[Theepistle] Kindling interest

[Ian Dickerson]

Tim,

The Hodder anthologies were scanned in and proof-read by me. Hodders have
absolutely nothing Saintly in their archive (I checked). Further editions of
those anthologies are not out of the question--particularly since volume 1
sold out in six months--but Hodders are waiting to see what happens with the
TV pilot (as are we all).

But the interesting thing is that Hodders don't have electronic rights to
those anthologies--we went through some quite painful negotiations to get
them taken out. 

And to take a point you rise in the first half of your response--what format
would you see them being released in?

Ian

-----Original Message-----
From: theepistle-bounces+ian.dickerson=gmail.com at fascicle.org
[mailto:theepistle-bounces+ian.dickerson=gmail.com at fascicle.org] On Behalf
Of Tim Forcer
Sent: 18 January 2010 1:40 PM
To: theepistle at fascicle.org
Subject: Re: [Theepistle] Kindling interest

At 08:21 14/01/2010, Ian wrote:

>  Whilst I'm firmly with Delmo in favour of the printed page  nowadays 
> I am a lot more accepting of Kindles if not other  forms of electronic 
> literature.

So far, I've not even been tempted by an e-reader.  I like the concept, but
feel it needs more development before it might suit me.  Things I'm not keen
on are:

a) Display resolution - currently crude, so number of legible words per
display is much smaller than per paperback page.  (And, for legibility, the
typefaces have to be those optimised for pixel-based displays, rather than
those used for printing - the latter are much easier on the eye, but don't
render well on the screen unless the resolution is exceptionally high.)

b) File formats - there's no way I'm getting into proprietary formats,
particularly if the platform won't handle general-purpose formats (eg pdf,
txt, rtf).  (And I'm not sure how pdfs look - most pdfs are produced for A4
or similar page size, so would be illegible on a Kindle unless one zoomed
and scrolled all the time, or unless the software was smart enough to be
able to re-paginate on the fly, which makes pdf pointless.)

c) Rights - while I DO want the rights owner to get a fair return, I don't
want to have to pay again every time I shift the file from drive to drive
(and I'm certainly not interested in having the file reside on a server
somewhere - a book should be usable anywhere, anytime, not simply where and
when WiFi is available).

d) Second-hand - I own a huge number of second-hand books, but the resale
market for files is fraught with rights issues.  With printed books, the
publish-on-demand option has brought large numbers of out-of-print titles
back into circulation, and I've been very happy to buy such volumes.  As
yet, besides rights-free offerings through Gutenberg and others, there seems
little opening up of back-catalogues.  Long live ABE!

>  The problem with offering the adventures of the Saint on  those 
> platforms is simply one of effort versus return. I  think it would be 
> far too much effort for very little  return.
>
>  Happy to be persuaded otherwise though!

OK, a challenge.

I cannot believe the recent _Best Of The Saint_ volumes were printed other
than from electronic masters (the chances of the original plates being
around is surely nil, and anyway the page layout would have been wrong for
modern paper sizes).  Therefore, Hodder already have, in digital form, all
or most of a quartet of Saint original volumes, or a couple of dozen
original shortish stories.  Turn a handle or two and they become collections
of rtf, pdf or whatever.

Use those to test the water, pricing by comparison with back-catalogue
offerings rather than recent publications.  (OK, this will knock chances of
further print-runs of the books, but by now I would expect any such to be
unlikely?)

If this is a success, the income after preparation and admin costs, and the
estate getting appropriate royalties, ought to be enough to begin a process
of converting old masters (of whatever form) into new sets of files.

A commercial-grade book scanning / OCR operation is neither costly nor
particularly time-consuming (going by personal experience with a
consumer-grade OCR system and general-purpose scanner) - you don't have to
be Google or the British Library to set up a viable system.

Obviously, the results need proper proofing, cleaning up, de-paginating and
the rest, which isn't particularly cheap as peanut-paid monkeys deliver
crushed nuts.  One needs people who are not just literate but literary and
without the slightest tinge of dyslexia.  Probably not suitable for farming
out to low-wage operations in developing countries.

To make the results _*really*_ appealing to fans, the virtual covers of the
virtual books could cycle through a random selection of the actual covers
used for print versions.  Which would be of very limited appeal with current
equipment, since all have low resolution and limited (or very limited)
greyscale displays, not the high-res colour needed to do justice to the
wonderful artwork we all know and love.  (My personal favourite, partly
because it's how I got to know The Saint, is the stick-figure Hodder
paperbacks, but I'm sure the other styles have their champions too.)

Look, I can dream if I want to!

Sometimes, one has to accept that something is technically possible, but not
currently achievable in commercial terms (a year ago I ran a student project
which was about combining a collection of known technologies and
applications to achieve a particular stand-alone system - the excellent team
found that it wasn't _quite_ on at the moment, but give it a couple of years
and it might well be).  If there are clear "wants" made known to publishers
(etc, etc), then, if enough people "want" it, their marketing arms will push
for it to happen.

Currently, Kindle and the like sell well, but not extravagantly so.  I doubt
they make a huge amount, even where the hardware is a bit of a loss-leader
and files are sold at quite a premium to the actual costs of production plus
royalties.  Let the book world know WHY we aren't ALL buying Kindles, and we
might start to get something a lot better?

Tim 


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