Pretty much the same. Love the kindle but that said I still buy books, not everything you want is available on it. Plus I think it’s a little like iTunes, considering there are no production, stocking or distribution costs, the prices are still quite high.

Phuck the trees. think of all the people losing or who’ve lost jobs in the printing game. Trees are replanted by responsible paper merchants. Pity all the Chinese factories that churn out electronic gadgets don’t treat they’re employees with the same respect. populist stupid comment.

Jambee, that’s a bit like having said “think of the poor typewriter manufacturers” in the mid 1980s. Technology advances, and I can’t think of many examples of a society or and industry that successfully refused to adapt to the technological advances that applied to them. Sorry.

@nikolas… for over 20 years paper mills have had to plant a tree for every tree felled. This is my point, populist bullshite, from the green army. Kindles, great idea, love them, but not one extra tree will be on this earth if nothing is ever printed on paper, not one.

It sure is…. so when are Irish libraries going to get the finger out and start offering loans via Kindle?

Bad news for printing, but good news for publishing, paper, ink and delivery is expensive, ebooks mean less overheads for a publisher, and so more profit.

Great point Nikolas. Meant to say printing!

@ Nikolas: True, but the main reason for going to a publisher is because of their efficient distribution and publish/print channels. Kindle’s store obviates the author’s need for a publisher, author’s can take their content directly to the Kindle storefront.

This is bad news for the publishing industry.

Dave, I think there is still very much a place for publishers in the world. Best sellers are made, they usually don’t spontaneously happen. The publisher is responsible for finding a book that could sell well, and also for pushing that book to all the right people and all the right places to increase its chances of success. I can see that Amazon are moving into distribution, but I doubt they want to take over all the networking and wheeling-dealing involved in promotions. Authors can deal directly with Amazon/Kindle, but the big sellers will go through a p

Publisher as always. They’re place is safe in the greater scheme of things.

Not less overhead for publishers. They still have mostly the same costs. The biggest change is method of publication. Instead of paper, ink, presses etc they have formatters and staff to upload to various vendors. Everything else is the same…first readers, editors, line editors, proof readers, cover designers, accountants, etc.

Two big changes are happening right now…fiction sales are down in print but up in digital. Paperbacks, aka mass market, were always meant as throw away books, which is why they’ve teaditionally been made with low grade paper.

The other change is that because it’s so easy for anyone to publish, they are. Authors are bypassing things like editing and attractive cover art just to have their namws in print. As a result, the market is flooded with substard work which means the rest of us have to work much harder to get our work noticed. Unfortunately this is causing a huge rift between self publishing and responsible publishing.

@ Nikolas: Thanks for your reply and I agree with you in the short term. Right now printed books far outsell ebooks (although not on Amazon), so there is still a big place for publishers. For this reason, Amazon will keep publishers on their side and not compete against them; this will continue to be the case while the vast majority of books are still sold through publishers. Right now, Amazon needs publishers.

The tide is turning Amazon are already heavily involved with the promotion of books but they use data and user-generated reviews as their promotion metrics. The publisher that was responsible for finding a book that sells is being slowly replaced by the aggregate mass opinion of enthusiastic reviewers.

Publishing firms may still exist but they will be much more akin to glorified copy editors or marketing firms, rather than the distribution and promotion powerhouses we know today.

Dave — You might find the figures for this article were based on mass market books and not all book pulished. There is no doubt mass market digital books are outselling traditional paperbacks…comparing like for like. But the figures would be much different if all book sales were compared.

Also the current estimations are based on traditional distribution into bookstores vs the likes of Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The figures do NOT include small press sales which, combined just may rival Amazon totals. Small presses selling digital books have been around nearly 20 years. They have written the business model traditional publishers are only now scrambling to catch up with.

Booksellers like Easons are already hurting because a) they take too high a percentage which means small press and self published authors can’t get on the shelves and b) they price books so high that few can afford them. The great 3 for 2 deals are not great sales. Their mark up is so high they barely take a financial hit. It are the authors who suffer…the lower the price of the book the lower their royalties. AND if you compare the price of a book on and Eason shelf to the Amazon price you’d be shocked to find you can very nearly buy two of that book from Amazon for the one cost at Eason…shipping included.

Bookstores in Britain are only now starting to cop on but Eason’s only effort has been to put in a small kiosk for low end hard to use ereading devices but not train staff how to use them (most staff in my experience have Kindle). Those kiosks are also placed in high traffic areas which makes even looking at them nearly impossible. Easons other effort has been to fix up the childens area and enlarging it as to take up more space for adult books…as if the school books weren’t already an issue.

It’s happening all over the world but in Ireland. The digital age is here. Typically, Ireland is being left in the dark until the last minute then will have to scramble to catch up. Much like the economy. I wonder if anyone realizes just how much money small presses are making now…in this economy! Would surprise a lot of people.

100% Irish “erotic literature”. If James Joyce could see this, I’d reckon he’d be grinning from ear to ear.

Nikolas – No, not all erotic. There are mysteries there too. They’re a new publisher so working on filling their ‘shelves’. The current authors are all award-winners in their genre.

Point taken. I didn’t mean my
previous comment to be negative though; any new Irish publishing venture is a wonderful thing.

I didn’t take it as negative. I was just providing a bit more info on the company. They’ve gotten off to a great start. One of their authors is an MBE ;-)