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Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious
Yes, but how many new startups have access to the media catalogue of the giant, encumbent ones? If you have an interesting business model, but you can't provide what consumers are looking for, how can you compete?
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If you can't provide what customers are looking for, you don't have an interesting business model. If this only works by strongarming support from companies that don't like the idea, it's not a business model; it's socialized content management. (Which may not be evil, but the point is, if it can't be done by individual businesses, it's pretty much broken.)
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Well, you could check it out on your PC and then, after the first chapter has convinced you, confirm the purchase and have it on your ereader :-)
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So... I can read a sample in circumstances entirely different from those in which I read books. Um. Not interested in "access free sample that you can't use on your ereader."
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The content providers would not know who corresponds to each account (because accounts are generated by sellers). Each media seller would know who buys what (from that seller), like it happens now.
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You're proposing that all sellers combine their resources to a single point of access. (They'd have to, to avoid the same person sampling from different sellers' accounts.) Which means everyone has access to all the data used.
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Yes. However, would you use your credit card data with a public computer?
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Me? No. But I have a computer at home. People do, apparently, use library computers to pay bills and such. How insecure are you thinking this interface is?
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Moreover, since we are considering the "online preview" scenario, who says that the preview has to be 100% complete? It could be the first half of a book/movie/record, for instance.
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A lot of books at Smashwords already have a "download first 25-50% free" option, and it works on any ereaders. Kindle has a "download first chapter free" option. You're suggesting a more restricted version of those that requires an incredibly complicated infrastructure and is legally mandatory?
"Free total content before you buy" is a potential pitch to customers, although content providers would squawk. "Free partial content before you buy" just gets tagged as a nuisance by both sides, especially with all the restrictions you're proposing. Content providers believe they're providing enough free sample content now; customers sometimes think not, but they're not mostly interested in jumping through a bunch of hoops (register here, then there, install this software on your machine, only view in some formats, etc) to get more of a sample.
If they're that hard-pressed to find out if they like it, they'll ask someone they know. Which is what we currently do.
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I'm trying to improve on what is currently available to consumers, without damaging companies.
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Other than the cost of building and maintaining access software, tracking user records looking for fraud, and watching out for the Killer Plugin that would allow complete access to all their content.
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I suspect this "use case" is so rare that its weight on the definition of any new business model in bookselling is negligible. How many of us have the reading speed, free time and desire) to engage in full-immersion reading of a whole medium-length book over a single day?
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Apparently, you don't spend a lot of time with English Lit college majors. Not all of us has that much free time, but I'm not a superspeed reader. I don't read a book on the occasional day when I've scrounged up free time... I read 20-40k words almost every day.
What I give up for it? Well, all that time standing in the train waiting for it to get to my job. TV time... the family watches TV while I read. Movies... I don't think I've seen a movie in the theatre in the last year and a half. Games. Concerts. Cooking time.
It's a matter of priorities, and I'm not alone in arranging most of my nonworking time to be focused on reading. And no matter how rare my situation is--if publishers heard any number of people saying "free content if I can read it inside of 24 hours? Score!" that'd be the end of the program.