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Why ebooks are bad for you
johnk:
The big fat problem with Kindle is a word I dislike most when it comes to formats: proprietary.
-zridling (June 13, 2011, 03:45 PM)
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I don't understand the debate about the "proprietary" nature of the Kindle. The Kindle is an e-reader, and a top-class one at that. You can load it with thousands of books and documents without ever buying an ebook in a proprietary format. That's how I use it anyway, and many others do likewise.
And for what it's worth, I agree with elvisbrown. No-one likes DRM, but at least it means authors get a few bucks for their work.
Most musicians make music because they enjoy it, and some of them hope to make some kind of living from it through live performance. Most writers write for money, plain and simple. Without DRM, the vast majority of people will not pay for books, just as very few people under 30 pay for recorded music.
I don't think DRM will survive, but I don't see how authors will be paid, and I don't see how books will be written, aside from the small number of fiction writers who do it for love.
Carol Haynes:
I still buy paper books - that is what most writers sign up for and they get commission on the sale of those books.
Ever since books were first published the possibility of lending to others, giving away your book or pulping it - not to mention public libraries - hasn't stopped all the great authors from making a living out of their craft. In fact printed books are self protecting as they can only be in one place at a time. DRM is bound to be cracked - it is all part of the game now - and sooner or later eBook publishers will realise what the music and film industries are beginning to accept - there is no such thing as uncrackable DRM.
The only reason eBooks can't be used in the same way as paper books is that publishers don't allow it - there is nothing to stop Kindle or any other book reader from removing rights from a book while it is lent to a friend - who temporarily inherits the rights until the book is returned. It is just pure greed on the part of publishing houses - author's only get a tiny, and dwindling, proportion of the book cover price. The only motivation for publishers is greed - that is why eBooks often cost more than printed editions on Amazon even though the publisher overheads are minimal in the eBook world.
The same is happening with all 'products' - if I have a board game and get fed up with it I can give it away, take it to a charity shop or chuck it in the bin. With electronic games my 'investment' is lost when I no longer want to play a game - why can't I sell something I BOUGHT AND PAID FOR?
It is just another example of corporate society and corporate attitudes destroying the rights of individual people in their lust for maximising profit (I won't call us citizens because that implies we have some influence on our politics which we don't). Democracy in all its forms is dead - long live corpocracy!!
wraith808:
The big fat problem with Kindle is a word I dislike most when it comes to formats: proprietary.
-zridling (June 13, 2011, 03:45 PM)
--- End quote ---
I don't understand the debate about the "proprietary" nature of the Kindle. The Kindle is an e-reader, and a top-class one at that. You can load it with thousands of books and documents without ever buying an ebook in a proprietary format. That's how I use it anyway, and many others do likewise.
-johnk (June 13, 2011, 05:59 PM)
--- End quote ---
Agreed. I don't think there is an e-book reader that reads *only* proprietary formats. Heck, even iBooks allows you sideload other formats.
Most musicians make music because they enjoy it, and some of them hope to make some kind of living from it through live performance. Most writers write for money, plain and simple. Without DRM, the vast majority of people will not pay for books, just as very few people under 30 pay for recorded music.
I don't think DRM will survive, but I don't see how authors will be paid, and I don't see how books will be written, aside from the small number of fiction writers who do it for love.
-johnk (June 13, 2011, 05:59 PM)
--- End quote ---
I think that until you've written, you tend to undervalue the cost of words. It's the same with music, to a large extent. And software, to a lesser extent. It's the nature of the beast.
But I agree that DRM will not survive. I just wish that the publishers could see that *now* and not make the *same* sort of bad decisions the music industry has made.
wraith808:
The only reason eBooks can't be used in the same way is that publishers don't allow it - there is nothing to stop Kindle or any other book reader from removing rights from a book while it is lent to a friend - who temporarily inherits the rights until the book is returned. It is just pure greed on the part of publishing houses - author's only get a tiny, and dwindling, proportion of the book cover price. The only motivation for publishers is greed - that is why eBooks often cost more than printed editions on Amazon even though the publisher overheads are minimal in the eBook world.-Carol Haynes (June 13, 2011, 06:36 PM)
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Especially looking at the capabilities of the Nook to lend... and how the publishers have marginalized that.
40hz:
No-one likes DRM, but at least it means authors get a few bucks for their work.
-johnk (June 13, 2011, 05:59 PM)
--- End quote ---
Unfortunately, that's pretty much all they get.
The lion's share of the money still goes to the publishers - who used to justify their percentage because of the mechanical reproduction costs they incurred by printing, binding, and shipping books. But now that most of that has gone away (save for the relative low overhead of maintaining licensing and distribution servers) they justify their percentage by...I'm sorry - exactly how do they justify their share?
Oh...I see...they don't feel the need to justify it.
Ok. Now I got it. :-\
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