Chomu Press

[brendanconnell]

Thanks for your passionate review Des. I feel that it is full of insight. One thing I notice you referencing is e-books. This book is not currently available in e-book and I have to decide if I want it to be or not. I personally don't think reading it in an electric format is really the way to get the most out of it. There would of course be extra sales, but that isn't really something that would drive my decision one way or another. The only thing that really would drive it towards making an e-book available is to be "reader friendly". But what says the TLO natives? Do people think that all books should be available as e-books? They are a bit cheaper. No postage. Does it make a difference? How tight of budgets are people on?

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[vapidleopard]

Quote Originally Posted by brendanconnell

Thanks for your passionate review Des. I feel that it is full of insight. One thing I notice you referencing is e-books. This book is not currently available in e-book and I have to decide if I want it to be or not. I personally don't think reading it in an electric format is really the way to get the most out of it. There would of course be extra sales, but that isn't really something that would drive my decision one way or another. The only thing that really would drive it towards making an e-book available is to be "reader friendly". But what says the TLO natives? Do people think that all books should be available as e-books? They are a bit cheaper. No postage. Does it make a difference? How tight of budgets are people on?

It's still a contentious issue for most, the e-book debate. I think ultimately it comes down to whether you want to limit your readership (or potential readership). Seeing as some of your work is available digitally, I think it would be unfair to only release certain of your books in this way. Leaving those who are 'e-books only' high and dry, as it were. You're in or you're out, I guess. Unless, of course, the text formatting is completely incompatible with kindle etc.

Personally, e-books for me are a way to try a new author/publisher on the cheap; get hold of something that's been OOP for years and only re-issued digitally and is prohibitively expensive 2nd hand.

Many on here will happily lap up any and every limited hardcover title from their beloved presses, such is their trust, but many can't afford to do that. A limited print run that sells out within a month, could it not then be made available digitally for those that missed out? Not everybody reads with watchmaker's gloves on a velvet covered desk with no liquids in sight. I do jest here, mostly out of bitterness.

I've heard quite a few people say they often go for e-books to save on space. Soon, I will seriously have start getting rid of books, as space saving is becoming a serious issue. Most of my books are now doubled-up on the shelves, which I loath. Critical mass is imminent.

[qcrisp]

My two pence, or half of it:

Since I've had to move four times in the last four years, and since it's that kind of world a lot of us are living in, I can see why more people are relying on e-books.

Having said that, personally, even having had to move that many times (I can't drive and have not had money to pay extra for workmen, so each time have been involved in the actual moving of objects in other people's vehicles), e-books have zero attraction for me. You could say I've been put to the test and (so far) passed it.

In other areas:

I very much dislike book piracy. There are grey areas surrounding piracy, but, I can testify that, running an independent publisher, then finding the text you have been working on for months or years, stolen, and appearing on a site that has the chutzpah to have a donate button on it, with the simpering plea "help keep us alive" next to it, makes me feel like I'm digging my own grave while someone is pissing on my back and laughing.

I think this is the whole 'free culture' thing, which sounds great but is built on a blindness to how the world actually operates. If you've never really had to work, then free sounds good. If you have had to work, then you understand very keenly why the man at the market stall doesn't want people stealing apples from his cart. Anyway, I won't get tedious here. Some people already know what I mean by this, and the rest will know, eventually, when they have stuff stolen from them (which, in today's world, will be soon).

HOWEVER, despite the ease of piracy, it seems that people - I don't know the exact proportions - will still pay for e-books, which is enormously encouraging in the 'restores my faith in humanity' stakes.

Also:

Environmental: if it really is a choice between books and trees, then personally, I would say let's keep trees. But it doesn't have to be that way (I think). Especially not with PoD using paper from sustainable sources. I've read some things online suggesting that e-books have the edge environmentally. What they tend to downplay is that all electronic equipment (of the phone/Kindle/computer type) uses coltan, which is mined in areas of Africa where there is a lot of human 'collateral damage' (don't have time to copy and paste details), so the ethics here regarding which are best are not clear cut.

Culturally:

There are many things to cover here that I can't possibly hope to. I can say that I think we need some printed matter for the sake of cultural archiving. I spoke to someone whose area is digital data storage recently, and it sounds like it's pretty precarious.

I'll leave it at that for now.

[ramonoski]

If anything, I think digital is a good option for books that are out of print and not getting new editions any time soon. If the alternative is helping some guy turn a 500% profit on their used copy they probably skimmed only once, I'd prefer making a digital purchase knowing the author and publisher are getting at least a few bucks out of that. And perhaps the ebook sales might drum up enough interest for a proper reprint, but maybe that's a rather generous best-case-scenario assumption.

[gveranon]

Quote Originally Posted by ramonoski

If anything, I think digital is a good option for books that are out of print and not getting new editions any time soon. If the alternative is helping some guy turn a 500% profit on their used copy they probably skimmed only once, I'd prefer making a digital purchase knowing the author and publisher are getting at least a few bucks out of that. And perhaps the ebook sales might drum up enough interest for a proper reprint, but maybe that's a rather generous best-case-scenario assumption.

In another thread, someone pointed out that the publicity surrounding True Detective had caused a spike in sales of CATHR, based on Amazon sales rankings. But whatever income T.L. is receiving from this would, I think, only be from ebooks. The hardcover can only be ordered from third-party sellers, and the paperback has showed "temporarily out of stock" ever since the start of the publicity, if not before. If I were an author whose books were out of print, out of stock, or only temporarily in print in very limited editions, I would be homicidally frustrated by such a situation. A not-small point in favor of ebooks.

[Justin Isis]

I don't see anything wrong with pirated .pdfs if it's a dead author that only a giant corporation is going to make money from. There's no reason to pay $25 or $30 for a Faulkner or Cortazar, just download or steal the physical book. But when it is a living author whose work you enjoy, why not support them? I don't think Robin Hood would have been as popular if he'd stolen from the poor as well.

Ebooks are fine in theory...unless your concept of what a book is differs from the designers of the technology platforms. For example, the Kindle doesn't support non-standard text formatting - which means the book I'm about 95% finished with will be pretty much mutilated by attempts to port it to an ebook. This isn't a matter of personal format preference, it's a matter of being able to experience the book as it was written. For example, some people prefer vinyl albums for their sound quality, while others prefer digital music files because they can listen to them anywhere. But I don't think anyone would prefer a format that left 40% of the album they'd paid for unlistenable. This is the situation facing us with ebooks if you want to do things with writing that the Kindle designers have obviously never considered.

I say this as someone with no particular sentimental attachment to print books - I throw away or sell 95% of the print books I buy. But at present Gutenberg technology still allows more expressive possibilities than Amazon technology. This may change in the future, but for now ebooks are a useful if greatly limited supplement at best.

[brendanconnell]

Thanks everyone for saying what they think. I however am still not convinced about e-books. Also, my newest book is one really meant to be read in the silence of the mind. If a machine is on, then I suppose that silence is absent. I suppose going against the times means I will be left behind - but I think I would rather be left behind. Physical books have carried us along for a great while now. My shelves are full of books written thousands of years ago. Maybe I will change my mind about all this. Maybe even tomorrow. For now though I have a deep distrust of e-books, computers, and the internet. I have heard people describe the current time as "the golden age" of fiction. But there is very little being written now that appeals to me. Too much of it seems to be generated by a sort of collective consciousness instead of actual observation of the physical or spiritual world.

[Nemonymous]

Substantial article on Chomu Press:
Schlock Talks | Chômu Press | Schlock Magazine

[Brendan Moody]

A photo of my Chômu Press collection, complete again at last: My @chomupress collection is complete again! (Not pictured: s... on Twitpic

Not pictured is a signed/inscribed copy of The Man Who Collected Machen, which is shelved separately with my signed books.

Unfortunately nine of those handsome books remain unread. I have some excuse on the four that just arrived today, but somehow I've owned Here Comes the Nice for a little over two years, and Dadaoism and Celebrant nearly as long, without reading any of them. What can I say? A Chômu release isn't something you can speed through in an afternoon, or read while simultaneously paying attention to something else.

[Nemonymous]

A dozen favourites from my own recent photographs of local skylines shown at this link --
plus an advert for my three year old novel 'Nemonymous Night' from Chomu Press that has a skyline on its cover:
weirdmonger: Some favourite recent skylines from Nemonymous

(All my photos are taken with my ancient iPad)