Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal
mahesh2k:
I guess we're comparing our experience to that of kids in today's age. In that case my opinion falls on ground completely. But if you give your kids nook or kindle before paperback book then i guess they'll pick these tablets over paperback. Coolness factor and complexity attracts more to human mind sometimes. I think we're stuck in between pre-internet and high noise internet age. That makes us feel weird about the whole ebook vs paperback stuff.
In the last four years computers are changed rapidly in a such way that i don't know how to grasp all this information and cut the noise. I mean if someone from DC or from neighbors told you about nook in 2005, i doubt anyone could have imagined about ebooks. I think tablets, ebooks and mobiles in 2011 have more control over owner than the owner controlling these devices. When a work or device gets this much control over persons brain, they hardly remember or hold much memories about them. I mean most of us remember old consoles or computers or laptop, but today this stuff is changing so rapidly, i doubt anyone of us will remember them by their version and their impact on our life. I mean do you have memories with your kindle 1 ? iphone 1 ? ipad 2 or samsung galaxy 2 tab pro? My point is version changes, hardware changes and adapting to these changes makes our brain so exhausted, i doubt people who are stuck in between internet and pre-internet world will have memories like they used to have about stuff before internet or when technology used to run at snails pace.
wraith808:
But if you give your kids nook or kindle before paperback book then i guess they'll pick these tablets over paperback. Coolness factor and complexity attracts more to human mind sometimes. I think we're stuck in between pre-internet and high noise internet age. That makes us feel weird about the whole ebook vs paperback stuff.
-mahesh2k (October 25, 2011, 01:35 PM)
--- End quote ---
I wonder. Just like I wonder sometimes if she'll feel the same way I did on that day when I took her into Barnes and Noble for the first time someday. I've always loved bookstores... the small bookstores before the big chains came out. I remember this old used book store that I'd go in and stay for hours just looking through pulp paperback books- the 99 cent kind on the cheap paper that if you dogeared them a crack would appear in the fold. And just sitting there, reading. And when I'd get home, I'd have this stack of books that I'd watch dwindle as I read them.
I still read- and the upside is that if I get the desire to read a book again (I do that very often) then I have the new and the old with me all the time. I don't have to search through books to find the one I'm looking for- I just type in the name, and there it is. I don't have to spend hours looking through books or going to stores- I just browse to it on the internet and hit buy and then it's on my device. And if I move again, half of my moving charge won't be because of books- I remember one of my moves where they quoted me half the price the end cost was, and the difference was because of the sheer volume of books. I also remember a move in which I had to leave behind quite a few books because I just didn't have the space or money to keep them.
But seeing her sense of wonder when we went to the bookstore really made me realize what I'd lost to get the advantages.
Everything is a trade off, and this is no exception. Everything is a choice, and everyone should have the opportunity to make their own.
Carol Haynes:
I don't object to people having the choice - but the choice is important to me and if corporate publishers get their way they will move to digital only (just like many music publishers are trying to do with iTunes and MP3 stores).
It makes total business sense to go for digital only - almost zero costs, zero risk and potentially much higher profits.
If they get their way there won't be any choice - and that's what bothers me most. There is a rapidly growing 'digtal only' library of books appearing. Luckily I don't wan to read most of what I have seen - and I have refused to purchase anything I am interested in unless there is a DRM free version.
It's not so long ago that Amazon and Apple were both on the verge of bankruptcy - what happens to your proprietary libraries if/when something happens or another business comes along and pushes one of them out of the market?
wraith808:
But I guess my point from the other side is, in a lot of cases in the drive to make sure that the corporations don't get what they want, and the drive to make our voices heard, we forget that not all done is bad, other people have differing opinions even as far as our opinions are concerned, and that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It's fine that we might say that "If there isn't a DRM-free version, I won't buy it." It's not fine IMO if we say, "You can't offer it unless you offer a DRM-free version."
Would I like there to be no DRM? Sure! I'd also like if people would pay without DRM, and companies would trust that, and the people that made the content would trust that. But we don't live in that world, and if the choice is being able to take advantage of the convenience with DRM, or not having the content, at this point, I'd choose having the DRM. There are things that they could do to change this, and I've run afoul DRM before. But I'm willing to take the risk- and that should be OK.
There is a rapidly growing 'digtal only' library of books appearing.
-Carol Haynes (October 25, 2011, 03:13 PM)
--- End quote ---
The market will support what the market will support. And if the market speaks towards a digital only segment, then that's what the market will get. Many readers don't have e-readers. And I don't think that portion will be so easily silenced.
IainB:
A valid question that could be raised here is:
Would corporations actually try to push their new product/technology and attempt to wipe out the de facto existing (competitive) technology, if the latter actually had some value to consumers?
Following on from an earlier quote:
another quote springs to mind from the same song:
They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum
And then they charged all the people twenty-five bucks just to see 'em
--- End quote ---
If eBooks don't become the standard I can see large corporations seeing deforestation as a solution to the marketing problem!
-Carol Haynes (October 22, 2011, 07:03 PM)
--- End quote ---
Carol's comment (above) might not seem quite so far-fetched as one might think if you look at what has been described as "the obscenity of selling bottled water":
* it's done in competition to perfectly good chlorinated tap or rain water supplies.
* at least one of the manufacturers has declared (from memory) that "to increase our market share we must regard tap water as the enemy and destroy the public perception that tap water is OK to drink" (OWTTE).
* in the Philippines they have already achieved that perception.
* the manufacture of bottled water leaves a trail of waste due to discarded plastic bottle littering.
* many of the plastic bottles contain the BPA toxin, which is released into the "pure" water.
Never mind corporations manufacturing e-books v. hardcopy, what about the basic necessities of life?
Monsanto has already secured copyright over a large swathe of one of the world's staples with GM corn, and is ruthlessly working to exercise and expand that control.
Maybe it's not going to be too long before the air we breathe is going to be packaged and sold to us as "pure" air, with the same marketing BS being trotted out as for water.
Would this be meeting a need?
Do we need to have "options" such as these forced down our throats by corporations so as to become the only option for us to survive?
Some people might say that the direction that things have already been pushed towards in the marketplace, by psychopathic corporations, appears potentially ominous and quite frightening.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version