Yes, there will be change in the system. No, ebooks will not destroy publishing/editing/marketing.

I wish he would give a real example here, or go into more detail. Does he mean that an ‘ebook only’ text can cost as much as a print book, or that making an ‘ebook edition’ can more than double the costs of the accompanying print edition?

There’s a bit of another snag here, too, in his reasoning. He kind of lets slide that ebooks have no returns; he just says they have lower returns but without quantifying this statement, thus leaving his readers with the impression that ‘returns’ on ebooks could almost be as high as on print.

He uses the term ‘warehousing’ to describe storing metadata for an ebook, and this term sounds just as expensive as ‘warehousing’ thousands of boxes full of print books. Oh yes?

He also talks about how the Publisher will only get half, or less than half, than the hardcover price. He neglects to mention that Publisher gets less than half of the hardcover price for the hardcover.

Finally he totally fails to support his title, Why Ebooks Must Fail. A far better title would be Why Publishers Must Negotiate Better Contracts With Authors for Ebook Rights.

He might also have titled it, Why Publishers Must not Compete With One Another For New Titles and Must Pay Far Less in Advances to Authors.

Again and again, I get the impression that publishers are simply annoyed with ebooks and wish the whole digital world would go away and leave them alone.

1.) Large advances are only given to proven authors. Correct?
2.) If so, in that case cannot some of those advances be offset with pre-sale discounts? In other words, “order before it’s available and receive x% off”. For major authors you know that some people are going to buy the book no matter what.
3.) Wasn’t the world of finance and financial bonds created to smooth over such financing issues?

Maybe these are dumb ideas…but just off the top of my head.

The very short version is that publishers have a high up-front cost in publishing a book and count on the short-term cash that paper advances bring. Electronic books are a more efficient mechanism wherein publishers get paid when books are sold with the end result being that the publishers have to carry the debt longer.

Oh yeah:

“I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” — Jack Valenti. Now movies make more in home sales than they do in theaters.

[Append thousands of quotables from RIAA spokespeople here.]

Adapt, overcome, or die. Sounds harsh, I know, but if you don’t you’ll either be eaten by someone who does, or end up suing your own customers until you have all the popularity of Adolph Hitler at a B’nai Brith convention.

– T