On Apr 29, 2013, at 2:27 PM, Paddyjack <[email protected]> wrote: > Ray, > > I was wondering about something..... in the printing world, there is of > course a limited amount of books that are printed, and once you get to the > end of that for one particular book, then it's done and final unless you get > to get a second edition, a third etc. It means that some books can no longer > be found in bookstores except second hand stores. > > Now, with the ebooks era, how does that work? Is there a limited "copies" > that has to be sold, or are these books going to be in e-stores forever? Is > there something about this in contracts with publishers? > > Curious about this. > > PJ >
it's a different paradigm. If you look at the US paperbacks for Silverthorn, for example, it's in it's (I think) 37th printing. Magician got a do-over when the '92 revised text hit, because that was a new ISBN. Anyway, as my books never go out of print so far, its academic unless you're a 1st edition collector. E-books will have out of print, I expect, if there comes a time when it's just not downloading, which I can imagine for several reasons. Even though e-books have different fixed overhead, server space costs money. Yes, you can put a bazillion books on servers if you're design is scaleable enough and you have the money to buy blade servers, but at what point do you keep a book on that hasn't been downloaded in five years? And there's a question of a reader finding a book. Say we were talking and I mentioned some old Science Fiction author from the 1960s I loved, and you decided to go look for him/her. That's one way, but if nobody's talking about that writer, the book just sits there, because the publisher is not spending a dime on attracting an audience. It's a different retail channel and we don't know yet exactly how it plays out, so I guess my answer is books will linger far longer, but probably like print not forever. Best, R.E.F. ---- www.crydee.com Never attribute to malice what can satisfactorily be explained away by stupidity.
