Is the e-book threatening the future of our literary culture?

[ebookpirate]

DMcCunneyDennis--LIT is "more open" because it has been easily cracked. It certainly wasn't designed as open.

You can crack Mobi, too, and one of the other folks here wrote an app to do it.

Oh, Mobi's been cracked? thanx for telling me. but i don't think i want to add another bloated software on my computer. my computer resources are running out here with adobe's pdf reader software.


The Stones still get out on the road and play.

They go out and play with more frequency NOW!! But as i stated before when i posted "pre-mp3", they'd just laze around in their mansions and limousines cooing as the $$$'s rolled in, while watching their loyal fans get ripped off for $20 or more per album

I know a chap who is doing something like you suggest. His band has a couple of major label and a batch of indie label releases. They have a following, and make their living touring. He'd like you to buy their CDs, but if you rip them and share them with friends, he's cool with that, too: the more people who hear the music, the more will go to see them when they play.

I'm cool with that too. Most of the singers i like earn their money on the road. Ever heard of Melissa Ferrick or Emilie Autumn? Not many people do. But NOW, the "big stars" have to compete for my $$'s with other indie artists that consumers have found and loved outside the usual big 5 music cartel system. Alot more of the big stars ought to be earning their living on their feet, not their backs.

It's turning the industry model upside down. Before MP3s, that album was the product, and you played gigs to promote the album. Now we are seeing the albums promoting the gigs.

Good. As i said in the last paragraph, performers ought to PERFORM for a living; it would challenge them to make better music.

But meanwhile, how does that model translate for an author of books?

I'm not sure the pool of ad dollars is big enough. And if that's doable at all, it will be major publishers who can implement it. Smaller independent and folks self-publishing will be frozen out. They won't be able to attract advertisers. Advertisers place ads where they think the ads will generate sales, and be seen by a sufficient number of viewers interested in whatever it is they advertise.

Consumers want to open and read the books of authors who produce books that will make them turn the page or are useful to them in one way or another. Those authors with the most readers will obviously attract more advertisers whether or not the publisher is large or small. Can anyone say Baen? Obviously i'm not boy genius with all the kinks worked out with exactly which books should get the most advertising, but it IS obvious that ebooks are valuable just as mp3's are. it's just a matter of the proper form of payment exchange to the authors/publishers.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ebookpirate

DMcCunneyDennis--LIT is "more open" because it has been easily cracked. It certainly wasn't designed as open.

You can crack Mobi, too, and one of the other folks here wrote an app to do it.

Oh, Mobi's been cracked? thanx for telling me. but i don't think i want to add another bloated software on my computer. my computer resources are running out here with adobe's pdf reader software.

I have Mobi reader installed on my PDA in case there is content I want to read that is only in Mobi format. With the variety of platforms a reader exists for, Mobi is now the default standard ebook format. I don't bother with it on the desktop because I don't need it, but I have the resources if required.

The Stones still get out on the road and play.

They go out and play with more frequency NOW!! But as i stated before when i posted "pre-mp3", they'd just laze around in their mansions and limousines cooing as the $$$'s rolled in, while watching their loyal fans get ripped off for $20 or more per album

They got out on the road and played before. But when you are a multi-platinum act that fills stadiums, going out of the road isn't a snap "Let's go play" decision. It's an enormous undertaking.

And the Stones still play in part, I think, because Keith Richards and Ron Wood are old fashioned musicians who believe in the gig. Keith commented in an interview a while back that he could be 80 years old and in a wheelchair, but if people still wanted to see him he'd get out there and play. (There's certainly precedent: legendary guitarist Les Paul still does weekly NYC gigs with a jazz trio, and he's in his 90's...)

And there were stories about Richards and Wood dropping into clubs in NYC to jam, because they didn't want to lose their chops.

Bill Wyman retired from touring because he was tired of the road, but remains the Stones archivist. The rest seem willing enough.

I know a chap who is doing something like you suggest. His band has a couple of major label and a batch of indie label releases. They have a following, and make their living touring. He'd like you to buy their CDs, but if you rip them and share them with friends, he's cool with that, too: the more people who hear the music, the more will go to see them when they play.

I'm cool with that too. Most of the singers i like earn their money on the road. Ever heard of Melissa Ferrick or Emilie Autumn? Not many people do. But NOW, the "big stars" have to compete for my $$'s with other indie artists that consumers have found and loved outside the usual big 5 music cartel system. Alot more of the big stars ought to be earning their living on their feet, not their backs.

What you describe is a lot more common for country musicians.

It's turning the industry model upside down. Before MP3s, that album was the product, and you played gigs to promote the album. Now we are seeing the albums promoting the gigs.

Good. As i said in the last paragraph, performers ought to PERFORM for a living; it would challenge them to make better music.

Where does that leave stuff created specifically for recordings? I have stuff in my collection I'm extravagantly fond of that I doubt could be done live, and wasn't meant to be. It was designed for headphones and appropriate enhancement.

But meanwhile, how does that model translate for an author of books?

I'm not sure the pool of ad dollars is big enough. And if that's doable at all, it will be major publishers who can implement it. Smaller independent and folks self-publishing will be frozen out. They won't be able to attract advertisers. Advertisers place ads where they think the ads will generate sales, and be seen by a sufficient number of viewers interested in whatever it is they advertise.

Consumers want to open and read the books of authors who produce books that will make them turn the page or are useful to them in one way or another. Those authors with the most readers will obviously attract more advertisers whether or not the publisher is large or small. Can anyone say Baen? Obviously i'm not boy genius with all the kinks worked out with exactly which books should get the most advertising, but it IS obvious that ebooks are valuable just as mp3's are. it's just a matter of the proper form of payment exchange to the authors/publishers.

Re-read what I said about small publishers and independents promoting their own work.

What you want would effectively perpetuate what we have now, because you'd pretty much have to be signed by a major publisher to attract the ads.
______
Dennis

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Though I don't know if Scribd would consider it in their interest to take that kind of precaution.

I do not understand why people hit on Scribd that much; outside of the SFWA controversy, scribd is small potatoes; go after the huge file repositories like megaupload and similar, but first and foremost go after Google since it links with all that material, or your ISP because it does not block it

The big tech companies (both hardware or services like Google) are the ultimate enablers of those sites as for example YouTube showed more openly than usual; hitting on scribd is useless...

The bottom line is that computers, memory, broadband and so on cost money, and to make people spend those money the price of content has to come down in a way or another...

[nekokami]

I'm not particularly hitting Scribd. I can think of at least one other site that allows text file sharing that is rife with pirated copies of books. (No, I won't name it here.) But I've been reading news reports that Google/YouTube are looking at having to match uploaded content against an "audio fingerprint," which I think will be quite tricky -- whereas the text matching problem has been solved, and the content that needs to be matched is easily available in (or could easily be added to) Google Books. If I were a published author concerned with piracy (I don't think anyone is ripping my book on Chinese learning games, and if they are, heck, I don't make much money on it anyway), I'd buy the "Copysentry" service from Copyscape.com, make sure that Google had a full copy of my text, with my copyright registration, and proceed from there. I'd also be leaning on all file upload sites to require something like a Copyscape check before accepting a text upload. If the copyscape comes back positive, require registration with a verifiable address and an affirmation of right to post, or something.

And Cory Doctorow could then contact Copyscape and explain to them how he wants his works treated in terms of infringement. I think they'd be willing to have a category of content tagged as "known shareable" -- they could still flag the match, so no one else (e.g. a writing teacher receiving an assignment from a student) would mistake the work for someone else's, but no legal alarms would be set off.

It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be a heck of a lot more than we have now. And not that hard to implement with the infrastructure and technology already available.

[ebookpirate]

DMcCunney--I have Mobi reader installed on my PDA in case there is content I want to read that is only in Mobi format. With the variety of platforms a reader exists for, Mobi is now the default standard ebook format. I don't bother with it on the desktop because I don't need it, but I have the resources if required.

Yeah, well once upon a time, they said gemstar's imp format would be the default standard. I voted with my $$'s and refused to buy their proprietary reader or buy their ebook files. Adobe stated they would be the default format and out of all the ebooks i've bought in over 2 years, over 50 efiles, only 1 is in adobe format, and the rest are Microsoft lit files. I bought the adobe file because i couldn't get that certain book in a more open format like LIT and there was no physical book for it. Guess that shows that if people vote with their $$$'s, then the publishers can't just push their harsh DRM formats on us.

They got out on the road and played before. But when you are a multi-platinum act that fills stadiums, going out of the road isn't a snap "Let's go play" decision. It's an enormous undertaking.

yeah, i guess that's why i heard on npr.org that they're touring so much now that they're running smack into other stars. I guess they're really pushing those wheelchairs.

What you describe is a lot more common for country musicians.

Not at all. Even big rock stars like Prince understand and respect their fans and do tours without the need to sell cd's e.g. planet earth albums he gave away to promote his tours.


Where does that leave stuff created specifically for recordings? I have stuff in my collection I'm extravagantly fond of that I doubt could be done live, and wasn't meant to be. It was designed for headphones and appropriate enhancement.

I don't know about you, but i find "enhanced" music to be a bit sterile.


What you want would effectively perpetuate what we have now, because you'd pretty much have to be signed by a major publisher to attract the ads.


You could sort of form a "consortium" of small publishers as someone suggested in order to leverage yourselves. But I'll be honest and say that i'm ignorant of the small publishing business market.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ebookpirate

DMcCunney--I have Mobi reader installed on my PDA in case there is content I want to read that is only in Mobi format. With the variety of platforms a reader exists for, Mobi is now the default standard ebook format. I don't bother with it on the desktop because I don't need it, but I have the resources if required.

Yeah, well once upon a time, they said gemstar's imp format would be the default standard. I voted with my $$'s and refused to buy their proprietary reader or buy their ebook files. Adobe stated they would be the default format and out of all the ebooks i've bought in over 2 years, over 50 efiles, only 1 is in adobe format, and the rest are Microsoft lit files. I bought the adobe file because i couldn't get that certain book in a more open format like LIT and there was no physical book for it. Guess that shows that if people vote with their $$$'s, then the publishers can't just push their harsh DRM formats on us.

I don't buy DRMed stuff either. As I said, I have Mobi on my PDA to read Mobi content if needed. Most of my ebooks are converted HTML in Plucker format.

But one of the things hindering the ebook market is that there isn't a standard ebook format everyone supports. I want to download content once, and read it on whatever I happen to have. Mobi is about as close to that as we have, simply because a version of Mobi reader runs on just about everything.

They got out on the road and played before. But when you are a multi-platinum act that fills stadiums, going out of the road isn't a snap "Let's go play" decision. It's an enormous undertaking.

yeah, i guess that's why i heard on npr.org that they're touring so much now that they're running smack into other stars. I guess they're really pushing those wheelchairs.

If you're the Rolling Stones, and you're going to tour, you might as well do a big one. Gearing up to do it when you need to cart tons of equipment and possibly hundreds of support personnel around, it makes sense to do a lot of dates.

And all sorts of folks are out there. I just saw a report the the Eagles are in the final stages of a new album, and plan to tour extensively when it's released.

What you describe is a lot more common for country musicians.

Not at all. Even big rock stars like Prince understand and respect their fans and do tours without the need to sell cd's e.g. planet earth albums he gave away to promote his tours.

And oh, boy, was the record industry thrilled about that.

Where does that leave stuff created specifically for recordings? I have stuff in my collection I'm extravagantly fond of that I doubt could be done live, and wasn't meant to be. It was designed for headphones and appropriate enhancement.

I don't know about you, but i find "enhanced" music to be a bit sterile.

I meant enhancement for the listener...

What you want would effectively perpetuate what we have now, because you'd pretty much have to be signed by a major publisher to attract the ads.

You could sort of form a "consortium" of small publishers as someone suggested in order to leverage yourselves. But I'll be honest and say that i'm ignorant of the small publishing business market.

Yes, you are.

A consortium of small press publishers? I'd sooner try to herd rabid weasels.
______
Dennis