Back in 1997, Coach House Books was the first publisher in Canada to make available online editions of its books. The online texts were free, and readers were invited to tip the author. “All of the money was given to the author directly,” recalls managing editor Christina Palassio. The program ended in 2002 when Canada Council funding for the initiative dried up.
This week, Coach House revived the digital-reading side of its site, selling e-books that can be downloaded to your desktop, lap-top, or e-reading device as a PDF file. The company started with 10 titles – a mix of popular poetry, fiction, and non-fiction – as a way of gauging consumer reaction. The e-books are being sold for between $10.95 and $12.95 for books normally priced in the $15 – $22 range.
Palassio tells Quillblog the company decided to price its e-books lower for a few reasons – the first being that they didn’t have to incur the usual printing or paper costs. “Those costs are higher than the conversion costs,” she explains. “How much conversion costs depends on which conversion house you use, how many pages are in the book, and what format you choose… Consumers also aren’t willing to pay full price for e-books,” Palassio says.
So far, Coach House has advertised its new e-books via an email blast, Twitter, and Facebook. “We figure we can reach a lot of people through those media sites,” says Palassio. “Since we don’t have e-books for sale anywhere else at this moment, we’re excited to get feedback and see what people think.”
So what? Tons of publishers are doing this and yet Quillblog feels the need to write about Coach House’s step forward as if it’s news. Other publishers are even doing it better than Coach House (gasp!), so let’s for once emerge from our CH cloud and find actual publisher news, shall we?
ROTFLMAO! Stick it to those hippies! They didn’t publish MY book of sad-sack free verse either.
Nic, that’s because your book of free verse is an indisputable work of genius, way ahead of our time. A veritable blinding light of pure expression written in the language of the future. It will probably be found by alien astronauts at some point and will seem to them like some kind of prophesy.
That’s why Coach House didn’t publish your book. At least, that’s what they told me the other night.
Oh right… and by the way…
Anonymous critical comments are so gutless and shallow.
To the first poster in this comments section: you’re a punk.
If you had any integrity you’d print your name beside your vapid commentary about Coach House and the Quill.
So when you’re looking yourself in the mirror and reciting your well-worn opinions to yourself over and over again until they acquire something like the ring of authenticity ask yourself this question: what kind of person can’t stand beside the things that they say in a public space and why should anyone else care?
To be fair, may I point out (with all due respect to my friends at CHB) that the current e-offerings are a tad underwhelming, considering that the Coach House was pioneering online & even interactive literature on the web a whole decade ago. Selling PDFs of existing books may not, indeed, be all that newsworthy.
Fair enough, John.
You’re absolutely right… that’s not really what concerned me, tho.
The anonymous commentary is just lame. That’s all.
The anonymous commenter may indeed be right.
It’s not that I don’t stand by what I say. It’s that I work in the very small world of literary publishing, and I would prefer to remain anonymous (which is my right, by the way). I personally have nothing against CH; in fact, I quite like the books they publish. However, I am VERY sick of the fact that they continue to receive media coverage when they’re just doing what every other publisher in the country is currently doing. Wow, so they took advantage of ACP funding to digitize some of their books. So did most LPG members.
My point stands, however anonymous it may be: this is NOT newsworthy–especially when it contains such inane quotes about their e-books being priced lower because of a lack of printing costs. Can I get a, “DUH!”
Well if we’re being fair, name three news stories in Canadian Publishing on Friday. It’s a blog, they’re posting everyday.
Lots of publishers have taken advantage of the ACP’s program, but many of them still haven’t started doing anything with their e-books. What’s wrong with showing one example of how it can be done? This is a blog, not a newspaper.
The books will still be unreadable, but at least they won’t be printed on that awful champagne linen stock.