Boris Mann's Link Blog

I’ve been interested in writing an ebook for a while. The first time I tried I didn’t finish because I couldn’t stay motivated. This time around I was able to stay motivated because I put up a fake sales page to test the idea before I even started writing. This is the same technique that Tim Ferriss talks about in the 4HWW. The validation this provided was what I needed to see it through.

4 Months of ebook Sales

I’m fascinated by self-publishing AKA boot-strapped ebooks, so in general I’m collecting stories like this. Each market is different, of course, but much like Kickstarter, it feels like people are willing to pay for stuff that other people make.

It matters little what the e-book actually costs.

It only matters what the audience thinks they should cost.

Now, the audience won’t agree on an actual number (they’re cagey, those fuckers), but what they do seem to roughly agree on is, e-books should be cheaper than their print counterparts. What the e-book actually costs is irrelevant. What matters is the expected value loss by going with an ephemeral digital item — and, further, added into that is the expectation of, “I bought a device to read this, which cost me money already.”

Thinking The Wrong Things About E-Book Pricing

I’m annoyed when I’m standing in a Chapters (or e-book showroom, as I like to think of them) and see hardcover books for less than the ebook. But I’m still not buying the hardcover.

As Tim O’Reilly famously said, books don’t have a piracy problem. They have an obscurity problem. I have never met an author who didn’t wish that more people would read her book.

Piracy? You wish. - The Domino Project

Seth Godin on ebook piracy. With the infrastructure for paying for ebooks firmly in place, DRM is a red herring. Discovery IS the challenge.

In place of the canonical certainty of the book, our favorite book would have just a trace of shimmer: always the same, but subtly different every time.

Mark Bernstein: Basics

One thing I believe but won’t try to prove (which means “take it on faith”) is that more attention has been paid to the change from print reading to screen reading than to the change from store purchasing to screen purchasing. But the change in purchasing behavior is by far more significant in its affect on the industry than the change in consumption, at least in the medium term.

By one benchmark at least, we are probably halfway through the (r)evolution – The Shatzkin Files

The story of ebooks is big. The larger canvas of the continued growth of ecommerce - away from bricks-and-mortar retail - is big in ALL categories.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Ebooks (by @baekdal) #insights →

Interesting rant on how the ebook / EPUB format is really just HTML, and that publishers should just publish on the web.

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Readium | Digital Publishing meets Open Web →

Readium™, a project of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF) and supporters, is an open source reference system and rendering engine for EPUB® publications.

This is very, very interesting. Now really is the knee of the curve to do interesting things with ebooks and the web.

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Long-term there’s no future in printed books. They’ll be like vinyl: pricey and for collectors only. 95% of people will read digitally. Everybody in publishing knows this but most are in denial about it because moving to becoming a digital company means laying off like 40% of our staffs. And the barriers to entry fall, too. We simply don’t want to think about it.

Confessions of a Publisher: “We’re in Amazon’s Sights and They’re Going to Kill Us” | PandoDaily

It may take another 25 years or so, but the printing press is going away after roughly 600 years of dominance. But what exactly it transforms into has yet to be determined, and that’s a pretty exciting thought.

Gutenberg’s last gasp - RussellBeattie.com

Self-Publishing Your Own Book is the New Business Card Altucher Confidential →

I don’t think I have a book in me, but I am loving how the walls have fallen with respect to self-publishing.