Discussion: eBook Publishing Model proposals - Page 6

GregS · 12-19-2007, 07:03 PM

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.

mrkai · 12-19-2007, 09:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GregS

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.

This cannot happen GregS, until the publishing business starts being concerned with, and about, the needs of customers that wish to buy the product...as opposed to the current SOP where the energy and obsession is with people that are in fact not customers

sanders · 12-20-2007, 08:25 AM

I am about to publish a non-fiction book (a computer programming manual) and I'm considering an ebook version of it as well.

A few things to note (which most of you probably alreay know): the printing/paper costs are not the bulk of the price you pay for a book in the store. The store usually gets books from the publisher at a "deep discount" of 55% (and can even return unsold books to the publisher for a refund). Out of the remaining 45%, the publisher pays the author, the editor, the printer, the cover designer, etc. A 300-page book in large numbers costs only a dollar or two to print.

Using print-on-demand and a short discount of, say, 30%, I incur higher printing fees (about $4 for a 300-page book) but no stocking costs; in the end, this leads to higher net per book (say, about $10 for a $22.99 book).

However, ebooks do not need to be stored in brick-and-mortar stores. I could publish the pbook and offer the ebook for download from my own site, at the same price I would get for the pbook; yet the consensus on this forum seems to be that an ebook should only cost a few dollars, tops. Include the risk that an entire class of students will buy one single copy of my ebook and put the pdf on their Iliads, and this makes me hesitant to go that route. Especially for technical/textbook material, the "share copies of the PDF" problem sounds like a real risk.

Can you say anything to convince me? :-)

Steven Lyle Jordan · 12-20-2007, 09:20 AM

In truth, probably not.

You accurately summed up the market as-is for books and e-books, most importantly, the fact that there is a "risk" of piracy. As we've been saying around here, e-book publishers have to figure out a way to deal with and accept the expected losses that come with electronic files, just as they do in print.

If you are selling an e-book, and concerned about one purchaser sharing their e-books with too many, you may need to look into (dare I say it?) a way to secure your copies with DRM (say, using the PDF passwords function, going through a DRM-capable publisher, or tying your books to specific hardware like Sony or Amazon). However, there are other ways of trying to deal with the issue, such as adding value to the e-book to make it more palatable to buy it... issuing a "validation certificate" to each purchaser... lowering the e-book price, to remove the "burden" of paying for it...

...or, simply appealing to their sense of honesty and asking them not to rip you off.

No, none of these methods are perfect. Guess what? There are no perfect methods to remove "shrinkage" in the print world, either. In the end, all you can do is take some steps and hope for the best.

If you really feel that producing e-books will be counter-productive for you, wait. The market will get better down the road... maybe now is not the right time for you. But if you're willing to take a chance that you can figure out the best selling model for e-books, netting maximum profits and minimum losses, and coincidentally lead the way for the rest of us... go for it.

Liviu_5 · 12-20-2007, 10:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanders

Can you say anything to convince me? :-)

To me the determinant things would be:

1: what is my market?
2: how many copied do I want to sell at a minimum?
3: how do I get people to look at my book?

Discussing about publishing an e-book (or more generally a book) in a vacuum has no point. Worrying about people ripping the book are useless if you cannot sell the book anyway, or if very few people see it...

nekokami · 12-20-2007, 12:06 PM

I'd suggest two things:

1 - when we say an ebook is worth a "few" dollars (I usually think around US$5), we're talking about fiction, not technical books

2 - Look into "social DRM", by which I mean a system that embeds the purchaser's identity in the text, for all to see. Include a valid email address (confirmed by response of purchaser) and phone number. You don't have to worry about making it impossible to remove. This will slow up anyone that more customary DRM would work on, and won't irritate your customers nearly as much as regular DRM.

AnemicOak · 12-20-2007, 02:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nekokami

I'd suggest two things:

1 - when we say an ebook is worth a "few" dollars (I usually think around US$5), we're talking about fiction, not technical books

$5-$6 is probably a good price overall, although I don't personally mind the pricing used by S&S where new HC equivalent releases usually sell for $10-$12 & PB equivalent releases are usually $3-$5.

bingle · 12-20-2007, 04:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nekokami

2 - Look into "social DRM", by which I mean a system that embeds the purchaser's identity in the text, for all to see. Include a valid email address (confirmed by response of purchaser) and phone number. You don't have to worry about making it impossible to remove. This will slow up anyone that more customary DRM would work on, and won't irritate your customers nearly as much as regular DRM.

I seem to be the only person that feels this way, but as I user I would be more worried about social DRM than the anti-social sort ;-)

The reason being that 'real' DRM prevents accidents. I can't accidentally share a file for the entire world to see, or accidentally copy it to my laptop, which then gets stolen. Also, if something *does* happen, well, that's too bad for the publisher (to the tune of a few lost sales), but it's not bad for me.

On the other hand, with Social DRM, it's easy to imagine a scenario where your file gets accidentally shared somehow - a family member installs file-sharing software, or your computer/device gets hacked or physically stolen. Now your personal info is out in the wild, and your reputation has suffered irreparable harm. Depending on the info that gets out, too, the financial damage could be considerable.

nekokami · 12-20-2007, 05:27 PM

bingle, I can see your point, but this is true of a lot of info that might be on your laptop or other system. You can put passwords on your computer. You can even put passwords on individual files, if you want to, effectively DRMing your purchased ebooks. All this is in your control as an individual. And that's where I'd rather have it.

But I recognize your point of view, and I think it was good to bring it up.

bingle · 12-20-2007, 06:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nekokami

bingle, I can see your point, but this is true of a lot of info that might be on your laptop or other system. You can put passwords on your computer. You can even put passwords on individual files, if you want to, effectively DRMing your purchased ebooks. All this is in your control as an individual. And that's where I'd rather have it.

That's a good point - individuals can opt-in to as much lockdown as they like.

I definitely feel better about social DRM from a trust point of view - it doesn't seem as customer-hostile as the other sort. And I'm sure everyone knows that I'm not a fan of regular DRM ;-) But I think the downsides of any method should be considered.

sanders · 12-21-2007, 04:30 AM

Some very interesting options here.

How do e-readers handle password-protected PDFs? Can you enter a password on an Iliad for example? Will users consider this an "acceptable" hindrance?

Also, I like the "social DRM" part. I understand the problems with reputations being at stake, but perhaps this will make people more careful. After all, with a "non-personalized" PDF being shared, the publisher/author has the same problem, but the "culprit" can more easily shrug it off.

I can see setting up a server which, when a user buys the eBook, re-generates the PDF file with "Registered to John Doe (thank you for buying!)" on the title page. On the other hand, the problem with "tech" material is that there's usually a close group of people who buys the book at the same time, so I guess the normal "sharing situation" of "I liked this book, here's a copy for you to read" goes to "Let's all put in 50 cents and register the book to "University XYZ book club" and all use it for this semester".

Regards,
Sander

tompe · 12-21-2007, 06:28 AM

Students have always shared book if they were to expensive (that is a copy of the book done in a copying machine is much less expensive).

We used a book in a logic course that had a key that was used to correct exercises via the net. The book was freely available as pdf but to pass the course you had to have a unique key and two persons could not use the key at the same time. That is one way to get people to buy a new book.

Maybe you could sell sets of books for one class to the teacher and then they could collect the money for using the book?

Steven Lyle Jordan · 12-21-2007, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanders

Some very interesting options here.

How do e-readers handle password-protected PDFs? Can you enter a password on an Iliad for example? Will users consider this an "acceptable" hindrance?

I confess, I don't know how Iliads handle PDFs and password protection. (By the way, don't call an Iliad an "e-reader," or you'll incur the wrath of Jon!

Call it an e-book reader.) PDF files can be created with a password to open (or edit) the file. For small enough distribution, you could create individual files with unique passwords for each.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tompe

We used a book in a logic course that had a key that was used to correct exercises via the net. The book was freely available as pdf but to pass the course you had to have a unique key and two persons could not use the key at the same time. That is one way to get people to buy a new book.

An excellent way to go about it!

Amalthia · 12-21-2007, 02:28 PM

I knew a girl that bought a 180 dollar book for college, paid the 20 dollars to use the copy machine and then took it back to the store. But really 180 for a book??? can't say I blame her. College books are WAY too expensive. I get the reasons why, small market and all that but I think students are less likely to cheat if they can actually afford to buy the book.

Steven Lyle Jordan · 12-21-2007, 02:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amothea

But really 180 for a book??? can't say I blame her. College books are WAY too expensive.

That's an issue unto itself, one more aspect of the U.S. education system that needs serious attention. It's still my hope that converting textbooks to electronic formats will go a long way towards improving the cost situation, but it won't do the trick by itself.

12-20-2007, 08:25 AM	#78
sanders Connoisseur Posts: 66 Karma: 918 Join Date: Dec 2007 Device: iRex Iliad	Non-fiction I am about to publish a non-fiction book (a computer programming manual) and I'm considering an ebook version of it as well. A few things to note (which most of you probably alreay know): the printing/paper costs are not the bulk of the price you pay for a book in the store. The store usually gets books from the publisher at a "deep discount" of 55% (and can even return unsold books to the publisher for a refund). Out of the remaining 45%, the publisher pays the author, the editor, the printer, the cover designer, etc. A 300-page book in large numbers costs only a dollar or two to print. Using print-on-demand and a short discount of, say, 30%, I incur higher printing fees (about $4 for a 300-page book) but no stocking costs; in the end, this leads to higher net per book (say, about $10 for a $22.99 book). However, ebooks do not need to be stored in brick-and-mortar stores. I could publish the pbook and offer the ebook for download from my own site, at the same price I would get for the pbook; yet the consensus on this forum seems to be that an ebook should only cost a few dollars, tops. Include the risk that an entire class of students will buy one single copy of my ebook and put the pdf on their Iliads, and this makes me hesitant to go that route. Especially for technical/textbook material, the "share copies of the PDF" problem sounds like a real risk. Can you say anything to convince me? :-)

12-21-2007, 04:30 AM	#86
sanders Connoisseur Posts: 66 Karma: 918 Join Date: Dec 2007 Device: iRex Iliad	Buyers clubs Some very interesting options here. How do e-readers handle password-protected PDFs? Can you enter a password on an Iliad for example? Will users consider this an "acceptable" hindrance? Also, I like the "social DRM" part. I understand the problems with reputations being at stake, but perhaps this will make people more careful. After all, with a "non-personalized" PDF being shared, the publisher/author has the same problem, but the "culprit" can more easily shrug it off. I can see setting up a server which, when a user buys the eBook, re-generates the PDF file with "Registered to John Doe (thank you for buying!)" on the title page. On the other hand, the problem with "tech" material is that there's usually a close group of people who buys the book at the same time, so I guess the normal "sharing situation" of "I liked this book, here's a copy for you to read" goes to "Let's all put in 50 cents and register the book to "University XYZ book club" and all use it for this semester". Regards, Sander

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12-19-2007, 07:03 PM	#76
GregS Zealot Posts: 107 Karma: 308 Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Perth Australia Device: EZ Reader 5", Iliad	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.

12-20-2007, 09:20 AM	#79
Steven Lyle Jordan Grand Sorcerer Posts: 8,478 Karma: 5171130 Join Date: Jan 2006 Device: none	In truth, probably not. You accurately summed up the market as-is for books and e-books, most importantly, the fact that there is a "risk" of piracy. As we've been saying around here, e-book publishers have to figure out a way to deal with and accept the expected losses that come with electronic files, just as they do in print. If you are selling an e-book, and concerned about one purchaser sharing their e-books with too many, you may need to look into (dare I say it?) a way to secure your copies with DRM (say, using the PDF passwords function, going through a DRM-capable publisher, or tying your books to specific hardware like Sony or Amazon). However, there are other ways of trying to deal with the issue, such as adding value to the e-book to make it more palatable to buy it... issuing a "validation certificate" to each purchaser... lowering the e-book price, to remove the "burden" of paying for it... ...or, simply appealing to their sense of honesty and asking them not to rip you off. No, none of these methods are perfect. Guess what? There are no perfect methods to remove "shrinkage" in the print world, either. In the end, all you can do is take some steps and hope for the best. If you really feel that producing e-books will be counter-productive for you, wait. The market will get better down the road... maybe now is not the right time for you. But if you're willing to take a chance that you can figure out the best selling model for e-books, netting maximum profits and minimum losses, and coincidentally lead the way for the rest of us... go for it.

12-20-2007, 12:06 PM	#81
nekokami fruminous edugeek Posts: 6,745 Karma: 551260 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Northeast US Device: iPad, eBw 1150	I'd suggest two things: 1 - when we say an ebook is worth a "few" dollars (I usually think around US$5), we're talking about fiction, not technical books 2 - Look into "social DRM", by which I mean a system that embeds the purchaser's identity in the text, for all to see. Include a valid email address (confirmed by response of purchaser) and phone number. You don't have to worry about making it impossible to remove. This will slow up anyone that more customary DRM would work on, and won't irritate your customers nearly as much as regular DRM.

12-20-2007, 05:27 PM	#84
nekokami fruminous edugeek Posts: 6,745 Karma: 551260 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Northeast US Device: iPad, eBw 1150	bingle, I can see your point, but this is true of a lot of info that might be on your laptop or other system. You can put passwords on your computer. You can even put passwords on individual files, if you want to, effectively DRMing your purchased ebooks. All this is in your control as an individual. And that's where I'd rather have it. But I recognize your point of view, and I think it was good to bring it up.

12-21-2007, 06:28 AM	#87
tompe Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,452 Karma: 7185064 Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Linköpng, Sweden Device: Kindle Voyage, Nexus 5, Kindle PW	Students have always shared book if they were to expensive (that is a copy of the book done in a copying machine is much less expensive). We used a book in a logic course that had a key that was used to correct exercises via the net. The book was freely available as pdf but to pass the course you had to have a unique key and two persons could not use the key at the same time. That is one way to get people to buy a new book. Maybe you could sell sets of books for one class to the teacher and then they could collect the money for using the book?

12-21-2007, 02:28 PM	#89
Amalthia Wizard Posts: 1,185 Karma: 32196 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Anchorage, AK Device: Sony Reader PRS-505, PRS-650, PRS-T3, Pocketbook HD2	I knew a girl that bought a 180 dollar book for college, paid the 20 dollars to use the copy machine and then took it back to the store. But really 180 for a book??? can't say I blame her. College books are WAY too expensive. I get the reasons why, small market and all that but I think students are less likely to cheat if they can actually afford to buy the book.