Each issue we’ll have an open discussion on some topic of interest to our Readership & Writership. This issue, we begin a series on a very practical aspect of Titanzine’s future:
 

New Technology and the SF&F Experience

Our second viewpoint is offered by author Jack Egan

Don’t get too relaxed... YOU’RE NEXT!
 

12-35-98 WED 1720 PST Kent-Covington WA

NEW TECHNOLOGY & THE SF&F EXPERIENCE
©1998 Jack Egan
 

Last month we introduced the topic of discussion: the impact of new technology on the Readers & Writers of SF Zines.  This month, we continue with this article on some specific new technology, changes in the Publisher, Reader and Writer communities in response to that technology, and some comments.

We’ll look at who is being affected, some specific technologies, and finally try to grasp some of the effects on us all, to be expected now, in the near future, and further out there.
 

We’re All In This Together

Although we often segregate our weighing of priorities, in terms of what we do with our lives, in terms of labels (e.g., “publishers” vs “editors” vs “writers” vs “readers”), many of us are playing all of these roles, these days.  In the ‘Zine world, this situation is even more true than for strictly printed media.

Our culture is on the threshold of achieving a kind of “social telepathy.”  We can instantly communicate a lot of things in a lot of ways to a lot of people, at relatively small expense.

In the old world, a few people (the Writers) became the spokespersons for a particular world view.  The rest of us (Readers) depended upon a very small number of interfacers (Publishers) to present those ideas to us.

What has happened, has happened, technically, mostly to the interfacers.  The physical publishing and distribution world has been turned on its ear by the Internet and ubiquitous computing machines.

Now we are in the midst of a mad scramble by the publishing world, to rearrange a way of life that has had its doors flung open to a vast new landscape of delivery vehicles and interfaces (with more appearing daily) which no one currently controls.

Did somebody say, ‘Power Vacuum...?’
 

Specific New Technology

Here we sit, most of us, still reading paperbacks for the most part, and, obviously, a Zine or two.  But we also communicate by e-mail.  Many of us are writing, perhaps as we always did, but now we are also sharing that writing, by e-mail or Zine, much more than before.  As Readers and Writers, what are some of the new advances about to be put in our hands?

NuvoMedia and RocketBook are two companies coming out with a rental/lease device, with a dedicated connection to a proprietary Internet site, which allows you to "buy" the download of a book (or magazine, or whatever!) to its flat panel display, read, and, um, "discard," electronically.  Giving legitimacy to this offering is Sharp’s signing on to produce the screen for the eRocketbook--the weakest part of the prototype.  (Sharp secretly manufactured Apple’s Newton.)

Separately from the NuvoMedia deal, Sharp’s flat screen color imbedded micro-processors-LCD is reportedly a step by the company toward producing paper-thin “sheet computers” with clear application to the reader market.

No paper.  No storage problems.  Of course, no free re-reads, and no fleamarket Book Fairs.  Unless we can trade semi-permanent plug-in memory modules bearing their last downloads...

The probable impact on us as Readers?  A lot of stories that would not otherwise have seen the light of day, might find themselves at least transiently presented to the world as digitally-addressed active emitters on an LCD screen.

Great!  So we Readers get to see a lot more material, and see it when we wish--even select authors or subject material in advance, shape our own downloaded issue, so to speak.  What’s the catch?

But wait!  Here's another wrinkle.

Xerox and IBM are gearing up for what might prove to be the first commercially feasible Books On Demand (BOD)-publishing effort.  IBM has sequenced the InfoPrint 4000 black-and-white page printer, paralleled by the InfoPrint Color70 4-color cover-printer, and a binder-cover assembler, to yield a paperback-a-minute production center.  The production cost figures to be some five times that of a normal paperback, but considering the wastage in unsold paperbacks, returns and whatnots, the principal players think that they have a commercially viable operation.  And these are just two players.  There are new ones, some totally new on the scene, announcing in the trades every week.

Think of it!  Single copy (paperback OR hardbound, ultimately) production.

This is big.  No, this is BIG, in ways none of us has foreseen.

Then, there's E-Ink's microcapsular paper-thin programmable screen.  I'm not sure they have a name for it yet, but the general idea of the invention is simplicity itself:  Inside these little microcapsules (which are pressed together with a transparent resin binder into a piece of 'paper') is a suspension of opaque white flakes and colored ink.  A charged grid underlies the page.  Downloaded data gets translated to a pattern of electric charges on the grid, and the white flakes either settle, revealing the ink, or rise, making a white dot.  These charge-controlled 'pixels' can be very dense on the page, so the effect is high-contrast imagery.  The image resolution depends upon the fineness of the underlying grid and the size of the microcapsules.  The demonstrated gizmo had only one page, though the plan seems to be to have a whole book full of these C-pages, reprogrammable under the distributor's control.

And that, as they say, is just the tip of the ol’ iceberg.  Pardon the mixed metaphor, but, the pebbles have been dropped into the pond, and the effects are widening.

Downwhen Ripples

What are some of the obvious, immediate effects?

For Readers

Well, as a Reader, you can ask for, and probably get!, almost anything that you want, no matter how offbeat or rare.  (Just not too old yet--gotta digitize them old backissues!)  Of course, you’ll be asked to buy into one of possibly dozens of overlapping and competing technologies.  And what you will pay for the entertainment is still in the shaky “how much can we gouge ‘em for” stage.  Cost to Read is going up, in often subtle ways.

For Writers

As a Writer, you may be invited (or simply decide on your own) to offer for sale, almost anything, no matter how small the audience.  First Grade Cookbooks.  High school literary-zines.  First drafts, rejects.  Entire SF magazines...  The distribution network exists (US Post Office, Federal Express, UPS, etc., for print-based products; CDs, DVDs, chips, disks, downloads, etc., for digital products); the ordering network exists (Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, Internet pages, snail-mail,  etc., etc.); the secure online payment means is here and improving rapidly, and the Reader’s required home viewing and storage equipment is getting to be sufficiently ubiquitous...

All of that has to do with the quantity and quality of your written word.  But what about the nature of the work itself?

Writers are already being asked to produce, not just the codified story, but scripts, games, artwork, media productions.  More ultimate interfaces, beyond the mere printed word, means more work going from concept/idea to final presentation or presentationS, with a capital “S”.  Market diversification, simul-marketing.  Single writers are becoming teams, even more so than in the print-word past, part of the expansion of the publishing concept.  Tools are expanding, way beyond the typewriter, way beyond the word processor...  Cost to write (time & money) is going up.

The breadth of the front is enormous.

For Publishers

As a Publisher, what are you doing?  The little guys, the start-ups, and the part-timers have a wide range of low-cost methods, most of which depend upon a source of material (from Writers) that costs next to nothing, at present.  This is an experiment, after all!  Nobody expects to make a profit in the R&D stage, right?
 
Maybe. How many little publishers can afford this stage, and for how long?  They can also charge, whatever the market will bear.  More about that in a minute.

The large Publishers have a different challenge.  They have a world to protect!

Large Publishers have invested, often, hundreds of millions of dollars, or more, in their existing personnel, installations & equipment, and distribution networks.  In a world where demand for the printed product plummets, a lot of turmoil will take place.  They are already paying off one long decade of collapses, mergers, and press re-tooling, and are embroiled in another.  They’ll work to protect their investments, to make intelligent new investments, and to try to survive as corporate entities.  LARGE corporate entities.

Another, more ominous prospect.  Publishers have always represented the ultimate CENSORS of written ideas in the West.  If a writer can’t get published, s/he was dead.  This power has repercussions beyond mere profitability.  It has political repercussions.  And if you do not believe that politics are involved in large scale publishing, take a look at who has been buying up publishing houses.  Most large publishers are no longer U.S.-based.  They are international, and ownership has been transferring to the top nations in the international monetary game: Germany and Japan, with the U.S. and Britain remaining major, but much less dominant, players.

The Internet and the open publication experiments going on now, loosen the control of ideas by making publication, at least of the less spectacularly-produced materials, easier and cheaper to produce and distribute.  Does this mean we have a de-centralization of censorship, an opening up of the reading world to a wider realm of ideas?  And if so, is it likely to remain so permanently?

Some Intermediate Conclusions

For Readers

 Paper-based reading has become, in 1963-constant dollars, fairly expensive.

In 1963, when I was in high school, I pulled Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End off the rack at Charles Pharmacy and shelled out 35c for it.  Gasoline was 30c a gallon (10c during gas wars).  Bread was 25c a loaf, and milk 35c a gallon (milk wars, 15c).  A custom-trimmed Chevy Impala Super Sport with a 350 4-barrel and B.F. Goodrich JetAir Nygen self-sealing tires was $3,500 (bought on time at 8%).

Paperbacks run $5- $7 today, are an awful lot thicker (wordy writers who don’t rewrite, and editors who don’t make them) and “purdier,” thanks to torn foil overprints and a palette that Salvador Dali would have died for.  That’s about 20 times as expensive.  I’ve bought and read a LOT of books over the decades, and I can honestly say, the quality of the writing being sold for this money today is decidedly DOWN.

Bread is now $1.00 for paste, $2.50 for good stuff.  That’s about 3 to 7 times more than in 1963.  Milk, $2.79 to $3.25 a gallon, say, 10 times as much.  Top-line sports cars (much smaller and lighter now) run $20,000 - $30,000, about 8 to 10 times as expensive.  Gas is $1/gal, only 4 times as much, AND it takes about half the gas to drive the same distance, so call it only twice as much!  Pay scales, by the way, are about 10-15 times the 1963 level, except for minimum wage.  There was no wide-spread minimum wage in 1963.  But when it was first applied, I was making $.85/hr as a TV cameraman, and paying very little income tax.  It’s now about $5/hr, or about 6 times as much, and taxes are higher.  Tell you something?

 Now, what about the cost of non-paper-based Reading?

 Computer costs are dropping.  But the average price per unit for the existing installed base world-wide, personal PCs that might be applied by us Readers to reading for entertainment, runs in the rough neighborhood of $1,000, plus a highly variable software application cost, and an upkeep expense.  The new base units will be down to about $500-600, but applications have tended to get more expensive, more complex, and HUGE.

Of course, these things DIE.

About every three years, you HAVE TO BUY NEW.  As with automobiles, repairing and upgrading can only be tolerated for so long.  And the technologies are changing so rapidly, that what you could read a book from five years ago (a 5-1/4 inch 360K/1.2 Meg floppy... anybody remember those?), or ten years ago (how about that ol’ 8-inch 180 kilobyte drive?  The audio-cassette data recorder?) is Smithsonian material today!

 What’s that?  The Justice Department wants to bust Microsoft up, and allow three, four, fifty new Operating Systems to compete on the market?

 Does anybody have any idea what re-diversification of operating systems costs will mean, for a publisher to support?  And who supports the publisher?

 How about which of the new “print” media will come to the fore, and over what time scale, and at what price?

 Who ultimately foots the bill for all of this evolution, anyway?  And, are we benefiting proportionately?  Why do we read SF?  Are the products reaching market satisfying our reason for being that market in the first place?  Because, like it or not, the act of Reading has become a lot more expensive.

 And who is asking the Readers for their opinion about all of this?
 

For Writers

 Writers use the same machine that Readers are currently using to download or load and read the material, for digital stuff.  We use the computer-plus-applications like a typewriter, or like a typewriter-cum-publishing house lay-up shop.  But the basic creation effort, which used to be ALL we were responsible for, is now computer based, on a machine with all of those above-mentioned frailties, lifeline junctures, and costs.

 A 1963 comparison?  OK.  A portable typewriter like the Royal or Underwood retailed for $120, and could be obtained used or in hock shops for $25-$50.  I bought an Underwood Standard, which weighed in at not much less than the Chevy, for $30 used.  It would last dependably for at least ten years.  (Mine is still working, 35 years later, no repairs.)  Ribbons cost $.50 and would last for at least the completion of one book.  Say, six to ten ribbons a year, due to drying out and other uses.  Paper, $1.25/ream for high quality; second sheets (the yellow ones used for carbon copies) about $.75/ream, and carbon paper $.50 for a box of 50, which would take care of about 500 copies, or a ream of originals.  Waste, due to having to retype and rewrite, cost about twice the cost of the original alone.  A novel might cost a writer, including the ENTIRE COST OF THE TYPEWRITER, about $175-$275 to produce (excluding his normal living expenses, which were embarrassingly small in my case).  Knock the typewriter out, and it was down to $50-$150, depending on length.  Asimov cranked out up 20 works a year, before he went to the word processor (100 a year, after, as I recall him rubbing it in, in a NY convention talk).

But, writing has become easier, you observe.  Easier, yes, arguably... so easy that we get verbose and our editors don’t seem to care.  So easy, that more of us are doing it every day.  SF ideas are “mainstreamed” now, on many people’s minds, hence a lot more authors are ready to publish, by whatever means, an SF Reader-targeted product.  Presumably for an equally-expanded Readership.  (Comments on that?)

How does a Writer pay for that computing machinery, its applications, supplies, peripherals, upkeep, and inevitable upgrade/replacement?

 Writing, in short, in spite of enormously expanded markets, has become much, MUCH more expensive to do, for the author.
 

For Publishers

 Since 1963, my base year, the world population has quadrupled.  The Reading population has enlarged more slowly, but the market for Western writers has done very, very well.  Why?  Because English has been successfully exported, translation is cheaper and easier to obtain, distribution empires have been built into every major nation and most small ones.  Huge international combines have eaten up virtually every family-owned (and they were almost all family-owned in 1963) publishing house.  Economies of scale for print publishing have accrued to the few publishers now on top of a very large heap indeed.

Their product costs, to produce, have not stood still, however.  The same ramp-up of technological evolution has affected the publishing industry deeply, and is one of the main reasons for the consolidations.  Evolution of printing equipment has been directed explicitly at economy-of-scale.  Single installations can now do in a month what the entire world produced in 1963.  OK, production ease--volume-- has improved.  What about the profitability promised by economy-of-scale?  Which comes principally from new markets, and... ta da!... Cost Cutting.

 Author payments ran about $5,000 for a fairly successful paperback in 1963.  Advances of $2,000 were nice but rare.  Royalties ran at 15% from most family publishing houses.  Short stories paid 1c a word at Ziff-Davis’s Amazing, to 5c a word in Campbell’s Astounding / Analog.  Hey!  Aren’t the pay scales about the same today?  You mean, magazine writers are making 10 to 20 times LESS than they would have in 1963??  Whoa!  And those are the pros!

Magazines cost us Readers $3.95-$4.95, 10 to 14 times their cost in 1963.  Publishers, whom I have every reason to believe, tell me that they do not make much money after operating costs, even at those cover prices, for magazines.  For book publishers, the picture is much muddier.  Some magazine publishers are still in-country, though the big ones have also gone the way of the international combine.  International corporations play very interesting games with their profitability reports.  Much sleuthing effort here has not convinced me that the international houses have suffered much, profit-wise, but I am open to further input.

In terms of the impact of new technology, though, some outstanding facts grab you by the throat.

PRINT-ON-DEMAND technology, such as that described above, will require a large and unstable expenditure by publishers, to embrace.  The storage technology, and printing technology, although both fairly reasonable in cost, as far as an investment, are functionally acceptable.  But the technology is changing very quickly.  Publishers will most likely inherit a situation not unlike us Readers and Writers, insofar as technology costs are concerned: continuing upgrade absolutely expected annually, and revolutionary change likely over the 5-year horizon.  That translates into expected high cost for the new printing technology.  And it will have to be paid for, ultimately, by the end-user.

Putting It All Together

If the relative-to-1963 picture throughout the industry, is one of Readers paying more, Writers earning on average LOTS less, and Publishers maybe making more (but only some of them), what has been the advantage of thirty-five years of “progress” in the published SF Community?

And, now that so MANY advantages are accruing to the Publisher/Distributor of digital products, and the markets are expanding--thanks to us Readers and Writers willingly buying the required hard- and software--what is likely to be the direction of price/performance in the future?

Lest Titan Readers feel that this topic is only an amateur’s or sometime-pro’s concern, in the most recent SFWA Forum--an organ of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, which came out as this second installment was being finalized--this topic was a principal editorial focus.  Like the rest of us, even the pros are head-scratching over the impact of technology on the shape of their future.  And, like Titan’s editors and publishers, SFWA is convinced that the time to begin doing some soul-searching on this is NOW.

The net result of all of this is, a possible birth of really highly-specialized print runs, niche markets, and, in the future geological strata, a complete (but misleading) <dirth> of any evidence that Homo sapiens remembered how to read or write, after the dawn of the TV age.  As my favorite digital memory engineer (I’ll call him ‘Hank’) and I concluded over drinks near Microsoft U, digitally-stored information is the most evanescent, the most transient, the most temporally challenged data in the universe.  (We was sipping John Jameson, always a mellifluizer.)

Maybe, we concluded, as an offset to current trends, we should all get together and found a company going back to offering Clay Tablet Publishing (CTP), Parchment-Calligraphy (PC) (with DataBase Safe Storage (DBSS) in Old Dry as a Bone Caves out in the High Desert (ODBC-HD)), and some high-end Rock-Chiseled Archives (RCA!) for the Really Valuable Stuff (RVS).  If you have a hankering to be read by audiences up around 2300 AD (about equivalent to the longevity of Virgil or Pliny), the newest technologies may not be for you.  You might better go for the CTP!

-------------------------------

Post Script
Titan’s objective here is to encourage your thinking, and your participation.  We aren’t here to beat a particular drum.  Most any noise at this stage is just the wake-up call, because what we really need to do, is to STAY ALERT to the burgeoning possibilities.  Open to new ideas.  Aware of threats.  But also poised to act.  Our Writing lives, and hence, our Reading and Publishing lives, may depend upon it!
 

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