E-books, POD’s and other such things by Joyce Hart

I received a “Nook” for my birthday last week. Between my son, the gift giver, and my grandson, it is up and running. My son, Jeff, bought me the one with wifi, but not with the 3G phone capability. He feels the 3G technology is on its way out. And, I recently saw an advertisement about 4G phone service this week. Where are all these changes leading us? And, how long before the Nook, the Kindle, the Sony Reader and even the iPad are obsolete. How long will it take me to learn how to use it? I have some free books on it, but I haven’t bought any yet. Will I like reading on it? I sure hope so. My editor and agent friends who have these readers love them and my son, who travels for a living, loves his. That’s why he bought his mom one. I’m traveling again and so I’ll try it out on my trips this fall.

Rumor has it that a major publisher is telling their clients they want to do their next books in POD. What does this mean to the authors and the agents?

When POD first came into being it was mostly for people who were self-publishing. It was a much better answer than for an author than having 5,000 books printed and sitting in his/her garage on pallets. In those days a 5,000 print-run was where the publishers could make a profit. Now, it’s possible to do a 3,000 or even a 1,000 or 2,000 print-run and still make a slim profit. But even so does an author want to buy that many books and have to store them?

One problem with POD books is that they cost more per copy to produce. However, with speakers who want to sell their books at the back of the room, when they speak, this isn’t a problem. They can sell the book at the full retail and still make some money to support their ministry and they don’t have to warehouse their books. The author can have the number of books needed for each speaking engagement shipped directly to their location. Also, POD is a way to keep books that are several years old in print.

It is interesting to watch technology. Some feel that before long we will be doing everything on our smart phones. At first we wanted larger screens, now we are going smaller. My grandson, the computer science grad, is going to buy a net book for e-mail when he travels. He’s going to Europe in the fall and wants something smaller than his laptop. I’ve been thinking about getting one too, it’s easier to carry than my laptop 

Stay tuned for a much more technical blog on this subject from Terry.

In His service,
Joyce