I'm really excited about this, not least because she claims another 18,000 words available through the site. (My nerd self rejoices!)
This is the publishing equivalent of the Stones or U2 doing what they want, since they own their own back-catalog, so at some level it's not that big a deal, less replicable by the small-fry. On the other hand, I enjoy seeing disintermediation, and I truly enjoy hearing the whining from publishers about stuff like this.
One of the major underdiscussed ways to get screwed writing is just not being able to learn how much you're selling. I worked for an author at one point with a major publisher. We literally could not get reports as to how many books had been sold, were shipped, were in bookstores. Nothing.
If you think that's shocking and we misunderstood, I did some research -- it's common. Isn't that strange? You get paid per book, but publishers can't tell you how many books you've sold. Really!
This lack of reporting happens in the music industry as well, for the same economic reasons.
Rowling is going to have access to realtime statistics of sales; along with owning 100% of proceeds, these statistics are a major change in the amount of knowledge and control she has.
Book publishing isn't quite as bad as music publishing, as far as I know. Even so, much of the revenue goes to the middle men. I don't think many people appreciate how difficult and rare it is to make a living as an author. A lot of the people who wrote the books you're staring at in a book store have day jobs. More so if you're looking at, say, computer tech books.
Self-publishing of books and music is already revolutionizing these industries, and will turn them upside down once it becomes the norm. More control, more money in the creator's pockets, and a closer relationship between creator and fans. It's a good thing all around.
> A lot of the people who wrote the books you're staring at in a book store have day jobs.
And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, IMHO. Kafka had a day job at Assicurazioni Generali, but that didn't stop him writing The Castle or Metamorphosis.
Think about the implications though. Think about how many otherwise good books haven't been written because authors couldn't spare the time due to their jobs. Think about how many prospective authors haven't written their first books because they didn't have the time and/or didn't think it would make a significant amount of money.
So she owns the publishing rights to Harry Potter and she created everything about the series (names, places, characters) but somehow Warner Bros. owns the trademarks and copyright for the characters and names? Seems like she may have had to relinquish (or sell, rather) a lot of rights to get those movies made.
People keep confusing publishing with distribution. She's self-distributing, not self-publishing. In fact, her publishers in the UK and the US are getting a cut of the Pottermore sales. The fact that users won't be able to download the books via the Amazon and iBooks stores but have to go to Pottermore and download the (presumably ePub) ebook directly are a consequence of her self-distribution. And it's a terrible idea. Users love centralized stores where they can find all their content with a single search, and most users have never run across an epub outside of these stores. If you can't search for it on Amazon or iBooks, it might as well not exists as far as these casual users are concerned.
Yes, obviously the popularity of Harry Potter is going to do a lot to teach casual users about the ability to get eBooks via other mechanisms than the centralized stores. But it's akin to trying to sell the physical books using a small independent bookstore (that just happens to be in everybody's town) but not stocking it in the big chains such as Borders. And really, it just strikes me as greedy. The only compelling reason to try and self-distribute is to avoid the 30% cut that Amazon or Apple would take. She's couching this as being a DRM-Free maneuver, but providing DRM-free ebooks on your site doesn't mean you have to take them off of the centralized stores too. Anybody who cares about the DRM issue can get it from you, and everyone else can get it from the store. And it may surprise you to realize that the DRM-laden books from the iBookstore are far more convenient for consumers than DRM-free epubs. I can buy a book on my iPad, then re-download it later on my iPhone without having to remember where I got the original epub or without having to manually sync it on to the device. And I can easily delete it when I'm done reading it and then re-download it again if I want it back for whatever reason. And I believe Amazon's Kindle app has a very similar experience.
J.K. Rowling, I love your books, but don't you think you're rich enough already? Give up that 30% and let me have my convenience back.
The lack of convenience of epub-books is caused by the lack of content only available in epub format. If DRM-free epub books were to become the dominant format, the convenience would come.
You argue that Rowling must be doing this for the money and that she will likely sell fewer copies because the distribution channel is foreign to the buyers. This doesn't quite add up. The other extreme analysis would suggest that Rowling is sticking her neck out for epub, trying to push it to the dominant position to force ereaders to take the format seriously.
Both analyses are extreme. The truth usually lies between the extremes.
I don't understand your position. The iBookstore is purely ePub. Amazon has already said they are adding ePub support to Kindle. ePub is already the dominant ebook format for interchange (I don't consider PDF to be ebooks).
If Rowling were to sell her books on the iBookstore, they would be every bit as much ePub as if she distributes them herself. What's more, the iBookstore doesn't mandate DRM, so even the argument that she's doing this in order to promote DRM-free is a red herring.
Sure, by all means distribute the ePubs yourself. Rowling can publicize DRM-free ebooks using the ePub format. But there's no reason for her to avoid also selling her books on the existing bookstores. Let the consumer choose which place to buy their book from. The only reason that makes any sense to avoid selling on the iBookstore is a desire to avoid giving the 30% cut to Apple. And convenience goes out the window as a result.
That's fully understandable. I based my comment on several misunderstandings.
So, with my newfangled knowledge, I might say that "self publishing of epub books" would become awesome if it were more common. Instead, however, I will refrain from digging myself deeper into this hole :)
Not a big fan of the Harry Potter series, book or movie, but have plenty of admiration for Rowling. Her execution has been tremendous throughout. She's pioneered so many new markets, at least i think so. I really wish the record labels and movie studios would follow her footsteps and consider a different business model. Its time to give much love, respect and appreciation back to the consumer. (Sorry for going off on a bit of a tangent)
I like HP and JKR, but I don't get the "new markets". Her books got made into movies, and lots of useless merchandise was created alongside it. What is new about that? Not that I blame her/them for making money, just that it seems a very traditional way to do so.
I definitely want this to lead in a new generation of self publishing for writers that can look as good as the big boys provided they have good editing, and a fantastic website.
There is a huge difference. Twilight is just a teenage love story, I couldn't even get through the first book and found it be complete crap. The creativity and details it took to create the world of Harry Potter is just amazing. You can even tell by the fans. Harry Potter fans are a bunch of nerds, Twilight fans are a bunch of love crazy teenage girls or adults who never grew out of that phase.
Harry Potter fans are a bunch of nerds, Twilight fans are a bunch of love crazy teenage girls
I'd argue that neither is superior to the other, btw - but since we're on Hacker News of all places, it's quite understandable that there'd be a lot of Harry-Potter-loving nerds here! The comment above would be (rightly) heavily upvoted if it had been posted on a Twilight forum...
Do you really think you're inherently superior to the average teenage girl? Really?
On what metric? Ah, intelligence? Productivity? Technology skills? Contribution to humanity's scientific progress? And who decided that those are the way to measure the superiority of one human being over another?
You say "moral relativism", but I don't think you've looked up the definition of that term. Moral relativism is about the evaluation of moral judgements and actions, not of people's intrinsic worth.
Fundamentally, you're only "better" than a crazy teenage girl according to metrics that you've made up. For example, if the ability to give birth to and nurture children is picked, you (assuming you're male) would be intrinsically "worse".
You got it exactly backwards, I meant they were better. That you assumed otherwise tells us more about the relative esteem in which you hold the two than it does about anything I could say.
Ah, sorry, I, er, misunderestimated you then. I don't think it tells about the esteem I hold for those two groups - more about the assumptions I make about HN users.
This is the publishing equivalent of the Stones or U2 doing what they want, since they own their own back-catalog, so at some level it's not that big a deal, less replicable by the small-fry. On the other hand, I enjoy seeing disintermediation, and I truly enjoy hearing the whining from publishers about stuff like this.
One of the major underdiscussed ways to get screwed writing is just not being able to learn how much you're selling. I worked for an author at one point with a major publisher. We literally could not get reports as to how many books had been sold, were shipped, were in bookstores. Nothing.
If you think that's shocking and we misunderstood, I did some research -- it's common. Isn't that strange? You get paid per book, but publishers can't tell you how many books you've sold. Really!
This lack of reporting happens in the music industry as well, for the same economic reasons.
Rowling is going to have access to realtime statistics of sales; along with owning 100% of proceeds, these statistics are a major change in the amount of knowledge and control she has.