Introduction
Technology has now improved since 2008 (when I first
created this page) and we have found ways to create more suitable file
sizes for digital versions of our books, sizes might still be as large
as 50M but not the original 500M plus that they were (thats the file size needed for commercial printing). Sounds great but
theres a
catch. Once I looked at the sales numbers, I found for most of our
books we can only afford to produce one version of a book. So what is
the single format that ALL walkers can use? Currently its a printed
book.
Let me explain, overnight walking guides (many of our books are such)
only sell in small numbers. Most of these books sell between 300
and 500 copies a year. A minimum commercial offset colour print run is
3000 to
4000 copies - the more pages in the book, the larger the print run
needed to make it commercially worthwhile. You can now work out why
walking guide books in Australia last for 6 to 10 years or more before there is
another edition (400 x 10 years = 4000 copies!). You can also see why very few books get multiple
editions - authors write a book hoping to make a decent amount of money
then get disappointed with tiny yearly cheques and just drop it
(authors get a maximum of 10% of selling price, work it out $40 x 500 x
10% = $2000 per year, not much pay for up to a year of work). If we
also produced
digital versions, I am certain that for almost every digital version
sold, that would be at least one less printed book sold. As it is not worthwhile
printing any less than 3000 copies (for colour) we would probably have
to drop
the printed book completely if we made a digital version. In other
words, sales numbers are so low that only one form of an overnight
walking guide book is worth producing. Yes some book runs can be as low
as 1500 or 2000 copies but they are black and white
printing only - is that what walkers want us to do, return to black and
white only. I suspect we would sell even less?
The other side of this issue is, if we go fully digital, which version,
an ebook or maybe an iphone app or some other as yet to be determined
format for the latest gadget!. For an ebook you will need a computer
(yes most people have them so thats OK) but the ideal is to use a laser
printer as you will need to print hard copies - inkjet printing runs
when wet so if possible avoid it in the bush. So ebooks are possibly
feasible as
most will be able to read them but disadvantages are lower quality
printed output when walking (if you use an inkjet),
and they will be carrying
more weight as the paper is also heavier. Specialist versions to use
while on a walk for
google kindle and ibook etc are the same as iphone apps - read next
paragraph.
iPhone apps
The other popular format I have been asked for several times is
an
iphone app,
well for long bushwalks they are not ideal. Great gadget, very
impressive and great
potential for many applications but for bushwalking, they
are not waterproof, the screen is fairly easily broken and also the
batteries only last only a couple of days of use, not ideal for number
one navigation device on multi-week walks in Tasmania! Yes we carry
mobile phones ourselves and we have found they go flat too quickly to
be reliable when away from mains power. We have experimented with solar
chargers, works well when base camping but as we walk most days they
are not reliable for a daily recharge. The best solution we have found is to
carry a battery pack and use that to recharge all devices including camera batteries and our water purifier but its heavy!
Regarding iphone, the Apple
contract for app development is also appalling as it gives all
sorts of rights of the work
to Apple including the ability to reduce the price without asking
the publisher/author
for permission. Also will
iphones exist in 10 years or even 5 years time, the best gadget that
all want then might not be made by Apple, think back 15 years what we
had then - could you have predicted a popular phone would be
made by
Apple! To avoid a non-working phone and not being able to use
an
app on a walk.some have stated on the web that you should carry a backup book copy but as
explained above, book sales for walking guides are already very low. If
we did
a digital version there
would be no printed backup book to take! You could print one yourself
but look at a stack of of 200 sheets of copy paper and compare it to a printed book.
As I see it, at the moment an
iphone app is not worth considering, as surveys show that only 11% of
ebook sales are for smartphones (apps) and ebooks are projected
to
rise to eventually be around 25% of all book sales. So for 500 printed book sales
per
year, thats 125 ebook sales, which translates to 14 iphone apps per
year,
would it be worth paying Apple $1000US for a licence then doing all the programming work for an app for
sales of 14 copies per year. Would you do that! I dont think Apple would be
interested much either - also for us it would take less
time
to answer 14 emails a year with a detailed reply than write,
design and edit an
iphone app. Yes first year app sales might be higher but you must
consider long term averages if you want the app to exist and be updated
in the future. Maybe Apple iphones are here to stay (it you really
think so buy their shares) but I suspect they will be another fad, in
time there will be another more popular system with less
restrictive licensing such as Androids. Essentially the same also
applies to ebook
sales - while some walkers would love an ebook version, the reality is
that sales would be too low for it to be worthwhile doing - if the big
publishers struggle to make a profit on ebooks for best seller novels where
they sell a million or more printed books then it should be
obvious it is currently not worthwhile for any tiny guide book
publisher with
small book sales to attempt.
I
now have an update on the above from some guide book publishers. One
reports that for his interactive ebook he sells 10 copies per
year. Its on Amazon etc so is widely ditributed. The other publisher
reported he has been selling an average of 30 ebook sales for each
title per year. Simply put, as I expected, the sales are simply too low
to produce ebooks along with printed copies as its not worth the extra
time it takes to create
them. If you really want to use a digital copy, then use your phone to
photograph each page and use those on your phone or transfer them to a
tablet, Kindle etc. Under copyright laws
you are allowed to do that for your own personal use (its called format
changing), just don't pass such images onto others -others can
make their own
version from their own printed copy.
Kindles are becoming more poular and we have one ourselves. They are
lighter than most
books and can hold huge
numbers of text based books. The batteries on the latest models now
last several weeks (I have noticed that at around 1 week they need
recharging, the multi-week quote assumes you only use it for 30 minutes
per day!)). The problems though are the same as above, a small user
base (relative to the numbers who walk) and the black and white display
makes map reading difficult. While great for reading
novels, Kindles do not yet replace printed guide books where
colour, detailed maps and images are an essential requirement.
As I see it at present, ALL walkers can carry printed pages and they
can be used without requiring other technology such as phones,
batteries or electronic devices. A printed book is currently available
to everybody
(unless you are blind but then you have other problems with
bushwalking) and at present it is
the best version to produce for bushwalking use. If you want to carry
less weight, then cut off the spine and carry just the relevant pages,
you will be surprised at how small and light they are, in fact they
are lighter than one spare set of batteries. Some dont like
cutting books
up,
I dont see it as being any different
from buying an ebook and printing just the pages you need, the end
result is the same. If you dont like cutting up books, buy two copies,
one for the shelf and one for cutting up to take on walks, increased
sales would also help the publisher to produce the next edition
earlier. Sometimes we have seconds of some of our books and they are
ideal for cutting up. Advantages of offset printing is that even
if the
pages get wet they can still be used, yes you need to dry them a bit
but offset printing does not run like inkjet printing. Some have asked
how to cut off the spine - get a stanley or similar knife, use a
straight edge (timber or metal) and simply cut 2 to 3mm from the spine.
Dont try to cut the whole book in one go, rather multiple cuts will
remove around 10 pages at each cut. If you order a book from us, you
can ask us to do it for you.
eBooks for us
Its likely at some stage we will decide to produce some books as an
ebook version but when we do that, the printed book will never reappear
as its not worth doing both - once digital copies exist, sales
of a printed walking guide book would drop in numbers to be under 300
per year and probably
never be
enough to be again worth printing. If we went digital, hopefully ebook
sales would be around the same as before but if the ebook version did
not sell well enough (at least 100 copies per
year, the publisher noted above now only sells 30!), then a
likely outcome is that we might drop
support
for that book completely -
essentially not update it with new information. If not enough are
willing to pay for ebooks then we dont see why we should put time into
updating them. Essentially we write books to help others enjoy the
places
we have seen, if too few want that help then why spend up to a thousand
hours producing the information.
We have spent some time researching how to create an eBook. While
it initially sounded attractive we have found some significant problems
for our type of books. The first is that most devices and apps are still mainly
text based and maps will tend to merge into an overlapping mass of
similar toned lines. Couple that with the low resolution of 72dpi for
images and graphics leads to maps that are poor when they are printed
out. Fine
text of 5 or 6 points can be
so fuzzy that they are often unreadable and line thicknesses of 0.6
points (0.2mm) often vanish, oops there go the small text and contour
lines. The
image resolution in ePub
files is designed to look fine on screen, photographs often print OK
as jpegs 'invent' data to fill the holes and thus look OK but
things like maps with fine lines and fine text are mashed.
PDFs dont suffer from that problem but
most eBook sales are currently not in pdf format. Essentially
digital books have been designed for works that are primarily all text
such as paperback best-sellers (novels).
Ebooks - the
current state
As for overseas travel guides where PDF type ebook guides are
starting to appear, with a target market of hundreds of millions
(Particularly the USA and Europe) rather
than our comparatively tiny 25 million, they can have larger print runs (50,000 plus)
and also do
new
editions more often. Also larger markets can support both digital
and printed versions at the same time as they are selling thousands and
in some cases hundreds of thousands each year, not just hundreds.
However, even
in those
much larger markets, only a small number of successful printed books
are actually making
a profit as an ebook. I have had private discussions with two
publishers of
outdoor books (December 2010). One (who many readers would know) has
put many travel books into
digital format - users expect more than just pdf files as they want
interactive navigation, the text had to be added to and reorganised,
many links and indexes had to be added and maps redone and linked to
the text so they could be zoomed in and out, link to other maps etc,
this requires programming, not just text writing. The total cost was
just over $100,000 for each book, a large investment, with prices of
$10 (less
commission and author fees means the publisher would get around $4)
they would need to sell an extra 25,000 digital copies of each title
just to pay for
setup
costs. Another smaller publisher is putting one of their guide books
into an
iphone app, much of the work was done free by the authors but even so
it still cost the publisher more than $10,000, he estimated if he had
to pay wages
for the development, it would have cost close to $100,000 and that
would have put him out of publishing. With such high setup costs and
with walking
guide sales in the hundreds per year it should be obvious to all that
it is simply not worthwhile ($100,000 divided by 500 = $200 per copy -
would anyone pay that!). Any digital books we produce will have to
stay with simple navigation (probably simple PDF files) as anything
else
is simply too expensive.
Yes, with my extensive programming experience, I can write the code
myself but I am not prepared to spend an extra years work writing code
for a handful of walkers - at the moment I prefer to spend more time
walking
and less on the computer. Currently we are considering providing one
online ebook and see what the response is, I suspect we will not sell
many copies. As for providing all our books as ebooks for free - after
reading my page about
copyright
you might
understand why we would not bother and instead stop writing and just
walk for ourselves if we were forced to provide free ebook versions.
There is another potential problem of going digital as sales would
inevitably
fall
once ebooks are put into public online libraries where many could get
it for
free (or nearly free) -
it would then not be worth doing another ebook edition at all..Yes you
can
borrow a
printed book from a public library now but thats not quite the same as
everyone instantly accessing a
libraries contents over the web - national libraries in many countries
are currently working at how to put their entire digital collection
online. Most readers will not know that you have to give the
national library a free copy of every book (both print and digital
books)
which they can then loan for free. Digital sales do work for some books
but
its currently the minority - most publishers have not yet returned a
profit on most of their digital ebooks and will find it even harder to
do
so once the libraries complete their online projects. There has been
some discussion about libraries charging for online borrowing and
paying the publisher but the proposal is to pay a few cents to the
publisher for each borrow (the government and libraries will decide what
to pay - the publishers have no say in it), not the couple of dollars
the publisher
would get from an ebook sale. As an example, in Australia under Public
Lending Rights for printed books (fee given to authors for printed
books loaned in libraries) authors
currently get about
$1.30 per year for each copy of their printed books in libraries
(regardless of how many times its borrowed), less than what they get if
one reader bought one copy! Work it out, if we
sold an online book
for say $10 and the library 'loans' it for something less than $1,
which will
most readers get. Then with 500 book borrows for a few cents each,
would you
create a digital walking guide book for a cheque from the library
somewhere between $10
to $100 each year? There are some methods like DRM (Digital Rights
Management) that restricts how
many copies libraries can loan but users and libraries dont like DRM
etc.
Printed books are not perfect either. Disadvantages of a printed book
are the expense for us to print (we
would like to avoid that but digital actually costs more!) and they
also have to be stored and
posted/freighted to places. They also they get out of date as its many
years between editions but that can be partially overcome by providing
free online
updates. Advantages of printed books are they are
less wasteful of ink and paper (provided you need hard copy) and you
end up with something tangible
that may be worth keeping. Surveys of users of kindle and other
ebook readers have shown that almost all users of these technologies
still buy printed books as well so even those using the latest
technology still prefer printed books for many uses.
Book Industry Trends
Some interesting aspects about books and publishing have come from the
Book Industry Strategy Group report that was chaired by
Barry Jones and released in September 2011 (a
government report). It showed that printed book sales were remaining
fairly steady, more than what many expected. There was a slow increase
over the previous decade but its
slightly smaller than the inflation increase which means in real terms
it is dropping slightly - not a drastic sales drop but if a business
plans on
increased sales then static growth can be disastrous as we have seen
with some book chain collapses. Digital book sales are expected
to grow dramatically but reading the fine print shows that while the
most
optimistic estimate is it will rise from 1% to be 25% of all book sales
over 4 years, the average estimate is it will probably only rise from
1%
to
between 5 to
15%. While significant, it is clear ebooks are not going to completely
replace printed books. With current ebook sales of
1%
it also explains why most publishers cannot make a profit from ebook
sales. Those who want ebooks make a lot of noise on the web but the
reality is not many of them actually buy ebooks! An even more
interesting and alarming part of the report shows that the mean author
income from books has decreased from $23,000 in 2001 to $11,000 in
2008 - you can see that authors are poorly paid. The report
comments that the booksellers, distributors and publishers are paying
authors
less as they want to increase their profits and use the extra costs of
creating ebooks
and digital production as a reason to pay authors less. As an author
and self-publisher we
can verify that this is indeed the case as the bookshops and
distributors keep asking us to take less and less while retail
prices remain the same. If this trend continues then authors will
either simply give up or 'cheat' more when writing a book. A blatant
example of cheating was an infamous travel guide to a south american
country which
was written by a person who had never visited the country - with
decreasing author payments such incidences can be expected to become
more common. Essentially the industry is forgetting that authors
already get the lowest pay of anyone in the book system, paying
them even less will probably result in more cheating and less authors
overall - the bookshops, publishers and ebook sellers have forgotten
that without
authors they dont have a business!.
The
report comments that reduced
pay to authors has forced many into self-publishing but for
most this does not work either as the report also comments that 40% of
all
publishers (mainly self-publishers) are effectively locked out of the
national book distribution system. The future looks bleak for authors
as the retail and distribution part of the book industry is dominated
by big business - authors are individuals and will always be 'small'
business and hence are unable to bargain for a fair return. As an
example, comparing mean income shows that an editor now gets
paid about 7 times what an author gets - this does not look very fair.
Personally, we
have seen this pressure on authors to accept less pay as a
well-known large publisher we once used to work with, asked us to work for
less pay and
at the same time commented in their newsletter that
they did not understand why most authors were not writing more than one
book for them to publish. Essentially they could not see that they
already paid the authors peanuts and were reducing payments even more
to the state of stale peanuts -
authors could not even cover travel costs on the income they were being
given and were
leaving to earn a
living elsewhere. In 2015, Macquarie University conducted an industry
wide survey about authors in Australia then published a lengthy report.
It essentially supported most of the trends from the above 2011
government report
2016 update - The bookshops were reporting that in 2016 sales
of printed books was slowly increasing. Shop owners told me that
the
increase seems to be mainly from young adults. It seems that some of
them have become disapponted with online content and want writing that
has been researched properly, has been edited and is well writtten.
While some free content on the web is very good, the reality is that
much of it is poorly researched, has not been edited, often has
notable errors or sometimes is simply mis-leading. As its free it
should not be a surprise to anyone that web writers generally don't put
in the extra effort needed to check or polish their writing. Even worse
is there are plenty of travel sites that copy bits of information
from elsewhere and try to present it in a fancy looking page, while
they often look professional the information is often poor and these
sites are all about selling advertizing space and accuracy of the
content is less important.
Changes to Copyright Laws
Canada
relaxed copyright laws in 2016 and
the result was many less books written by Canadians and four major
publishers closed down permanently (two filed for bankruptcy). The
changes led to more books with copied material, more books in
the
$5 bargain bins but reduced the number of new Canadian works. Their
market is
now flooded by cheap books that not many really want,
how is that increasing productivity - beats me. In particular, they
killed off the authors and publishers who produced work for schools as
teaching institutions are allowed to use any works for free, they now
have no recent Canadian educational content as no new works are
produced
for school use, oops, thats not what they thought copyright removal
would do. They thought they were going to reduce costs to schools and
students, they did, but they have lost Canadian content, they have had
to resort to texts written for the US, UK and France, not ideal. In
2019, they were considering restoring copyright to what it was before
but it
will take some time for the authors to start producing new Canadian
work and remember, the publishers are gone, most wont return. Removing
copyright sounded great but the effects and later change of mind
are very
similar to what happened when copyright was removed during the
French Revolution in 1789 - see my page about
Copyright.
Another
2016 issue that effected all writers in Australia is that the
Productivity Commision put out a draft report to recommend that
the
federal government reduce copyright to either 15 or 25 years maximum
after first publication plus make some other significant changes. They
have also recommended
that 'fair use' be extended and a number of experts have commented that
this will lead to widespread copying of material by other publishers
who then will not have to pay the original authors. To some users it
initially
sounds good but it would end the careers of many writers as they would
earn much less than the average $11,000 they get now. This is not
rocket science, less income means less time to write hence less books
and if the public wants the information, a loss to the community.
The
Australian federal government considered the Productivity
Commission report, they passed
some changes that relate to school and library use but did not
change general copyright laws. No one knows if other areas of that
report get implemented later on. Lets hope future changes don't
destroy the
copyright incentive for authors. One recommendation was to
reduce copyright to 15 years
after first publication which would make many of
our older editions free for anyone to copy, example 'South West
Tasmania' and 'Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair and Walls of Jerusalem'
first editions are 40 years old. If this happened we would have to
consider
stopping writing and publishing such books as others will be able to
reprint our
older editions without our permission. While we could still publish, if
our sales got cut in
half by a copy many of our books would not be worth printing. We
are happy to write books for a fairly low yearly return but not to
produce them knowing they could not make any profit. Copyright
free means anyone may copy it including putting our name on their cover
and they can make changes as well as its free for anyone to do anything
they like with it - thats what copyright free means. I will be
surprised
if any of the copiers would re-walk every walk (or even any walks) or
do in-field checks to update the information and as printing costs will not change, its
unlikely for prices to drop much either. The result will be either no
books (we could not risk publishing if a copier can also print a
version with our names on the cover!) or
reprints of old guide books with very outdated information, I suspect
that
like Canada, some of the public will not be very happy with the
end result.
Your thoughts on the above are welcomed as digital books and current
trends are issues
we regularly look at and the thoughts of others are welcomed. Should we
keep
printing books as we have done or simply stop printed books completely
and go digital only as some seem to want. Maybe it will all get too
hard to sell books in any format in the future when copies will become
available in libraries very cheap or free and authors get paid
less and less!. The alternative then is for
us and other author/publishers to stop producung walking
guides (and other books that have only small sales) and spend
more time in the bush. I
know that to some
copyright seems selfish, but its not, you may find my page about the
history of copyright
interesting! Without
some way for an author
(and publisher) to maybe get a fair return for their efforts (there is
no
guarantee there will be a profit), many
books would never be written or published and the public would not get
the opportunity to read and share the authors knowledge and thoughts.