They're coming! Run! Hide!

That seems to be the general sentiment about electronic galleys. And yet, try as they might, it's unlikely anyone can stop them. Still, most people would like to put off using e-galleys as long as they can.

Ron Charles, senior editor for the Washington Post Book World, believes paper galleys, at least at his newspaper, are pretty safe. “We haven't received any electronic galleys so far, and I don't sense any enthusiasm for them here,” said Charles. “In a way, that's a shame, because we discard the vast majority of galleys and books that are sent our way—about 150 a day. We review 15 a week. The math is cruel.” Paper galleys help Charles and his fellow editors through the process of putting together the weekly book review: “We like to look at physical galleys and turn them over and sort them into smaller and smaller piles of survivors. We like to take them home and mark in them and then bring them to meetings and argue about them for the final cut. And then, as a reviewer, I need to have a physical book to read at home and on the subway—the last thing I want in my life is more screen time!,” Charles said.

Lev Grossman, book critic for Time magazine, said, “I've been offered them before, but only tried to read one once, on an early-generation Sony Reader. I hated the experience. That low-contrast screen, the poky refresh rate! It was like a horrible, crippled imitation of a book. But having said that, I think e-galleys are inevitable. They just make too much sense—financially for publishers, environmentally for everybody. Maybe by the time I'm forced to read them, e-readers will have turned into something less insulting to the eye.”

Not everyone shares Grossman's distaste for e-ink screens, but it seems like only publishers are truly excited about what e-galleys have to offer, at least for now. Doug Seibold, president of Agate Publishing, recently had a discouraging experience with a book his house was crashing, Bernanke's Test. In order to give sufficient lead time to the media, he tried sending an e-galley to a few pre-pub reviews—PW among them—and was turned away every time. He's frustrated: “I interpret their refusal as result of Agate being a small press,” Seibold said. “If there's a new book by Dan Brown, they'd [accept an e-galley].This is a hot book for Agate and PGW, my distributor. To me this indicates a disconnect between the needs of actual journalists and the policies of their venues.”

Fran Toolan, president of Firebrand Technologies, the publishing software company that recently took over the fledgling NetGalley project, is confident about the future of e-galleys, but also sympathizes with the complex needs of publishers and book reviews. (NetGalley is an online system that allows publishers to track—and eventually send electronically—the galleys they submit for review.) Firebrand is revamping the system following its initial development by Rosetta Solutions and a pilot program in which PW has been participating. According to Toolan, “No one yet has made it as simple as pressing the update button on your Kindle and getting a galley on it. That's definitely one of the top things we're working on right now.”

“I think it is inevitable, and I bet it's going to take three or four years for the publishing industry to fully change its electronic workflows,” Toolan concluded.

Fictionwise/Overdrive Breakup
In another skirmish in the ongoing battle over whether DRM helps or hurts sales of e-books, OverDrive, the large-scale e-book and audiobook distributor, recently announced that after January 31, it will no longer serve files to Fictionwise, the e-tailer that owns the eReader format and sells e-books housed on its own servers as well as several partner aggregators'. For customers, this means that any OverDrive books purchased through Fictionwise will no longer be available for re-download (Fictionwise promises to store backup copies of purchased titles whenever possible), because Fictionwise doesn't own the de-encryption keys to unlock the files and wrap them in its supported file formats—eReader and MultiFormat.

This made some customers concerned about their e-book purchases, and sent rumors flying about Fictionwise files no longer working—in a January 8 post, Cory Doctorow, on the tech blog Boing Boing, quoted the apology and explanation of a “file replacement program” Fictionwise had posted on its site, and noted, “And publishers wonder why their customers rip books off... rather than paying for them.”

According to Fictionwise, OverDrive files account for 300,000 titles, or 4%, of the books sold through Fictionwise. Fictionwise claims to have agreements with 80% of the publishers of affected books, allowing Fictionwise to sell the books in its formats, and that it is still tracking down others. Fictionwise cautions customers, however, that “we cannot absolutely guarantee future availability of files delivered through third-party aggregators.... This is why we strongly recommend MultiFormat and Secure eReader formats above other choices.”