[GregS]

Steve and Dale thanks for the replies.

In one sense what I have said is not practical to implement, mind you if someplace like Cuba or Venezuela wanted to become the world hub of epublishing, it would not be hard for them to do so, but it is extremely unlikely.

At the moment ebook publishing is artificially constrained, as well as suffering the pangs of its own development. Epub standards (and other more specialized standards are needed as time goes on), and at least DRM (as crippled literature) should be device and software independent (how that might come about may be far more difficult).

Standards, Copyright, micro-cash and DRM/ownership-receipting, hang around our necks like millstones. Why us?

Why is this not such a problem in other digital industries, such as software?

Yet with ebooks these things are immensely prominent. What is it about literature that creates these things as obstacles where elsewhere they hardly seem to matter?

Copyright, which is implemented differently around the world, has not been a big problem, but with ebooks it is. First because the readership is world world and so is the means of distribution, and second because we are a site of conflict.

A publisher holding copyright can keep a book out of the public's hands. By not printing it effectively the author is denied royalties and the public their thoughts. With paper this was just an unavoidable by-product of the cost of production. Publishers needed control over the work, because producing it was expensive, it represented an investment and while publishers may well want every book they control inprint - it was never viable to do so.

Ebooks mean perpetual publication, reproductive costs and storage costs of the "plates" is negligible, the constraints of paper reproduction no longer hold. This alone causes a huge tension between public and private interests - the response by industry has been extraordinarily protectionist not just in DRM but also in getting in some places copyright extended in its favour and completely alienable (the rights passing from the author and edition to the companies now deemed as living beings and having those rights exclusively).

The clever contract now can effectively deny the author income (one of the reasons copyright was established in the first place), deny the public reading material, and give retail/publishers virtual unending monopoly over our art and literature (I consider 70years that excessive).

The fact is this is all coming to a head because of promise (it has a way to go yet) of eink and epaper. I have tried for more than twenty years to read computer screens without success, between flicker and battery-life I find it a complete non-goer, and have waited and waited for the technology to make electronic reading as good as paper reading.

That is the critical thing, where eink/epaper is likely to be in the next five years - we can all smell it, regardless of what is thought about current devices, the publishing industry can smell it, and finally it looks like a real and large audience/market is ready to come into being. Hence, what was niggling obstacles before start to become crushing problems.

The fact is up until now paper has been the supreme technology for storing and comprehending coherent thought. Despite the first computer revolution, the centuries old technology of pressing ink to wood fiber was superior - now that is changing, we not only have the beginnings of technology as good as paper, but with added bonus of the functionality of digital. Hence the problems suffered in the past now become insufferable and hold everything back.

The truth is no one will have a business model that can really work under such conditions, for the conditions have to be changed. It will change, there is no doubt, but when is an important for people already publishing and selling, for millions of potential authors, historians, academics, students etc.,. We don't get to live for ever, we need change within a reasonable time, and that means forcing the issue rather than waiting for the powers to be to change their minds.

We need to form an association of e-publishers, e-retailers, translators, editors, authors and readers, capable of presenting coherent policy to the world - there area it needs to cover is standards, micro-cash, copyright/anti-piracy and e-receipting/tagging/signatures of literature. They are all curable and this could well become the biggest market for a single product the world has ever seen. The way it is going at the moment it will take decades before this potential has any chance to succeed.

PS

On cheaper editions for the third world, you are very limited, obviously you can as a retailer/publisher cut your profits down for this sector, but this will hardly make a significant difference. We need a royalty payment system that is so easy to use, that it is possible for copyright holders to make charity royalty sacrifice, without them being ripped-off by shady operators. But that needs an organization capable of rating countries fairly and establishing a regime of fair percentages - and that is some way off yet.

The other side of things, is that third-world sellers (publishers, retailers and authors) need a reverse pricing structure, so that buying a ebook in Africa from Australia, I have to pay an uped percentage, to protect retailers in the developed world and deliver a good sum to the underdeveloped world (a small bias towards the latter would be understandable).

Sorry for another extra-long post.