OverDrive sold to private equity firm KKR

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by stumped

"in china for example" ???
& "so long as a country is willing to look the other way while its citizens commit such acts"
are U serious ?
e.g. think you will find that most of these 54 million copies of Game of Thrones were pirated in the USA
Data from piracy monitoring firm MUSO indicates the show was pirated 54 million times in the first 24 hours
and
Star Wars television show The Mandalorian was uploaded to the internet by pirates within three hours of its launch on Disney+ yesterday.
The debut episode of the show was being circulated on file sharing websites almost immediately after the new streaming platform went live, with most downloads appearing to originate from Spain and the U.K., according to an analysis by Comparitech

try naming a country where stuff is NOT pirated "while the country looks the other way / while its citizens commit such acts"

for English language books, films, music, TV shows the pirates mostly live in the west, and they get rich from the Google etc. adverts on their sites

blaming China is not the answer

Perhaps the English language shows are pirated by people who live in the west, but the servers tend to be in countries where copyright laws are at best laxly enforced. At one time, the big pirate sites were in Russia, China, India and some small countries in the Caribbean. It's rare to find a pirate site actually hosted in a country like the US. Those sites are too easy to shutdown and the owner sued.

It's not a blame game, it's simple reality. Many parts of the world do not respect copyrights and never have.

[stumped]

we are drifting off topic, so all I will say on respect for copyright is don't confuse supply and demand. the demand for pirated media in english is in the west. It's not fixable by making it harder to set up servers- that's like thinking building a bigger wall will stop americans from wanting to consume cocaine.
the fix is to make legal stuff more accessible and fairly priced as has already happened with music. Folks don't pirate CDs any more , now that they can have unlimited legit streaming for $10 per month. and why go to the hassle of downloading a pirate show if its on netflix. ( and you have your neighbour's password )
e-books are out there on download sites, millions of them, and even if DRM was super-hardened, new copies of new books would leak via review copies, ARC....
a bigger, better library lending system , with some recompense for authors built in, would help - which brings us back to what are KKR's plans for Overdrive.
I'd sign up tomorrow for a netflix for books type deal

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by stumped

we are drifting off topic, so all I will say on respect for copyright is don't confuse supply and demand. the demand for pirated media in english is in the west. It's not fixable by making it harder to set up servers- that's like thinking building a bigger wall will stop americans from wanting to consume cocaine.
the fix is to make legal stuff more accessible and fairly priced as has already happened with music. Folks don't pirate CDs any more , now that they can have unlimited legit streaming for $10 per month. and why go to the hassle of downloading a pirate show if its on netflix. ( and you have your neighbour's password )
e-books are out there on download sites, millions of them, and even if DRM was super-hardened, new copies of new books would leak via review copies, ARC....
a bigger, better library lending system , with some recompense for authors built in, would help - which brings us back to what are KKR's plans for Overdrive.
I'd sign up tomorrow for a netflix for books type deal

I liked netflix a lot back when they had a much bigger catalogue, but their catalogue has been reducing for years. Content providers don't want to put content they can easily sell on such sites, or they want to keep the best for their own sites.

This is the same issue that eBook subscription sites face. Authors who are successful selling their books, generally don't want them on cheap all-you-can-eat subscription services. Maybe old backlist books that no one is buying anymore. The same issue for library books. Libraries want to control cost because readers don't want to pay, ergo the authors don't get the compensation they want.

The big issue that libraries face is the increase in book sales over the past 60 years. When libraries were a much bigger percentage of the average book sales, they had a lot more influence. Heck, at one time, when libraries first started, a diverse collection of books was fairly rare and reserved for the wealthy. That was true even into the late 1800's. Even up through the 1950's, unless you lived in some place like NYC in the US, it was difficult for an individual to buy any of the vast majority of books put out each year.

Now, that libraries account for perhaps a percentage point of book sales, not so much. Libraries are getting squeezed on both sides. They don't get the funding they use to and publishers aren't as keen to sell to them as they use to be.

As far as the whole "fairly priced" thing goes, there is no price that beats free. There is a percentage of the population who is going to pirate regardless. The question is can you come up with a business model that works for all parties, authors and readers. If I were to compare business models to the business models from 40 years ago, I would say that subscription services fit into the niche that discount bookstores and used bookstores use to fill. But the enabler for discount bookstores was publishers wanting to unload books that were just taking up warehouse space. That's not the case with eBooks. So the subscription ebook niche is more old backlist and tier two authors.

[stumped]

Maybe convenience beats free. Spotify etc are not uncrackable, but what the subscription buys is ease to use, so millions of people pay a small monthly fee instead of going through the hassle of stealing and hoarding.

Pre Amazon, pre kindles, no one I knew actually bought books, that was something only rich people did. You wanted something to read, you joined a library...

I would prefer a less cutthroat world for all media, where creatives could get enough from a share of a streaming, rental, model for them to go on creating, and no one would need to own personal media copies of stuff.
Compared with the current winner takes all model of a handful of superstar authors, musicians, actors while everyone else starves.
Ok. Enough of that, back to reading dystopias...

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by stumped

Maybe convenience beats free. Spotify etc are not uncrackable, but what the subscription buys is ease to use, so millions of people pay a small monthly fee instead of going through the hassle of stealing and hoarding.

Pre Amazon, pre kindles, no one I knew actually bought books, that was something only rich people did. You wanted something to read, you joined a library...

I would prefer a less cutthroat world for all media, where creatives could get enough from a share of a streaming, rental, model for them to go on creating, and no one would need to own personal media copies of stuff.
Compared with the current winner takes all model of a handful of superstar authors, musicians, actors while everyone else starves.
Ok. Enough of that, back to reading dystopias...

You are off by a few decades there. I've been buying books since the mid 70's, even as a poor student using my lunch money, so it's certainly not pre Amazon, pre Kindles only the rich bought books. My 1976 paperback copy of Elric of Melnibone cost $1.25, well within the means of most middle class people at the time.

What made books more accessible was the rise of the Mall bookstores. I bought books at the Waldenbooks Books (started 1962) and B. Daltons (started 1966), both of which were at my local mall. The mall bookstores really expanded the market for hardback and paperback books in the US. Heck, my local mall even had a library branch in the basement. In the mid 80's big box stores like Barnes and Noble and Borders took over the market.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by stumped

Pre Amazon, pre kindles, no one I knew actually bought books, that was something only rich people did. You wanted something to read, you joined a library...

I never knew I was rich back in the 1960s when I bought quite a few Ace doubles and other science fiction books. The Ace doubles price changed over the years but I seem to remember 40 to 50 cents when I first started buying them. Then there were my subscriptions to several SF & F magazines and visits to the local used book stores. I also read quite a few books from the local library and might have influenced their book purchases into improving their science fiction and fantasy collection.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by stumped

Pre Amazon, pre kindles, no one I knew actually bought books, that was something only rich people did. You wanted something to read, you joined a library...

Even as a 12 year old I was buying my own books and my family was not rich by any means. My father was an NCO in the military. I worked even then. I was required to save the majority of money I made. The rest went to buy books. The only books I did not buy were the ones I traded with an Uncle and a grandfather for. Lots of people bought books pre kindle. Hell, they were less then than eBooks are now. I could buy a new book for $0.35 back then. There were a surprising number of bookstores and I wonder how they survived when only the rich could afford books. I think by pre-kindle you must mean before the printing press was invented. Then only the rich could afford books.
Apache

[JSWolf]

The problem with streaming services like Netflix is that with more and more company specific services starting up like Disney+, there is less content available for Netflix to get the rights to stream.

[binaryhermit]

Originally Posted by Apache

Hell, they were less then than eBooks are now. I could buy a new book for $0.35 back then.

I wonder if this is still true after adjusting for inflation.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem with streaming services like Netflix is that with more and more company specific services starting up like Disney+, there is less content available for Netflix to get the rights to stream.

I agree, but I think long term network specific streaming won't last. Sure, Disney will be okay, because they are just too large. HBO is fine as long as their service is an offshoot of their paid channel. But NBC, CBS, etc? I don't think long term those will last.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

I wonder if this is still true after adjusting for inflation.

One Ace Double I purchased in 1964 ( M-135 Space Captain by Murray Leinster and The Mad Metropolis by Philip E. High ) was 45 cents then. In today's dollar, that would be ~$3.66. How many new paperbacks do you see for that price today?

[Uncle Robin]

I don't know about "only the rich" but certainly in my country, from the 80s onward (when I began to be aware of prices) books were never anywhere near as cheap as the prices cited above. Even back then, the equivalent of $5US for any book of any sort would have been so low as to cause amazement. My family was lower-middle socio-economically, but despite being a family of voracious readers, we owned few books, relying heavily on libraries. Most of the books we did own were sets brought out when my father's family immigrated/emigrated - which does at least show how much they valued books.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by DNSB

One Ace Double I purchased in 1964 ( M-135 Space Captain by Murray Leinster and The Mad Metropolis by Philip E. High ) was 45 cents then. In today's dollar, that would be ~$3.66. How many new paperbacks do you see for that price today?

There was a major change in the business model for books (especially certain genres such as SF&F and mysteries) starting in the 80's. Authors went from writing mostly for magazines and producing books that were a couple of hundred pages long, if that, to much bigger works. The previously mentioned Elric Of Melnibore, which cost $1.25 in 1976 was 160 pages long. The Dark Tide, book 1 of McKiernan's Iron Tower trilogy cost $2.95 in 1985 and was 303 pages long. Scales of Justice, one of Daniel Hood's Fanuilh series was $5.50 in 1998 and 297 pages long (but a smaller font, so I'm not sure what the actual word count was). Perhaps some people are remembering hard back prices rather than paper back prices, or perhaps books were simply more expensive in some parts of the world.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I agree, but I think long term network specific streaming won't last. Sure, Disney will be okay, because they are just too large. HBO is fine as long as their service is an offshoot of their paid channel. But NBC, CBS, etc? I don't think long term those will last.

CBS is doing well because of new Star Trek. NBCU, I have no idea what they will do to get/keep viewers.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

CBS is doing well because of new Star Trek. NBCU, I have no idea what they will do to get/keep viewers.

True, but even Star Trek and Star Wars can be bled dry eventually. There's a reason Star Trek went into hibernation for so long.

Disney has Marvel, the Lucas stuff and their own history. CBS has Star Trek (and doesn't Paramount own Star Trek anyway?) and the Twilight Zone and...?

NBC, CBS and the rest can create their own original streaming content, but will it make sense to spend a lot of money on quality shows that aren't being shown on their own broadcast channels? And will it be enough? Already there's the joke about getting excited when you see a trailer for a new show only to be disappointed when you see it's exclusive to Hulu.