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Long Tails, Starving Legal Tails, Skinny Pirate's Tails

What impact does illegal file-sharing have on the results predicted by the long tail theory with regard to product sales? A Wired article reports,

“Consumers are ... driven to seek the same music in legal and illegal markets,” reads the report (.PDF), published Thursday by BigChampagne Media Measurement and music rights organization PRS for Music. “The most swapped files were also the most downloaded on legal music sites, indicating that what’s popular is popular.”

Though the report applies to music rather than books, publishers might anticipate similar sales curves as electronic books gain popularity.

Brevity Is the New Black

In 140 characters: Japanese novels now have US competition. Salon discusses Twitter fiction, “a happy lesson in old-fashioned technique.” 

South Africa: "What Would I Do If I Was a Publisher Today?"

Writing for MoneyWeb, columnist Magda Wierzycka reviews the Kindle and considers the digital future of publishing:

As a book lover, I was very sceptical about replacing a physical book with an electronic tablet.  However, having re-read my blog last week, I decided that some technological advancement on my part was necessary.  I thus succumbed to purchasing a Kindle on Amazon.com. Irrespective of the fact that accessing the functionality of a Kindle is far from effortless in South Africa, I have been very pleasantly surprised.  The Kindle is revolutionary. 

Read more here.

USA: Pirated Versions of Print Books on Web

The New York Times reports that while "for now, electronic piracy of books does not seem as widespread as what hit the music world," new technologies are making piracy easier:

Until recently, publishers believed books were relatively safe from piracy because it was so labor-intensive to scan each page to convert a book to a digital file. What’s more, reading books on the computer was relatively unappealing compared with a printed version.

Now, with publishers producing more digital editions, it is potentially easier for hackers to copy files. And the growing popularity of electronic reading devices like the Kindle from Amazon or the Reader from Sony make it easier to read in digital form. Many of the unauthorized editions [found on sites like Scribd and Wattpad] are uploaded as PDFs, which can be easily e-mailed to a Kindle or the Sony device.

India: Book Publishers Need to Look at Mobile Phones

The New York Times describes the growth of cell phones in India:

There are 65 times more cellphone connections than broadband Internet links, and the gap is widening. And so those who wish to influence Indians are not waiting for the computer to catch on, but are seeking ways to adapt the cellphone to the things Westerners do online. Indian companies have invented methods, via simple cellphone text-messaging, to wire money to temples, pay for groceries, find jobs and send and receive e-mail messages (on humble phones with no data connection).

"Digital Books Gain Momentum"

ITWeb, a technology site, reports that in South Africa,

Local publishers have also stepped up their efforts to keep up with digital trends. Publishing group Penguin previously announced it would publish all new titles both as printed books and e-books, and will digitise its backlist. Locally – where the mobile phone is a more cost-effective option – Penguin has said it has started preparing content for mobile phones.

Meanwhile,  Silicon Valley Insider comments:

Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos dropped a bomb on the book industry [stating] "Kindle sales are now 35% of book sales when Kindle editions are available." ...

If that's even close to accurate, it's hard to overstate the importance of it.  Kindle penetration is still tiny.  As it grows, that percentage will likely grow.

Will Free E-Bible Spur Print Purchases?

Thomas Nelson is giving away electronic copies of a Bible it will publish in August, and The Washington Times questions whether the strategy will work:

they're taking a PDF, or electronic copy, of a book that'll likely sell for $20 to $25 when it's released and giving it to you now. Sounds crazy, right? After all, this isn't an excerpt or a sample, but the whole product.

To me it may not be that crazy, however: If this "expanded" Bible is as good as they claim, a "seeding" of the market will create buzz and interest and translate into more sales when the print copies appear. And even if I were not inclined to buy one myself, I would almost certainly have to get a "dead trees," or paper, version if I wanted to give it as a gift. Either way, they sell books.

Selling Books By the Chapter

Galley Cat reports that W.W. Norton has begun a program where you can buy only the chapters you want, rather than having to buy an entire textbook. While the chapter option is only available for online books, and chapters cost between $1.00 and $3.00, the company has established a minimum e-book price of $20.00.

E-books Changing Reading, Buying Habits

In The Wall Street Journal, author Steven Johnson discusses "How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write." After an "aha" moment, he writes

I knew then that the book's migration to the digital realm would not be a simple matter of trading ink for pixels, but would likely change the way we read, write and sell books in profound way. It will make it easier for us to buy books, but at the same time make it easier to stop reading them. It will expand the universe of books at our fingertips, and transform the solitary act of reading into something far more social. It will give writers and publishers the chance to sell more obscure books, but it may well end up undermining some of the core attributes that we have associated with book reading for more than 500 years.

The article discusses not just reading and writing, but book buying behaviors, citation, author payment models, and more.

Japan: Novel on Mobile Phone Enables Outreach to Drug Addicts

Five of last year's top ten fiction bestsellers in Japan started out as works for mobile phones, and in the U.K., The Independent newspaper takes a look at keitai novels. One author used his earnings to reach out to readers in an unusual way:

Ryu, age 24, the author of Tokyo Real, a gritty tale inspired by his friend's addiction to the drug MDMA, agrees that the accessibility of mobile phone novels is crucial. "My novel is very dark. I think readers reacted to it, and I hope that, for a few, it may have helped them to stop taking drugs," he says.

He wrote his book on his mobile phone at night before going to sleep. It was first published online, with download figures so high that Ryu was approached by a conventional publisher within 48 hours.

More than three million people have now read the book on their phone, and last year Real readers organised a march through the Tokyo streets to raise awareness of the dangers of drugs.

Ryu used the profits from the novel to buy a bar, where people not only come for a drink, but also to visit the author to talk about their experiences with drugs or for ad-hoc counselling. "It's only been so effective because people would read it on their mobiles, so it was accessible to people who may be into drugs," he says.