Book Publishing Going Paperless
That’s one of the headlines in the new issue of New York Magazine’s Intelligencer column:
The Hachette Book Group recently distributed hundreds of Sony Readers to its editors and publishers. “People are evangelical about it,” says publisher Jonathan Karp, who has about 30 submissions on his Reader. “If you’re traveling, this is so much easier than lugging around manuscripts. It’s good for reading in bed, too.” Agents selling to Hachette’s imprints are now required to e-mail their texts to acquiring editors, who download them to their Readers; paper manuscripts are no longer routinely circulated. “The savings on Xeroxing are considerable,” says Karp. Sony managed to infiltrate the books business ahead of Amazon’s Kindle release—Simon & Schuster’s Readers arrived last fall, though only some editorial types there are currently using them. Unlike the Kindle, the Sony has no note-taking ability, which means editors can read but not edit on their devices. That’s fine for now, says Hachette digital-media director Neil De Young. “Some of the more senior editors like sitting on their couches with a glass of red wine and pencil in hand,” he says.
I know Kate Duffy of Kensington has said she’s a devotee of loading manuscripts onto her Kindle. So even if the electronic reader takes longer to gain reader fans, editors are definitely on board.
The winner of the box o’ books is: Katherine (at that link). Katherine, email me your mailing info and I’ll get that sent out to you. It’s ready to go save for the tape and the label!
I’ll get back to the story of the 1453 words on Sunday. I’m on a roll, and can’t stop right now to explain.
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March 14th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I enjoy ebooks, but a good ebook reader is so darn expensive.
Congrats Katherine!
March 14th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Congrats, Katherine! Can’t wait for the rest of the story, but glad to hear you’re on a roll! Keep rolling!
March 14th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
wtg katherine
April 13th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
This is such a great step — I read an article recently from the Christian Science Monitor explaining how even in today’s digital world, between all the editing, translating, etc. of their newspaper, they print 5,000 pages for every single article that gets written… it just seems like this stuff needs to modernize at some point.