Disqus - Latest Comments for ceciliatan

Re: Publishing Community Unites to Help Editor After House Fire - mediabistro.com: GalleyCat

ceciliatan — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 12:50:09 -0000

I wish I could do more!

Re: Café Wednesday: M.C.A. Hogarth

ceciliatan — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:32:46 -0000

Nice interview! And I'm so flattered by the shoutout for Daron!

Re: What will be the big digital issues in January 2011?

ceciliatan — Mon, 24 May 2010 17:20:09 -0000

Mike, are you taking nominations for the DBW council of 30? (And/or for presenters for DBW 2011?) I have someone I'd like to recommend to you.

Re: O’Reilly’s Offer of Distribution Points to a Larger Change

ceciliatan — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 03:11:52 -0000

Dang! I won't be in Lakeland until Wednesday! That's a lovely tour of the grapefruit league you have there, though. Enjoy it.

I forgot to say earlier that the one thing I might like best about O'Reilly doing content conversion is I am under the impression (which could be wrong) that they would do it with decent Quality Assurance, because I hope they would approach it more like a software company than the way most publishers seem to be, which is that ebooks are second-class to the printed book anyway, and therefore formatting errors, substandard proofreading, etc... are all accepted (by the publishers, not the consumers). One of the reasons I've kept conversion in-house at Circlet Press so far is purely for quality control and so even when the budget's there to pay for the conversion... I'm still a skeptic of letting that out of our hands, given the results out there. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like O'Reilly wouldn't dare let too many buggy books out because they have more of a software ethos.

Re: O’Reilly’s Offer of Distribution Points to a Larger Change

ceciliatan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:57:54 -0000

My company's print distributor (a consortium-type distributor called SCB in Gardena, CA) started offering ebook conversion & placement shortly after BEA last year, but I've so far kept all ebook operations in-house at Circlet Press.

Is 25% really worth it? Conversion itself should be a fixed cost, not something that will balloon on more successful books, so I find myself loath to give up that big a chunk of the income. When O'Reilly (and other ebook middlemen) will become really attractive is when there are hundreds of ebook retailers and systems that need to be fed and the upkeep of doing all that is what needs to be scaled. Right now there aren't enough different places to sell that a small publisher can't manage their own distribution. Will that change? Will more devices and more resellers proliferate? Or will we just see even more consolidation, as we've seen with the print book retail world?

Curious times we live in. Curious times.

I'm off to Tampa tomorrow for a week of spring training baseball, myself, Mike! Enjoy your trip!

Re: Apple’s disruption of the ebook market has nothing to do with the tablet

ceciliatan — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:15:46 -0000

The trouble with the books I've gotten from the current iTunes model is that each book loads to my phone as a separate app. That's a royal pain, to put it mildly. But each MP3 I buy doesn't have to load as a separate app. I'm hoping they'll launch something that works as well for ebooks as iTunes does for MP3s. I don't even think most people realize there are books for sale through iTunes now, and it isn't transparent how traditional publishers should go about trying to make their books into apps and getting them sold there.

Re: Apple’s disruption of the ebook market has nothing to do with the tablet

ceciliatan — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:31:04 -0000

I agree 100% with ampressmen's comment, "So what publishers actually want is access to the iTunes store's massive customer base that rivals Amazon.com as an ecommerce sales platform with all its credit card data and ease of purchase, it sounds like. Fascinating. The tablet is just a side show."

Speaking as a publisher of ebook titles, that's what I want most. Apple's clout as a potential ebook reseller, iTunes for ebooks, and I don't care what devices they are selling to, whether it's their tablet, iPhone, IPod touch, or the next thing in ereading software for the Mac. (As it is my own ebook reading device is my iPhone.)

Can't wait for Digital Book World next week.

Re: The 2009 Playoff Collection

ceciliatan — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:01:47 -0000

OMG, I love the presentation! And you are right, and awesome way to re-live the postseason. The layout of the book is awesome and the nifty page-through software is really cool, too.

Now I have to get back to work. Will blog this later at Why I Like Baseball, though!

Re: Baker & Taylor has the next big thing in ebooks. Really!

ceciliatan — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:07:32 -0000

Thanks for the heads up! Will do that.

Re: Baker & Taylor has the next big thing in ebooks. Really!

ceciliatan — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:32:25 -0000

Ooh. I'm really looking forward to their presentation at Digital Book World, although if it's as awesome as you say, sounds like I want to get my titles into their system ASAP and not wait until January. Are they approaching publishers or can publishers approach them?

Re: The digital transition really IS harder for trade publishers than for other publishers

ceciliatan — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 23:05:14 -0000

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, except that I saw your Twitter feed above, I ran my iPhone through the laundry on the heavy cycle. Yeah, completely water (and detergent soaked) and dead. I followed the advice on CNET and stuck it in a Ziplock bag full of Silicagel packets and let it sit on a warm heating pad (on low) for 48 hours. Once it was completely dry inside, it worked like a charm. A bucket of uncooked rice will work the same as silica gel, too. The only consequence of my iPhone's adventure through the clothes washer is that the camera is a little teeny bit blurry now!

Re: The digital transition really IS harder for trade publishers than for other publishers

ceciliatan — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:58:00 -0000

Will do! Thanks! And I'm making your blog required reading for my interns and staff, by the way!

Re: The digital transition really IS harder for trade publishers than for other publishers

ceciliatan — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:40:40 -0000

Yes. And yet I don't think "just ebooks" will be quite the whole picture of the future either. We live in interesting times.

On the subject of the talent drain, one off the other things we lost when we lost the thousands of independent booksellers we used to have is we lost a population of say 5000 to 10,000 people who knew how to sell books to customers in their stores and who had some idea of what would sell. That 'crowdsource' of knowledge is entirely lost now that one or two individuals in the big chains make the buying decisions for the entire country. I wasn't surprised to see the numbers for various categories rising and falling as the recession has hit -- people are buying less nationally marketed packaged books like celebrity bios and tie-ins and are sticking with the niches they can't live without: romance, fantasy, mystery. The industry as a whole publishes too many titles that are aimed at "everyone" -- and therefore are aimed at no one, really. (also not a surprise to me that the niche-y genres like erotic romance, paranormal, and gay romance are so hot as ebooks since those readerships could never find enough of what they wanted in the mainstream bookstores).

Sorry, I'm rambling now, but you have got me thinking.

I hope I can afford to attend Digital Book World. (Will the conference be taking proposals for papers/speakers?)

Re: The digital transition really IS harder for trade publishers than for other publishers

ceciliatan — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:13:57 -0000

You hit the nail on the head Mike, both in the way trade publishers are getting squeezed from all sides to the point where their actual product can't turn a profit, and in the lack of marketing savvy in the big houses. I feel like about 10 years ago a lot of the knowledgeable talent in the business started to leave for greener pastures, and most of the people working in marketing and publicity actually have very little grasp on what they ought to be doing. And then new people who come into the industry learn from those people the same ineffectual flailing...!

The one thing trade publishers used to be good at was getting the books onto the shelves of bookstores. Now that the only buying decisions that matter are made by two people--one at Borders and one at B&N--that ability is largely negated.