Voice of the Readers

[Horemheb]

I have read a lot about the issues of e-book business, about the legal difficulties around e-publishing as well as about the technical difficulties around e-book readers and DRM. I have not read however much about the interests of the readers - the people who actually are and will be reading the products of e-book business. As of now we are talking about millions of people. Yet the conversation about e-book business is still like they did not matter too much.

Why does it seem so? In spite of e-books are just about to go mainstream still there are several critical issues which make the life of e-book reading people miserable. Here are the 3 most important problems in order of importance:

1. It is not possible to have one single e-book reader and read all e-books on it regardless of which publisher has published it and from which retail site it has been purchased from. Really thinking with the head of the customers this is just ridiculous. It is like we had to buy different TVs in order to watch different channels. As ridiculous as it may sound it is in fact not much more ridiculous than the situation with e-books.

2. There are territorial restrictions. People from EU cannot buy books for US and sometimes vice versa. There are restrictions for all directions between almost all imaginable geographical location. In the 3rd millennia it is not less ridiculous than the previous problem. In the age of global economy and the age of Internet which makes it possible to buy anything from anywhere by one click the region based restrictions are just as anachronistic as a horseshoe smith in a highway gas station.

3. There are lot of books which are still not available in e-book format. Although the penetration among newly published books is not so bad (however there are outrageous examples of new popular books not published in e-book form) older books are increasingly less likely to have been published in e-book format with the age of the writing - except of course the highly wanted classics.

While I am well aware of all the technical, legal and other difficulties behind these problems I have to say that as a customer I do not care. Why should any of the e-book reading people care about big players' of book industry technical and legal difficulties? Especially knowing that, all those difficulties are caused by their own ignorance and greed. I know very well that no real obstacles exist in the way of achieving the solutions for the above problems. But then again as a customer I do not even have to know it and do not even have to care about it.

What I really miss from this whole story is the representation of the people reading e-books. I think it would be absolutely necessary to confront the players of e-publishing and to firmly represent the interests of the readers towards them. Without this I am afraid that the e-book world will be much more like big players want it for their own interests than like the customers want it to be.

Does anyone know about any organizations, civil movements or other kinds of assembly aiming this goal?

[mldavis2]

The only way I know to vote is with your purchases. If those authors who refuse to allow electronic publishing see a decline in the purchase of their pBooks, they will reconsider. I don't recall seeing any recent percentages of eBook reader platforms, but as the number of eReaders gradually begins to represent the majority of consumers, publishers will begin to provide either a single, universal format (remember the Betamax vs. VHS war), or they will publish in multiple formats. Sadly, it just takes time. In the meantime, serious readers have chosen their readers by considering the most appropriate source for their chosen reading material and/or have expanded their material base by either format conversion or by purchasing multiple eReaders.

[Horemheb]

Unfortunately the voting with purchase works only in cases where there are critical differencies between purchase choices. The problem is that all of the above mentioned shortcomings are equally present in all choices available at the moment. Moreover we cannot even see the light at the end of the tunnel considering that this entire business area is captured by the big six so they are hardly can be forced to give priority to the interests of the customers.

[bobavey]

There is no doubt in my mind that ebooks are the future of publishing, and if publishers want to survive they will have to embrace this.

I'm an independant author -- published by a small publisher -- and I care deeply about my readers.

Twisted Perception

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...=2940011822049

[neilmarr]

Mldavis has it right, I think. Vote with your credit card.

The publishing/authoring game is changing dramatically and publishers and authors, must more and more, deal with the customer directly and not through a middleman.

Whereas once, hight street brick-and-mortar stores provided a human being with a smile or a grouch between creator, producer and reader, new stores offer only a shop window.

It's up to publishers and authors now to respond to all reader reaction ... with truly personal interest. And that, I believe, is good.

Cheers. Neil

[kennyc]

Yes, we need to Open the Markets. Unfortunately I think it's going to be a long time coming. The Old Guard are going to be fighting and screaming all the way....

[jbcohen]

In the IT industry this situation has occured many times over the years that I have been apart of the industry and prior experience has taught me that there are two types of IT sectors - mature and immature sectors. The electronic books definetly fall into the immature catagory. These issues typically follow an established pattern that generally plays itself out to evolve the industry sector into a more mature industry. Getting in our time machines and going back to the 1970's PCs as a whole were considered to be an immature sector and their detractors were correct to lable the sector that way. There were several different camps in the IT industry that were often times built around a company and their products, there was the IBM sector, the apple sector (which incidently remains but not as a seperate sector since apple products have the ability to interoperate with IBM products they have joined the IBM camp). Those were the two major camps but there were more including Commodore and others that do not come to mind. Each sector had a go it alone approach to IT and attemtped to prove that they were the best at everything IT. Eventually the industry shaked out and combined camps to form one big camp, which incidently the company that built that camp (IBM) was driven out of the leadership role (with the failure of the PS/2 PCs). After all how many people here the term "PC Compatible" any more. Once the industry shaked out and combined camps it became a lot easier to oeprate PCs and get things done.

Another example of this maturation of the industry occured later with the introduction of the VHS and Beta. Neither format could talk to the other and eventually beta was not selected (incidently this was one decision that was made by the movie making companies not the consumer).

This happned again with the introduction of the Blue Ray DVD and High Definition DVD two different formats with different capabilities and again the movie comapnies selected for the consumer the blue ray. At the time I was simply unwilling to pay the high prices for either and waited until they reached a range I was willing to pay and by that time the decission had been made.

My beliefe is that electronic books are no different then the older examples that I have cited above. The industry will eventually shake out and formats will be dropped and eventually a customer will be able to buy from anywhere. At the moment the producers are more interested in being a monopoly then serving their customers wishes.

My perdiction is that there will be a fight betwen Amazon and Barns and Nobles to dominate the electronic book market and the winner will be the industry standard. I am perdiciting that Amazon will win the fight but until the shake out ocurrs my advice has and always be to get yourself a smart phone and download and install all of the free readers that you can get from the internet. This way you can buy books from where ever you so desire.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

My belief is that electronic books are no different then the older examples that I have cited above. The industry will eventually shake out and formats will be dropped and eventually a customer will be able to buy from anywhere. At the moment the producers are more interested in being a monopoly then serving their customers wishes.

The word is a virus.

Previously locked down, no longer. We will not stand idly by while industry attempts to control the uncontrollable.

Have a nice day.

[sourcejedi]

Originally Posted by Horemheb

the voting with purchase works only in cases where there are critical differencies between purchase choices. The problem is that all of the above mentioned shortcomings are equally present in all choices available at the moment. Moreover we cannot even see the light at the end of the tunnel considering that this entire business area is captured by the big six

Look harder.

You genuinely do have the choice to ignore the DRM feature on your reader and buy only DRM-free books from any region. The sacrifice is that it limits your choice of electronic titles, excluding most recent works by popular authors.

Webscription.net offers contemporary s.f. from Baen and others.
Fictionwise.com survives and allows you to show only "multiformat" files. They include some good s.f. backlist published by E-Reads.
Some individual authors are able to sell backlist on their own sites - see Closed Circle and Book View Cafe. I believe s.f & f. is quite prominent here also.
If you read French, many native French publishers apparently forgo DRM.
And there are public domain works on Amazon and Gutenberg, which are tracked and taken notice of. In some cases this will be something publishers are theoretically monitoring - e.g. Penguin who sell "value-added" classic ebooks (or the obvious example being something like Wind in the Willows, where the out of copyright version doesn't have the best illustrations).

As for public campaigns, there's a general anti-drm campaign called "Defective by design". Personally I think that's the most important issue. The other two you raise could be seen more as teething problems. Georestrictions aren't a major problem once your region+device has a local e-book store with full coverage. But there's no real sign that large publishers are thinking about DRM-free books yet.

In that context, one problem is that Amazon appears to have captured the market (and hence, many people don't see a reason to worry about being locked in to Amazon). So you can still vote to avoid Amazon and choose a Adobe reader (not B&N!), where the DRM feature is at least licensed to multiple hardware manufacturers and stores, and is much easier to work around (Topaz books from Amazon are pretty harsh, but MobiPocket isn't a very good format for alternative reading systems either, even if you've stripped the DRM).

[carpetmojo]

Doesn't much improve a daft situation when, here in the UK for example, we can't get the Sony store, or, even more ludicrous, Google books.

[wyndslash]

Originally Posted by carpetmojo

Doesn't much improve a daft situation when, here in the UK for example, we can't get the Sony store, or, even more ludicrous, Google books.

we don't have google books and ibookstore here.

[Anthem]

You know, I've been voting with my wallet and nothing has ever changed in my favor. Same with voting! A single vote/purchase can change things (but not if your me!!!). Now, if consumers could collude (reverse the tables on companies for the first time in history), but I don't see that happening as my rampant eclecticism and morbid fear of illegal activities virtually guarantees that I would not fit in anywhere or accomplish anything.

Herding cats, my friends, herding cats. In this case, wishy-washy, indecisive, witless, shy, and nervous/paranoid cats.

Problem number One (1, I, Uno, Ichi, etc.) is something I feel with keen zestfulness and surely needs to be fixed (it is a problem the likes of which should be remedied). Hardware, software, and publishing companies are treating e-reading devices and software platforms like they are video game systems and it is annoying (those types of tactics work fine in the game world, but they feel positively underworld in the book universe. Guido is waiting outside your door.).

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Anthem

You know, I've been voting with my wallet and nothing has ever changed in my favor.

I think it works better for people with larger wallets. Probably *much* larger wallets. Wallets the size of most MR's wallets combined...

[Kali Yuga]

I generally agree with jbcohen. However, I will say that any possible blame for readers treating ebooks as though it's a mature platform lies, in no small part, with the various boosters of the technology -- including the retailers ("our ebook service is great!"), reviewers and, uh, enthusiastic early adopters.

That said:

1) You can buy a tablet or computer, and use the apps to read books from different retailers.

2) Territorial restrictions are not going to go away. Sorry, they just aren't. There are too many contractual obligations and too many advantages to using local resources. What will happen is....

3) As with most other format changes, the availability issues will be worked out, and this in turn will largely fix the problems caused by geo restrictions.

The thing is, when you are paying people to do the kind of grunt work to convert analog books into digital formats, you have to, y'know, pay them. This naturally causes a bottleneck for the conversion process.

You also have contractual issues, for in many cases the electronic rights are not explicitly assigned or are otherwise in play.


Despite the fact that nowadays the average citizen of an industrialized nation apparently has the attention span and patience of a flea, and feels as entitled as the Sun King to have what they want at a moment's notice, and despite the promises that everything really does work perfectly with this wonderful new tech, it just takes time to work these things out.

Patience is still a virtue. I think. Let me check Wikipedia and get back to you.

[leebase]

The problem with "voting with your wallet" -- is that other people get to vote too. Ok, so that's not a problem, but it does explain why some folks might wonder why their vote doesn't seem to count -- too many other folks simply not caring about DRM or agency pricing, or open book standards.

Lee