Tor/Forge Books Announces DRM-Free E-book Store

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Publishers aren't tech companies. That isn't their job. Its tech companies that "engineer" device platforms (the clue is in the word "engineer?").

The publishers job is to find, develop, and bring to market authors. That's a whole another game from creating ereading devices.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't publishers have to give those tech companies license to use property that they held the distribution rights to in the first place? Property whose creators they (the publishers) found, developed, and marketed?

Whether or not they (the publishers) could have done anything to stem the tide of the ebook's popularity is a discussion that certainly has merit. But the idea that they couldn't have possibly foreseen the ebook's potential just doesn't hold water. They simply chose to believe the ebook had no potential. There's a difference between "lack of foresight" and "couldn't have foreseen."

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Publishers aren't tech companies. That isn't their job. Its tech companies that "engineer" device platforms (the clue is in the word "engineer?").

The publishers job is to find, develop, and bring to market authors. That's a whole another game from creating ereading devices.

"Bring to market" includes "find what formats the market is interested in buying." They developed audiobooks, first as a niche market for the blind, and later, as tape players became ubiquitous, for the general public.

As soon as ebooks started showing up--mid-70's, project Gutenberg--they should've realized "hey, this is eventually going to be a real market for books," and started planning for it. They might not have been able to predict the Kindle explosion, but before that point, the market had been steadily growing for a decade. Predicting that someday they'd be expected to provide their entire line in e-text was not a big jump.

They don't need to be engineers to realize that people will read books on screens, and start figuring out what kinds of screens will sell which books to which people.

After all, they don't manufacture paper or ink either.

[ProfCrash]

Then again, ebooks really did not start to take off until the Kindle came into play. Since then the market has really grown but before then, the market was so small that it did not really make financial sense to look at ebooks.

[DiapDealer]

But you can't specifically grant someone the right to sell your property in an electronic format and then claim to have not foreseen the possibility that people might actually want to avail themselves of that option (in considerable numbers). I like to think I'm no dummy, but I'm not willing to believe that I was able to envision a viable market for ebooks (pre-kindle) where publishing execs could not. Again... "not recognizing the explosive potential" is simply not the same thing as it being "unforeseeable."

[NightGeometry]

Pre-Kindle I had a Sony PRS-500. I was in a reasonably rural part of India, (stopped for some food travelling between Mumbai and Pune). The guy server in the cafe we stopped at asked about my Sony, he'd assumed it was a PDA (remember those?). I explained what it was, that I was in India for 6 weeks, and had a stack of books to read, it saved heavily on baggage.

He got it. He thought that someday he'd have one. Just seemed obvious that is the way things would go.

Now, the Indian population is in general well educated and forward thinking, from my experience. But this was pre-kindle in a reasonably backwoods part of the country, and a *waiter* got that ebooks would take off.

And BPH's didn't? Yeah, right.

[EDIT = Chennai not Channai, and it was actually Pune anyway. Long day ]

[ProfCrash]

He got it because he asked you what it was. The Sony was sold in bookstores, that is where I saw it for the first time, and it was still not known in the US. I happened to notice it one day and mentioned it to my then boyfriend, now hubby. I needed to get new bookshelves soon and the idea of an e-reader sounded great. I ended up with a Kindle. This was a year after the Kindle had been released. So, pre-Kindle, I had no clue about e-readers. I have a feeling that I am in the majority and we are talking in the US with the Sony being sold in some well known stores.

[stonetools]

"Prediction is hard, especially about the future".
(No prizes as to who said that!)

Now that ebooks have exploded, its easy to say that publishers should have foreseen that, but really, did anyone foresee the course of ebook expansion? As Shatzkin pointed out, ebook expansion was driven by the introduction of innovative hardware , and publishers don't make hardware.
( With Audiobooks,, the publishers weren't involved in the creation of hardware,AFAIK.)

The publishers did what they could , which was to continue to create content and to license it to the tech companies for distribution. Now they may have to directly distribute it themselves, thanks to the vagaries of the market- a development that they did not foresee or want .

[ApK]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

Now that lock-in is coming back to bite them in the rear, literally.

Literally?

One of my favorite moments from the TV show 'Psych!':

"Detective Lassiter is literally on fire today."
"'Literally on fire' as in Michael Jackson in the Pepsi commercial, or as in a misuse of the word 'literally?'"

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I had no clue about e-readers. I have a feeling that I am in the majority and we are talking in the US with the Sony being sold in some well known stores.

But you're talking devices and the general public, mostly. The fact of the matter is; publishers were licensing online retailers to sell their books in electronic format long before Amazon came out with the Kindle. That they never expected ebooks to catch on like they have is largely irrelevant. If you're licensing people to sell your product in new format, you have to at least entertain the possibility that people might want to buy that product in the new format.

[ProfCrash]

Not if they saw it as an easy way to make some extra money and never thought it would take off the way that it has.

E-Readers apparently have been out there for many, many years but few people knew about them and even fewer used them. Why worry about something that brought in probably less then 1% of their revenue? They were surprised by the success of the Kindle and realized that they were not properly prepared.

I have no problem with that. Years of flat sales in a particular market make it hard for you to see how quickly things can change.

I do have a problem with how the BPH have handled things since then. They were caught off guard, I get that, but they failed to learn from the other entertainment industries that have already gone through the digital pains. That is what annoys me.

[Kirtai]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Now that ebooks have exploded, its easy to say that publishers should have foreseen that, but really, did anyone foresee the course of ebook expansion?

Given how digital music exploded in much the same way, I suspect they did foresee it; they simply stuck their heads in the sand just like the music industry did to protect their business models and deals with distributors. (The latter especially)

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ApK

Literally?

I think I've read that fanfic. Or something like it...

The Morning After about Fandom leaving Delicious for Pinboard. Or Making Up Is Hard To Do* about Fandom taking out its frustrations on Livejournal after Strikethrough.

*Explicit story. People under 18 probably shouldn't click. Although I can't really say that people over 18 should click; some things are hard to unsee.

I'd be happy to read BPH/DRM anthropomorphic slash.

[Kirtai]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I'd be happy to read BPH/DRM anthropomorphic slash.

Eww. Now that's an image I could have done without...

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

BPH/DRM anthropomorphic slash.

Now I'm just waiting to see that next to some offering in the Deals forum.

("Yet Another Genre I Didn't Know Existed.")

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

Not if they saw it as an easy way to make some extra money and never thought it would take off the way that it has.

See, we're not really that far apart in our thinking when it boils down to it... except maybe semantically. Because I agree with your above statement. I just don't think "never thought it would take off the way that it has" means the same thing as "couldn't possibly foresee it." Which is what stonetools (by way of Shatzkin) is asking me to believe. They're asking me to believe that the people wanting to sell ebooks saw a market that publishers couldn't possibly see. Nope. Sorry. They simply wrote off ebooks as a non-factor. Which is fine... but guessing wrong doesn't absolve you of anything... it's your industry. You were supposed to be on top of it and guess right. Others did after all.