Vernon Coleman and E-Books




None of my books will be published as e-books in the future. I did sign a contract to allow an American publisher to produce an e-book version of How To Stop Your Doctor Killing You. But that's it. There will be no more e-books. One experiment was enough for me.

Publishers all over the world are enthusiastically embracing the new technology. Bookshops are selling e-book readers. Wholesalers are distributing e-books. They are, in my view, all mad.

The e-book will destroy publishing. Publishers, agents, wholesalers and bookshops will all disappear. More important, from my point of view, the e-book will also destroy professional authorship.

The Internet, and associated new technology, have already darned near destroyed the music industry. (How many shops are there near your home which sell CDs?) The film industry is fighting for its life as DVD sales collapse. It can take hours to download a DVD from an Internet site. But people do it. And pirated copies are absurdly easy to make.

It is much easier to download a book from the Internet. And much, much easier to print pirated copies - particularly when a book consists only of text. Online piracy will destroy publishers who rely on selling e-books.

It won't take long for computers and the Internet to destroy the publishing industry. It won't take five years. The damage is already being done. And the problems started long before technology companies started producing e-readers which were able to hold copies of thousands of books, and pick up zillions more from the Internet (with little or no money going to the authors or the original publishers).

First to put the boot in were websites such as Amazon which allow `associates' to sell books for a penny (plus the postage). This is undoubtedly a great service for book buyers, and a wonderful way to find rare books. But the ready, and cheap, availability of books in this way has destroyed back list sales. Authors and publishers can no longer rely on their books being in print for years because all the books that have ever been sold stay in the system. Instead of hiding on the shelves of second-hand bookshops in Hay on Wye or the Charing Cross Road, waiting to be found by assiduous book hunters, they can be found within seconds and bought just as quickly. Often for pennies. Books sent out for review end up on Amazon or Ebay within a day or two of being put into the post. The publisher and the author of a book that might have expected to sell just a thousand or so copies to start with, and to have then remained in print for years and earned a steady income, will now die an early death. A book which might have survived in print for years will now be allowed to go out of print very quickly. The publisher and the author must keep on producing new books if they are to continue to eat. It is hardly surprising that the output of new books is constantly accelerating. And hardly surprising that authors, publishers and small bookshops are suffering. The disappearance of the backlist will destroy small publishers and specialist authors. All this, note, was happening long before the arrival of e-books and those damned reading devices. (One of the most absurd sights of 2009 was that of WHSmith and Waterstones both selling e-book reading devices. It was an extraordinary example of the murder victim loading the gun for his assassin. If publishers, bookshops and authors had united to defend their world then they could have protected themselves effectively.)

The end result of all this is that bookshops will continue to disappear. And so will publishers (especially the small ones which cannot rely on income from television stations to survive). New book lists will exist almost exclusively of biographies and autobiographies written by and about minor celebrities. The most interesting books, specialist books, books that explore new ideas, adventurous, daring, questioning books will be increasingly expensive. Professional authors who aren't lucky enough to write huge international bestsellers (and there is a huge element of luck involved in writing a big bestseller) will find themselves joining the job queues and trying to supplement their meagre incomes in some other way. As e-book reading devices become cheaper so the death of the entire publishing industry will accelerate.

You won't find my books available as e-books.


Copyright Vernon Coleman 2011

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