Discussion: eBook Publishing Model proposals

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

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.

Back when I was in college the professors would write their own text books to supplement their income and require students to buy them. In some cases I bought books that I never opened the entire year. The professors would also revise them every few years so that used books would not be purchased.

Dale

[nekokami]

Interactive content at a website is a great add-on for an ebook, and often is licensed separately when pbooks include this content, i.e. if you buy a used copy of the book, you still end up buying the license for the web content.

Regarding the iLiad, yes, it can read password-protected PDFs. It has stylus input via an on-screen keyboard or a handwriting recognition line. I dislike PDFs for ebooks, but a password is one of the less onorous kinds of DRM -- as long as future versions of Acrobat continue to support the password feature. I've heard there can be problems with that.

[GregS]

My pleasure in reading is non-fiction, I like taking notes, slotting quotes away, I would like to annotate, but could never bring myself to do so, my iliad has not yet arrived, but even so I would like to print out the occasional work from time to time, I also like to listen to lighter works.

In other words my use of any particular book is unpredictable. Hence crippled DRM ebooks are most unattractive. Tethering ebooks to devices, is very much the same as monks chaining books to tables. Ironically a handwritten book was a very expensive item, while an ebook is potentially a very cheap one to reproduce.

Passwords are too difficult, too difficult to keep, but besides they do not change the problem, the ebook is still crippled, for if it is open to reading it is closed to other uses, if it weren't then the password effectively nullifies itself.

DRM cannot escape the fact that it is crippling the ebook against legitimate use.

If the problem is pirating then the cure is policing, and on the web bots can be sent out easily, but only if they also have an easy method of checking.

In terms of models there is an easy way to check things using hash tables, a suspect file can be checked, the graphic cover can be used along with the text, the TOC etc.,. It is not hard but it can be made easier again with digital signatures and identity numbers.

First the work is given a unique identifier, and the edition, and the publisher signs the book with a hash table. One other thing, the publisher's signature also hashes the distributors signature, and the distributor signs a receipt that includes a unique identifier of the transaction and thereby the ebook itself.

All of this can be combined in one way or another that the removal of one part corrupts the other signatures - an easy check for falsely resold ebooks that look genuine.

Of course, all the signatures can be removed, and new ones created making the book suspicious only to electronic bots, the publisher's hash table and records being sufficient to prove the ebook a knock-off.

Nothing would stop giving copies to friends, but arguably this small circle hardly effects overall sales, and besides it is likely to create a greater readership for future works by the same author, I know this happens in my family when a friend lends us a book they have liked, we return the book, and buy subsequent volumes as they are published. Public libraries act in much the same way - they expand the market.

I don't mind that the right to resell the item disappears. That seems a fair exchange given the nature of the medium.

Basically reliance on electronic means to restrict and cripple literature, means that I will only buy material I know before hand I can crack - not to pirate but merely to freely use.

As for students, even book reading clubs buying only one copy and sharing it, I should not that in my country the right to reproduce works for the purpose of study has co-existed as a common law right with copyright since its inception. Twice big business tried to have this eliminated and twice the courts upheld that copyright cannot stand in the way of study - this has not led to rampant piracy, it has led to more readers.

The model being proposed is one of affixing seals or stamps which has been used for ownership purposes for centuries.

I would not want to mandate personal information being signed in, some books in some parts of the world are dangerous to read, that should not be forgotten ever. But I would not mind being able to mark my books with an exlibris signature - it would make it easier for me to keep track of my collection for one thing.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

The only problem with the identifier method is the situation where someone replaces a new device without transferring the devide's ID to the new device from the old. Even at best, many people have not proven equal to doing this with new devices (usually there are so many such accounts, IDs, etc, that they are missed), and at worst, if the old device was lost/stolen/damaged, you might not be able to recover the ID from it.

This suggests using some sort of ID that is part of your personal ID info (like a social security number or driver's licence), that will not change, and is device independent. But then there are privacy concerns... you don't want just anybody to have your social security number.

So... a unique identifier, maybe a number randomly generated for you and then stored on a card, dongle, or database. But if you lose the card or dongle, or the database is corrupted or taken offline, you're locked out of your books.

About all that's left is a biometric identifier, like a fingerprint, that must be added to the e-book when bought and checked by the reader when you open it.

This would even accomplish the Big Pub's dream, by taking away the ability to loan the book to anyone else. But you also wouldn't be able to pass it down, gift it or resell it, alienating the consumer further. But it is by far the best way to secure a book.

Mind you, that depends on whether the e-book reader is designed to lock out the book unless the fingerprint is read, and I'm sure we all know someone will come up with a hack for that...

[GregS]

Steve Jordan thanks for the reply. Whatever is used it has to be unhitched from device - this just does not work and can never work. My suggestion is simply self-identity, that is the book identifies itself as a specific work, bought from a specific retailer with a item (copy) specific serial ID.

Nothing would make the book unreadable and simple editing could remove all security. It is an aid to policing, not a substitute for actually tracking down pirates and dealing with them by legal means.

Everything else relies on either keeping the same set of devices forever, or some abstract password (I regularly lose these so I now use the same simple, easily guessed, password for everything).

My main problem is that DRM the way it is done now cripples the ebook. I have many legitimate reasons for manipulating the text aside from simply reading it, none of which, by any stretch of the imagination, comes close to piracy.

Any system that opens the book fully, allows for editing (legit or otherwise). It is a catch-22. The book is either permanently crippled or opened up for editing of one sort or another.

The problem is thus two-fold with DRM. One the system that would make it universal (device independent) requires identifying the buyer unambiguously. This has serious consequences, especially if the buyer is reading something their government deems subversive, dangerous, and liable to sanctions.

Biometrics could be used, but think of the consequence of finger prints in keeping tabs on the reading population, link the print to the person and with the right software anything and everything they are reading is available to the local police. I was considering at one stage the use of generic identifiers - height, eye colour, hair type - simple generic descriptors, linked with a book and reference (ie any selected text divided by 999, text plus number = password).

The problem is that the ebook remains crippled, simply unencrypting is actually a limited use right.

That is the bit that I have been unable to reconcile - no matter what the system, no matter how it might be improved (improvement is not hard to imagine), we still get stuck with a book that artificially restricts legitimate use.

My solution of signing/stamping works with signatures, will not satisfy publishers, because they are fixed on the idea that there is a foolproof electronic solution. The idea that copyright infringements would have to policed just like any other item, including traditional books, frightens them.

I believe there is a concession to be made, that the right to resell, or make an ebook publicly available is given up. Putting a purchased ebook on the net, is therefore an infringement, removing the signatures from it a serious infringement, re-editing and presenting a copyrighted ebook likewise.

What is done privately within the home, or amongst friends on a one to one basis, that is private and publishers should just give up on this aspect of things - besides which it does them good, if they publish good works, in the end.

For libraries, I would suggest, time-bomb triggers, that is agreement by software reader suppliers to look for a library signature and delete the file if it is out of date. This might also work for short term renting of books, but anyone determined to get a copy could easily get around it.

[nekokami]

Even resale could possibly work if you do it through the retailer or publisher, i.e. they could change the digital signature and change the record of ownership to the new person at the same time. Otherwise, I agree with GregS on all points.

It's important to remember that the majority of the books floating around the darknet currently are scans of paper books.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by GregS

[B]

For libraries, I would suggest, time-bomb triggers, that is agreement by software reader suppliers to look for a library signature and delete the file if it is out of date. This might also work for short term renting of books, but anyone determined to get a copy could easily get around it.

Interesting thoughts in all of the above post. However one simple question remains unanswered to me. Why bother?

If you think there need to be so many hoops (publishers do this, consumers do that...) why bother with e-books at all. print books work quite well...

E-books need to have REALLY compelling benefits for people and this to me is still the big unanswered question. Who is going to offer those benefits? The publishers - well until they MUST, they won't as we well know from the music industry case, and from current practices...

[sanders]

Originally Posted by nekokami

It's important to remember that the majority of the books floating around the darknet currently are scans of paper books.

I'm not sure what this points out. On the one hand, a scan of a paper book to me would be equivalent to the old cassette recording of a piece of music: you listen to it a few times, then determine whether you want the real CD, or put up with the slightly lower quality of the cassette, or tape something else over it. I'm certainly not opposed to that kind of "piracy", and I've personally bought many CDs which I already had on cassette.
On the other hand, you could say that people are willing to put in a lot of effort to avoid paying for a book.

When you take into account that digital copies (of CDs or DVDs, for instance) are of the same quality of the original, I'm worried about publishing the PDF of my book. It would perhaps make things very tempting to copy.

Over here in The Netherlands, "piracy" is pretty rampant. People even look at me strangely when I say I prefer to buy software, and that they don't need to "burn a copy" from their latest CD for me. What I find even stranger is that people leave their computer on overnight to download a torrent of a DVD, take the effort of burning it to a DVD, including printing the cover (!), while I just drive by our local blockbuster equivalent and rent the movie, probably for about the same cost (taking printer ink, empty DVD-R etc.).

Anyway, so far I like the "personalized copy" idea and the password protected PDF.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Liviu, I do think there's a reason to bother... there are a lot of positive aspects of e-books, their portability, their flexibility, their environmental friendliness, and their lower production cost, that make them a desirable product. We just need a publishing model that suits those positive aspects... or, put another way, doesn't outweigh them to the extent that nobody wants e-books.

Greg, although e-books can probably be considered a bit like software, and a bit like digital music, I think they will earn their own definition and method of use, and that may not preclude being resellable. However, I think we have a long way to go before we get there... digital music's and software's selling/reselling model took years to settle down, and e-books probably will, too.

Maybe we're all paying too much attention to the meticulous details, and need to step back and get a better look at the overall picture. We have a digital file, and the point here is to package it in such a way as to make people want to buy it, not bother to steal it, and not detract from their enjoying it.

Take my publishing method (no DRM, low-cost, multiple formats, semi-entertaining website) as example: It seems to work fine... but a major variable is that I am not widely known, so the cross-section of the population that knows about me is small. If we theorized that I became famous tomorrow, and millions of people started coming to my site to buy e-books, would my model still work? Would I get more sales, massive pirating, or a modicum of both? What should I alter to deal with such a situation?

Then, other publishing methods, such as Baen's, or Harlequin's, both of which have larger e-book customer bases: Do their models need to be tweaked to make them more palatable? To make them palatable to the mainstream? Is there a reason the mainstream couldn't handle their system? Or are they really fine as-is?

[GregS]

nekokami many thanks, I have been going through the epub format (slowly) and digital signatures are well catered for within it. One of the things I will work towards is making an exlibris signature system so that you can stick it into the non-DRMed ebooks, along with shelving information, so that they may be organized on the the PC at least.

Steve Jordan I am not sure that I am reading the format correctly, but it looks like it may be able to incorporate TIE tags (Text Encoding Initiative), which may be very good news for textbook and serious scholarly works. Optional stylesheets seems the only deficit in the format, but that may be the result of nothing other than my poor attempts to understand the format.

In terms of giving shape to market, file format is critical, epub seems close enough to mobileread format that transforming it automatically would not be all that difficult. Buyers should not ever be concerned with formats, just the ebooks. Epub serves well for most fiction, there are a few things which should be mandatory (such as Section-chapter-paragraph numbered ids and unique IDs for the publication and edition - I would also add shelving information re the Universal Decimal system), but these things can be dealt with in the fullness of time.

Complex non-fiction is another matter, and that a standard that includes some form of PDF-like stylesheet that generates typographically true pages designed for the particular reader is not yet even on the drawing boards as far as I can find out. But again that needs time to emerge. Epub is to my mind THE critical keystone for providing a large and growing market in ebooks.

Aside from big publishers/retails, what you seem to be doing on your site is what I see as the true model for ebook publishing - the specialist publisher-retailer will I think be the backbone definition of the ebook publishing model.

The problem of advertising will not so easily be solved, yet the solution is not a biggy. Review eMagazines need to be produced - the problem is that for these to become viable the writer/editors need to make an income and such regular publications need to be cheap and with an easy subscription system.

That brings us to the one vital missing ingredient - micro-cash, a means of safely depositing real money on the net, and make easy transactions of small (a few dollars) and very small (a few cents or less) amounts. Transactions that are the electronic equivalent of opening a wallet and paying in cash.

I was looking at your site, and I have not read any science fiction for years, and despite not yet having a reader (and I cannot read off a computer screen), I was very tempted to buy a few, I don't have a credit card (I can't be trusted with one), and I will now setup and use paypal, however, while this is good enough for ebooks that are a few dollars it falls apart at sub-dollar prices (which is where public domain publishing should be), and it would positively fall apart at the small Ebook Review Magazine level where transaction costs would swallow up the price which should be for such a thing at less than 50 cents level.

That needs to be fixed, as I believe micro-cash could well support the minor publications on which genuine advertisement (via ebook review) could evolve - after all, if I set up such a emagazine, I would be paying readers to write reviews for it. I thus also need a simple means of paying them, what might be a very small per sale commission. Until that loop is secured we all stand behind a substantial barrier to further development.

As an example; my eMagazine sells for just 10cents, back issues for 5cents. Each issue has fifty reviews, as editor publisher I take 20% commission, and pay out 80% of the cover price (based on ebook providers actually forwarding the full cover price - why not they benefit from the reviews). That is 80% of 10cents = 8 cents divided by 50 or 0.16 cents for each reviewer for each magazine sold new, and 0.08 cents for each backissue sold.

Three thousand readers surrenders only $4.80 to each reviewer, hardly worth the effort. However, I get $60 per issue - I would be better off working a couple hours at MacDonalds. However if I had the prior interest, and the reviewers likewise, it may be enough to get things started. 30,000 regular readers produces $600 and $48 per article which is looking not too bad for the effort involved - greater factors of readership make it into a viable business.

We are a long way from that, but in terms of future advertising Review eMagazines are a natural way to expand the market - held back by the lack of a micro-cash system - I will write to paypal to see if they are interested in setting up a cash purse system, even if it was limited to just $50 it would work well enough. This is one aspect of a model we need to get in place. Review eMagazines for instance are not viable until we have something like this.

sanders I agree with you, big publishers are worried about nothing, of course if they severely overprice their products (as many do at the moment - they will create a blackmarket whether they are DRMed or not). nekokami on the last point raised - likewise.

Liviu_5"E-books need to have REALLY compelling benefits for people and this to me is still the big unanswered question. Who is going to offer those benefits? The publishers - well until they MUST, they won't as we well know from the music industry case, and from current practices..."

Until we had eink/epaper readers, there were mainly deficits, with DRMed ebooks no real benefits at all. But this changes dramatically when a device can be read for weeks, and library carried around, we have a way to go yet in providing more digital functionality in readers (such as proper shelving, fully referenced quoting and integration into a eCard system - but that will come).

The devices make the difference - they first the first time since Gutenberg pressed movable type onto paper, provide a substantial improvement in recording, storing and apprehending human thought in written words.

I will repeat - until now the best form for keeping complex concepts was on paper - that has changed, it is a revolution or as Steve Jordan says "the ebook IS the 21st Century".

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Liviu, I do think there's a reason to bother... there are a lot of positive aspects of e-books, their portability, their flexibility, their environmental friendliness, and their lower production cost, that make them a desirable product. We just need a publishing model that suits those positive aspects... or, put another way, doesn't outweigh them to the extent that nobody wants e-books.

I like and read e-books, so of course I would like them to succeed. However, even if interesting all this discussion seems to me that is somewhat missing the main point, which is that paper books have a very well defined ecological place in our culture and the e-book experience overall really needs to offer very tangible advantages to make serious inroads.

Simplicity, durability and easy access are VERY powerful advantages and right now e-books have a long way to go in all those categories compared to print.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by GregS

In terms of giving shape to market, file format is critical, epub seems close enough to mobileread format that transforming it automatically would not be all that difficult. Buyers should not ever be concerned with formats, just the ebooks. Epub serves well for most fiction, there are a few things which should be mandatory (such as Section-chapter-paragraph numbered ids and unique IDs for the publication and edition - I would also add shelving information re the Universal Decimal system), but these things can be dealt with in the fullness of time.

Complex non-fiction is another matter, and that a standard that includes some form of PDF-like stylesheet that generates typographically true pages designed for the particular reader is not yet even on the drawing boards as far as I can find out. But again that needs time to emerge. Epub is to my mind THE critical keystone for providing a large and growing market in ebooks.

Agreed here. I haven't spent enough time with ePub to know how well it is suited for more complex works, like textbooks, but if it isn't there yet, I'm sure it can be brought up to that level.

(By the way: If you don't want to read SF, there's always Lambs Hide, Tigers Seek! )

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

I like and read e-books, so of course I would like them to succeed. However, even if interesting all this discussion seems to me that is somewhat missing the main point, which is that paper books have a very well defined ecological place in our culture and the e-book experience overall really needs to offer very tangible advantages to make serious inroads.

Simplicity, durability and easy access are VERY powerful advantages and right now e-books have a long way to go in all those categories compared to print.

I think e-books are closer to that point than you might think... in fact, poised to become as major a part of literature as MP3s are to music now. That's why the proper publishing model, applied now, could push them over the edge.

[nekokami]

My reason for pointing out that most of the darknet books are scans was twofold:

1 - Even though most commercial ebooks are available in a "cracked" DRM format (LIT), that does not constitute the bulk of the shadow market (i.e. what people are stealing isn't, for the most part, commercial ebooks).

2 - There is enough market demand that people are spending time manually scanning books that are not yet available as ebooks to share, and these have value in the gift economy of the darknet.

If I'm right about this, there is plenty of market demand for ebooks, even now, and if the ease of use was high and the prices reasonable, the darknet could become completely marginalized, without needing any DRM at all. I honestly believe this is the case. I favor social DRM (embedding the identity of the purchaser) just to remind people not to "loan" copies of books too widely, but that should be sufficient to provide a viable ebook market.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I think e-books are closer to that point than you might think... in fact, poised to become as major a part of literature as MP3s are to music now. That's why the proper publishing model, applied now, could push them over the edge.

Maybe; we will see. Still in the latest published report, quarterly e-book sales were about 25M$, compared with about 7-8B$ for print.

Now it can be argued that for a long time the same was true for the ratio of cd to mp3 sales, however cd sales have started going into free fall recently while book sales still have healthy trends.

I have no doubt that the number of books released as e will increase over time, what I doubt is that the sales of said e-books will increase dramatically.

If we talk about free e-books (of whatever kind), then the picture may indeed look a bit different, since if there is a point where e competes well with print is when e is free.

[GregS]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

I have no doubt that the number of books released as e will increase over time, what I doubt is that the sales of said e-books will increase dramatically.

If we talk about free e-books (of whatever kind), then the picture may indeed look a bit different, since if there is a point where e competes well with print is when e is free.

Liviu_5 one of the biggest publishing countries in the world is India - and one of the biggest parts of that industry is reprinting out-of-print works that cater to specialized interests (in terms of money earned).

Ebooks have a definite advantage in that arena. Plus the capital costs of setting up make even low-cost Indian printers look expensive. Then of course there are the many authors (from poor to overlooked geniuses) that can go directly into publishing.

One argument worth considering is the huge drop in the cost of the means of production and the general effect this has socially on the reproduction of texts. More ebooks can be produced and stored for reproduction, covering a wider and deeper publishing potential than paper products ever possessed.

Lower costs mean lower prices - significantly lower for anyone who has knowledge of printing industry and the risks involved. The capital risks being smaller the profit margins do not have to take this much into account (unlike p-book publishers), the profit ratio can more be tuned to expected turnover alone.

This favours production, more old works and more new ones, more neglected works that should have been printed, and of course more rotten works which still make it into print. This does not translate into buyers of course.

Customers need devices which are relatively cheap, robust and paper-like, that have extra functionality built in. These are the early days, the devices are expensive, fragile and lack the things which will in a few years all change dramatically for the better in every respect, if the rest of technology is any guide.

The missing element, a means of payment, so that p-book to e-book scanners, editors, writers, graphic artists and all the rest can begin to make a living from their work, this is in Beta stage - Micro-cash seems well on its way, so hold onto your hats folks:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=342430011

PS
After over 10 years advocating micro-cash/payment as essential to eCommerce, Amazon.com is doing the right thing. Hopefully PayPal and Wildcard will soon join in, if phone cards and iTunes cards could be used for payments, then third world is in a good position to reap benefits as well as custom.

Hooray - I just got my Christmas present - mirco-cash/payment is just months away.