Comments on: Oh, forgettery about it! http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/07/21/comments-corrections-clarifications-and-cckups-42/ now with extra source Sun, 12 Feb 2012 02:48:10 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Michael James http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/07/21/comments-corrections-clarifications-and-cckups-42/#comment-31801 Michael James Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:48:11 +0000 http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/07/21/comments-corrections-clarifications-and-cckups-42/#comment-31801 Jackie French. Battle of the books. Excellent information (I thank you), but deeply depressing. It is even worse than I imagined. How on earth do you make a living?! It makes it seem even more inevitable that it will all shift to the web. The Apple iTunes and iPod App Store are the models: Apple takes 30% and the rest is for the author/creator. No swathe of middlemen. No printers. No remainders. No haggling your rights away to huge corporations with grossly unequal negotiating powers (including Amazon). I suppose editors and publishers might be involved but the author is now in the top position. No bulk discounts. No time-sensitive authorial (forced) giveaways. Of course it is already apparent on the App Store that with hundreds of thousands of Apps it is still difficult to stand out from the crowd, but for lesser-known Australian authors it is no worse than the current situation. And for all that many of us love browsing bookstores, the reality is, especially in Australia, searching online, then reading other's reviews and opinions, and reading free excerpts is vastly more comprehensive and time-efficient than any physical bookstore/library ever can be. For those of us who love physical books perhaps some new models will evolve whereby, for an extra fee, you get both: the e-book plus a mailed hardcopy (or a bit further down the technological road, an emailed coupon to go and get it printed-on-demand--at print shops that simply compete to provide this service in the open market). This would still leave most of the power in the hands of the author and bring a fierce competition to all the usual suspects (printers, wholesalers if they still exist, large book chains, Amazon, publishers if they still exist). Jackie French. Battle of the books.
Excellent information (I thank you), but deeply depressing. It is even worse than I imagined. How on earth do you make a living?! It makes it seem even more inevitable that it will all shift to the web. The Apple iTunes and iPod App Store are the models: Apple takes 30% and the rest is for the author/creator. No swathe of middlemen. No printers. No remainders. No haggling your rights away to huge corporations with grossly unequal negotiating powers (including Amazon). I suppose editors and publishers might be involved but the author is now in the top position. No bulk discounts. No time-sensitive authorial (forced) giveaways.
Of course it is already apparent on the App Store that with hundreds of thousands of Apps it is still difficult to stand out from the crowd, but for lesser-known Australian authors it is no worse than the current situation. And for all that many of us love browsing bookstores, the reality is, especially in Australia, searching online, then reading other’s reviews and opinions, and reading free excerpts is vastly more comprehensive and time-efficient than any physical bookstore/library ever can be.
For those of us who love physical books perhaps some new models will evolve whereby, for an extra fee, you get both: the e-book plus a mailed hardcopy (or a bit further down the technological road, an emailed coupon to go and get it printed-on-demand — at print shops that simply compete to provide this service in the open market). This would still leave most of the power in the hands of the author and bring a fierce competition to all the usual suspects (printers, wholesalers if they still exist, large book chains, Amazon, publishers if they still exist).

]]> By: Joel B1 http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/07/21/comments-corrections-clarifications-and-cckups-42/#comment-31795 Joel B1 Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:23:40 +0000 http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/07/21/comments-corrections-clarifications-and-cckups-42/#comment-31795 "Freeview endorsed products for consumers:" Hadn't Freeview better come clean and call themselves "Costview" in that your existing Digital Set Top Box or TV won't pick up these "free" channels because they don't have the proprietary "chip" in them? “Freeview endorsed products for consumers:”

Hadn’t Freeview better come clean and call themselves “Costview” in that your existing Digital Set Top Box or TV won’t pick up these “free” channels because they don’t have the proprietary “chip” in them?

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