e-Publishing nuts and bolts

by M. D. Benoit

Five hundred and forty-eight years ago, in 1455, Johannes Gutenberg completed the printing of his first book ―a Bible― from a metal type press. It had taken him two years to do so. Another ninety-three years passed until a secular work was printed and made available to the public, thus starting a new era of learning by providing easy access to reading material to the general population.

Similarly, thirty-two years ago, in 1971, Project Gutenberg produced the first digital version of a printed work by digitalizing the United States Declaration of Independence. The first published electronic book on CD appeared less than ten years ago, in 1994. This was the real beginning of the e-book "movement".

An electronic book, or e-book, is a book in computer file format that can be read on a desktop, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), or proprietary handheld devices. Because an e-book is composed of 1's and 0's, it can contain words, pictures, music, and video, making it ideal for textbooks and children's books. Most e-books, however, especially fiction works, have similar content as a print book, mainly, words.

As compared to the development of the print book, e-publishing is in its infancy. It was born out of a need that print publishers could not meet: writers want to be published. According to an April 2000 Wired News interview with Melanie Rigney, editor of Writers Digest magazine, there were "24 million creative writers in the United States, less than 5% of whom are published."

Starting a paper publishing company requires, among others, vast outlays of money, a lot of personnel, and business contacts. The high risk of failure is a major deterrent. Not so with e-publishing. An e-publisher can start with a minimum amount of investment. Just like small print presses, many independent e-publishers started out by publishing their own work, then broadened their scope to other people's work while some e-publishers have published only other people's works from the outset. All of them saw the opportunity to give writers more freedom to create or mix genres, thus broadening the types of acceptable prose.

Contrary to traditional publishers who take on authors based on past work, market, and forecasted profits, in e-publishing these factors are not as important; the set up costs and distribution costs can be minimal, the printing costs are nil. Many e-publishers eliminate distribution costs by selling their e-books themselves on the Internet through their own websites.

e-publishing has also spawned another type of publishing: Print-on-Demand. Once the setup for the book is done, because the file is electronic, it allows the publisher to send the file to a printer who will print and bind a book in a matter of minutes. It's then easy to produce as little as one book per run. (For more information ―including caveats― on POD, check out http://www.sfwa.org/beware/printondemand.html ).

In terms of market, at this time, e-publishing satisfies writers more than readers. According to Ed McCoyd, director of digital policy at the Association of American Publishers, in 2001e-books made up less than 1% of the $25 billion in annual sales in the U.S., although they have been increasing steadily since 2000. Approximately 500,000 e-books were sold in 2001, and McCoyd expected that amount to have doubled in 2002. Hundreds of publishers, from independent e-publishers to the traditional print publishers come out with new e-books every month. There are now over 40,000 titles on the market, from the classics to the new authors.

e-publishers expect sale numbers to increase steadily because of one major reason: adult readers are used to paper, but kids today learn from the Internet, carry PDAs and cell phones. Many colleges and universities are switching to e-textbooks. Teens regularly download and pay on-line. They'll find reading the latest novel on their PDA or laptop as normal as breathing.