
J.K. Rowling's Next Chapter: A Transfiguration Spell on the Publishing Industry - carusen
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/jk_rowlings_next_chapter_a_transfiguration_spell_o.php#.TgTb4Ej9Gsw.hackernews
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vessenes
I'm really excited about this, not least because she claims another 18,000
words available through the site. (My nerd self rejoices!)

This is the publishing equivalent of the Stones or U2 doing what they want,
since they own their own back-catalog, so at some level it's not that big a
deal, less replicable by the small-fry. On the other hand, I enjoy seeing
disintermediation, and I truly enjoy hearing the whining from publishers about
stuff like this.

One of the major underdiscussed ways to get screwed writing is just not being
able to learn how much you're selling. I worked for an author at one point
with a major publisher. We literally could not get reports as to how many
books had been sold, were shipped, were in bookstores. Nothing.

If you think that's shocking and we misunderstood, I did some research -- it's
common. Isn't that strange? You get paid per book, but publishers can't tell
you how many books you've sold. Really!

This lack of reporting happens in the music industry as well, for the same
economic reasons.

Rowling is going to have access to realtime statistics of sales; along with
owning 100% of proceeds, these statistics are a major change in the amount of
knowledge and control she has.

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InclinedPlane
Book publishing isn't quite as bad as music publishing, as far as I know. Even
so, much of the revenue goes to the middle men. I don't think many people
appreciate how difficult and rare it is to make a living as an author. A lot
of the people who wrote the books you're staring at in a book store have day
jobs. More so if you're looking at, say, computer tech books.

Self-publishing of books and music is already revolutionizing these
industries, and will turn them upside down once it becomes the norm. More
control, more money in the creator's pockets, and a closer relationship
between creator and fans. It's a good thing all around.

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paganel
> A lot of the people who wrote the books you're staring at in a book store
> have day jobs.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with that, IMHO. Kafka had a day job
at Assicurazioni Generali, but that didn't stop him writing The Castle or
Metamorphosis.

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InclinedPlane
Think about the implications though. Think about how many otherwise good books
haven't been written because authors couldn't spare the time due to their
jobs. Think about how many prospective authors haven't written their first
books because they didn't have the time and/or didn't think it would make a
significant amount of money.

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coderdude
I find the copyright and trademark information to be confusing:

"Harry Potter and Pottermore Publishing Rights © J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter
characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Warners Bros.
Ent. All Rights Reserved."

So she owns the publishing rights to Harry Potter and she created everything
about the series (names, places, characters) but somehow Warner Bros. owns the
trademarks and copyright for the characters and names? Seems like she may have
had to relinquish (or sell, rather) a lot of rights to get those movies made.

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kissickas
I can't find a citation anywhere but I'm pretty sure, to add to the confusion,
that Disney owns the rights to the soundtracks.

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eridius
People keep confusing publishing with distribution. She's self-distributing,
not self-publishing. In fact, her publishers in the UK and the US are getting
a cut of the Pottermore sales. The fact that users won't be able to download
the books via the Amazon and iBooks stores but have to go to Pottermore and
download the (presumably ePub) ebook directly are a consequence of her self-
distribution. And it's a terrible idea. Users love centralized stores where
they can find all their content with a single search, and most users have
never run across an epub outside of these stores. If you can't search for it
on Amazon or iBooks, it might as well not exists as far as these casual users
are concerned.

Yes, obviously the popularity of Harry Potter is going to do a lot to teach
casual users about the ability to get eBooks via other mechanisms than the
centralized stores. But it's akin to trying to sell the physical books using a
small independent bookstore (that just happens to be in everybody's town) but
not stocking it in the big chains such as Borders. And really, it just strikes
me as greedy. The only compelling reason to try and self-distribute is to
avoid the 30% cut that Amazon or Apple would take. She's couching this as
being a DRM-Free maneuver, but providing DRM-free ebooks on your site doesn't
mean you have to take them off of the centralized stores too. Anybody who
cares about the DRM issue can get it from you, and everyone else can get it
from the store. And it may surprise you to realize that the DRM-laden books
from the iBookstore are far more convenient for consumers than DRM-free epubs.
I can buy a book on my iPad, then re-download it later on my iPhone without
having to remember where I got the original epub or without having to manually
sync it on to the device. And I can easily delete it when I'm done reading it
and then re-download it again if I want it back for whatever reason. And I
believe Amazon's Kindle app has a very similar experience.

J.K. Rowling, I love your books, but don't you think you're rich enough
already? Give up that 30% and let me have my convenience back.

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maggit
The lack of convenience of epub-books is caused by the lack of content only
available in epub format. If DRM-free epub books were to become the dominant
format, the convenience would come.

You argue that Rowling must be doing this for the money and that she will
likely sell fewer copies because the distribution channel is foreign to the
buyers. This doesn't quite add up. The other extreme analysis would suggest
that Rowling is sticking her neck out for epub, trying to push it to the
dominant position to force ereaders to take the format seriously.

Both analyses are extreme. The truth usually lies between the extremes.

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eridius
I don't understand your position. The iBookstore is purely ePub. Amazon has
already said they are adding ePub support to Kindle. ePub is already the
dominant ebook format for interchange (I don't consider PDF to be ebooks).

If Rowling were to sell her books on the iBookstore, they would be every bit
as much ePub as if she distributes them herself. What's more, the iBookstore
doesn't mandate DRM, so even the argument that she's doing this in order to
promote DRM-free is a red herring.

Sure, by all means distribute the ePubs yourself. Rowling can publicize DRM-
free ebooks using the ePub format. But there's no reason for her to avoid also
selling her books on the existing bookstores. Let the consumer choose which
place to buy their book from. The only reason that makes any sense to avoid
selling on the iBookstore is a desire to avoid giving the 30% cut to Apple.
And convenience goes out the window as a result.

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maggit
> I don't understand your position.

That's fully understandable. I based my comment on several misunderstandings.

So, with my newfangled knowledge, I might say that "self publishing of epub
books" would become awesome if it were more common. Instead, however, I will
refrain from digging myself deeper into this hole :)

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r00fus
DRM-free and watermarked is definitely a great way to keep the honest folks
honest while allowing interoperability and usability of the content.

This sounds like great news for readers.

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krmmalik
Not a big fan of the Harry Potter series, book or movie, but have plenty of
admiration for Rowling. Her execution has been tremendous throughout. She's
pioneered so many new markets, at least i think so. I really wish the record
labels and movie studios would follow her footsteps and consider a different
business model. Its time to give much love, respect and appreciation back to
the consumer. (Sorry for going off on a bit of a tangent)

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Tichy
I like HP and JKR, but I don't get the "new markets". Her books got made into
movies, and lots of useless merchandise was created alongside it. What is new
about that? Not that I blame her/them for making money, just that it seems a
very traditional way to do so.

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jrubinovitz
I definitely want this to lead in a new generation of self publishing for
writers that can look as good as the big boys provided they have good editing,
and a fantastic website.

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dolvlo
Can't stand the teen drama that is harry potter. It's no different than
twilight, in my opinion.

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naqabas
There is a huge difference. Twilight is just a teenage love story, I couldn't
even get through the first book and found it be complete crap. The creativity
and details it took to create the world of Harry Potter is just amazing. You
can even tell by the fans. Harry Potter fans are a bunch of nerds, Twilight
fans are a bunch of love crazy teenage girls or adults who never grew out of
that phase.

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swombat
_Harry Potter fans are a bunch of nerds, Twilight fans are a bunch of love
crazy teenage girls_

I'd argue that neither is superior to the other, btw - but since we're on
Hacker News of all places, it's quite understandable that there'd be a lot of
Harry-Potter-loving nerds here! The comment above would be (rightly) heavily
upvoted if it had been posted on a Twilight forum...

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cma
Moral relativism at its worst

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swombat
Do you really think you're inherently superior to the average teenage girl?
Really?

On what metric? Ah, intelligence? Productivity? Technology skills?
Contribution to humanity's scientific progress? And who decided that those are
the way to measure the superiority of one human being over another?

You say "moral relativism", but I don't think you've looked up the definition
of that term. Moral relativism is about the evaluation of moral judgements and
actions, not of people's intrinsic worth.

Fundamentally, you're only "better" than a crazy teenage girl according to
metrics that you've made up. For example, if the ability to give birth to and
nurture children is picked, you (assuming you're male) would be intrinsically
"worse".

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cma
You got it exactly backwards, I meant they were better. That you assumed
otherwise tells us more about the relative esteem in which you hold the two
than it does about anything I could say.

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swombat
Ah, sorry, I, er, misunderestimated you then. I don't think it tells about the
esteem I hold for those two groups - more about the assumptions I make about
HN users.

