We had to figure out how to produce books in a cost-effective way.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Making books is hard work. Some books are, of course, more demanding than others.
The ecological impact of book manufacture and traditional book marketing - I think that should really be considered. We have this industry in which we cut down trees to make the paper that we then use enormous amounts of electricity to turn into books that weigh a great deal and are then shipped enormous distances to point-of-sale retail.
I think we did a great job of putting together a program that would have made good e-books available had people been buying e-books in any real numbers.
I priced my books at what I would want to spend on an electronic book.
The publishing industry has always wanted to make books as cheaply and as ephemerally as they could; it's nothing new.
The common intuition is that e-books should be cheap because they aren't physical - no printing, no shipping.
It used to be a lot easier to get a book deal.
Buying books was a way anyone could acquire a work of art for very little.
We are the children of a technological age. We have found streamlined ways of doing much of our routine work. Printing is no longer the only way of reproducing books. Reading them, however, has not changed.
Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.