Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books
Paper for the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference, 2004
February 12, 2004
San Diego, CA
Cory Doctorow
doctorow@craphound.com
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Forematter:
This talk was initially given at the O'Reilly Emerging TechnologyConference [ http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004 ], alongwith a set of slides that, for copyright reasons (ironic!) can'tbe released alongside of this file. However, you will find,interspersed in this text, notations describing the places wherenew slides should be loaded, in [square-brackets].
This text is dedicated to the public domain, using a Creative
Commons public domain dedication:
> Copyright-Only Dedication (based on United States law)>> The person or persons who have associated their work with this> document (the "Dedicator") hereby dedicate the entire copyright> in the work of authorship identified below (the "Work") to the> public domain.>> Dedicator makes this dedication for the benefit of the public at> large and to the detriment of Dedicator's heirs and successors.> Dedicator intends this dedication to be an overt act of> relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights> under copyright law, whether vested or contingent, in the Work.> Dedicator understands that such relinquishment of all rights> includes the relinquishment of all rights to enforce (by lawsuit> or otherwise) those copyrights in the Work.>> Dedicator recognizes that, once placed in the public domain, the> Work may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used,> modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any> purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including> by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived.
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For starters, let me try to summarize the lessons and intuitionsI've had about ebooks from my release of two novels and most of ashort story collection online under a Creative Commons license. Aparodist who published a list of alternate titles for thepresentations at this event called this talk, "eBooks Suck RightNow," [eBooks suck right now] and as funny as that is, I don'tthink it's true.
No, if I had to come up with another title for this talk, I'dcall it: "Ebooks: You're Soaking in Them." [Ebooks: You'reSoaking in Them] That's because I think that the shape of ebooksto come is almost visible in the way that people interact withtext today, and that the job of authors who want to become richand famous is to come to a better understanding of that shape.
I haven't come to a perfect understanding. I don't know what thefuture of the book looks like. But I have ideas, and I'll sharethem with you:
1. Ebooks aren't marketing. [Ebooks aren't marketing] OK, soebooks *are* marketing: that is to say that giving away ebookssells more books. Baen Books, who do a lot of series publishing,have found that giving away electronic editions of the previousinstallments in their series to coincide with the release of anew volume sells the hell out of the new book — and thebacklist. And the number of people who wrote to me to tell meabout how much they dug the ebook and so bought the paper-bookfar exceeds the number of people who wrote to me and said, "Ha,ha, you hippie, I read your book for free and now I'm not gonnabuy it." But ebooks *shouldn't* be just about marketing: ebooksare a goal unto themselves. In the final analysis, more peoplewill read more words off more screens and fewer words off fewerpages and w