The eBook market is starting to look like what the music industry wished the digital music market looked like in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. Back then, Microsoft and Apple wanted lock-in to their own proprietary players, so they created their own music file standards and proprietary DRM. And record labels wanted the ability to sell everyone a new copy of music they already owned at a higher price, so they experimented with tactics like releasing albums exclusive to Apple or Microsoft formats.
The existence of a digital music dystopia was thwarted by an open standard (MP3), the existence of high-quality digital copies (CDs) that could easily be converted to MP3, and music sharing services like Napster. This made consumers demand players that could play their existing MP3s, and it gave them an alternative when labels were screwing with them by releasing content on a format they couldn’t play.
Unfortunately, there’s no eBook equivalent of CDs and MP3s, so, for example, if you want to buy the book associated with the popular movie The King’s Speech, you can’t get it on your Kindle, but you can get it on your Nook. Even though the book is out in paperback, you’ll still pay the hardback price on the Nook ($9.99) which is 7 cents less than the price for a paper copy that can be resold or given to a friend who has a Kindle, which can’t read Nook ebooks (and vice-versa).
The concept of eBooks, like the concept of reading newspapers and magazines on an iPad, is a good one. The implementation, as usual, is a consumer fuck-a-thon that will drive a flourishing piracy market.
Gin & Tonic
MP3 is not an open standard, it is a patented format.
cleek
eMusic’s piracy market is greatly enhanced by the fact that idle teenagers really like music. i’m not sure there’s similar enthusiasm for books.
grass
Use Calibre to change ebook formats – http://calibre-ebook.com/
Use pirate bay to download ebooks.
mistermix
@Gin & Tonic: But it’s DRM-free and widely implemented, unlike DRM-encumbered versions of WMV and AAC.
dp
“Consumer fuck-a-thon” is a pretty good description of the entire early-21st century economy, when you think about it.
pto892
Mrs 892 gave me a Kindle for Christmas. Much to my surprise, I really like it. A whole lot in fact, because it can read many more formats than one would expect coming from Amazon, and it’s trivially easy to find a whole lot of ebooks out there that are free or very low cost. Among other things, it can read pdf and plain text files seamlessly and treats them the same as a Kindle formatted ebook. You can bookmark, search, and make notes within a plain text file just the same as an ebook bought from Amazon. Everything from Project Gutenberg can be used on a Kindle (Amazon even makes them freely available on their web site). Baen books has a whole mess of free ebooks on their site, as another example. Technical notes and journals in a pdf format can be read no problem-so I’ve put my 2004 Toyota Corolla shop manual (pdf) which I found online on the Kindle. It seems to me that plain text files and pdf files already are the analog to mp3 files when it comes to this developing technology. If you insist on it, you can send a text or pdf file to Amazon and they’ll convert it to the Kindle proprietary format for free, but why you would need to do so is beyond me.
Robert Sneddon
A friend of mine is a professional novelist. He has a six-book series out but due to contractual changes while he was writing them only five of the six are available as electronic editions. When he started the series e-books were under the publishing company’s radar and so the rights were assigned without difficulty. Halfway through the series the publishers woke up to e-publishing but vastly overvalued the e-book rights so no e-publishing organisation took up the rights to one of the books. Now the publisher has a good working relationship with a specialist e-book licensing organisation and the last books in the series got e-book versions but the orphan book in the middle is still without an e-version.
Basically the e-book market is controlled by the book publishers and it is they that have still to get their act together, not the retailers such as Amazon and Borders. As for the cost of e-books they still take a lot of man-hours to produce. The cost of actually printing and shipping paper books is a minor part of the cost of publishing any given title since there’s been a lot of effort put into reducing those costs over the centuries. The editing, layout and other stages of preparation of a book (never mind the actual composition of the text) are still manual-labour-intensive operations which for various reasons can’t be done cheaply. Marketing is another whole expense in getting the book into the hands of a willing customer (review copies, press adverts, in-store advertising etc.)
E-books aren’t much cheaper than regular paper books, they’re just more convenient to store and search and carry around with you. DRM and “ownership” are part of the reason e-books are different to paper books and trying to mentally shoehorn e-publication into the well-established regular paper publication process causes all sorts of mistakes to be made.
Steve M.
Well, the book business, unlike the pre-Napster music business, has not exactly been awash in cash — editors aren’t exactly sitting around hoovering up grams of pharmaceutical coke off triplet hookers’ asses. Book people are just trying to hang on as the technology changes. You complain about eBooks at paperback prices, where the book business sees it as every eBook being at paperback prices, thanks to Amazon. (Yeah, you don’t have to print and ship and warehouse eBooks, which is supposed to make up for the lost revenue, but it’s still a comedown.)
And whereas bands can survive by charging people for live shows, writers can’t. If books are widely pirated, there just won’t be very many new books.
mistermix
@Steve M.: I thought the deal for writers if they sell direct via Amazon was 75% for them, 25% for Amazon, which is the inverse of the traditional publishing model.
@pto892: I felt the same way when I got my Kindle a couple of months ago, but now I’m getting frustrated with the limited number of books available in eBook format. Anything published more than a few years ago that isn’t extremely popular can’t be purchased for Kindle.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@dp:
Fix’t.
Every business has the right to screw you for anything they can get from you and the ‘sharks’ work this angle to death. If a business decides to be honest and fair then it’s their loss because if there is any money to be extracted from their line of business then the sharks will find it and in the process, drive the nice guys out of business.
Can you imagine if every aspect of our country worked that way? It damned near does and it will if the “free market” fuckers and their bought and paid political lackeys have their way.
Nunzia
Gosh, and I thought the solution was to buy an iPad, and use one of the free apps for kindle, nook, borders and google books, plus the iBooks app. Works great for me.
Michael57
The publisher of this title (Sterling) is owned by Barnes & Noble. Maybe that has some relevance?
My favorite insider quote from 2010: “The Kindle is the Betamax.”
Gin & Tonic
@mistermix: But it’s not open, like OGG or FLAC. Implementers of MP3 encoders pay Fraunhofer a license fee.
I think there’s an interesting article in why a patent-encumbered format became dominant when there are free, open and arguably higher-quality encoders available.
Anyway, words have meaning. Don’t say “open standard” when it isn’t.
pto892
The frustration I have with the Kindle at the moment is because of the copyright hole-pretty much anything published after 1923 or so is still under copyright unless it has explicitly reverted to public domain. For example, you can get all the Mark Twain you want from Gutenberg, but just try to find Steinbeck, Hemingway, or Remarque. Then you have to open the wallet up and buy it at an inflated price from Amazon. I don’t mind paying full price for something new but it galls me to pay out the nose for a popular classic that’s been in print for seventy years. Thanks Disney! Copyright was never meant to be a perpetual money machine.
ChrisS
Buying an eBook at paperbook prices, to me, is like “renting” an e-copy of a movie for $5.99; it’s a waste of money. Though at least there are better books than films available through the e-services.
Though, I still can’t believe that I buy digital music. Not much these days, but I still do occasionally.
WereBear
I lurve the Kindle app on my iTouch, which is free. I carry around an awful lot of books, between that & the free classics & Gutenberg options & such.
I see two plusses to this situation:
As a consumer, I get it RIGHT NOW and it is cheaper than the hardback, and in some cases, cheaper than the paperback. Without shipping, and the subsequent oil, etc.
As a writer, I can go ahead and publish my own book for the Kindle, and I have, and I do sell some. This is a great way to bypass the cement-headed publishers whose first question to me is “How much of a celebrity are you?” and then I must list the talk shows I have already been on as part of my query letter.
BTW, if anyone wants to publish an awesome cat book, I will gladly work with the cement-headed, of course.
All bitter kidding aside, current publishing seems all too geared to ghosted books by current reality show contestants; shaking that up can only be a good thing.
bago
As much as I hate to say it, PDF is the mp3 of the ebook industry.
Peter J
I’d argue that EPUB is the equivalent.
That some e-readers won’t support it, is not the fault of EPUB, more a fault of the other thing you write about, manufacturers wanting to lock-in their readers so that they will get a share everytime a book is sold to use on their reader.
dr. bloor
@mistermix:
You can get anything really old, or really new. The rest is still in legal lock-down while digital rights issues are settled, although there’s money to be made so it *will* happen.
You can also buy something like a BeBook Neo, that reads several different file types.
It’s not a dystopia, it’s a new technology/medium, with all the legal headaches that inevitably accompany new stuff. Take a pill.
pto892
While I’m at it, it seems to me that both Mistermix and I have hit upon the same problem but from differing angles. Because of the USA’s completely wedged copyright laws it’s impossible for open projects such as Project Gutenberg to transcribe and publish books dated from around the mid 1920’s up to today. This covers a huge swath of literary history, and locks up books that should be freely read (whether obscure or popular). I don’t begrudge a living author’s desire and need to make money, but at the same time their is no need to treat books that were originally published in the 1920’s as somehow playing by the same set of rules. This is just another aspect of how screwed up our nation’s laws have become as a result of serving our corporate overlords needs and desires so completely.
snarkypsice
If you have an iPad, you can read any of the formats thanks to free apps. I have the Kindle and B&N apps on my iPad. haven’t tried B&N yet, but the Kindle one works just fine. Some books I read as iBooks, some as Kindle books. Apple is way ahead on this one.
I don’t get the resentment at paying full price for Hemingway or the other greats. Publishers need to make a profit or else you won’t have anything at all to read, and they’re hardly swimming in cash. Why should they give away staple back catalog items that they can rely on and that they use to finance signing new and untested books? The idea of book publishers as “corporate overlords” is just silly if you’ve ever been involved with one.
cleek
@Michael57:
does that insider work for Apple or Google ?
geg6
Two controversies that, thankfully, will pass me right by. I have never downloaded music and really don’t ever plan to. And I absolutely REFUSE to do the e-book thing. Books aren’t just words on a page or screen to me. They are the smell of print and paper, the feel of a printed page. I will never give up my hard copies. Never ever.
Peter J
@Michael57:
So, it’s the better e-reader that will lose to an inferior product?
Not sure what product it’s going to lose to, the ipad (which is an inferior if used as an e-reader)? Don’t see that happening, due to the fact that the ipad is a lot more expensive.
Not that I’m a fan of the Kindle, I really want an e-reader that can read EPUB.
cleek
when Hemingway wrote his books, copyright lasted 28 years with an optional 28 year extension.
today, copyright lasts 70 past the death of the author, or up to 120 years for “corporate” works (ex. Mickey Mouse ™). and there is little doubt those terms will be lengthened, as Mickey Mouse’s copyright begins to run out (again).
our copyright laws are, literally, written by media companies who seek to ensure that they never let a work slip out of their grip.
and, just for fun… why should they finance sign new and untested books when they can rely on back catalog items ?
Steve M.
@mistermix:
In certain genres, you might have a shot at some level of readership if you self-publish. In others, it’s pretty much hopeless.
Alex S.
@Michael57:
Hmm, so where does the porn industry stand?
pto892
@snarkypsice: The snark is meant for Disney in particular-our screwed up copyright laws are a direct result of Disney doing everything they can to protect The Mouse. A nasty and desired result has been the locking up (for the lack of a better word) of older works-and not just literary but also audio and video works. And yes, I do begrudge a publisher charging high prices for an old work-the author isn’t getting the money. Copyright was conceived as being mainly of benefit to the creator of the work, and not to the business that sells it. If you want an example of how letting older works revert to public use doesn’t hurt publishers, everything done by Mark Twain (except his recent autobiography) is in the public domain-and yet publishers have no problem printing and selling his works. The lack of copyright in this case doesn’t hurt anyone.
guster
@mistermix: @Steve M.: I thought the deal for writers if they sell direct via Amazon was 75% for them, 25% for Amazon, which is the inverse of the traditional publishing model.
No, the deal for professional writers is whatever’s in the contract. I’ll dig up my latest if anyone’s interested. But in the real world, the publisher gets a big cut (as they should; they edited the thing, paid me an advance against royalties that I’ll never ear, and they’re marketing it, as much as publishers do market anything, which is not far) and the agent gets a cut. And I get a cut. Which is not 25% of the cover price, much less 75%.
The whole 75/25 spit is (in addition to not being the inverse of anything) for hobbyist, fanfic, self-pubbed stuff. It’s a great deal if you’re planning on selling 100 copies to friends and game-mates. If you’re trying to make a living in this clusterhole of a business, it’s pretty much irrelevant.
JimF
If you want an e-reader that does EPUB and are willing to pay a little extra Bookeen makes a decent product. http://www.bookeen.com/en/ I currently own a Cybook GEN3 and am thinking about getting an Orizon.
Lee
I would also argue that the ePub format is the MP3 for books.
I just got a nook and love it. I’ve already downloaded my favorite books (for free via a torrent) so I can re-read them on the nook.
As for the Kindle being the betamax, the reference is probably that while it is the first to market but will eventually lose because it fails to give the consumer what they want.
PeterJ, get a nook. Reads ePub format therefore interfaces easily with your local library for checking out books. Very excellent product.
guster
@geg6: I love you.
macinc
There is an EPUB reader for iPad, too.
mr. whipple
I’m conflicted on that. On one hand, writers, publishers and artists need to make a buck. On the other hand, are their heirs entitled to a perpetual money machine?
Xenos
Please note that we just celebrated Public Domain Day, as January First liberated some notable writing from, I think, 1923.
Isaac Babel
Walter Benjamin
John Buchan
Mikhail Bulgakov
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Emma Goldman
Paul Klee
Selma Lagerlof
Leon Trotsky
Vito Volterra
Nathanael West
Emma Goldman would be seriously pissed off by this situation. Trotsky would probably laugh at us.
Norbrook
Personally, I like the Baen Books method. They’ve been selling e-books for almost a decade now, and they’re one of the few who have been consistently making a profit on it. There are some other publishers (sci fi/fantasy) who have joined in with the Webscriptions system. Basically, there’s no DRM, you can do what you want with it once you’ve bought it in your choice of formats, and even better, the e-book price is less than the paper price.
MikeJ
My nook color is free of B&N. It’s now just a generic android pad. Go to the android market, download the free kindle reader app. If a new format comes along, hack together a reader yourself and load it.
Readers are computers. They don’t work without software. Why would anybody have a computer upon which they could not install things they had written themselves? The whole idea is crazy talk. A grape flavoured moped.
The epub format is wonderfully simple, easy to xlate. Kindles DRM is wonderfully stupid and easy to defeat with a minimum of fuss.
I used to be worried about vendor lock in (not as much as a worry about this blog’s audience capture), but having open hardware makes me feel all free and dreamy. And I haven’t had coffee yet.
Xenos
For those who want a multi-format reader at non-Apple prices the new Android-based tablets should be out by summer.
Edit – looks like a hacked Nook Color is a workable Android tablet. Thanks.
guster
@mr. whipple: No. Fuck their heirs.
But please, please, please let publishers/writers/artists get a buck.
In socialistic Urp, I understand, writers get a penny every time their book is checked outta the library. Here we’ve got a government program, that I wholeheartedly support, with an office in every town in the country, that gives away my work for free.
singfoom
@Xenos: Trotsky is always laughing at us.
mistermix
@Gin & Tonic: There are various degrees of openness, and your definition (not patent encumbered) is by no means the only accepted usage.
@guster: Thanks for the info. One of the tactics I’m seeing in the Amazon market is some authors releasing their book as a free ebook for a few weeks to get its rank to move up, then switching to a paid ebook. There are probably other techniques for a self-published or small press author to publicize their book.
@others: Kindle is betamax only if Amazon doesn’t allow Kindle to read ePub. It would be trivial for them to add support with a software update, and the reason they’re not doing it is their lock-in fantasy.
Peter J
It hurts his heirs ;)
But a publisher can only print and sell work of Twain until the the e-reader pushes out the book. If I want a copy of a book by Twain today, I would either have to buy a book, download and print it, or download it and read it on a computer. Most people won’t do option three, the second option isn’t free and the result doesn’t look very good either. So that only leaves option one. With an e-reader there isn’t any real difference between option one and three, except for option free being free.
HRA
First of all doing cataloging for the U’s libraries does give me a look into trends and/or non-trends in publishing, selecting, etc.
It’s ironic to come across an e-book entry in our database while holding the same book in my hand to be added to the collection. Then there is the designation of Special Collections which is where books reside that are not lent out and are bought new in huge amounts from here and abroad. In addition there are the gift books donated either by bits or by having a moving company deposit a truckload at our mailroom. There will not be a quick death to print any time soon.
The question of why we do have E-books in our database is the cost of having the print of textbooks, expediting the need for the material since our staff has been shrunk to a sixth of what it once had been and dealing with the logistics of space. Then somehow it still does not compute with some of the selectors who decide we really need a 1960s engineering or science book added to the collection. ????
Peter J
@Lee: Thanks, forgot about the nook, which last time I looked was my preferred choice.
pto892
@mr. whipple:
are their heirs entitled to a perpetual money machine?
No, they are not. Copyright was originally conceived of being of in the interest of the author AND in the interest in the public at large. It was a carrot and stick setup. The author got the incentive of getting legal protection in the form of a limited monopoly-that’s the carrot. The stick was that after a limited period of time the author’s work reverted to the public. The public could then do what it wanted with the work-rip it off, make improvements, redo it completely, and so on. By limiting the copyright term the stick was applied to keep the author(s) producing new works that further benefited the public at large. The idea that an author’s heirs and by extension a publisher could keep making money off a work after the author’s death while giving nothing back to public would have been pretty damn strange at one time.
DecidedFenceSitter
@Xenos: We’ll see – I’ve been waiting for a good droid tablet for reading my pdfs and casual surfing and you know what – assuming 2nd Gen ipad comes out this April, I’ll just go with that.
Not my first choice, but it does what I want, and it is available.
C. Gallagher
@cleek:
Exactly. If current law had been in effect, a work written at the end of the Civil War by a 20-year old author who lived to be 96 would still be in copyright today. This is insane. It’s even more insane when you consider that the first Copyright Act of 1790 allowed for 14 years, with the right of a living author to renew for another 14, that’s it. (Arch-conservative author Mark Helprin has called for copyright in perpetuity, surprise, surprise.)
Still more insane, if you invent cold fusion or a cure for cancer, you pretty much only get a patent for 20 years.
See this chart for how copyright terms have been fattened over the years, thanks to idiocy, greed, Disney, and Sonny Bono..
harlana
Hello, sorry for being OT but I hope we will have a post up soon about this, thank you. It is all over the news this morning.
Bruuuuce
The fooforaw Disneycorp makes over The Mouse really is tied to one, count it, ONE, cartoon: Steamboat Willie. Every extension they’ve pushed for and won has protected that particular work (and, by extension, all of Mickey’s works, since that’s the first) from the public’s grubby little video editing software. I have no doubt that as it approaches public domain again, the issue will become more and more vital to Congressional, um, cartoon fans. Yeah, let’s call them that.
I’d also argue that while ePub is a lovely little format, the REAL killer format for ebooks is HTML. It’s completely unlicensed (AFAIK), handles almost any sort of formatting that might be found in books, and, unless a volume is image-heavy, is easily portable. (Also, AFAIK, most ereaders, and certainly the ones that have web browsers, can handle it.)
(Which reminds me: the NookColor has been rooted and the process is now fairly easy, so that Kindle fans can install the Kindle Android app on it.) ETA: I see I was beaten to this info up around #35, while I was typing this. Such is life.
Pococurante
If we’re bringing in MP3 than I’m another vote on EPUB. It will need additional extensions. But it is much closer to a genuine standard (“Alas poor Mobi, I knew him… Where be your IFF now.”)
Like others I’ve had no problem using calibre and Kindle. Buy a book, strip the DRM, import to calibre, push to mem card on my Kindle. Occasionally the spousal unit and I overlap on tastes so just like we’d leave the same hardcopy next to the bathtub I’ll push to her newer-fancy-schmantzy Kindle.
I’m holding out for the Android touchpad competitors to iPad.
Chyron HR
@pto892:
You feeble Maples are just jealous of the mighty Galtian Oaks who had the foresight to be born into families that would give them money for nothing. Why must you punish these great Producers for your foolish mistake?
liberal
@pto892:
I’m not sure that’s actually true—though I don’t have time to really research the subject. An initial skim of the Wikipedia article on history of copyright law says it might have more been government attempts to regulate printing to control dissent.
Anyway, in the US, the Constitution itself says the purpose of copyright is to benefit society. Of course the author or others may benefit, but that’s not the ultimate purpose.
Lee
The downside to iPads, Nook Color, etc is that they do not use e-ink.
Bascially you are reading a book on your computer screen. e-ink makes all the difference for reading.
Southern Beale
And you can get it on the old-fashioned dead tree technology which, unlike CD’s or vinyl, require no special hardware for users to enjoy. In fact, you might even find it in a used bookstore or public library. So in this way the eBook market is different from the digital music market. Hardware has always been an issue in the music industry affecting its copyrights in a way wholly unlike book publishing.
I remember way back in the 90s when I was putting together a portfolio of my freelance articles and trying to get color copies of magazine stories I’d done reprinted at Kinko’s. I got into it with the manager several times because he kept saying I needed written permission from the magazine publisher to copy MY articles. I’m like, “I’m the author, I hold the copyright, you have no idea what kind of contract I’ve signed with this publication and frankly it’s none of your fucking business anyway.” Whew, that was a fun time.
This is the thing that gets me … since I live in Nashville, which is a songwriters town, and I write about musicians and the music business so I’m in this weird place …. but as a magazine writer, our copyrights are shit. We get paid one time, when the magazine buys our work. And you can share that magazine with your friends or leave it on a coffee table at the doctors office to be read by 25 different people, and these articles can be xeroxed or links shared via e-mail and on blogs or — I love this — I’ve had people reprint my entire article on their fan site of some artist, and sometimes they don’t even keep my byline. And I’m not getting one more penny, not one more dime by how many times my work is read. I’m not complaining, mind you, I’m just saying: that’s how it is. That’s how it has to be because technology has done very little over the past few hundred years to change how print writers’ work is shared.
But songwriters, man, they get paid every time their song is HEARD. Their publishers vigorously defend their copyrights. An entire industry has been set up to defend these copyrights: BMI, ASCAP, SEASAC have armies of lawyers ensuring you pay every time you play someone’s music. Hell, they have investigators who go undercover to biker bars and clubs in Bumfug, Tennessee, places who haven’t paid their ASCAP and BMI licensing fees, and these folks will write down the name of every song they hear and these groups will go after these bars that don’t pay.
So … it’s just always been really interesting to me the disparity between the two kinds of work. You know, you can get newspapers and magazines on e-readers like the Kindle and whatnot, and these things are also available online and the only difference I see is that it’s just another right I’m waiving away when I sign my contract with a magazine.
I know there are other writers over here, and I just have to wonder what other folks think of this. We never got organized under a licensing umbrella like an ASCAP or BMI, I’m not sure why we bypassed the whole unionizing movement of 75-100 years ago. It’s interesting to me how technology affects what creators are compensated …
Bill E Pilgrim
@harlana: While that page was loading and I saw the address bar had something about “uss_enterprise_sex_video” I felt a cold chill of fear but thank you and the FSM that it wasn’t some sort of Shatner tape in the end, but something else entirely.
Man that was close.
liberal
@pto892:
While I agree with your argument, there’s a nuance here I disagree with. Since copyright is a state-granted privilege, not an intrinsic right that would exist otherwise, I don’t think lapse of a copyright is a stick, but rather the absense of a carrot.
pto892
@Peter J: That’s funny-I put a whole bunch of Twain’s works on my Kindle via Project Gutenberg. Yes, the Kindle isn’t free. The download itself isn’t free thanks to Comcast. But once I have the books on the device, how are they not free at that point? Since Gutenberg produces multiple formats almost any portable media doohicky can read them. Isn’t this an example of how a free source (free, as in use without restrictions-no DRM) serves the public good? Which is sort of the point I’ve been trying to make here. I am more likely to read other authors on Gutenberg at this point, since the barrier to getting their books has now been flattened to the point of trivia. I can also pass these books on to other people if they want them without fear of legal retribution-in fact it’s encouraged.
MikeJ
@Lee: I’ve got a B&W nook too, one with e-ink, along with a color. E-ink is sloooooow, the ui is horrendous. I greatly prefer the color.
Bruuuuce
@Lee: That’s why I’m holding out for the Notion Ink Adam with the transflective Pixel Qi screen. All reports have it as at least as readable as eInk, but with color and animation.
jon
I’m still holding off on buying any e-reader, but am pretty satisfied with my library and bookstores. I don’t see this changing anytime soon, but I do see a lot of formats dying in the near future. I’m choosing not to own one.
Then again, I’m the guy who still doesn’t have texting on my cell phone contract.
liberal
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Agreed. A friendly comment: it would aid the discussion if we focus on the root economic evil but also give it a name, which is “rent”.
pto892
@liberal:
Well, the founders were far more statist than our Galtian overlords would like to admit…
liberal
@mr. whipple:
I think the standard promulgated in the Constitution is a good one: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts…”
Length of copyright should be the minimal time to provide a reasonable monetary incentive to authors. ISTM that 10 years is easily sufficient.
Zach
“Even though the book is out in paperback, you’ll still pay the hardback price on the Nook ($9.99) which is 7 cents less than the price for a paper copy that can be resold or given to a friend who has a Kindle, which can’t read Nook ebooks (and vice-versa).”
How is this different from the music market? There are iTunes exclusive releases (not to pick on Apple), there are restrictions on sharing music, and full albums carry about the same costs as physical albums. And with music, there’s a popular perception of a decrease in fidelity & convenience with digital purchases (much less than before, but it still exists). In my experience, people with digital readers *prefer* that option to purchasing paperbacks. I suspect this is still a minority view for folks owning devices that play MP3s, although that won’t last for long.
Another major difference in the market is that I can’t buy a book and digitize it myself. There’s an added value in the digital version that you don’t get with music and video.
Digital readers will continue to drop in price. I suspect that in one or two Christmases you’ll see things like a Nook or Kindle packaged with every Harry Potter, Twilight, Nicholas Sparks or Dan Brown novel for $100 or so. Once we get to that point, prices for digital editions will drop below print editions. For now, the population of people owning digital readers is quite affluent and willing to spontaneously plunk down $10 for several hours of reading material. Given the wealth of free material available for any digital reader, I think Amazon would’ve set a lower price point for books if it meant significantly increased sales.
liberal
@pto892:
Our Galtian overlords are scum, either rent-collectors themselves, or apologists for rent collectors. The essay “Are you a Real Libertarian, or a ROYAL Libertarian?” does a good job elucidating this. It has an amusing discussion of Atlas Shrugged itself:
And
MikeJ
@liberal: When copyright was originally set up in the US, exploiting your work meant moving dead trees over shitty roads in horse drawn wagons. It might be years before somebody out on the frontier, like Ohio, could ever have the opportunity to buy your work.
With the internet, you can fully exploit your creation instantly. I propose change the term to 3 and a half weeks.
PaulW
Isn’t Google coming out with an ereader format that can get added to most other edevices?
Also, there’s a thing the libraries offer called OverDrive, which provides audio-book and e-book titles. Nearly every ereader (except Kindle, which Amazon is racing to fix because they’re starting to suffer from competition) can adapt and read from OverDrive. And when I visited my local library this weekend, the library staff (my former co-workers) were warning me that the OverDrive website was swamped with users logging in and checking out…
TomG
Call me old-fashioned (I’m 46) but so far I haven’t felt any need to own an ebook – and reading about all these issues doesn’t make me likely to in the near future. I don’t travel enough for the “40 books in your pocket” idea to appeal to me, so I’ll settle for paperbacks and library books (for the new ones) for several more years.
Olivia
@grass: Never thought that I, a sweet little old granny, would be doing this, but I discovered this very solution a few weeks ago.
Emma
I just got a Kindle for Christmas and sign me up for the group that loves it. I love early twentieth century genre fiction and all the Project Gutenberg stuff can be downloaded, read, annotated, etc. Also, several formats of print file, as well as audio books and music. (Edit) Mind you it won’t stop me from buying print books. Love them too much. But being able to download old, old fiction in several languages… fantastic!
Walker
@Bruuuuce:
ePub is just XHTML plus some extra style files to define the table of contents. If you have a book in HTML it is trivial to change it to ePub by hand.
Ed in NJ
@jon:
I’ve seen your sentiments expressed alot when discussing ereaders, I think there is a big difference between holding off on buying a $1500 Betamax or HD-DVD player and picking up a Nook or Kindle for $139. Even if the technology doesn’t last, you are almost certain to retain the ability to read your downloaded books (even if it requires some conversion program), and will have access to new content for many years to come based on what’s already been produced. And the initial investment is really not that great.
I just bought my wife a Nook for Christmas and she loves it. Even if she only gets a year or two out of it, which is doubtful, it will have been worth the money spent.
Bruuuuce
@Walker: Thanks, that’s cool to know. I’m not familiar with the guts of ePub; I had noticed that it was a major improvement over the pdb files I’d been reading before. I’ve been reading things in straight HTML; I’ll have to learn to convert.
AAA Bonds
Huh? Internet book piracy dates from BEFORE Internet music piracy, and uses the same means. All this digital release stuff has done is made it easier to continue pirating books in the exact same way people have done it for a decade (albeit with updates like torrent files, etc.)
pto892
With all the copyright comments I forgot to mention the one thing about the Kindle that I find impressive. It is very readable-not at all like reading text on a PC but visually just like reading a book. There is no backlight so you have to be in a well lit area and the e-ink display produces clear and readable text that appears to be printed. I really would have thought this to be impossible but there it is. I understand that the Kindle has been rooted by now, so I’m confident that it’ll get hacked into a completely open format ebook reader before long. Now, I’ll have to go check out the references to ePub and Calibre, they sound quite interesting.
Peter J
Since Project Gutenberg has been mentioned a couple of times, I’d like to mention LibriVox which is to audiobooks what Project Gutenberg is to ebooks. They currently have 4000 free audiobooks with 60-100 added each month.
AAA Bonds
Judging from the comments here, I’m beginning to wonder whether the market for these electronic books depends largely on lack of awareness about the availability of pirate copies.
It’s easy to pirate books online right as they’re put on shelves – one just has to know the best site to do it, exactly like music or movies.
I mean, there’s TONS of “MP3” equivalents for books: they’re just image archives, and usually images of text, at that.
Walker
@Bruuuuce:
I taught myself how to make ePub when I was making some Clark Ashton Smith e-Books. Most of his stories are out of print, but they are all available in HTML at Eldritch Dark.
Here is where I went to find out how to do it. You essentially make an XHTML file for each chapter, a few extra style files, you ZIP them all together and replace the .zip extension with .epub.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@harlana:
“In the Navy…”
lol!
MikeJ
@Walker: Zipped but uncompressed. Storage mode only, iirc, but I haven’t hand hacked one in a while.
Bruuuuce
@Walker: Oh! So ePub:HTML::cbz:jpg (more or less). Muchas gracias for the linkage and instruction!
Keifus
Several friends of mine have ebook readers and love them, and I can see the appeal: easy to travel with, instant access to what you choose to buy, searchability, and maybe I’ll get one eventually for convenience, if I ever find myself commuting by train or something. I have some issues with the idea on principle, however.
I see it as (finally, after the couple or three decades since they made widely-sold recordable media) the industry solution to the democratization of information. If information is cheap and reproducible, then the money is instead to be made off of access to it. After a few failed experiments (does Rhapsody still exist?) they’re zeroing in on ways to make you subscribe to your own content, instead of selling copies of data on your own storage media.
Granted, it’s a different industry, we’re talking, a different “they”. I think the service providers are the real winners here, and publishers will decline or be absorbed, and the artists will suffer as ever. The nook isn’t free, but it’s nice that it retains a basic seller/buyer model, where you just purchase a book and then read it. For most everything else, the bundled data stream coming into my house or into my wireless devices is bloody expensive.
RSA
@Steve M.:
__
This is my concern, personally. So I’m writing a book, and I’ve been working on it (not full time) for over a year. My hope is that it ends up being popular, of course. Imagine that it’s popular and pirated, widely enough that I earn back my small advance but no more. Would I write another? That’s hard to say.
This is one thing I find interesting about digital media. There used to be clear economic incentives for writing books, even if there were no guarantees. They’re much less clear now.
Walker
@MikeJ:
The standard ZIP with compression in OS X (e.g. “Compress Folder”) seems to work fine for me. Certainly you do not want to do any nonstandard compression.
MikeJ
@Keifus:
You read it until Amazon decides they don’t want you to read it. Remember when they accidentally released Orwell’s 1984 and a week later deleted it off the reader of every purchaser? Turns out they didn’t have epublishing rights nailed down, so they just took the book back in the middle of the night.
Which is why the very, very, very, very first thing you should do to any media you buy is to remove any DRM and make a backup.
Edited to add: Duh, you were talking nook, I had anecdote from kindle. Same idea though. Using a nook the way B&N claims is the only way to use it, the same thing could happen with them.
KevinNYC
Android Tablets are here. Got my wife an Archos 70 for Christmas and she loves it. You can get the Nook and Kindle apps for it. I think her Kindle will be put aside for good.
Samsung has sold over a million of their Android Tablet. 2011 is going to see a flood of tablets for Android. The next version of Android is going to feature several tablet-centric features. Companies that have Android or will have Android tablets coming out are
Dell
Toshiba
LG
Viewsonic
Motorola
Walker
@RSA:
The problem for authors is not the rise of e-Books, it is the consolidation of bookstores. If you are a midlist author and your sales do not have an upward trajectory, then bookstores will stop carrying your titles. Tobias Bucknell has some interesting posts about this on his blog. One time he and Jim Hines went to autographic books about NYC. Whenever they went into a B&N, Jim would have nothing to sign, and whenever they went into a Borders, Tobias would have nothing to sign.
The rise of e-Books is promises to be better for midlist authors as it makes their works more widely available. Unless you are a Dan Brown or someone like that, the issue is not that people are pirating your book; it is that they do not even know about it in the first place.
Bimmy
As noted above, you can use Calibre to convert ebook formats. Calibre also has a nice feature where you can share the books in your Calibre library across your network. I like the free Stanza reader on my iPod Touch and use Calibre to upload the ebooks to Stanza on the iPod in epub format. Calibre is very very easy to use.
MikeJ
@Walker: Checking the specs, the mimetype file is defined as uncompressed, the other files may be compressed. My guess is that every actual implementation just uses a standard zip lib and handles what is technically an error. Which is good, but better to write the file to specs.
Kirk Spencer
When I have an income more than subsistence I’d like to get a reader. When that happens, it won’t be a Kindle regardless how pretty and excellent it might be.
Amazon lost me pretty much forever for e-media in the great Orwell rollback. It demonstrated as nothing else that to Amazon you are renting, not purchasing.
A caveat. If I see a used Kindle that’s inexpensive enough I might buy it to hack it.
KevinNYC
Amazon is feeling the heat and soon you will be allow to share some Kindle titles. I think it’s up to the publisher to allow this though
Janet Strange
@KevinNYC:
That’s what happened to me. I never used my Kindle much, and gave it away after I got an iPad. I use the iPad as an ebook reader every day.
I really disliked how small the screen was on the Kindle (I know the newer ones are bigger, but still not big enough imo). Since I set the type size to one click above standard so I can read w/o glasses, on the Kindle there was only about a paragraph on each page, meaning I had to clickclickclick constantly which really disrupted the flow of the reading. Not a problem with the bigger iPad screen.
And the computer type screen doesn’t bother me at all, but that’s just me. I realize that others are more sensitive to it. What I love best is the backlight. I mostly read in bed on my way to sleep at night and frequently would fall asleep reading a paper book. And then not sleep well because there was the bright bedside light shining in my eyes all night. When I do that with the iPad (no other light on in the bedroom as I read), it just turns itself off after a few minutes. I do end up sleeping with the iPad next to my pillow all night, but so far, that hasn’t bothered me. Oh, and I prop up the iPad in its cover, so I don’t even have to hold the book up as I read it. Lazy I guess but I like it.
I guess my point is, people are different. There are pros and cons to the different type readers. Because it suits me doesn’t mean it will suit you and vice versa. I wouldn’t say there’s one clearly superior way to do it and the others should be Betamaxed into oblivion.
Jack
@mistermix: sorry, but you’re wrong on several fronts.
1. There are ebook formats that are open and free, and some readers (like the iPad) support them.
2. mp3 wasn’t and isn’t an open standard.
2. DRM was imposed on Apple, as least, from outside, and Jobs worked hard to get it removed, as it now has been.
3. Apple’s format was not created by them, nor to thwart other vendors; it just wasn’t the already widely accepted mp3. Wiki says:
Also
All that said, the ebook industry is still lagging behind music, as is video, but it’s fairly far along given the recentness of real readers.
MBunge
@Walker: The rise of e-Books is promises to be better for midlist authors as it makes their works more widely available. Unless you are a Dan Brown or someone like that, the issue is not that people are pirating your book; it is that they do not even know about it in the first place.
And how are people going to know about it? Especially if copyright issues get worked out and there’s a deluge of new material available for e-readers? There might be greater access to midlist authors but instead of trying to pick that work out of hundreds of other books on the shelves, people will now have to hunt for it out of tens of thousands (and probably more) books online.
If we get to the point where people can easily self-publish to e-readers, the book industry will be where the movie industry is now with changes in production and distribution technology producing a biblical flood of awful crap in the marketplace.
Mike
MikeJ
@MBunge: You’re correct. Reading should only be done on one time use lead tablets that are laser inscribed by monks thirty stories under the headquarters of Knopf.
Keeps out the fucking riffraff that think anybody should be able to read what they write.
cleek
@Kirk Spencer:
this is the reality of copyright law. “content” remains the property of the entity that published it, and users are only entitled to strictly-defined uses. you do not “own” a song or book in digital format unless you write it yourself, or get it from someone who has explicitly relinquished rights to the work.
Amazon is required to enforce draconian DRM schemes (remote disabling of infringing works, etc) by modern copyright law.
mistermix
@Jack:
You and a few others are smudging the distinction between the formats that readers can read with the DRM-encumbered formats used by the big booksellers. My point is that eBooks for sale at B&N and Amazon are sold in DRM-protected walled gardens, with the same shenanigans that we saw with DRM-encumbered music a few years ago.
So, to address your points:
1. I was talking specifically about eBooks for sale at Amazon and B&N, both of which use DRM to protect their eBooks.
2. MP3 is patent-encumbered standard with multiple open source implementations on a variety of platforms. I call that an open standard. This isn’t as cut-and-dried as you and others make out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
3. DRM was part of the deal Jobs made to get companies to use iTunes. It takes two to make a deal, “imposed from above” is a pretty generous gloss on Jobs’ actions.
4. AAC is an open standard. AAC + FairPlay (.m4p) is by no means an open standard and that’s what Apple was using to protect iTunes songs until the whole DRM-encumbered digital music edifice fell down.
Seth
I’m the broken record here, but EPUB is the open format and Calibre is the program you’d want to convert to/from other formats.
Amazon is the only big player that doesn’t support that format. Draw your own conclusions.
Perfect Tommy
My workplace library has site licenses for hundreds of scientific journals. I cannot spend time during the workday reading them, but with my Kindle DX and full-text-PDF downloads I have the journal articles at my fingertips when I am at home or on the road. I find it much more convenient than trying to read the PDFs on a computer.
Lee
@MikeJ:
The initial startup is slow ( 60 seconds: 20 seconds to splash screen, 40 more to started), but once it is started works like a champ. The page transition is smooth and quick. Navigating thru the menus is fast. I test drove the Kindle and Sony before I decided on the nook. By far the best bang for the buck. I’m not getting it to be a tablet (which is what the color is) I’m getting it to be an eReader.
@Bruuuuce
That looks really excellent. I can’t imagine what the price is going to be for that. That looks like a good contender for when I get a tablet.
MBunge
@MikeJ: Dude, what is with you? I’m talking about a real problem that I’ve seen in trying to do a movie review blog. Changes in filmmaking technology in the last 20 years have allowed anyone with a little ambition, less skill and no talent to make films. Now, the rise of the DVD (soon to be followed by blu-ray and online streaming) is allowing companies to vomit out any piece of crap that’s been committed to video, including a lot of bigger budget garbage with recognizable stars.
People have no idea how much crap is out there and how much more crap is being added all the time.
Mike
cleek
@mistermix:
not sure what you’re implying here. are you implying that Apple wanted DRM and the record companies just went along ?
Gin & Tonic
@mistermix: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“Open” and “proprietary” are not the same.
MikeJ
@MBunge: Lowering the barriers to entry is not a bad thing. Sorry if your delicate sensibilities ore bruised by allowing the proles into the game.
tesslibrarian
@HRA: I don’t know for whom you work, but university/research libraries are going to keep items considered “out of date” for later use by historians or other researchers. A public library has no need for that, but we still get the occasional request for that type of obsolete how-to. We find what they need at the University library and send them on their way.
Popularity of ebooks in libraries has been slow to occur, in no small part because Amazon is so dead-set against lending, and they are the biggest player right now. Nook allows lending, but it cannot be renewed, or at least none of it has been tested. Few libraries have the time or money to be a test case against a corporation. And, at least in our region, which is primarily rural with a large percentage of people living below the poverty line, we’re still teaching classes that explain how to use a mouse and keyboard, not how to get the most from your ereader.
Uloborus
@WereBear:
If you’re still on this thread, do you have any links to information on this process? I don’t know if it’s right for me, but as a new novelist trying to get my first two books published, I am interested in learning everything I can about every option available.
mistermix
@cleek: What I’m implying is that Apple/Jobs wanted to make a deal, they knew DRM would have to be part of the deal, so they made the deal. I don’t think that means “imposed from above” as much as “something they had to do to make a deal at that time in history”. Apple didn’t have to make the deal, they could have kept selling iPods and stayed out of the music selling biz.
@Gin & Tonic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
MikeJ
To add: everybody should be able to be a creator without technology standing in the way. When this is true, critics are more important than ever.
Bad artists should be stopped with mockery and using their insecurities to keep them snivelling in a closet. They shouldn’t be stopped because Amazon doesn’t deem them worthy.
cleek
@mistermix:
ah.
well, i think they’re probably glad they didn’t go that route! and frankly, i think Jobs should be praised for doing it – iTunes made the digital music market a reality.
Gin & Tonic
@mistermix: Also, AAC and WMA were developed, at least in part, to avoid paying the MP3 license fees to Thomson/Fraunhofer.
MBunge
@MikeJ: Lowering the barriers to entry is not a bad thing. Sorry if your delicate sensibilities ore bruised by allowing the proles into the game.
“Proles”? Seriously?
And you think the marketplace is better when stuff like “Zombie Apocalypse” is taking up space on video store shelves or online ordering menus?
Mike
Ryan
As someone who buys 2-3 books a week and pirates about 3-5, I must say that scribd is pretty much the best thing ever.
MBunge
@MikeJ: To add: everybody should be able to be a creator without technology standing in the way. When this is true, critics are more important than ever. Bad artists should be stopped with mockery and using their insecurities to keep them snivelling in a closet. They shouldn’t be stopped because Amazon doesn’t deem them worthy.
Yes, because that dynamic has worked so well in politics where paranoids like Beck and bullshit artists like Hannity and Limbaugh have been rendered non-factors in our public discourse.
Mike
Comrade Mary
@Xenos: The public domain list is very, very different from country to country. For example, none of those authors are under public domain in the States. Thanks, Sonny Bono!
Bruuuuce
@Lee: The prices for the Adam tablets during preorder varied by type of screen and connectivity:
* LCD + WiFi $375.33
* LCD + 3G-900 $425.33
* LCD + 3G-850 $425.33
* Pixel Qi + WiFi $499.45
* Pixel Qi + 3G-900 $549.99
* Pixel Qi + 3G-850 $549.99
Overall, I’d say that those prices are about right, being comparable to the iPad, for better, if far later, hardware. (We can only speculate, as yet, what Android Honeycomb — a version designed for tablets, not merely phones — will be like, so no software comparisons. Yet.)
Since I’m hoping to buy a new phone soon (we’re just off contract with AT&T, and I’m panting for something like the HTC Thunderbird), the Adam will sadly have to wait until next holiday season. (Then again, I can happily read off of a decent sized phone screen. For now :-)
Gin & Tonic
I don’t want to belabor this more than I already have, and it’s all not really germane to what I think are good points you’re making about e-book formats, DRM, etc., but your intro really elides many of the key points of the history, or gets them backwards.
The MP3 format was developed in the early 1990’s, and was popular well before Apple and Microsoft developed portable music players. Remember the Rio? Napster was in its heyday in the mid- to late- 90’s, still well before Apple and Microsoft entered the market. Napster was shut down in July of 2001, and the first iPod wasn’t until October/November of that year. Microsoft’s player wasn’t until 2006.
AAC and WMA, as I said above, were developed in large part so that Microsoft and Apple wouldn’t have to pay royalties to Fraunhofer. The fact that they could have DRM added and MP3 couldn’t was a bonus, and was what led the record labels to go along with the iTunes store. But by that point the sheer weight of MP3 dictated that customers wouldn’t long tolerate DRM-encumbered formats. But saying that the prospect of DRM-encumbered sales via the iTunes store was “thwarted” by Napster is simply impossible, as Napster had already been shut down before the first iPod hit the shelves.
cleek
@MBunge:
are you seriously saying we need more gatekeepers to keep people from seeing things of which someone (you, apparently?) does not approve ?
whatever Limbaugh’s political merits, he’s puts out a very popular product – and a popular product is the exact thing any profit-minded gatekeeper is going to be interested in putting out.
Lee
@Bruuuuce:
Thank you very much for that information.
I might have to take that money out of my ‘hookers & blow’ fund :)
henqiguai
@MBunge (#106):
Seriously, as opposed to what ? Tastes vary; who’s to be the arbitrator of what’s worthy of shelf space (that’s not to say I don’t agree with your apparent disdain for “Zombie Apocalypse” or its ilk).
MBunge
@cleek: are you seriously saying we need more gatekeepers to keep people from seeing things of which someone (you, apparently?) does not approve ?
I’m asking a basic question. How are the good films, low-budget or otherwise, supposed to propser in a world where people have to wade through an ocean of crap to find them?
Do you realize there are about 3 dozen or more new releases on DVD every week? If you watch 2 new DVDs every day, 7 days a week, you still won’t keep up. And that’s not counting the tens of thousands of DVDs that have already been released since the format was created. And when (if?) broadband improves to the point where all this stuff can go online…?
Let’s be clear. There have always been sucky films. In the past, though, there were financial and technical limitations on how many of them could be made and distribution limits on how widely they could be seen. Those restrictions have been and are being eliminated and, from my view, instead of a flowering garden of creativity it’s producing an untended plot overrun with weeds.
Perhaps this is just a product of a transitory phase we’re going through and will be fixed or ameliorated somehow. I can’t at this point see how that’s going to happen.
Mike
Fang
Having done ePublishing, it’s a pain in the backside on the publishing side as well, with format issues, changes, etc. ePub is pretty much the one hope I see of some kind of standard right now.
However, I think that the device manufacturers will have to move towards a more open standard simply because it will increase opportunities. I just expect it to be contentious as hell and filled with backstabbing.
MBunge
@henqiguai: “Seriously, as opposed to what ?”
I think a system where anyone can make a film, but not everything gets distributed is workable. So is one where not everyone can make a movie but every one that gets made is put out for the public to see. I don’t think a system where anyone, no matter how little experience or ability they have, can make a movie and all of that detritus then clutters up the market is tenable.
In doing my blog, I’ve tried to seek out low-budget films I’ve never heard of. When I find one that’s good, it’s a joy. But I have encountered more than a few films that are morally and ethically fraudulent. I’m talking about crap that wouldn’t get a passing grade as the final project in a community college filmmaking class, but is nevertheless put out on video store shelves for unsuspecting consumers to rent or buy.
Mike
SueinNM
To those who approve of piracy:
Keep in mind, as at least one other commenter has mentioned, that if you keep pirating there will be no more good books. We authors (I’ve been a novelist for 18 years) won’t be writing books if people steal our work and rob us of our royalties. We need to earn a living, too. What you’re doing is absolutely no different than if I walked into your apartment and emptied your wallet. You are stealing. And if you keep stealing from the people who produce, they’ll stop producing. Those who don’t care about making a living will write, but the quality will go down (as it did in the early days of e-publishing) and pretty soon there won’t be anything left you’ll want to pirate.
You’re a thief, pure and simple.
mistermix
@Gin & Tonic: Hmm, I don’t think we’re disagreeing about this: The MP3 ecosystem, which was the result of the existence of Napster and follow-on sharing networks like Limewire, as well as the ability to rip MP3s from existing high-quality digital copies (CDs), was the reason that we were spared a lengthy format war and other kinds of shenanigans in the music market.
RSA
@Walker:
__
I see your point; in my pessimistic way, I’ll view the situation as involving multiple problems. :-)
henqiguai
@MBunge (#117):
Awfully dictatorial there. Again, who’s the decision maker, the arbiter of what’s distributable and what’s not ? And what’s the criteria for who can or cannot make a movie, regardless of distribution access ? I’d be willing to bet a significant chunk of the films I wish were distributed in my market, would not make your list. Not being a big fan of movies to begin with, I can guarantee you really wouldn’t want me making distribution decisions; especially of the art-house type of productions or virtually any of the films having been deemed “important” over the last two decades.
Gin & Tonic
@SueinNM: The Grateful Dead came to be one of the most lucrative and successful rock bands in history by not only allowing, but encouraging people to record their performances and “trade” them. I put the “trade” in quotes because in the 1980’s and early 90’s, with physical cassette tapes, it really was trading — you had to cultivate personal relationships, send stuff in the mail, etc. As digital technology improved, “trading” became, for most, much more passive, and was really just downloading. But they still allowed and encouraged it, because they knew that developing a loyal fan base and disseminating their music freely to those who might not otherwise experience it built a larger audience than restricting it did, which over the long term was better.
I know analogies with writing are not always good, and you can’t sell out Boston Garden for a poetry reading, but they were creative (not just performers, but songwriters) and yet never spoke of “piracy.” Yet they certainly cared about making a living, and succeeded at it quite well.
drkrick
@MBunge: My rule of thumb in any creative endeavor is that 90% of everything is crap. The reason things seemed better in the old days is because the crap tends to gets forgotten faster (with the exception of transcendent crap like “The Attack of the Killer Tomato”). There’s no doubt that the decrease in the power of the gatekeepers has increased the amount of accesible output, but you seem to be arguing that it’s changed the proportion, too. Given my experience with the gatekeepers over the years, let’s just say I have my doubts – it’s certainly not self-evident. For someone with niche tastes (in my case primarily in music), the decreased barriers to entry have been a gift.
WereBear
@Uloborus: Hey, I popped in to say I’d be glad to share what I know.
Use my contact form
and once we have swapped emails, we’ll see what I can tell you.
WereBear
One thing I haven’t seen expressed here, and yet I feel is absolutely vital; years ago I stopped being able to afford hardcovers, except in used bookstores.
Now paperbacks, which debuted for a quarter back in the day, are between $8 and $12. And that’s going to keep going up, because we’re talking chopping down the trees and trucking them to the plant that pulps them up and then squishing them flat and then trucking them to the plant which uses big machines to smack the ink on them… etc.
You see where I’m going with this, I hope?
We don’t need books to be MORE expensive and price them out of more people’s hands. eBooks will keep the price down and keep the sales flow going.
I am second to no one in my love of books. Mr WereBear & I support a storage unit devoted to books that won’t fit in our apartment! But I see this new development as both inevitable and positive.
And regarding lowering the barriers to entry; that’s positive, too. Sorry for reviewers who have more crap to wade through… but hark!
Isn’t that your job?
MBunge
@henqiguai: Awfully dictatorial there.
Look. Giving people who want to make movies a chance to do so is, on the whole, a very good thing. Giving films a greater chance to be seen by the public is, on the whole, a very good thing. However, when you combine those two very good things, something quite bad happens. I have no idea at all what to do about the problem, but we ought to at least recognize it exists.
And by the way, this isn’t an “art house vs. commerical” thing. Most of the movies that I’m talking about getting lost in the ocean of crap are stuff like WEATHER GIRL, THE PERFECT WITNESS, THROTLE and even entertaining trash like STRIPTEASER. I’m talking about movies that aren’t film festival darlings and aren’t the greatest stories every told, just pretty good pieces of entertainment that get buried under the perpetual landslide of films that outright suck.
Mike
El Cruzado
Of note, talking with some friends who do technical books, the ePub format isn’t yet reasonable to deal with for them. Same could be said about the current implementation in a number of platforms.
Also, we need to distinguish between copyright and author’s rights. Author rights are currently life of the author + 90 years (I think they upped it from 70 a few years back). Most living authors will tell you that such a long time is silly. Great-grandkids of famous authors might disagree.
Copyright is also too long, but it relates to corporate works.
MBunge
@drkrick: but you seem to be arguing that it’s changed the proportion
I would say the propotion has changed because in the past, before you even got the chance to make a bad film, you usually had to put some time in the trenches to at least learn a bit of the craft. Today, there’s far more movies being made on the level of DOLEMITE, but without the social or cultural significance.
Mike
Mnemosyne
@Emma:
If they also got you the nice Amazon-branded case without a light, DON’T USE IT. It seems to be causing a short in the new Kindle that makes it restart itself again and again. I already had to return one, and I’m trying to figure out if I have to return this second one, which started having the same problem but seems to have resolved itself once I followed another commenter’s advice and took it out of the Amazon case.
HE Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
Can you back up your proposition that the fuck-a-thon is what drives a flourishing piracy market? My experience leads me to believe that people steal because they don’t like to pay creators for entertainment, not because of competing formats, DRM’s, or what-have-you.
Walker
@El Cruzado:
This is because equation support in HTML still sucks worse than the early days of Microsoft Word. LaTeX it is not.
Mr. Nobody
I was recently given a nook as a gift. I like using it but there’s an issue here. If I buy a book of B&N.com, it works just fine on the nook, but lets say 5 years from now I feel like I want to get a Kindle. Great, except that every book I bought from Barnes and Noble will not work on a Kindle. I don’t like that B&N is trying to lock me into using their products forever. And its prevented me from buying many books. I’ve mostly gotten public domain stuff so far.
If I buy a hardcover it’s with me forever. Same should apply for an ebook. I should be able to “take” it with me to any device I choose. Google’s ebook store seems to offer a possible solution for this, allowing customers to download books in multiple formats. Although they make you download some Adobe software to do it (for DRM). I still don’t like it, but it’s a start.
Emma
Mnemosyne: No, it came with a Belkin padded zippered fabric case. My sister, bless her heart, chose it because it was in my favorite color. But thanks for the warning!
different church-lady
You’re missing the point: paper books are a nice, functional 500 year old technology. The only reason they need to be replaced by something else is SO that a consumer fuck-a-thon can commence.
burnspbesq
Entirely apart from the interesting discussion about e-book formats, let me just say that anyone who uses the words “CD” and “high quality” in the same sentence needs to proceed immediately to a qualified audiologist to have their hearing checked. Even the best mixed and mastered CDs are mediocre. The CD standard (44.1 kHz sample rate and 16-bit word depth) is inherently flawed.
Ab_Normal
@Mnemosyne: I’m feeling even better about building my own cover for my Kindle out of cardboard, duct tape, an old t-shirt, a 40-pin ribbon cable, and a lanyard from a convention badge (out of pocket cost: $0).
burnspbesq
@Gin & Tonic:
So far, the Dead seem to be sui generis. Their business model worked for them because of the highly improvisational nature of their work. Each night’s performance was likely to be vastly different (both in content and quality) from every other night’s performance, and a 40-minute LP was a poor substitute for a three-hour live performance.
henqiguai
@burnspbesq (#135): <blockquote>let me just say that anyone who uses the words “CD” and “high quality” in the same sentence needs to proceed immediately to a qualified audiologistYeah, well, it beats vinyl.
burnspbesq
@different church-lady:
“The only reason they need to be replaced by something else is SO that a consumer fuck-a-thon can commence.”
When was the last time you were able to fit 150 albums, four DVDs, twelve books, and three red welds full of hard copy documents into a bag that fits under the seat in front of you on a 737? That’s why I have an iPad.
different church-lady
@burnspbesq: I am an audio engineer. Do not make me come down there and get you.
All reproductive formats are “inherently flawed” as you put it. The question is, which flaws are you going to trade for which?
Example: will you trade a bit of harshness in the high end for rock-solid pitch stability? There’s your CD/vinyl trade off.
Will you exchange portability for quality? There’s your MP3/Red book CD trade off.
Are you willing to accept Dolby’s idea of which bits of sonic information are important to your ear and which can be ditched? There’s your ACC/uncompessed trade off.
I’ve heard CDs that sound spectacular, and CDs that sound like crap. I’ve heard the same on vinyl. I’ve heard stuff straight off the master tapes that sounds like it was recorded on yarn.
Yeah, it would be wonderful if we had a broadly adopted consumer format that was 24 bit and 96k. We don’t. That doesn’t make a CD “mediocre”. Hell, as far as actual delivery to the listener there’s hardly anything that compares at this point (at least as far as marketplace penetration is concerned).
different church-lady
@burnspbesq: when was the last time I needed all that on a 737? Ya dig?
burnspbesq
@henqiguai:
“Yeah, well, it beats vinyl.”
I’m going to assume that’s snark, because otherwise I will have to conclude that you’re an idiot.
different church-lady
@henqiguai: Oh dear… here we go…
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: While I never cared for them, a lot of people did, and Phish seem to have done reasonably well. There are a lot of “jam bands” that allow/encourage taping if you look at etree or similar sites. Sure, none of them are millionaires, but then not every garage band becomes the Stones, either.
henqiguai
@MBunge (#126): Was gonna leave this alone, but hell, it’s a day off.
Uh huh. Knowing nothing about those films but their names, I’d posit that I would not vote them for distribution. You may not think they’re artie-house, but they sound like it to me. I think movies should be entertaining and mindless; with 85 to 120 minutes, just how thoughtful do you want to be ? When I want thought provoking material, I grab a book. Movies are for light-weight and generally mindless entertainment (YMMV). And thus we get back to – your constraints sound just plain ole “I know what’s good and what’s junk” dictatorial.
If it’s too much work for the critics to work through, specialize, work harder/longer, or do something else. if it’s too much for the putative buyer to go through to choose, ask around for recommendations, take a chance, or go read a book. But demanding there be constraints on what’s produced or distributed is
dictatorialelitist !BDeevDad
I just got an iPad and have read more books in the past three weeks then I did during the rest of the year. I’ve also only paid for one book. Amazon has a whole host of pretty good books for free, both classics and new ones, while I have not searched iTunes yet for very many. Also, many public libraries now lend eBooks using Overdrive which is available on the Apple and Android brand products like the iPad and the Samsung Galaxy. The selection is not as good as Amazon or iTunes, but it’s free.
Gin & Tonic
Portability/convenience trump quality. The market has spoken loud and (ahem) clear. We put up with shitty cellphone audio which we would not have tolerated on a landline 30 years ago. Having music on your iPod is more important than having good music available at home. Watching a movie on a 7″ screen strapped to the headrest in your parents’ car is more convenient than talking to the kids (and guarantees that they will be so conditioned to crap that they’ll never know the difference when they grow up.
This battle is lost.
burnspbesq
@different church-lady
You’re an engineer? Can I blame you for all the stuff that has the life sucked out of it because it’s mixed, mastered, and (the real mortal sin) compressed so that it sounds good as a 128k mp3 file fed to a pair of SkullCandy earbuds?
And I am not exactly ready to buy the idea that it’s all David Chesky’s fault for not having a better marketing plan for hdtracks.com.
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq:
I think my last post got FYWP’d, but go to the first site that comes up when you Google “mosquito ringtone” and tell me where your hearing cuts out.
BDeevDad
Cory Doctorow has a lot to say about how giving books away for free digitally has helped him a lot. Also, over 50% of Amazon’s book sales are not bestsellers, unlike brick and mortar stores, so there is something to be said that digital access and niche markets will improve the ability of mid-list authors to make a living (read The Long Tail).
different church-lady
@Gin & Tonic: Agreed: we, as a consumer society, appear to have given up the ability to hear each other clearly while sitting in our living rooms for the ability to not really be able to hear each other everywhere we go. Bell thought about this stuff really really hard for decades, and now we’re just pitching it all out the window.
Lee
@burnspbesq:
Here is a great comic just for you :)
http://xkcd.com/841/
Re: Consumer Fuck-a-thon:
Waaaay back when ripping CDs started the recording industry wanted it to be piracy to rip your CD. Once they figured out there was absolutely no way to enforce that idea (and IIRC the government said it was not piracy) things died down for a while until the P2P networks started. Granted there were some half-hearted attempts to stop websites from posting MP3s but a simple extension rename was enough to avoid any problems and by far most mp3s were traded via FTP.
Then Napster was born and the genie was out of the bottle. Before Napster was shut down they offered the recording industry a business model that was similar to the one that Apple has now. It did not fuck the consumer enough so it was denied. I believe the creator of Napster had a very prescient statement to the effect of “you have no idea the problems you are about to have”.
Now we have iTunes. While it is not perfect, it has a very simple interface and it is very simple and cheap to purchase songs. My daughters (11 & 14) both have accounts and manage their money very well on it. But it does not have everything and sometimes it is very difficult and expensive to actually purchase songs not found on iTunes. So piracy steps in to fill the void. Taught my daughters how to find and download songs and how to verify what they are getting are the actual songs. They always check iTunes for what they want and a couple of others, but I would say about 10% of the time they have to pirate the songs. Then there is the whole “buy a new iPod, can’t listen to the purchased songs” problem. So I then had to teach them how to strip the DRM from the Apple songs.
The same thing for movies. I have a Netflicks account. If I can’t stream the movie from Netflicks, I download it and watch it (takes about 30 min for the average movie to download).
The same for books. I own just about every book Stephen King has written. There is no &($&# way I am going to pay just to have it in a new format.
Mnemosyne
@Ab_Normal:
I knitted a Kindle sleeve for myself out of some leftover yarn. Now I’m waiting for it to dry so I can use it. Cost: about $3.50.
JasonK
@mistermix you have an interesting view as to the Apple involvement. I’m sure I don’t have to explain this but will anyhow. Apple is a business. Their sole purpose is to make money. Apple, like most of their other decisions, decided that it would be better for them control their ecosystem in order to do so and in a way that benefits almost everyone who buys their products. How best to do that with the iPod? Create your own music store and do it in a way that is totally integrated. If they were evil they would have yanked mp3 and never allowed DRM-free music. As it stands they did the deal with DRM to make money (shock) but it still made business sense to get rid of DRM which they also did (shock). AAC is a better format sound-wise than mp3. You get better sound at lower bitrates. It also had the ability to allow a DRM wrapper, in Apple’s case FairPlay.
For all the complaints about the DRM if Apple were truly just being evil bastards they wouldn’t have allowed *5* CD burnings of a playlist. They wouldn’t have allowed *any*. I think it was pretty clear that they put the DRM there because of the record companies…not because they wanted to. It was necessary for the deal and they made it pretty damned easy to strip the DRM if you were really interested in doing so. Just burn the files and reimport. Done. No more DRM.
henqiguai
@burnspbesq (#142):
Nope on both. I’m not a Golden Ear; am not interested in squeezing out the last bit of ultimate audio experience out of a sound system. I listen to music at low levels in a fully non-optimized listening environment while completely distracted by whatever is my immediate primary activity. The rest of the time I’m listening to one of my local NPR stations (news and information, not music) or lectures on tape/disk. I go with the concept of ‘good enough’.
But I’ll grant maybe being a bit hasty on the ‘idiot’ part.
JasonK
@Lee
“Then there is the whole “buy a new iPod, can’t listen to the purchased songs” problem. So I then had to teach them how to strip the DRM from the Apple songs”
I’m not sure what problem you are referring to. I owned 3 iPods while DRM was still a feature of iTunes downloads and never had to strip any DRM. They still play fine on my iPhone 4 (the tracks where I couldn’t get replacements via iTunes for whatever reason).
different church-lady
@burnspbesq: You can’t blame me because I ain’t down with that trend, but you can blame a lot of my brethren.
Mastering engineers can be like Saruman cooking up Orks in his fortress. When I send my stuff out for blind mastering I compare it to sending your children to military school — you have no idea if you’re going to recognize them when you come back.
Then again, the latest OK Go record was deliberately fucked up in the mix, not the mastering room. (or as the producer said, “We wanted it to sound like your shit was on fire.”) It’s an aesthetic that I don’t agree with at all. I’m a fan of artful distortion. I’m not a fan of novelty distortion.
The funny thing is you’re getting at my point: what you stick INTO the format and what you do with it has a lot more influence over whether something sounds good than the format itself. So poo-pooing CDs is a fun sport if sport is what you’re interested in, but if you’re interested in music then it’s a lot more complicated than that.
henqiguai
@different church-lady (#143):
What ?! Was that a ~religious~ pronouncement or something ? Really ? So if I say something like beer is nasty or the Red Socks sux…
MBunge
@henqiguai: First of all, you really need to be a lot less paranoid about the concept of judgment. If you can’t get past a freak out over the idea of someone saying “This is good and that is not”, there’s no way to engage the actual issue.
Secondly, if you think something called STRIPTEASER is an art house film…you really need to refine your sensibilities. WEATHER GIRL is a comedy about a 35 year old woman who finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her, so she has to move in with her slacker brother. THE PERFECT WITNESS is about a guy so desperate to be a filmmaker, he blackmails a serial killer into being his documentary subject. THROTTLE is about a guy trapped in an underground parking garage with a truck that’s trying to kill him.
Thirdly, you keep avoiding the basic problem. What are we going to do 10 years from now when 99% of the low budget movies on video store shelves today have been knocked off by an endless parade of crap coming out every week? And if video stores aren’t around, what are people going to do when they’re confronted with online selection menus that offer 15 to 20,000 or more possibilities?
Mike
Gin & Tonic
@different church-lady:
Which is why the professional musicians I know generally have pretty mediocre (or even shitty) playback equipment. They listen for music, not sound.
different church-lady
@henqiguai: So now I have a googlephonic system with a moon-rock needle… It’s OK for car stereo, wouldn’t want it in my house.
Shinobi
It’s nice that there is still one format we don’t need an e reader for. A book. I can buy a book and know that all of my money goes to the writer and the publisher, and none of it to Sony.
Unlike music, books don’t need record players or tape decks or mp3 players. All I need to read my book is a pile of paper and maybe some cardboard to hold it together.
I’m not normally such a luddite, and I get how e-readers are convenient, but I don’t think I will ever do my fiction reading on a device. I like books. So here is one customer who wont be getting screwed.
emdee
In addition to what others have said on Apple and DRM:
AAC is an open standard, but .m4p is not. In fact, there is no supported way for anyone but Apple to add their own copy-protection to AAC files. As was noted, the music industry simply refused to allow digital distribution without DRM in 2003, when the iTunes Music Store debuted. Apple had to keep making concessions to get more features, too&emdash;for example, when the number of devices you could copy your purchased music to went up, the number of times you could burn a given CD containing purchased tracks went down.
DRM finally went away when Apple caved and gave the music industry its biggest request (other than totally draconian copy protection, which Apple refused to implement): flexible pricing. At firs,t unprotected tracks cost $1.29 instead of $0.99. Later, they were all unprotected, but the labels got to price the hot songs at $1.29 and the old stuff at $0.69, rather than keep it all “every song costs $0.99” as Apple preferred—and as some research showed increased sales. The music industry is known for shooting itself in the foot.
The movie/TV folks aren’t even that far; they don’t allow anything to be sold without copy protection, and it’s far more draconian than the music stuff ever was. That was really the entire strategy behind WMA: “Apple won’t let you put ridiculous content restrictions on what you sell, but we will. Want it to stop playing if a subscription fee stops? Or only be valid for two weeks, no matter how it was obtained? Or be remotely disabled? Windows Media will do that. Apple won’t.”
(This, btw, is also why Apple never gave into the pressure to license WMA/WMV formats from Microsoft so they’d play on the iPod or later devices. If Apple had done so, Microsoft would have told Hollywood, “You use our stuff and it plays everywhere with whatever screw-the-buyer restrictions you want. Use Apple’s stuff and it will be pirated all over the world.” It was no accident that Steve Ballmer said publicly that iPods were full of pirated music. It was their entire sales pitch to the MPAA and RIAA members. Had Apple fallen for this, Microsoft would control all content distribution and could decide to change licensing fees or permissions at any time, essentially killing any devices it didn’t like. Far too many tech pundits didn’t see this, but Apple did.)
Apple’s pitch to content providers is pretty simple: people are going to pirate your work. From mix tapes to photocopiers, they always have. To pirate a book today, all you have to do is saw off the binding, feed it into a ScanSnap, run OCR on the resulting file, and there you go. But it’s just too much work for most people. The ones who insist on everything free would do it if it’s twice as much work; the ones who do it out of convenience will not. If you give people a convenient way to legitimately buy digital products that have all the major features of the original, the vast majority of people will buy them unless copy-protection makes them too inconvenient to use in normal ways. Content producers generally hate this message for reasons I don’t understand, but it’s all true. I’ll buy an eBook to avoid having to store it or keep track of it on my bookshelf, though I would really like a way to lend it.
For something like The Making of Star Wars, eBooks just don’t make sense. For something like Nixonland, where you get bonus videos and interviews, it makes a lot of sense. But publishers are still afraid both of piracy and of losing control, of not being able to control the channel with supply and targeted distribution to certain areas and punishing some resellers over others.
Let’s hope they figure it out better than the newspaper and magazine folks have to date.
different church-lady
@Gin & Tonic: Ex-ACTLY.
That and the fact that they’re all broke and spend their money on guitars and booze, right?
Jeanie Shamburger
Will the health care crises ever end!
different church-lady
@MBunge:
No problem! Amazon will just tell you what people like you are watching!
Meet the new gatekeepers — same as the old gatekeepers.
cleek
@MBunge:
you can already ask that question about music. and the answer is: it works pretty much the same as it did before.
i can find bands i like with no following whatsoever, or i can look at the top sellers on big merchants like iTunes or Amazon. i learn about bands in exactly the same way i did in 1992: word of mouth, respected sources, casual browsing, accidental exposure on radio/tv/etc..
look at Justin Beiber. maybe you don’t like him, but millions of people do. and guess where he got his start? YouTube. people noticed his homemade videos on YouTube, told their friends, his views went sky-high, record companies took notice, and now he’s huge. same system, additional players.
Gin & Tonic
@different church-lady: Uh, unfortunately the professional musicians of my acquaintance are far less fun than that, being classical musicians.
different church-lady
@Gin & Tonic: Have you priced out a Stradivarius lately?
The thing I have discovered is that musicians — especially those with any classical training — listen to music differently than laypeople. They hear the notes much more than the sounds. In fact I have needed to remind myself that I frequently cannot rely on the musicians to tell me if things are balanced, because they listen for performance (was that the right note, was it in time, was it steady) and their brains tend to pitch the sonic balance as a consideration — as long as they can hear any cello that satisfies their brains, for example.
Lee
@JasonK:
Actually as soon as I posted that I think it was when they switched computers, not iPods.
Either way it was a quick lesson on stripping the DRM.
henqiguai
@MBunge (#159):
Ah. Well, no, I’m not avoiding it. I do think your stated concern, here, is absurd. Ever done any business in a serious library collection ? I’m thinking, in particular, of the Library of Congress. I equate the two issues. You use the catalogs and indexes. Especially since, for all intents and purposes, video stores are actually no longer around; if I wish to obtain any video material (movies, documentaries, et. al.) or music (virtually zero outlets offering material of interest to me here in New England), I must search various catalogs and indexes, do some research on the content and sound, then reach out for the acquisition. Modernity; is ze beech, yes ?
Jack
The ability of authors and musicians to make a lot of money from selling their products in some tangible format is a very modern one, 20th-century for the most part. Previously authors were wealthy or didn’t care about wealth (e.g., monks), and musicians made a living (if at all) from performing. With the advent of appropriate media and markets, both of those things changed.
We are now perhaps seeing a partial return to that previous system. I won’t rehearse the history of all this, but it is worth noting that:
1. Middle-men make the big bucks in both situations, except perhaps in rare cases of extremely popular writers and musicians. They’re the ones who are really mad (e.g., RIAA, though there are exceptions, like AC/DC).
2. Direct-to-consumer sales (like in the iTMS or Lulu.com) may make it possible for more of these artists to make decent money on their output (books or recordings).
3. For pop musicians the big money is still in performance, where they can sell their other stuff, like t-shirts.
MBunge
@cleek: “you can already ask that question about music.”
The difference is that filmmaking in most cases, even the very low budget variety, requires the efforts of dozens and dozens of people for weeks on end, just to produce one 90 minute long movie. It’s really not feasible for people to go through all of that and then plot it on Youtube and hope.
Mike
Marci Kiser
I think that PerfectTommy is offering a valuable perspective here. One area where e-publishing is desperately needed is the field of academic journals. Not only do companies like Elsevier charge usurious rates for access to journals (knowing they have libraries over a barrel), but the costs associated with academic publishing have always been a barrier towards making academic work accessible to all. There have been numerous issues with price increases and the completely ass-backwards model (unlike traditional writing, academics send their work to journals for free and beg to be published. That work is then read and critiqued by other scholars for free – after all, they might want to be published someday as well). The entire sphere of academic publishing is rife with exorbitant prices to produce volumes which are obscure due to the pricing structures that could only afford to print 500 of them.
With e-publishing, the major cost associated with journals – the actual physical production – is eliminated. Staff will still be needed to compile and produce the works themselves, but the need for university libraries to devote entire wings towards preserving the scholarly minutiae of a hundred different fields on dead trees disappears.
On the other note, I’ve never understood those who say “Oh, I would never give up my real books. I love the tactile experience, the smell,” as if it were a choice between one or the other. I have a Kindle. I also own around 500+ books. But not everything I want to read is available on the Kindle, and not every book I own is one I want to keep enough to continue to devote shelf space to it. Having an e-book copy of a work I may want to reference every five years or so is far more practical, but I’d never surrender my Iain Sinclair to man or beast.
For now, at least, it is possible to have the best of both worlds.
MBunge
@henqiguai: I do think your stated concern, here, is absurd.
I think it’s absurd for someone who claims to not be a big fan of movies in the first place to be so contenious on the subject.
I also think it’s absurd to expect low budget movies no one has ever heard of to be able to survive if consumers have to jump through the hoops you’re talking bout to find them.
And by the way, modernity isn’t a force of nature. It’s the product of human decisions. If a couple of decades ago, Congress doesn’t elminate the Fairness Doctrine, our modern politics would look a whole lot different.
Mike
different church-lady
@Marci Kiser:
They say those things because the press and tech writers and early adopters all present it as though there will not be a choice. As in, “Here’s the Crumple, the latest gadget that will replace books! It’s wonderful and modern and will replace those old things you only think you love because nothing this wonderful and modern existed until now!”
Basically you and I are Monsieur Hulot at this point. (more thoughts in next comment…)
different church-lady
(Continued from #175…)
Yesterday there was a commercial for the local TV news which ran, “Your old smartphone is about to be obsolete! (graphic: “3G”). Your new smartphone will be smarter and faster than ever! (graphic: “4G”)”
Obsolete? I think. WTF are they talking about? 3G phones aren’t going work on a 4G network… hey, wait a minute, I’m smarter than that, but I bet a lot of people don’t know that.
imagines… some local news consulting shop in the midwest…
WEASEL A: What kind of promos are we going to do for the Smartphone segments?
WEASEL B: How about “YOUR OLD PHONE WILL BE OBSOLETE?”
WEASEL A: Well, wait a minute, the old phones will still be usable, right? It’ll only be obsolete in the sense that there’s something newer, not in the sense that it’s useless.
WEASEL B: You’re right, but… hey screw it, FEAR AND OUTRAGE EQUALS EYEBALLS!
cleek
@MBunge:
well, the model would be: an aspiring director/producer/cameraman does some cool demos which get noticed by a larger firm which will bankroll larger efforts. which is pretty close to how it works now – from what i understand.
but, when you get right down to it, indie filmmaking is already a tough business. even in largish cities, it’s hard to find theaters that play indie films at all. and even where there are theaters, there’s huge competition for screen time. there’s already too much content for the number of outlets. i’m not sure YouTube could actually hurt that kind of business – if anything, YouTube could be a great way to show clips/trailers and get people interested enough to demand that their local theater plays it, or to sell DVDs.
different church-lady
@cleek:
Well, sure, if you could figure out some way to burst through the astronomical signal-to-noise ratio on YouTube, that is…
MBunge
@henqiguai: I do think your stated concern, here, is absurd.
And another thing. You just proved in this thread that my concerns are not absurd. I listed off 4 random films that are getting lost in the clutter and you just turned your nose up at them because you thought they sounded too “art house”. STRIPTEASER is about an armed gunman who takes over a strip club and holds everybody hostage while he plays a sick and demented game of his own design. It sounds like that’s the sort of film you claim to enjoy, but you rejected that possibility because you’d never heard of it.
Mike
cleek
@different church-lady:
again, Bieber is an example of how to do it. but it’s the same problem artists of all kinds have always faced: create something that people like, then convince them to pay you for the enjoyment of it.
it’s not supposed to be easy.
henqiguai
@MBunge (#174): 1. “I think it’s absurd for someone who claims to not be a big fan of movies in the first place to be so contenious on the subject.”
Principles. I got lots of them, and yes, they can be a burden. I always get all contentious when someone starts advocating restricting access to material for arbitrary reasons. ‘Specially when it’s something like arbitrary dictates of taste or worthiness. By whose lights, sir, are they not worthy ?!
2. “I also think it’s absurd to expect low budget movies no one has ever heard of to be able to survive if consumers have to jump through the hoops you’re talking bout to find them.”
See, it’s low budget movies you may never heard of. And oh by the way, what’s your heartburn with serendipity ?
3. “And by the way, modernity isn’t a force of nature. It’s the product of human decisions.”
Dude, I’m both. Granted, there are times when it does seem that I am supernatural, but no, not really.
different church-lady
@cleek: I might have lost the thread a bit here — are we considering Bieber to be signal or noise?
henqiguai
@MBunge (#179):
Nope. I turned my nose up because the titles implied types of content about which I care not one bit. Including, or especially, “Stripteaser”; got some personal hangups with things going in that direction. By your description, it is firmly in that range of content from which I would walk away, even if I had paid an admission fee.
“Art-housie”: just used it as a catchall term for movie types I don’t like. Just like sports, about which I have zero interest and from which I will always walk away, regardless of any universal acclamations of awesomeness.
Seriously, it’s all about the outrage of someone claiming that there should be restrictions on access based upon their valuations. One more example: I am, at best, completely indifferent to pornography. But back in the day of video stores, I would not patronize any local store that did not carry “adult entertainment”; who are they to tell me what I shouldn’t, or couldn’t, watch ?
different church-lady
@henqiguai:
Yeah, but jeez, who are you to tell them what they should or shouldn’t carry?
cleek
@different church-lady:
if we’re talking about using YouTube to promote yourself into a career as an artist: signal. because, it doesn’t really matter if you or i don’t like him; he has enough fans to allow him to make a living doing what he wants to do.
henqiguai
@different church-lady (#184):
But I didn’t. I went all Reaganesque and voted with my feet; I shopped somewhere else.
Marc McKenzie
@SueinNM: Thank you for saying this, Sue….I abhor and loathe piracy and have gotten fed up with hearing the excuses for it. My friend, who is a writer, has seen a couple of his books pirated and posted up on sites without his permission, and he isn’t getting a red cent from any of that.
As an artist, I have to deal with piracy and the fact that some of my work will be figuratively yanked out of my hands and I won’t be compensated for any of it. If we–and I mean artists, writers, and musicians–are not allowed to earn our living by our work, then art will truly suffer.
In my honest opinion, I don’t know if the Kindle–or any e-reader–will stop piracy. I’m also not very happy with the fact that even with these e-readers, it appears (at least to me) that the writers are still getting screwed. I hope I’m wrong.
Kristine
@BDeevDad: Cory had access to the huge Boing Boing audience, and wrote in a genre that would appeal to that readership. He wasn’t starting from zero.
henqiguai
@Marc McKenzie (#193):
Who, or what, gave you the idea that the Kindle, or any other eReader, would stop piracy ? For future reference anything technology can block, technology can circumvent. You’re misreading the whole point to the eReaders; they’re simply another vector for the printed word, not the antidote to photocopiers.
Ed in NJ
If I buy a book and decide to pass it around to 10 others because I liked it, that’s ok. If I upload an .epub to The Pirate Bay (I wouldn’t even know how to do that) that allows me to share it with thousands of people, that’s not ok.
That’s a huge grey area with digital content and piracy. Most content is not really “owned” once it is downloaded because anti-piracy laws legislate what I can do with it after I purchase it. Saying that downloading is akin to walking into your house and stealing something is grossly oversimplifying the issue. Most pirated stuff would not be purchased otherwise, and in many cases, leads to increased sales for the artist.
Radiohead released an album for pay-what-you-want (even free) digitally and made a fortune. 2 months later, they released a CD to brick-and-mortar outlets and sold 3 million albums, their best-seller ever.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
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Partially correct. Only Microsoft created their own music file standard to foster lock-in. Non-DRMable MP3 and AAC were not created by Apple, and both of these ISO-standard formats played on the original iPod and today’s iPod.
Apple basically forced the non-DRM option on the media companies. Microsoft never favored non-DRM media.
I completey agree about the consumer fuck-a-thon. Among for-profit companies, Apple is about the only one which has done anything positive for the consumer on this. Here’s a link for background info on Microsoft’s Apple-thwarted media villainy attempt to “Knife the Baby”.
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Eric
It’s inaccurate to claim that “Apple wanted lock-in to [its] own proprietary players,” since when the iPod was released, Apple had no proprietary format. It was built to play “open standard” MP3s. In fact, iTunes was designed to make it easy to convert your existing CD library into DRM-less MP3s.
The iPod still isn’t proprietary. It still plays MP3s, and no one has ever been required to purchase music from the iTunes Music Store to fill their it.
Sure, the iTunes Music Store had to have DRM for a while, but that had nothing to do with the iPod itself.
Peter J
@MBunge:
The internet is filled with blogs, and most of them are crap. There should be something done to regulate them, so that the good ones will be easier to find and won’t be drowned out by all the crappy ones.
The more movies put online, the better. Like most blogs, most movies will never be watched by any others than the creators and their close friends. But I prefer that to your ideas.
Peter J
@Steve M.:
Right. Because people only write if they are paid. Most people who write a book, won’t get paid. At all. Even now.
For fun:
If movies are pirated, there just won’t be any actors/directors/screen writers.
Peter J
REDACTED.
Michael57
@different church-lady: Exactly.
Michael57
@cleek: “My favorite insider quote from 2010: “The Kindle is the Betamax.”
does that insider work for Apple or Google ? ”
Neither: for an independent bookstore.
different church-lady
@Peter J: Riddle me this: when was the last time you read a novel that the author didn’t get paid for?
Peter J
@different church-lady:
To be honest, not sure. Since I generally buy the books I read, that means that the author ought to have been paid. For some older books I really don’t if the author got paid or not.
Instead:
When did I last time read a novel that the author wasn’t assured or wasn’t expected to be paid for?
I’d say I’ve read quite a few of those.
Are there any books written without a promise of being paid?
Of course there are. There are books written without an a promise of being paid. Movies made. Paintings painted. Photographs taken. Programs written. And so on.
Ruckus
I used to create tools that were used by industry to create products that many of you have seen and or used at some point in your lives. I designed and built the tools and I got paid what I told the customer I would do that for. But I never got any commissions, royalties or anything like that. And some of these tools were/are still in use after 25 years, making the same product day in and day out.
Notice I said I designed and built these items.
Created them, using learned and intrinsic talents. How is that different from an artist who sings or acts or writes? Why should an artist get paid every time one of his songs is played or movies shown when another product of talent and learning is used without royalties?
Is it because someone paid up front an agreed upon amount to create the unique product and fronted the money to use that product to create an item that is purchased by consumers? And if that is so then how is an artist in today’s world who desires to be compensated by established labels/studios any different?
Just something to think about.
Joe Shabadoo
Why does everyone always forget about libraries.
We have have always been able to get books basically for free. Book companies at one point in time said that public libraries would put them out of business.
I am all for a public library for ebooks. They buy a few licences and set up a system for it. I suggest no DRM but they could work something out if they feel its necessary. A public library of ebooks would be so cheap (compared to a system of brick an mortar libraries across the country) and so valuable to society it should be a no brainer.
different church-lady
@Peter J:
Really? No financial compensation from the publisher whatsoever? Are we talking self-published here?
People just turn their works over to publishing houses and say, “Hey, if you feel like sending me a check, no problem, I just do this for the love of it.”
different church-lady
@Ruckus:
For the same reason waitstaff don’t make real wages: they’re “supposed” to be compensated through a different method.
For example: musicians (under the traditional 20th century model) don’t get paid for making an album. The get an advance on their royalties up front. Technically the only get compensated through the royalties. The advance is just that: an advance payment of potential royalties.
That answers the why part. Should it be this way? That’s a different item for discussion.
In the end it doesn’t matter what the business is — people get compensated in the fashion they arrange to get compensated in. There are conventions, but none of them are sacrosanct — IF you have enough power or moxie to break them. There’s no reason you couldn’t get royalties on the hammer you design IF you make that arrangement with your company. Big time actors do it all the time — choose between lump sums and points, or some combination.
Why people who “create content” work in a royalty system I can’t answer. Perhaps it is just tradition, or perhaps it’s a very complex “meritocracy” system.
You designed your tool. You got paid for designing it. If the tool was a dud, the company might take a loss. If it was a smash, the company might make a fortune and you end up with your tiny crumb comparatively. Wanna redo your deal next time?
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@different church-lady:
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I can. Because “works of art” have no absolutely objective quantifiable survival value. For example, Beethoven’s Fifth has no more survival value than the Archies’ “Bang-Shang-a-Lang” (unless you feel like shooting yourself more when one of them comes on the radio, perhaps).
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Peter J
@different church-lady:
Not sure how many would-be writers have been able to just go to a publisher and tell them ‘give me money and I’ll write a book for you’. They have written a book obviously wanting to be paid for it, but they aren’t assured that they will get paid, nor do they expect that they will be.
Yet, they have spent time to write that first book.
Not sure I agree on the view that authors all are greedy people, just doing it for the money.
Peter J
@Michael57: Interesting survey from JP Morgan released yesterday.
The iPad Is Not A Kindle Killer
You should send it to your insider working for that independent bookstore.
machine
@liberal:
First, who decides what comprises a “reasonable monetary incentive”?
As a photographer, copyright is extremely important to me as it gives me control over my work and how it is used. There is more than just money at stake in copyright.
lyn
The downside to iPads, Nook Color, etc is that they do not use e-ink.
Bascially you are reading a book on your computer screen. e-ink makes all the difference for reading.
This is true. But the Nook comes in 2 versions. The standard e-ink version and the NookColor, the tablet. So the customer has the choice on which version they prefer. Some customers want the LCD screen and back light and all that other functionality, even if the readability compared to the standard Nook is not the same. While others, serious readers usually, usually go for the standard Nook. Which is also cheaper.
@seth: I’m the broken record here, but EPUB is the open format and Calibre is the program you’d want to convert to/from other formats. Amazon is the only big player that doesn’t support that format. Draw your own conclusions.
Also true. With the Kindle 3 many were hoping that Amazon would allow for EPUB, but alas. Amazon is betting on the fact that their customers will be loyal to them and stay that way. But you can convert files to a format the Kindle can read. But being able to support EPUB makes life easier. Google books uses EPUB. If you library has an e-lending program…they use EPUB. Many of the free websites like Gutenburg and the like..use EPUB. And if it is your things…on torrent websites and other pirating website….EPUB is widely available. You hardly ever find .kindle book on there. There is always conversion needed.
But many e-readers also support other formats as well. Nook I know supports PDF and PDB file formats as well as EPUB, and the NookColor does support Word documents as well. So really the customer is not really that screwed. Just depends on which product they buy. Buy smart.
As for ebook prices. That is mainly driven by the publisher. When there was only Amazon and BN in the market selling these e-books it was easier for them to dictate the prices of the books to the publishers if they wanted them sold. But now with the introduction of many other…mainly Apple….who has basically told the Publishers: charge what you want to charge. The publisher are pushing back on how much they can charge. Which is why you see some ridiculous pricing every so often. Frankly..I see no sense in paying 19 bucks for an e-book. Pricing is very much in flux right now and won’t settle down for while. Once they see what people are willing to pay.
lyn
@mikej: dited to add: Duh, you were talking nook, I had anecdote from kindle. Same idea though. Using a nook the way B&N claims is the only way to use it, the same thing could happen with them.
What happened with Amazon is that they soled a book that the copyright issues were not fully settled. So in order not to get sued they went into the libraries of every person that bought the book and deleted the book. This was a big fiasco and I can be well assured something like that won’t happen again. I don’t forsee BN falling into such a clusterfuck.
The only way BN will delete a book from your Nook library is if you specially asked them too, for whatever reason. But I don’t see why you would have to since you can delete the book yourself when you log into your account online. Every book you purchase on the Nook is yours for life. It is saved on the BN servers as well and if you lose the Nook…you can just get a new one and register it and all your book are there…like the ipod. Same for Kindle. So really the only way to lose your books permanently is if BN or Amazon goes out of business or something.
different church-lady
@Peter J: Well, now you’re getting to my point: writing a book for nothing is one thing. Having it published for nothing is quite another.
Basically the publisher is a gatekeeper: they’re making a preliminary decision about what people will want to read (and pay for). Yes, the writer may have initially created on faith or desire. But the writer did that in a context of hoping to one day be compensated, and the compensation starts with the publishing agreement. Thus, there’s probably very few books (in the traditional sense) that you have ever read where the writer has gotten no compensation.
It takes time to write a novel. If there’s no compensation for that time people won’t bother doing it very much, or won’t have the time to do it. Everybody’s got to make a living one way or another. Or perhaps only the independently wealthy will be novelists in the future.
Same with independent film: someone might make one out of their own desire, but most hope it will be either purchased (in parts — the screenplay, the concept — or whole) or will use it as a building block to further their careers. But unless the film gets picked up by a studio or the producer/director gains a distribution deal, there’s very little chance you’ve seen it or heard of it.
So, yes, in your hypothetical people will always write books, whether they get paid or not. Will those books be any good? Will the writers be able to take the time to craft them well? Will they write another? Will you or I ever get a chance to read it?
And does any of that make any sense if we are going to value culture as something more than a hobby?
I have issues with Baltimore
@MikeJ: I’m with you on this. I got a Nook Color for christmas with the express intent of rooting it. My friends saw what I did and immediately bought themselves nooks, too. $250 for something that’s just as useful as an iPad? There’s no question. Looks like I won’t need to upgrade my old android phone to an iPhone when it comes out on Verizon.
Peter J
@different church-lady: How about valuing culture as something more than a means to make money?
About the independent movie, the songs written by an unsigned singer/songwriter, the stories written during the evenings after work, all these can actually reach people without a publisher, distribution deal or whatever. That’s one of the great things about the internet.
A lot of people actually value the fact other people will read their work, watch their movie, listen to their song, admire their photos or paintings, or use their code, even if they won’t get paid.
I’m very sorry, but your view, I can’t really understand it. It’s just sad.
Michael57
“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”–Samuel Johnson
“I write for my pleasure, but publish for money.”–Vladimir Nabokov
(Some of the more excitable fanboys for these new gadgets might have to look those names up.)
Peter J
@Michael57: Great, two names. That does it. You’re obviously right.
Your other argument about e-reader fanboys is even more stupid.
grendelkhan
Untrue! Well, sort of. The ebook equivalent of the CD/MP3 ecosystem are open-format, unencrypted files described by an open standard. That’s pretty much what (unencrypted) EPUB is, though (unencrypted) Mobipocket is just a different encapsulation format which holds the same HTML data in a different kind of container; conversion between the formats is, in my experience, easy enough to do automatically; Calibre will do it for you easily enough.
The vendor lock-in problem was much worse before the introduction of e-ink devices made ebooks much more popular. The two most popular DRM systems, Kindle and ADEPT, are cracked (see “unswindle” and “inept”, respectively); while it may take a bit more computer-dealing-with elbow grease, I feel confident that I won’t actually have to repurchase my books from this point onward.
In any case, you can already see some ebook sellers selling at least some of their books DRM-free. (It seems to be more popular in certain genres than others to do so.)
@Robert Sneddon: Are you talking about Charles Stross and the Merchant Princes series?
grendelkhan
@Peter J: It’s very true that people who love to do creative work will try to find some way to do it even if there’s no way for them to get paid… but, as celebrated SF author Charles Stross will tell you, there’s a tremendous difference between what you can produce in your spare time and what you can produce when writing full-time. Being a writer is a job. Some people manage to work two jobs at once when they’re working on their first novel or whatever, and aren’t being paid. But it’s still a job.
Peter J
@grendelkhan: I have never doubted that writers would get paid.
If people like what they read, they will reward the author.
The way they get paid will most likely change though, so will also the amount and also how long they will get paid.
But I am tired of the idea that people only write to be paid, that culture wouldn’t exist without the promise or possibility of being paid.
Or the doom and gloom about the future. Sure, it’s doom and gloom for publishers, for printers, for bookshops. But not for authors.
Michael57
@Peter J: Oh, my comments are stupid, are they? Listen, Chuckles, I’ve been a professional bookseller for some time now and I’ve probably read more books than you’ve drawn breaths. The idea that Jeff Bezos, with that hideous laugh of his, should make zillions peddling a product no one needs, a product that provides a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, while writers in your view should be content to work for nothing, in what Jaron Lanier calls “digital Maoism”–all the intellectuals sent to till the fields, no value to their work–your credulity and stupid arrogance are appalling, honestly.
I just picture Nabokov writing his novels late at night standing up in the bathroom so his young family could sleep, wondering how he would make the rent, and then I flash to that huckster Bezos peddling the world crap it doesn’t need, getting everyone to agree that his kind of reading is the inevitable future. The mind reels.
Peter J
@Michael57: Have I commented on the number of books you read? No. But you made a stupid comment about e-reader owners.
What does Jeff Bezos have do with it, or the comment about his laugh?
The value of the writer’s work? In the current system, the writer gets about 7-15% of the price of a book. An author could by selling his book for a fifth, still make more money than the current system would give him.
I can picture Nabokov giving lessons in sports to afford writing, which is what he actually did.
But really, “I’ve been a professional bookseller for some time now”, explains your dislike for e-readers, Bezos, etc. It’s not the author who is going to lose. It’s you. So obviously you’re pissed.
Here’s a hint, with the invention of the printing press, a lot of monks had to find something else to do. You’ll have to do that too.
Or maybe you think that the printing press provided a solution to a problem that didn’t exist? I bet a lot of monks did.
Michael57
@Peter J: Explain to me the problem with physical books that e-readers solve. How are they an advance? You can list some advantages, you can list some disadvantages, but the physical book is still, for most people, the somewhat superior delivery system for information and art. And yet all this money is being thrown around to promote the idea that e-readers are obviously superior and their ascendancy is inevitable. Why is that?
I’ll tell you: it’s the thin end of the wedge. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple don’t care a whit about books. The publishing industry is too small to concern them. People spend more money on socks. To understand this story, think about gadgets; think about eyeballs; think about buy buttons, people getting used to doing commerce through Google; think about Wall Street dominance. Think about markets involving 90% of Americans, as opposed to the 10% who regularly read books.
E-readers will actually help my business. I own an independent bookstore. E-readers will put additional pressure on the big box stores, which expanded inappropriately into tertiary markets like mine where they had no business opening up 30,000 square foot palaces. Any significant move towards digital will kill them and leave the field to little mammals like yours truly. It won’t be a problem to fill 4000-8000 square feet of retail space with physical books and find customers to buy them. That’s the size bookstore that always worked, all across America, and that’s the model that will work again, even if the market goes 30% digital. But say bye-bye to Borders, say hello to a smaller B&N.
The problem will remain for authors — you truly are not understanding it. Too many people have no problem spending $10 at Dunkin Donuts on frozen lattes to get the kids to shut up in the back seat for 90 seconds, but think they’re being robbed if they have to pay that same $10 for a book an author worked two years on. There’s a real disconnect in this new world, a devaluation of the idea of value, a disrespect for work. Not only the author’s. Publishers and booksellers also add value to our literary ecosystem. If you think our culture is stupid now, just wait. Have you ever had the experience of finding a book on Amazon that looked like just what you wanted, so you ordered it, but when you got it it was just a crappy self-published book rife with errors, poorly written? That’s your world without publishers and physical bookstores. Good luck in it.