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Originally Posted by stumped
we are drifting off topic, so all I will say on respect for copyright is don't confuse supply and demand. the demand for pirated media in english is in the west. It's not fixable by making it harder to set up servers- that's like thinking building a bigger wall will stop americans from wanting to consume cocaine.
the fix is to make legal stuff more accessible and fairly priced as has already happened with music. Folks don't pirate CDs any more , now that they can have unlimited legit streaming for $10 per month. and why go to the hassle of downloading a pirate show if its on netflix. ( and you have your neighbour's password  )
e-books are out there on download sites, millions of them, and even if DRM was super-hardened, new copies of new books would leak via review copies, ARC....
a bigger, better library lending system , with some recompense for authors built in, would help - which brings us back to what are KKR's plans for Overdrive.
I'd sign up tomorrow for a netflix for books type deal |
I liked netflix a lot back when they had a much bigger catalogue, but their catalogue has been reducing for years. Content providers don't want to put content they can easily sell on such sites, or they want to keep the best for their own sites.
This is the same issue that eBook subscription sites face. Authors who are successful selling their books, generally don't want them on cheap all-you-can-eat subscription services. Maybe old backlist books that no one is buying anymore. The same issue for library books. Libraries want to control cost because readers don't want to pay, ergo the authors don't get the compensation they want.
The big issue that libraries face is the increase in book sales over the past 60 years. When libraries were a much bigger percentage of the average book sales, they had a lot more influence. Heck, at one time, when libraries first started, a diverse collection of books was fairly rare and reserved for the wealthy. That was true even into the late 1800's. Even up through the 1950's, unless you lived in some place like NYC in the US, it was difficult for an individual to buy any of the vast majority of books put out each year.
Now, that libraries account for perhaps a percentage point of book sales, not so much. Libraries are getting squeezed on both sides. They don't get the funding they use to and publishers aren't as keen to sell to them as they use to be.
As far as the whole "fairly priced" thing goes, there is no price that beats free. There is a percentage of the population who is going to pirate regardless. The question is can you come up with a business model that works for all parties, authors and readers. If I were to compare business models to the business models from 40 years ago, I would say that subscription services fit into the niche that discount bookstores and used bookstores use to fill. But the enabler for discount bookstores was publishers wanting to unload books that were just taking up warehouse space. That's not the case with eBooks. So the subscription ebook niche is more old backlist and tier two authors.