OverDrive sold to private equity firm KKR

[Apache]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I've seen lots of folks highly recommend it.
I don't watch linear TV at all but I did point it out to my brother who finally got tired of cable price increases.

I tried Sling Blue during the first season of KRYPTON to DVR and binge but nothing else caught my eye. I like their model of skinny bundles but I have no use for it. Between the ondemand streaming services, gaming, and ebooks, I have no eyeball-hours left for "appointment TV."

( I did try YouTube premium to watch IMPULSE but it proved to be the worst ondemand service I ever tried. Good show but the service was awful.)

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I dropped cable TV this past fall. I use Hulu Live for TV (mostly sports). I've got Disney+ free (with Verizon unlimited), Hulu, Prime Video, Apple+ free (with the purchase of my iPad Pro). I had Playstation VUE, but switched to Hulu Live when Sony pulled the plug.

I've had Netflix and dropped it when I realized that I hadn't watched it in six months and there wasn't anything that I particularly wanted to watch. I suspect I'll drop Apple+ since I haven't watched anything and have no plans to watch it. I did like the new Star Wars show on Disney+ and there are several announced shows that appeal to me, so I'll likely keep it.

I find that I'm more likely to buy movies and TV shows that appeal to me. I've got a decent sized collection of both movies and old TV shows. I bought the big HBO mini series that appeal to me, such as Band of Brothers, Rome and Adams on DVD. I've never really gotten into binge watching. I read a lot more than I watch TV.

The main reason I went with YouTube TV was the DVR. There isn't an extra charge for it. Most other Live Streaming Services charge extra for DVR and limit how much you can store. YouTube TV does not charge extra for DVR. You can store as much as you want. After 9 months recordings will be deleted. If I haven't watched it in 9 months I am probably not going to.
I record anything I want to watch on YouTube TV and watch it when I want to. Plus I can fast forward through the commercials.
Apache

[John F]

Originally Posted by Apache

...
I record anything I want to watch on YouTube TV and watch it when I want to. Plus I can fast forward through the commercials.
Apache

I have YouTube TV also, and on some things I "record" I cannot fast forward through commercials.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by John F

I have YouTube TV also, and on some things I "record" I cannot fast forward through commercials.

It's a network agreement thing, as some "recordings" are using the on-demand stream instead. It's improving though, as I think CBS recently stopped doing this for most, if not all of their shows. (It might not have been CBS, my memory is fuzzy.)

[Apache]

It was CBS that agreed to allow fast forwarding through commercials. CBS was the only one, that I recorded, that did not allow skipping. YouTube TV now has PBS and PBS Kids. They started in December.
Apache

[ezdiy]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I tend to disagree with you regarding piracy. I have yet to see any evidence that piracy is a major issue for book publishers. First off, while piracy does exists for paper books, typically in various 3rd world countries, it's a non factor in markets like the US and UK. So piracy is mostly an eBook thing and eBooks is only around 20% of the book market the last time I looked. Publishers charge what they think will give them the most profit.

My rant is indeed biased towards ebook market, and its sorry state of ridiculous pricing pretty much killing it. Print is a kind of different can of worms, as the audience for dead trees is far bigger - for now. If we were to draw comparison to music again, we're in 99 - napster exists, mp3s are kinda shitty and low bitrate, and far more people simply buy cds still, mostly because everyone is on expensive dialup (e-readers are kinda huge upfront investment).

Pirate scans indeed don't register all that much in grand scheme of things once we abandon the ebook context, though there are notable exceptions (such as textbooks or journals).

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by ezdiy

My rant is indeed biased towards ebook market, and its sorry state of ridiculous pricing pretty much killing it. Print is a kind of different can of worms, as the audience for dead trees is far bigger - for now. If we were to draw comparison to music again, we're in 99 - napster exists, mp3s are kinda shitty and low bitrate, and far more people simply buy cds still, mostly because everyone is on expensive dialup (e-readers are kinda huge upfront investment).

Pirate scans indeed don't register all that much in grand scheme of things once we abandon the ebook context, though there are notable exceptions (such as textbooks or journals).

For the most part, eBook pricing matches paper pricing, so I don't really consider it ridiculous. It's only ridiculous if you assume that eBook ought to cost less because the cost of printing adds a lot, yet the data I've seen says that printing is a fairly small component of a book's price.

One thing to consider is that demographics for the big music consumers tends to be very different than the demographics for the big book consumers.

Looking at the Pew research survey, only 15% of Americans read more than 20 books a year, something that is has been fairly constant since 2011. I think it would be interesting to know what the percentage of big readers read ebooks verses audiobooks verses paper. I would also be interested in seeing the demographics of the big reader group. Last, I would say that I suspect that the Pew research survey does not capture the kids market very well.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by ezdiy

..
Pirate scans indeed don't register all that much in grand scheme of things once we abandon the ebook context...

partly because the quality of pirate book scans is generally dire, whereas the quality of pirated movies and TV shows is often very good ?

also, i could be wrong, but I don't think best selling book releases suffer from the geo stupidity of " you can't get it legally in your country for another 6 months"

e.g. Disney are apparently to dumb to realize that by the time they actually launch disney+ in europe , millions of star wars fans will already have downloaded millions of copies of Maladorian/baby yoga,and wont then bother to pay for the channel

[John F]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

For the most part, eBook pricing matches paper pricing, so I don't really consider it ridiculous. It's only ridiculous if you assume that eBook ought to cost less because the cost of printing adds a lot, yet the data I've seen says that printing is a fairly small component of a book's price.

...

Any chance you could share the data?

Doing a quick Google, printing costs do seem significant ( all I could find was small runs), and than there is shipping, returns, ...

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by stumped

partly because the quality of pirate book scans is generally dire, whereas the quality of pirated movies and TV shows is often very good ?

also, i could be wrong, but I don't think best selling book releases suffer from the geo stupidity of " you can't get it legally in your country for another 6 months"

e.g. Disney are apparently to dumb to realize that by the time they actually launch disney+ in europe , millions of star wars fans will already have downloaded millions of copies of Maladorian/baby yoga,and wont then bother to pay for the channel

1- eBook piracy has long moved past scan&ocr. Just as video piracy has moved past DVD/BD ripping. For video they rip the rental streams on day one.

2- Print books suffer something bigger than georestrictions: the three month launch window, with it's sell or return bar. And also lack of support for anything but the pre-annointed "best sellers" and legacy big name authors. Video streaming gets a lot of post-theater revenue from rentals, disk releases, and streaming due to word of mouth. A movie might underperform in theaters but rake in decent profits in the secondary markets. Books are either early sellers or they get moved into the "two copies in a shelf somewhere", "special order" or simply relegated to online. Both businesses are blockbuster driven but video has a big secondary market and books a tiny one.

3- Disney+ didn't delay their international launches out of strategy but out of necessity. In the US, they own BAMTECH, one of the premiere video streaming backend companies, which they bought from MLB in 2017.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybr.../#78a745d94a5d

They also own Hulu so their US streaming infrastructure is huge.
Outside the US...not as big.
Nonetheless, they beta tested Disney+ in the Netherlands before the US.

https://www.fanthatracks.com/news/fi...e-netherlands/

They are opening globally as fast as they can build up the backend in each region. It just isn't easy. The required bandwidth and datacenter capacity is enormous. eBooks are small downloads so serving the entire world from one datacenter only requires licensing rights. Video, however, needs dozens of data centers. Check this for how Netflix operates:

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/o...-live-the-cdn/

Netflix content is handled on the company’s own equipment, installed within ISPs’ sites.

Since Netflix spends most of its time serving up the same shows to lots of people, these are cached close to the customers, where they can be served quickly and reliably.

The files are stored on AWS servers, but the actual work of serving the streams is handled by region.

Not simple.
So newcomers like Disney+, HBOMAX, and PEACOCK can't launch globally unless they delay the markets where they're ready until the last market is ready. And that is strategically unwise, since they're already late, and cost them money and customers.

People properly castigated NOOK for not going global when they could but video is different. And way more expensive so making money as soon as possible is a must.

[stumped]

I appreciate that video streaming needs big infrastructure, but simultaneous worldwide launches are surely the best anti-piracy strategy. All netflix originals launch worldwide, so there's less motivation to go seek out a pirate copy. But if a show or movie is not legally available in a country , folks will pirate it. The only alternative being to live like a hermit for months and never glance at a newspaper or magazine, and never join in office gossip to avoid spoilers.
Not such an issue with books, it's quite easy to know that a big author has a new title out , but not to stumble across plot spoilers

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by John F

Any chance you could share the data?

Doing a quick Google, printing costs do seem significant ( all I could find was small runs), and than there is shipping, returns, ...

It's been discussed and posted here a couple of times specifically by someone who worked for a publisher at one time. As far as small runs go, yes there is a reason that indies charge $18 for a paperback copy and $5 for an ebook copy. Small runs are expensive. I posted at least one article at the time, but can't find it at the moment. Yes, it's hard to get past all the self-publishing advise ads in google. You will probably have more success digging through the threads here to find it.

I dug around a bit and found this article. It's not the same article that I posted then, but it give a concrete example.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/bo...lishing-ebooks

basically, in 2011, a hardback cost $3.50, to print and distribute a hardback book. That's both the printing cost and the cost to ship the book to various bookstores.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by stumped

partly because the quality of pirate book scans is generally dire, whereas the quality of pirated movies and TV shows is often very good?

I think you have that backwards. Pirated ebooks tend to be the same as retail, stripped of DRM and uploaded.

There are fan scans of older books that haven't gotten an ebook release as yet.

also, i could be wrong, but I don't think best selling book releases suffer from the geo stupidity of " you can't get it legally in your country for another 6 months"

e-books suffer from the 'geo stupidity' of "you can't get it legally in your country, period." Try searching Amazon US for Kindle versions of Michael Moorcock's Elric books for instance. They are available at Amazon UK.

A literary horror novel I want to read, The Town That Forgot How to Breathe is available cheaply in the UK, but not available at all in the USA or Canada (and the author is Canadian).

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I think you have that backwards. Pirated ebooks tend to be the same as retail, stripped of DRM and uploaded.

There are fan scans of older books that haven't gotten an ebook release as yet.



e-books suffer from the 'geo stupidity' of "you can't get it legally in your country, period." Try searching Amazon US for Kindle versions of Michael Moorcock's Elric books for instance. They are available at Amazon UK.

A literary horror novel I want to read, The Town That Forgot How to Breathe is available cheaply in the UK, but not available at all in the USA or Canada (and the author is Canadian).

The first two or three Harry Potter books were available in the UK 6 months before they were available in the US.

There are two very different things going on with "pirate" ebooks. First, we have what I call pirate ebooks, i.e. someone selling eBooks that they are not authorized to sell and pocketing. Then you have fan scans that are frequently available for free download.

I have no experience with the pirate sites, but fan scans can range from excellent quality to terrible. A lot depends on how many people are interested enough in the book to take the existing scan, make corrections and upload the result. It's not much different that Gutenberg, except of course that Gutenberg does it for books out of copyright and fan scan tend to do it with books in copyright.

My personal take on pirate sites, ignoring the ethical questions, is why would you give your financial information to someone you know is a thief? Is saving a couple of bucks really worth the risk?

[John F]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

It's been discussed and posted here a couple of times specifically by someone who worked for a publisher at one time. As far as small runs go, yes there is a reason that indies charge $18 for a paperback copy and $5 for an ebook copy. Small runs are expensive. I posted at least one article at the time, but can't find it at the moment. Yes, it's hard to get past all the self-publishing advise ads in google. You will probably have more success digging through the threads here to find it.

I dug around a bit and found this article. It's not the same article that I posted then, but it give a concrete example.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/bo...lishing-ebooks

basically, in 2011, a hardback cost $3.50, to print and distribute a hardback book. That's both the printing cost and the cost to ship the book to various bookstores.

Thank you for link. I wasn't sure how to take your "fairly small" comment.

[ezdiy]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

My personal take on pirate sites, ignoring the ethical questions, is why would you give your financial information to someone you know is a thief? Is saving a couple of bucks really worth the risk?

You confuse pirate sites for scam sites. Internet piracy is overwhelmingly zero cost as it circumvents all licensing. Ironically, amazon is the largest scam site in this regard - as it is a host to thousands of "authors" selling either public domain works, or straight plagiarized copyrighted work under different name.

As for "good reasons" to pirate - being a cheapskate aside, it often is just geographical (or publishing - no legit ebook available) stupidity.

As for pricing policy, the dazzling thing is that eBooks often cost *more* than paperback, and publisher gets significantly larger cut for an ebook as their distribution cost is nil in there. This difference is most marked when you compare Big5 cartel ($10-$20 per ebook) vs non-cartel (small houses, self-published on amazon etc) pricing (about $1-$5 per ebook). Paperback usually costs $10-$20 range for both.