I've wondered about this myself. Part of me thinks it's just a button to make you feel good (like the clitoris, but easier to find with the lights off). When you think about it, why wouldn't they want to convert all their books? If there's this big market of e-reader people that you could be selling books to, why not just do it? Is publishing e-books expensive or a huge pain in the butt?
Well, every book needs an editor, the digital equivalent of a layout person/copy editor, as another person pointed out you need to negotiate a contract, all to compete with the thousands to tens of thousands of copies of the book selling for a few bucks in used book stores. And that's if they are lucky enough that they (still) have it in a digital format, otherwise add OCR scanning/input into the price.
All these people are currently engaged with
current projects in house. It's not like the staff is just lolling around, drinking gin in the afternoon, just hoping for some work to come through their door. There isn't really anyone available to start tackling the huge back catalog, or whatever they call it.
I know an author who has a few books out and his editor is talking about digital versions. They've been
talking for a year, I did some layout on the Kindle for them to show how it's done, but the editor wants to go for the Nook because apparently it has much better layout control (n.b. this is for poetry, which has rather strict layout requirements).
For what it's worth, starting with a word document, I turned a 500 page book into a Kindle book in about 8 hours or so. That was to get it to 'usable by me' format - it's still ugly. No TOC, layout all messed up still, etc.
I mean, it's obviously not some overwhelming effort and cost (especially compared to the normal editing cycle), but it's time consuming and uses labor resources which aren't readily available. I'm sure as the learning curve continues things can become much more streamlined, with very powerful automatic conversion tools, etc.
I suspect that over time we will see hugely popular authors converted over (if they acquiesce - a lot are virulently opposed to digital books), and the rest will have to wait for Project Gutenberg once the copyright lapse. I wonder if things like University and high school lit courses will start exerting pressure to get the 'greats' translated. Right now people like Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, etc., are heavily taught, but not available on Kindle. (well, look at that - Tobias Wolff
is on Kindle now, but still not Carver)
Now I'm rambling - but I bought Raymond Carver's biography in paperback, the first physical book I've bought since the Kindle. I'm
hating the reading experience. Heavy, hurts my hands to keep it held open, can't change the font size depending on whether I have my reading glasses on or not, can't search for things in the book or online, etc., etc. I declare: the book is dead. Long live the book!
I'm currently leaning towards the Celtic Hounds in green.
