading and writing about information transmission systems over the years, and all of the systems we've ever had for telling each other stories and facts are still alive and kicking. We use oral methods, we use handwriting, we use print, and now digital. As each new technology comes along the previous ones change, get used for different things, and acquire nuances but they don't go away. Generally, older forms tend to be prized, in fact. (You really want to make an impression? Hand write a book of poems for someone, or have a calligrapher do it.)

Books consist of two things: content and form. And, with a book, content is supreme. I keep seeing these comparisons of ebooks to DVDs, about how you have to wait to get the DVD until the movie's been out for a year, so you should have to wait for the ebook. This is a theory Nathan Bransford thoroughly debunked on his blog. In short: with a first run movie, you're paying for the experience of seeing it on the big screen; you then buy the DVD if you want to watch it over and over and over. Experience versus product.

With a book, what I want is the content--the experience--preferably in the most convenient form possible so I can access it when I am on the train, in the bath, on the beach. If I really like that content, and I want to keep a special version at home, I'll buy the hardcover, the product, later. I'll order it and wait for it, even, because it's really about putting it on my shelf and owning it.

As someone who once collected first editions of my favorite authors, I can tell you one way in which publishers could help themselves: go back to small first editions. I don't bother collecting any longer because the firsts are the same as all the rest: crappy paper, bad binding, huge numbers of them out there in the world with nothing that makes them outstanding in any way. I walked into Borders today and saw stacks and stacks and stacks of the new Sue Grafton. Now, I like Sue Grafton, but I'm not stupid: they won't all sell. And they're hardcovers. They'll end up on the bargain shelves, and everyone will lose money on them.

Instead of shipping hundreds of copies of each hardcover, start your sales with a truly special first edition hardcover that people have to pre-order to get their hands on. Start the pre-order six months before the book comes out. Let word of mouth develop. Let people get excited about it. Close the pre-order six weeks before the book comes out, then have your oh-so-beautiful-and-special first edition created here in the US at a really cool bookbinder. You know exactly how many of the edition you have to print. No returns. Nothing excess created, warehoused or shipped.

This was a special edition of Michael Connelly's Blood Work. 300 Limited Edition copies, signed and numbered. At present, it's selling for $260 on Alibris. It's not as if publishers haven't considered special editions before, they just haven't realized yet that as far as hardcover fiction is concerned, collectors are their primary market. The average fiction reader doesn't want a hardcover for 90% of his or her reading. The collector wants something special and is willing to pay for it. No, publishers aren't going to get $200 for every first edition they sell, but they can cut their own costs considerably and make the object more desirable by specifying the pre-order short run first edition.

Make me special editions, and you really have me boxed in. Because let's say you take my favorite author, John Connolly, and you produce special editions of his books, all with the same kind of neat binding and font faces, all the same size. Do I want all of those books on my shelf next to each other? You bet. Even if I already have them in paper or as ebooks? You bet. Produce those for me and everyone I know will know what to get me for Christmas. Even if they have to order them in advance so you don't produce more than you can sell.

As they used to say on the Six Million Dollar Man, "we have the technology."

And after the special edition? Give the readers what they want: all formats at the same time, each priced according to what it costs to produce. Libraries and a few readers will still want hardcovers, but there's no reason they can't order them so they'll have the books the day they come out. After all, they're buying hardcovers of authors they've already heard of. Publishers generally aren't putting out hardcovers of debut authors. (Except for the hardcover only publishers, and I have a few choice words for them as a reader: "sorry, but you will never get a penny out of me.") If bookstores feel like they still need a hardcover copy or two for impulse buyers, that's on the stores; they know their customers, let them worry about it. Eliminating returns and bargain shelving of hardcovers is a start toward fixing some of the industry's problems.

Now, as for paperbacks, they present a more interesting question. I think the paperback market is far more threatened by ebooks. Look at the form factor of ebook readers. They're not the same size as hardcovers. They're designed to mimic paperbacks. I'd very much like to see a breakdown of ebook sales by genre. I'd lay odds that the vast majority of them are genre fiction. Books people want to read, but know they won't want to keep. Those tend to be the books people buy in paperback, too.

But no one in the publishing industry is fussing about paperbacks. Only readers are. We're the ones who will miss the bathtub book, the beach book. Of course, that's assuming they disappear. And no one has yet convinced me they will, because we have print on demand technology, and the Espresso Book Machine. We'll have choices for immediate delivery of content, digital vs. paperback.

(Forgotten Book Friday, for which I am not sure this really qualifies, is a project brought to you by Patti Abbot.)