Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Sorry, ZSB, you ask such a lot of questions that I don't know where to begin to respond to you. Would you like to take it one point at a time, and then we can have a proper discussion about the points that you raise? I can't answer you properly when you ask 101 questions in a single post.
Thanks!
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Very well. (excuse length, I like hearing myself type too much.)
Historical note.
Business models (like hand-crafted shoes) die out. Specifically, the guild system (which was very restrictive and disapproved of innovation rather a lot, and which oddly still exists in name in selected "artistry-related" industries) went the way of the dodo: even though there still are a few cobblers making shoes for the top end of the market, the tight control over competition and innovation disappeared because of mass production.
Similarly in publishing, I get the feeling there are certain content control restrictions in place (through the things the editors "like"). [The same is true in the classical music performance and the visual arts btw.]
The (recently beginning to decease) monopoly on printing, which existed before PoD and eInk came along, made sure content creators
had to be accepted by certain people in order to get published; these publishers frequently seem like culture industrialists to me, rather than people ensuring cultural diversity and innovation. This model is now beginning to become irrelevant (something that started happening about a decade ago in the music business), as anyone who knows how to use LaTeX now has the technical tools to "set" type, and anyone who knows how to use
autotune can record songs. Assuming typesetting is easier for reflowable books than for pbooks, the cost to make an ebook copy should be next to nothing if the pbook datafile already exists, so as soon as the book has been set once, it should (barring silly technical problems) work for all formats.
1. The current French legislation is an effort to ensure the current models remain, and to ensure the current publishers stay in relative positions of power; you can see when you look at ebook pricing that publishers are very, very hesitant to lower prices, even though distribution costs and printing costs go towards 0 (as soon as the infrastructure is in place to sell 1 ebook, you can also sell 400.000, as long as you have a fast enough connection and a decent pc or two), they claim they cannot lower prices because of "reasons". Now, while advertising costs still remain, "placement" costs at bookstores (whatever it used to take to ensure your book got shelfspace) should disappear, because webstores have infinite shelf space, and even advertising costs can go down, because of recommendation and "similar items" sites like shelfari, librarything, amazon, and the like. We already see something like this happening for music on Last.FM (duno if you're familiar with it), but word of mouth
works. Which means the only things that remain are "editors" for content and spelling/grammar/style.
Now, if you'll allow me to speculate, I suspect that book sell better when they are priced lower. So why don't they lower prices if they're interested in maximizing revenues (and so royalties) for the authors, rather than keeping the prices high for no real reason?
2. A second, not directly related point, which might offend a few people: most book writing these days (just like most pop music) is uninspired enough for me not to call it "artistry" anymore, so I'm curious
why is writing still so revered?
Sure, a happy few might still be writing something memorable that will still be interesting to read for the next generation, but when 90ish% of the market consists of porn novels and Dan Brown, I don't really see why they should be protected to the notable detriment of the rights of others.
They're (as a whole) doing little more than churning out a product that is pretty much fit only for single consumption, so what makes them important enough to warrant the fact that an entire private police force is set up that has the right to monitor my behavior in order to ensure I don't do something they disapprove of?
Again, this intermingling of governments and corporations, and corporate interests coming seems like something that might happen in fascist states, and something that is mostly in favor of those corporations, and not of the "writers" they employ.
3. Again,
if they cared about the authors getting more royalties they should give them better contracts, or lower the prices on ebooks (DRMed for all I care): the fact that they won't tells me they don't care one iota about them.
So why do you approve of legislation that does little to nothing "for" the author, and everything for the companies employing them?