01-03-2008, 09:05 AM | #286 | |
Books and more books
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The publishing industry is doing very well despite perceptions to the contrary, so it has no reason to change, hence high e-book prices and drm and negligible digital revenue. The smaller specialized houses are the ones who will push toward e-books, but even there I just do not see a big market for them to more than scrape by with e-content; the big money still comes from print There is a big cachet in being print published by a mainstream house (or genre house for that matter), so authors will not go independent unless they have no choice and they want to publish a book and for whatever reason they cannot get a contract for that (for established authors that happens when a series is not performing so publishers drop later volumes and then it's very, very hard to find another publisher to pick it up) |
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01-03-2008, 09:28 AM | #287 | ||
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Alan |
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01-03-2008, 09:55 AM | #288 | ||
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As a reader, none of those things mean anything to me. You are confusing value to the author versus value to the reader. As a reader, none of those things justify paying a publisher. Quote:
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01-03-2008, 09:59 AM | #289 | |
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DRM is never transparent nor is it easy to use - especially when the system breaks (like when Mobipocket's DRM servers crash, or when a company goes out of business). Try reading that DRMed eBook on a reader that Mobipocket doesn't support (which is most eBook reading devices) and see how easy and hassle-free it is. |
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01-03-2008, 10:01 AM | #290 | |
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Fictionwise does better. Mobipocket doesn't even have a Mac-supported reader (although they do make it possible to at least purchase books for a hand-held). Lucky for me that my three main sources of books are all DRM-free -- Baen, Gutenberg, and Fictionwise multi-format (in that order). Xenophon |
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01-03-2008, 10:04 AM | #291 | |
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01-03-2008, 10:06 AM | #292 | |
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Publishers (for the most part) have a very poor record of filtering for good content. And we don't need them to get payments to the authors. They are unnecessary middlemen for that. |
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01-03-2008, 10:15 AM | #293 | |||
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I do not like DRM either. But so far I do not see an alternative for authors and publishers. Unprotected ebooks can be copied indefinitely. Paper books cannot. There has to be some kind of protection against unauthorized use of books. Do you have a better idea? Alan |
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01-03-2008, 10:39 AM | #294 | |
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Why do you think publishers have a poor record? I think you are totally wrong and that they have a good record. A couple of exceptions is not proof of a poor record. |
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01-03-2008, 12:02 PM | #295 | ||
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The alternative would be to make the legal product a better alternative to the illegal one - lower price and widespread availability would be the most important here - and then perhaps appeal to the conscience of those who download illegally. Quote:
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01-03-2008, 12:20 PM | #296 | |
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The above kind of reasoning is one of the main reasons commercial e-books are such an insignificant part of the publishing industry and why I am pretty confident that until external pressures come upon it, e-books are going to stay insignificant. For myself and I guess many book lovers, I value the most the ability to read a book whenever and wherever I want and with e-books this includes on any device of my choosing, so I will stick to non-drm, convertible-drm and print books for now. |
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01-03-2008, 12:46 PM | #297 | ||
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01-03-2008, 12:54 PM | #298 | |||
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But the majority of people won't do it. People are lazy. Most won't try to break any protection on DVDs or ebooks because it involves doing some kind of work. I live in Germany. When I go to the supermarket to buy groceries, I will find those big shopping carts in front of the supermarket. They remain there even after the market has closed. Anybody could take them easily and without problems. And those carts are expensive - a couple of hundred dollars each. But that does not happen, except for very rare occasions. Why? Those carts are being chained together. You have to put an Euro or some plastic chip into each cart to unchain them. And this is effective theft protection. The same with DRM. Of course you can circumvent it in many ways. But most people does not even bother to try. And the majority counts. That's the point. Quote:
You do it, many of us here do it, too, but the majority won't. Ereaders are still some nerd gadgets. They are not widely advertised, not prominently featured in the media and are hard to find in any physical shop. They are niche products. DRM on the other hand is not an issue for most people. But it is in the music business, because there DRM protected files are much less easy to use. An exception is the iPod and iTunes. And guess what - both sell big time. We might not like DRM (I do not). It might have some serious flaws in it (especially if the publisher is not available anymore and we got a new ereader). But I cannot see any alternative. Lower prices are fine and will attract more people to ebooks. Sure. But as long as you can get any book anywhere for free, not enough will bother to pay. Maybe digital watermarks might be an alternative. They do not prevent anybody from making illegal copies, but at least everybody will know, who was the original buyer and copyright holders can try to blame them for illegal activities. Time will tell. Alan Last edited by Alan; 01-03-2008 at 12:59 PM. |
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01-03-2008, 01:12 PM | #299 | ||
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01-03-2008, 01:17 PM | #300 | ||
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