Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you hey there, Text Stuff listeners, This
Speaker 1: is Jonathan Strickland and I have got a request for
Speaker 1: all of you. Now, Chris and I have decided that
Speaker 1: we're going to try and experiment. We're doing our first
Speaker 1: crowd sourced episode of tech Stuff and we want to
Speaker 1: know what your pick is for the worst video game
Speaker 1: of all time. Now, nominations you can. You can make
Speaker 1: one nomination. You nominate one game, and you need to
Speaker 1: tell us the name of the game and the platform
Speaker 1: it was on. And it could be any platform. It
Speaker 1: could be an arcade game, it could be a PC, Mac, Xbox,
Speaker 1: PS three, Nintendo handheld console. It can be web based
Speaker 1: if you like. But just you let us know what
Speaker 1: the platform is so we can make sure we count
Speaker 1: that as the votes. So you can nominate your game
Speaker 1: either through email, which is tech Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, or you can nominate through Twitter or Facebook.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna put a cut off date on this.
Speaker 1: I want to have the episode go up by the
Speaker 1: end of September of eleven. So let's say you need
Speaker 1: to get your nominations in by September eleven, So if
Speaker 1: you get those nominations into us, we will make sure
Speaker 1: we include those in the process, and we will have
Speaker 1: an episode where we give you the worst video games
Speaker 1: of all time based upon the votes of our listeners.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot. Can't wait to hear from you. Get
Speaker 1: in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello again, everyone, Welcome to tech stuff.
Speaker 1: My name is Chris Poulette and I'm an editor at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Sitting across from me, as
Speaker 1: usual is senior writer Jonathan Strickland Butterfly in the Sky
Speaker 1: I can go twice as high. Nice. Thank you. You know,
Speaker 1: originally we were talking about the possibility of doing an
Speaker 1: e books podcast, and then we realized we've done any
Speaker 1: books podcast, but we really haven't talked about a lot
Speaker 1: of the developments in publishing since then. That's right, and uh,
Speaker 1: and we had some listeners on Google Plus. So here's
Speaker 1: a little note from Google Plus. And John and Paul
Speaker 1: very biblical fellows. I suppose us are very beatle fellows.
Speaker 1: Perhaps so, but both John and Paul had asked that
Speaker 1: we talked about the books and e publishing. John was
Speaker 1: very insistent by the way, John, we do have an
Speaker 1: episode on the books, which I had completely forgotten about. Um,
Speaker 1: I believe Christi as well. And just this morning as
Speaker 1: I was as I was looking at my notes, I realized,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, this sounds really familiar, and sure enough
Speaker 1: we have done one. But yeah, we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about sort of the back end, not from the technological
Speaker 1: perspective so much as from sort of a business perspective
Speaker 1: about publishing, what publishers do, and how all that's starting
Speaker 1: to change in the e book era. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: guess first we should just start talking about what publishers do. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's actually a good question, especially because a lot
Speaker 1: of the discussions I've read recently. Uh. And when I
Speaker 1: say recently, I would guess probably. I think I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about probably the last year, because the books have become
Speaker 1: a lot more popular. Uh. You see uh news reports
Speaker 1: from Amazon that they are out selling paperbacks. Now, I
Speaker 1: think it was like for every one paperbacks Amazon sold,
Speaker 1: they'd sell a hundred and fifteen e books. So it's
Speaker 1: already matched and outpaced the Dead Tree version of of books. Yep.
Speaker 1: But the thing is a lot of in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases, the electronic version of the book costs close to,
Speaker 1: if not as much as, are in some cases more
Speaker 1: than um the price of a paper book or p
Speaker 1: book as I like to call them. UM, And people go,
Speaker 1: what the heck is going on here? If this is
Speaker 1: just bits and bites, it doesn't take up any floor space,
Speaker 1: you don't have to design a special cover for it. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, what are the publishers doing? What is the
Speaker 1: point of this? And then you you have to realize
Speaker 1: that they actually do quite a bit. So let's let's
Speaker 1: look at it from let's let's take electronic publishing out
Speaker 1: of the picture right now and just talk about publishers
Speaker 1: and what they do from a traditional standpoint. So traditionally,
Speaker 1: what a publisher would do is you have you have
Speaker 1: your authors. These are the people who are creating work
Speaker 1: right there. Then you've got editors who are editing the work,
Speaker 1: making sure it it's uh worthy of publication. Now the
Speaker 1: publishers the the entity that takes that work and produces
Speaker 1: it in a mass production uh kind of way. And
Speaker 1: then so that they're into production, they're into distribution, and
Speaker 1: that they find buyers that buy up uh several units
Speaker 1: of books all at once. So bookstores really is what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here. Publishers look for bookstores outlets to
Speaker 1: sell these So the publishers customers are really bookstores. They're
Speaker 1: not really readers like you and I aren't. Aren't a
Speaker 1: typical customer of a publisher, but rather a Barnes and
Speaker 1: Noble or until recently, a Borders would be a customer
Speaker 1: of a publisher. Right. So, Uh, the publisher's job is
Speaker 1: to create, to to produce the physical copies of this work,
Speaker 1: to send it to the various or actually sell it
Speaker 1: to the various bookstores out there vendors out there, um
Speaker 1: for a price that's usually about half of what the
Speaker 1: list prices for the book. Although your min onle age
Speaker 1: may vary. It's going to depend on a lot of conditions.
Speaker 1: So let's say like the price that's actually on the
Speaker 1: cover of the book. We're oversimplifying here, but in general,
Speaker 1: the wholesale price that the publisher sells to the bookstore
Speaker 1: is about that and then uh, a certain percentage of
Speaker 1: that goes to overhead, some of it goes to uh
Speaker 1: covering the cost of paying the advance to the author.
Speaker 1: And also you have to keep in mind that bookstores
Speaker 1: don't sell every single copy of every book, right, So
Speaker 1: occasionally bookstores have to send back copies of books they
Speaker 1: don't sell to the publisher um, in order to make
Speaker 1: up room for new books. So that means that not
Speaker 1: everything a publisher sends out is actually gonna get sold.
Speaker 1: Some of it's gonna come back. So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of costs here, and also it publishers other job
Speaker 1: is to market the authors, to get the word out
Speaker 1: about authors, and to drive up interest about authors. So
Speaker 1: that's one of the things publishers theoretically will do for
Speaker 1: their for the people who write for them in a way.
Speaker 1: In that way, I would say, um, when you said
Speaker 1: a few minutes ago that that the uh reader is
Speaker 1: not the end customer the publisher, I would say that's
Speaker 1: that's mostly the case, but in in some ways, I mean,
Speaker 1: it is their responsibility to do a lot of the
Speaker 1: marketing work, and so you know that, Yeah, they are
Speaker 1: in touch with the reader and they do that as
Speaker 1: a small portion of that, but they're really trying to
Speaker 1: help the bookstore sell books so that both the bookstore
Speaker 1: and the publisher went out and you can buy the books.
Speaker 1: You can buy books directly from the publisher, but in general,
Speaker 1: that tends to be a very small number of sales
Speaker 1: compared to book sales through stores. And so you also
Speaker 1: have another responsibility of publishers which is kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: and this is an important one that is going to
Speaker 1: be have a pretty big impact with the electronic publishing
Speaker 1: UH era as well, and that is that publishers are
Speaker 1: responsible for finding new talent. Right. That's kind of like
Speaker 1: the music industry when you think of like a music
Speaker 1: label going out and look, going to local venues and
Speaker 1: scouting out bands and saying, you know, this band actually
Speaker 1: has some promise, and they might not make it big
Speaker 1: for an album or two, but I really see something
Speaker 1: in them. Publishers do the same thing with authors. Now,
Speaker 1: when an author writes a book UH the author generally
Speaker 1: gets an advance on that book, and that advance is
Speaker 1: a royalties advance. It's it's actually counted against whatever royalties
Speaker 1: that author would make through book sales. Well, a lot
Speaker 1: of authors, especially first time authors, will not make that
Speaker 1: money back through book sales. They just aren't well known enough,
Speaker 1: so they won't get enough books sold to pay off
Speaker 1: that advance. So a lot of publishers are essentially paying
Speaker 1: authors at a loss um lots of new authors at
Speaker 1: a loss, but they're doing it by their betting. What
Speaker 1: they're betting is that some of those authors are going
Speaker 1: to make it to the big time, and those authors
Speaker 1: are going to sell lots and lots and lots of books,
Speaker 1: and that will help offset the cost of paying all
Speaker 1: these other low level authors who may not go anywhere
Speaker 1: that advance. So in a way, publishers are responsible for
Speaker 1: encouraging and and sustaining authors who are trying to really
Speaker 1: make it in the publishing world and trying to actually
Speaker 1: become published authors. UH. Without them, then you would have
Speaker 1: you know, you wouldn't have that that incentive really for
Speaker 1: authors to try and create. So when you think about
Speaker 1: things like, oh, well, Stephen king Man, he gets so
Speaker 1: much money for a book, you know, you could have
Speaker 1: some envy there. Perhaps you might question whether or not
Speaker 1: it's the work he does is worth the amount of
Speaker 1: money he makes. But at the same time, because Stephen
Speaker 1: king novels sell so well, that's part of what funds
Speaker 1: the publisher to uh, to encourage other authors to write.
Speaker 1: So it's it's kind of it's a really big ecosystem
Speaker 1: and it's actually pretty complex. I mean, The actual complexity
Speaker 1: of how much money comes back to the publisher and
Speaker 1: where that money goes is probably too complex for the
Speaker 1: purposes of this podcast, but I thought that it was
Speaker 1: important that we talked about that, and then we talked
Speaker 1: about how E publishing is kind of shaking things up
Speaker 1: a bit more than a bit in some cases. Well,
Speaker 1: you talked about the music industry and how how things
Speaker 1: have changed significantly, how the the music industry has been
Speaker 1: nervous because, uh, you know, for one, on on the
Speaker 1: one hand, they're concerned about things like piracy, but they're
Speaker 1: also concerned because um, people are able to create their
Speaker 1: own home studios and record their own music and post
Speaker 1: it for sale on their own website because they don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about, um, the costs of pressing c
Speaker 1: d s or vinyl anymore, although a lot of them do. UM.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, the distribution is less of an
Speaker 1: issue now because you know, once the marketing has gone
Speaker 1: out online, Uh, rather than having to put up posters
Speaker 1: and stores and do you know, uh different events and
Speaker 1: things like that. You know, those are important, but uh,
Speaker 1: a lot of bands can do a lot of that
Speaker 1: work themselves, and so you know, this has already been
Speaker 1: going on in the music industry. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: this hasn't been so much of an issue for publishers
Speaker 1: until just recently. Um, you know, and I didn't I
Speaker 1: don't think we even touched on this when we talked
Speaker 1: about e readers before. I don't even think about the
Speaker 1: e books world going back that far. But it does
Speaker 1: go back to around one UM when Michael Hart started
Speaker 1: Project Guttenberg. And uh, you know, they the first person
Speaker 1: who got an I S b N. That's an international
Speaker 1: standard book number. It's a unique number assigned to every book.
Speaker 1: Um was Kim blagg um around So these some people
Speaker 1: have been publishing electronically for a while. I mean Random
Speaker 1: House and HarperCollins, who are too big, Uh, regular publishers,
Speaker 1: P E and E. Um. You know, they were starting
Speaker 1: to sell digital in two thousand two. Um, and that
Speaker 1: was all before the Kindle hit in two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and if you think about it, you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of computers you would buy that
Speaker 1: would come with a n Incard c D. Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: that's that's a digital encyclopedia. Yes, you know, that's you know,
Speaker 1: just because it comes on a solid form of medium
Speaker 1: media rather that that that doesn't mean that it's not digital.
Speaker 1: It is digital. It's just that it's digital store and
Speaker 1: on a disk. Well, the the e publishing world is
Speaker 1: is starting to shake up now. I mean it's no
Speaker 1: secret that publishing has been having problems in the last
Speaker 1: few years anyway, especially with the economic downturn. UM. I've
Speaker 1: read that the closing of Borders stores here in the
Speaker 1: United States. UM, that's going to create problems for traditional
Speaker 1: publishing too, because they can no longer count on the
Speaker 1: sales to come from the store. It's UM, if you're
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with this, the situation here, UM Barnes and Noble
Speaker 1: and Borders, and you know some of the other major
Speaker 1: public UM sorry booksellers like Books a Million, UM basically
Speaker 1: were UM credited with, I hate to say credited with
Speaker 1: them the closing of a lot of local bookshops across
Speaker 1: the United States over the past what would you say,
Speaker 1: probably twenty years or so. I think something like like
Speaker 1: the I had the number in front of me at
Speaker 1: one point, but it was, you know, the the number
Speaker 1: of of independent little bookstores had decreased dramatically, like by
Speaker 1: more than fifty percent, because partially at least due to
Speaker 1: these these big, big bookstores that could just take away
Speaker 1: their business. Yeah. I mean there's some that are big enough,
Speaker 1: people like Powells in Portland, Oregon, and the Strand up
Speaker 1: in the New York City area, UM that are that
Speaker 1: are big enough to hold their own. But a lot
Speaker 1: of the smaller stores had had dropped out of the
Speaker 1: the uh picture there for a while. Yeah, I've got
Speaker 1: the number now. So according to a an article in
Speaker 1: the New Yorker, UM, actually, the American Booksellers Association said
Speaker 1: the number of independent booksellers declined from three thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred fifty to fourteen hundred since n Okay. Then, so
Speaker 1: that's more than And I read an article about the
Speaker 1: closing of borders that said that publishers are going to
Speaker 1: have to cut their print runs because they no longer
Speaker 1: have border stores to help them distribute their books to readers. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's causing more turmoil. And now with the popularity
Speaker 1: of e readers surging and the ability of people to
Speaker 1: do things to publish on their own, this is going
Speaker 1: to to cause things to shake up even further. And
Speaker 1: um lion the new version of the Apple operating system,
Speaker 1: some of you've written in that you want to a
Speaker 1: podcast on it. We need to talk about the possibility
Speaker 1: of doing that and possibly Windows eight. The Lion offers
Speaker 1: people the ability to publish the pub documents um you know,
Speaker 1: from different Lion documents, so you know it's not it's
Speaker 1: built into the operating system. I wouldn't be surprised to
Speaker 1: see that coming to other operating systems to in the future,
Speaker 1: which just makes it that much easier to publish your
Speaker 1: own e books, which can create another problem that we'll
Speaker 1: get into in a little bit. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk a little more about some of
Speaker 1: the other problems that the publishing industry faces, which is
Speaker 1: that you've got some major, major companies that have not
Speaker 1: traditionally been publishers getting into the publishing game. And one
Speaker 1: of the biggest is Amazon. So you know Amazon and
Speaker 1: e readers that those two terms go very well together
Speaker 1: because we are all familiar with the Amazon Kindle, which
Speaker 1: revolutionized the electronic publishing industry. Yeah, there were a couple
Speaker 1: of e book readers before UM. I first became acquainted
Speaker 1: with the Rocket e book and saw book back around UM,
Speaker 1: but they were really expensive and there just weren't a
Speaker 1: lot of books at the time, right, Amazon's plan was
Speaker 1: to create this electronic book reader, and also the company
Speaker 1: was incredibly intelligent in that they created apps for various
Speaker 1: other platforms that could also read the electronic book format
Speaker 1: that the Kindle uses. Um That's another thing to point
Speaker 1: out is that we don't have a single standard for
Speaker 1: electronic books. There are several different electronic book formats out
Speaker 1: in the wild, and one of the really popular ones
Speaker 1: is the Kindle format. Yes, um at, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people like that format simply because since
Speaker 1: they have apps on various other platforms and they can
Speaker 1: read it on a computer, they can read it on
Speaker 1: the smartphone, they can read it on their Kindle. Um
Speaker 1: that sort of of utility is a very high selling point,
Speaker 1: although some other companies like Apple have done a lot
Speaker 1: to try and undermine that in some ways with their
Speaker 1: own policies. We'll get into that as well, because that
Speaker 1: also plays a role in publishing. So what makes publishers
Speaker 1: a little nervous or really a little nervous is being
Speaker 1: kind really scared of Amazon. One of the things was
Speaker 1: that Amazon, for a while was really adamant about dictating
Speaker 1: what the price was going to be for an electronic book,
Speaker 1: and Amazon's decision was that it was going to be
Speaker 1: for a new release, which publishers were not thrilled about.
Speaker 1: They did not like the idea of and a vendor
Speaker 1: being able to say that this is what the price
Speaker 1: of e books needs to be, because it meant that
Speaker 1: if that got into the minds of the consumers, that
Speaker 1: people would expect all electronic books from that point forward
Speaker 1: to cost that much. You know, so it's reasonable, right right.
Speaker 1: It's like just like if you were to get something
Speaker 1: for free for several years and then find out that
Speaker 1: you have to pay for it, there's gonna be that
Speaker 1: reaction of wait, what just last week I got this
Speaker 1: for free? Why are you making me pay for it now?
Speaker 1: Same sort of things like, wait what, I just bought
Speaker 1: that book for ten bucks last week? Why are you
Speaker 1: asking for sixteen bucks now? I'm sorry? I was seeing
Speaker 1: pictures at the New York Times in my head. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: so what Amazon was doing was actually pretty interesting. It
Speaker 1: was it was kind of Amazon does some pretty risky moves,
Speaker 1: and what this move. What Amazon was doing was they
Speaker 1: were the company was buying books just like any other bookstore,
Speaker 1: like even digital copies. That was buying digital copies of
Speaker 1: books just like in the other bookstore, paying the the
Speaker 1: the wholesale amount to the publisher, and then that wholesale
Speaker 1: amount might actually be more than nine dollars nine cents,
Speaker 1: but Amazon would just turn around and sell it for
Speaker 1: nine dollars nine nine cents, meaning that they're taking a
Speaker 1: loss on the sale, but they're doing it in order
Speaker 1: to build up that market share, to to attract consumers
Speaker 1: to using the Kindle platform and purchasing books through the
Speaker 1: Amazon Electronic Bookstore. And if they could hook enough people
Speaker 1: doing that, and they do it by selling books cheaper
Speaker 1: than any other vendor is going to sell it, because
Speaker 1: most other vendors can't afford to cut the the price
Speaker 1: that much and take a loss in every single unit sold.
Speaker 1: Amazon can. But the idea was that maybe Amazon could
Speaker 1: eventually get what effectively would amount to a monopoly on
Speaker 1: the electronic books market. And uh, you know, the publishers
Speaker 1: did not like this at all, And in fact, we
Speaker 1: really saw this come to a head when Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: announced the iPad and eyebooks, because then you saw five
Speaker 1: out of the six major publishers sign on immediately with
Speaker 1: Apple to provide books to the Eye Books Library, and
Speaker 1: the price was no longer limited to nine dollars nine cents. However,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs was very firm and that it would not
Speaker 1: go over I think it was. Yeah. They they it's
Speaker 1: a different pricing model and the publishers are getting a
Speaker 1: bigger cut. Um. And there's an agency fee that that
Speaker 1: Apple gets out of it. Yes, um yeah about actually
Speaker 1: um so uh the thing is with all of this
Speaker 1: that uh you may be saying, well, you know, so
Speaker 1: what is all this this price? It goes to all
Speaker 1: those people we were talking about before, the editors, the publicists. Um,
Speaker 1: there's not the cost of printing or distribution. Um. I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, this completely falls under and it's you know,
Speaker 1: we use this a lot, the long tail that Chris
Speaker 1: Anderson talked about, because um books never have e books
Speaker 1: never have to go out of print, but they can
Speaker 1: be there, you know, taking up whatever space they're taking
Speaker 1: up a hard brilliant Yeah, as long as you have
Speaker 1: a a a good program that can take a master
Speaker 1: copy and create a user copy from that master copy,
Speaker 1: that makes that user copy unique in some way. Because
Speaker 1: almost every single form of of of e book file
Speaker 1: format that the major publishers want to use will have
Speaker 1: some form of DRM on it. Yeah, to try and
Speaker 1: prevent piracy. Yes, As a matter of fact, when the
Speaker 1: the books sale goes through, UM, there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of metadata that's encoded in that file that keys it
Speaker 1: to you. So you know it's That's how people know
Speaker 1: on some digital files that they have been corrupted, is
Speaker 1: because that information is still embedded in there some way,
Speaker 1: and that you know they've been cracked, and uh, it
Speaker 1: is possible, but you know they they That's how if
Speaker 1: you opened a book on your e reader. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were talking about the different readers. We didn't talk
Speaker 1: about the Nook. That was one of the features of
Speaker 1: the Nook was you were able to lend a book
Speaker 1: to a friend with another Nook. So, um, the DRM says, well, hey,
Speaker 1: this is uh, this is Jonathan's file. Um, and Jonathan,
Speaker 1: you know, allows me to read it and I get
Speaker 1: the three weeks I believe it is on the Nook.
Speaker 1: Was it? I thought was too? Well, however long it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's authorized for a specific set period and after that period, uh,
Speaker 1: the book is no longer available on the other device.
Speaker 1: And also I think during that time the owner of
Speaker 1: the book cannot read the book right right, So it's
Speaker 1: almost like it's a physical book in the sense that
Speaker 1: if I lent Chris a physical copy of a book
Speaker 1: I have, I could not read that physical copy unless
Speaker 1: I came over to Chris's house and stood behind him
Speaker 1: and looked over his shoulder. And trust me, he hates that.
Speaker 1: So and ever again, knock all. I'm saying, you get
Speaker 1: stabbed in the thigh once with a fork, and you
Speaker 1: do not need to tell me twice. Mr. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all done through d r M. And and so
Speaker 1: you know they're their costs associated with doing this, and
Speaker 1: you know that's why they're they're trying to recoup those costs,
Speaker 1: are trying to make a profit because a lot of
Speaker 1: these are public companies, and also their business was built
Speaker 1: around a different model, and to completely shift everything over,
Speaker 1: you could argue that the electronic model is much more efficient,
Speaker 1: and therefore your costs would decrease dramatically, and therefore you
Speaker 1: would be able to make UH as good or better
Speaker 1: a profit even if you cut your prices just because
Speaker 1: your costs are lower. But you have to remember, you're
Speaker 1: talking about revolutionizing an entire industry. Which is not something
Speaker 1: that's simple to do. Um. And also there is still
Speaker 1: a demand for printed books. There's not like that. It's
Speaker 1: not like the demand for printed books is completely vanished.
Speaker 1: It's so you have to balance that out, like how
Speaker 1: much focus do you put towards your electronic publishing uh
Speaker 1: arm of your company versus your physical publishing. But but
Speaker 1: also just to get back to Amazon for a second.
Speaker 1: Another reason why publishers get really scared about Amazon is
Speaker 1: that Amazon has the potential to become a publisher and
Speaker 1: that there is very little stopping Amazon. In fact, Amazon
Speaker 1: has been talking about doing this from having courting writers
Speaker 1: to write directly for Amazon. So a writer writes a
Speaker 1: book and then Amazon acts as both the publisher and
Speaker 1: the vendor. This could theoretically be a very beneficial uh
Speaker 1: relationship for the author because authors, if you if you
Speaker 1: take the advance out, like let's say that this would
Speaker 1: really change publishing. Uh. The advance is the big deal
Speaker 1: for authors right now, and if you are just starting out,
Speaker 1: that advances your lifeblood because you may not sell enough
Speaker 1: books to have made that much money. Otherwise. Now with
Speaker 1: Amazon's model, you may not get an advance. Instead, Amazon's
Speaker 1: model might be you will get a seventy cut of
Speaker 1: every uh, every book we sell, so you'll make more
Speaker 1: money per book sold through Amazon, but you might not
Speaker 1: make more money total, because the advance you would have
Speaker 1: received from a traditional publisher might have been more money
Speaker 1: than you would have made through selling books in the
Speaker 1: first place. So this is like a weird gamble here.
Speaker 1: And publishers are worried that perhaps authors could would think
Speaker 1: that they're going to have a much more beneficial relationship
Speaker 1: through Amazons. They're going to go there. Um, they're scared
Speaker 1: about that. They're scared that that Amazon will be able
Speaker 1: to undercut all the other sales of books, so that
Speaker 1: will hurt sales even more. But the publishers will also
Speaker 1: counter with saying Amazon doesn't really know how to work
Speaker 1: with authors, like the relationship between authors and publishers is
Speaker 1: different than between authors and a direct like a vendor,
Speaker 1: and that Amazon isn't the kind of company that can
Speaker 1: take time to talk to a new author and and
Speaker 1: kind of discussed with the new author of things, and
Speaker 1: and to uh to adjust deadlines. That was a big
Speaker 1: thing because writers sometimes don't make deadlines he he misterr
Speaker 1: editor and um, and so to talk to you about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know I'm a little behind. But the Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know that too well. I like big butts and I
Speaker 1: cannotline the but yeah, the the Amazon may not be
Speaker 1: able to take that time and effort to speak with
Speaker 1: an author the way a publisher could. So there's there
Speaker 1: are a lot of trade offs that we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: And where this is gonna go is anyone's guess. Although
Speaker 1: based upon the trends, I would say electronic publishing is
Speaker 1: just going to continue to become increasingly important, so we
Speaker 1: may see more authors moved to using a platform like
Speaker 1: Amazon as their publisher. This also pulls into question things
Speaker 1: like monopolies. Would Amazon's writers, would their works be sold
Speaker 1: on any other like through any other bookseller, or would
Speaker 1: they just be available through Amazon Do not Pass, Go,
Speaker 1: do not collect. Yeah, this gets gets really complex. Uh
Speaker 1: and and honestly, we don't have all the answers yet.
Speaker 1: And speaking of complex and monopolies, it probably is worthwhile
Speaker 1: to mention some of the controversies that have gone on
Speaker 1: around the publishing model, including the recent as at the
Speaker 1: time of recording this in mid August Um, Apple Telling,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, and Amazon that if they wanted to
Speaker 1: continue to sell books through their apps for the iPad, UM,
Speaker 1: that they were going to have to fork over some money.
Speaker 1: So they cut. So that's which is standard across all
Speaker 1: Apple Like, that's Apple's standard operating procedure is that any
Speaker 1: any app that sells something to the end user, Apple
Speaker 1: gives a cut of that. Yeah, an in app purchase. Um.
Speaker 1: So both of them pulled their sales link out. And
Speaker 1: of course you could still buy a book directly from
Speaker 1: them and then upload it to your iPad if you
Speaker 1: want to do that, but um, for now, even that
Speaker 1: is a little complicated, I think because I think there
Speaker 1: was a discussion about Apple saying that you could only
Speaker 1: upload titles from a Kindle up that you could also
Speaker 1: get through Apple Store. Yeah, it's interesting. And then they
Speaker 1: Amazon countered with their cloud Reader application, which as an
Speaker 1: HTML five reader that allows you to uh, it's not
Speaker 1: actually an app, um, it's actually a site that allows
Speaker 1: you to read your your Amazon books without um going
Speaker 1: directly through Apple and the the Kindle app. So and
Speaker 1: everybody's been crowing about that in the last few days
Speaker 1: as of the time we're recording this, so UM, and
Speaker 1: I have to say it's it was a pretty clever
Speaker 1: mover on that. Another big UH controversy has been around
Speaker 1: libraries who who worked with a service called overdrive, which
Speaker 1: for a long time was an audio book service for
Speaker 1: libraries public libraries to uh, you know, for people to
Speaker 1: uh listen to stuff. And basically you download the book
Speaker 1: through a through a little app and then you could
Speaker 1: listen to it. And this at the end of the
Speaker 1: checkout period UM the d RM and it would shut
Speaker 1: it out so that you can't use it again. UM.
Speaker 1: And they began offering e books. UM. Some libraries, like
Speaker 1: the library that I belong to, UH does not have
Speaker 1: has overdrives audio books, but does not yet have the
Speaker 1: e book UM capabilities. But I've seen it in action.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. The thing is UM. One of the
Speaker 1: major publishers, HarperCollins, said UM that they wanted to limit
Speaker 1: the number of checkouts that you could use with an
Speaker 1: e book to twenty six and this caused a lot
Speaker 1: of library people to be very upset because, um, again
Speaker 1: there's nowhere and tear on an e book. But HarperCollins
Speaker 1: point is okay. But once a paper book has a
Speaker 1: certain number of checkouts, let's say about you know, twenty
Speaker 1: six or so. It's the book is frayed, the binding
Speaker 1: is bad. Um, it's been beaten up, it's been left
Speaker 1: in someone's car. Uh. You know your kids build chocolate
Speaker 1: milk on it. It needs to be replaced with an
Speaker 1: e book. We're not selling more than one copy to you.
Speaker 1: You know that one copy can be checked out indefinitely.
Speaker 1: So UM. A lot of people have been very upset
Speaker 1: about this. Um. The thing is, I could see both
Speaker 1: both sides. Once you bought a copy, Hey, you know
Speaker 1: you bought a copy. You should be able to check
Speaker 1: this out, um, as many times as you want to,
Speaker 1: because it's digital and it doesn't wear out. At the
Speaker 1: same time, the publisher is not making anything past the
Speaker 1: original sale, and a library would probably need to replace
Speaker 1: that copy, especially if it's a popular book. So I
Speaker 1: can see what you do. Yeah, I could see a
Speaker 1: consumer saying if this were the case with the consumer,
Speaker 1: I could say the consumers saying, hey, what if I
Speaker 1: take really good care of my books and I never
Speaker 1: need to replace them anyway, then you're telling me I'm
Speaker 1: being punished for using the electronic format. Uh. There's also
Speaker 1: the concept of windowing, where a publisher will publish the
Speaker 1: hard copy of a book months ahead of any electronic publishing,
Speaker 1: and usually this is done for two reasons, well three really.
Speaker 1: One is electronic books don't count toward best seller lists.
Speaker 1: They well, it depends. Now. New York Times does have
Speaker 1: an e book best seller list, and they have a
Speaker 1: combined print and e book best seller list, but not
Speaker 1: all of them right there. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: the recent things. Yeah, there are a lot of best
Speaker 1: seller lists that would only would only factor in hard
Speaker 1: copy sales, which means that you know publishers who want
Speaker 1: who who count on best seller lists. As being a
Speaker 1: marketing employ they would not want to hurt the chances
Speaker 1: of a book getting on that best seller list by
Speaker 1: also offering electronic copy and then let people buy the
Speaker 1: electronic copy but don't buy the hard copy, and then
Speaker 1: the book doesn't get on the list. Another was that
Speaker 1: they just were worried about cannibalizing the hardcover sales anyway,
Speaker 1: because the hardcovers tend to cost more than the electronic ones.
Speaker 1: And then there's also the worry about piracy. Although we
Speaker 1: have seen with books that have either delayed electronic publication
Speaker 1: or not had any electronic publication at all show up
Speaker 1: as pirated electronic copies on various peer to peer networks
Speaker 1: from people who have scanned the books in the flip
Speaker 1: side of that being people like um uh Corey doctor
Speaker 1: Oh who have offered um their e book version of
Speaker 1: their book immediately for free. And I think Neil Gaiman
Speaker 1: has also done that. I know that there are several
Speaker 1: authors who have arranged it so that their books will
Speaker 1: publish in all formats simultaneously. And uh, the thing is,
Speaker 1: when they've done a trial like that, a lot of
Speaker 1: publishers have found that the e book will actually spur
Speaker 1: sales of the print book. Yeah, and I have done that.
Speaker 1: I have downloaded the free e book and I've started
Speaker 1: reading it and I said, well, you know what, this
Speaker 1: was before I had an iPad, so I was reading
Speaker 1: it on a computer and I thought, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm enjoying the first few pages of this book.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go buy the print book. And I've done
Speaker 1: that two or three times. Well, there's some things that
Speaker 1: are still easier to do with print books than them
Speaker 1: with electronic copies. I mean, it's just you know that
Speaker 1: tactile experience being able to put uh, you know markers
Speaker 1: in your book. I mean you can do that with
Speaker 1: a lot of the various electronic formats too, but it
Speaker 1: just it's still there's something psychologically that's just not the
Speaker 1: same with that at any rate. The the whole system
Speaker 1: of publication is kind of in this turmoil right now,
Speaker 1: and we really really don't know how it's all gonna
Speaker 1: shake out. It'll really We've got a lot of stubborn
Speaker 1: players with lots of lots of clout out there, So
Speaker 1: it'll really depend on who shouts the loudest and shakes
Speaker 1: their fist the hardest, and who has the most leverage,
Speaker 1: and hopefully whatever happens will end up being good for
Speaker 1: authors and consumers. Yeah, also for Chris's benefit. Editors, well,
Speaker 1: I have to say, I think the publishing industry has
Speaker 1: been a lot quicker to embrace E technology than the
Speaker 1: recording where the movie industry definitely either of those two
Speaker 1: yet um and and they've they've done so well. I
Speaker 1: think I think in general, everybody, the publishers and the
Speaker 1: technology providers and the readers have all made advances in
Speaker 1: working together to to make this happen. There's just a
Speaker 1: lot of issues that have to be worked out so
Speaker 1: that everybody is able to coexist peacefully. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: a relatively peaceful I would imagine that that one of
Speaker 1: the developments we will eventually see will have to be
Speaker 1: some sort of antitrust charges against Amazon, because even though
Speaker 1: there are other players in the electronic books market, I
Speaker 1: think Amazon's domination is hard, too hard to argue. Um.
Speaker 1: I know that eye Books when it first launch, had
Speaker 1: a really positive launch, had a lot of interest in it.
Speaker 1: But from what I understand, the eye books sales are
Speaker 1: not comparable to Kindle sales, and I think part of
Speaker 1: that is again what we mentioned earlier in the podcast,
Speaker 1: which is the Kindle app just provides for a lot
Speaker 1: of flexibility since you can read it on various devices
Speaker 1: and the the whereas the Eyebooks app is a little
Speaker 1: more limited, and it works great if you have a
Speaker 1: lot of iOS devices, but if you've got other ones
Speaker 1: that you would like to read stuff on, that's kind
Speaker 1: of you're out of luck if you're using eyebooks. Anyway,
Speaker 1: The situation is UH is changing dramatically and quickly, especially
Speaker 1: for industry like publication, which remained unchanged for decades. It
Speaker 1: was definitely one of those those legacy type industries that
Speaker 1: you know, it's the longer you stay the way you are,
Speaker 1: the harder it's gonna be when you when changes come.
Speaker 1: So it's actually kind of surprising to see how fast
Speaker 1: things are changing right now. We'll keep an eye on
Speaker 1: it and we'll probably do another podcast in the future
Speaker 1: once things kind of shake out a little bit more
Speaker 1: to see sort of the pathway that we took and
Speaker 1: why people chose the you know, the different ways to
Speaker 1: get to where we go. It'll be exciting. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to find out what I'm reading next. Any Way,
Speaker 1: we're gonna wrap up this episode of tech Stuff. We've
Speaker 1: got another one we have to cram in here in
Speaker 1: the studio before we get kicked out. So I would
Speaker 1: like to do is to invite all of our listeners
Speaker 1: to submit their ideas for topics that we should tackle
Speaker 1: in the future. You can let us know an email
Speaker 1: our email addresses text stuff at how Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can contact us through Facebook or Twitter. Are
Speaker 1: handle there is Text Stuff H s W. Chris and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon. Be sure
Speaker 1: to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future.
Speaker 1: Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
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