Author Topic: Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal (Read 70324 times)

IainB · « **Reply #75 on:** December 02, 2011, 05:45 PM »

Yet the Swiss government apparently sees things in a much more consumer-oriented way:
Swiss Govt: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal

(Excerpt from the article.)
The overall suggestion the Swiss government communicates to the entertainment industries is that they should adapt to the change in consumer behavior, or die. They see absolutely no need to change the law because downloading has no proven negative impact on the production of national culture.

Who'da thunk?

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #76 on:** December 02, 2011, 05:49 PM »

The Swiss just don't like an argument so long as it doesn't affect their bottom line

Let's all move to Switzerland - nice scenery, good food, lots of skiing and download what you like ... actually if I lived there I would probably never go near a computer - no time with all the other great things to do LOL

wraith808 · « **Reply #77 on:** December 02, 2011, 07:35 PM »

Maybe these updates need to be in either a news thread, or their own individual thread? Because a lot of them relate on peripherally to the subject of the thread, and its confusing...

IainB · « **Reply #78 on:** December 02, 2011, 08:10 PM »

The Swiss just don't like an argument so long as it doesn't affect their bottom line
...
-Carol Haynes (December 02, 2011, 05:49 PM)

Absolutely spot-on.

So without that kind of incentive, it will be interesting to see how Amazon succeed in further establishing their DRM control in their marketplace, in such countries - and there will probably be more than just this single case of Switzerland already.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #79 on:** December 03, 2011, 05:48 AM »

Knowing Amazon they will probably just say the Swiss can't have Kindles - so they nip into Austria, buy a Kindle and head for home.

IainB · « **Reply #80 on:** December 05, 2011, 06:43 PM »

Presumably contracts are for a certain length of time and not in-perpetuity - what happens when the big six publishers finally realise that Amazon has them in a headlock and they don't renew their contract? Presumably a lot of blank Kindles ????
-Carol Haynes (November 30, 2011, 03:48 AM)

I just had to "share" this: Never mind if it is blank, you could always "repurpose" a reading device made obsolete by the suppliers' draconian DRM - if this example of a Barnes & Noble Nook colour is anything to go by:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1372396
Its a "jailbroken" Nook tablet mounted into a Jeep's dashboard to make a for a futuristic audio player and engine monitoring tool.

So ingenious.

(It's enough to make me want to buy a Nook now, anyway.)

40hz · « **Reply #81 on:** December 05, 2011, 06:47 PM »

You know, it just occurred to me...it isn't so much a matter of Amazon writing publishers out as it is Amazon has become a publisher.

IainB · « **Reply #82 on:** December 05, 2011, 07:17 PM »

You know, it just occurred to me...it isn't so much a matter of Amazon writing publishers out as it is Amazon has become a publisher.

-40hz (December 05, 2011, 06:47 PM)

Eh?
I think that may have been discussed in the thread above...or was it somewhere else...?

IainB · « **Reply #83 on:** December 05, 2011, 07:24 PM »

Interesting:
How to read your Nook books on the Kindle Fire

Looks like Amazon don't want to sell you this particular app.

A quick search for the Nook app in the Kindle Fire's Appstore results in absolutely nothing.
The Nook app is available for Android (which is the Fire's OS), but Amazon chose to exclude its competitor's e-reader app from its store.

Probably just another reminder (if one were needed) that you need to avoid a proprietary OS on these devices.
You evidently can't expect the supplier to unlock you or to ensure that you are informed enough to be a non-captive customer.

40hz · « **Reply #84 on:** December 05, 2011, 08:27 PM »

You know, it just occurred to me...it isn't so much a matter of Amazon writing publishers out as it is Amazon has become a publisher.

-40hz (December 05, 2011, 06:47 PM)
Eh?
I think that may have been discussed in the thread above...or was it somewhere else...?
-IainB (December 05, 2011, 07:17 PM)

Just making conversation. Nothing I say should ever be taken as an attempt on my part to count coup.

IainB · « **Reply #85 on:** December 05, 2011, 09:01 PM »

It's not just Amazon that are publishing.
This seems to be self-publishing: The Book World Is Changing: Mark Cuban Creates A Best Seller Out Of Some Blog Posts

The idea of being able to produce smaller books, much more quickly is really quite appealing. And the legacy publishers still just aren't getting it.

Probably don't want to get it.

40hz · « **Reply #86 on:** December 06, 2011, 02:57 PM »

It's not just Amazon that are publishing.
This seems to be self-publishing: The Book World Is Changing: Mark Cuban Creates A Best Seller Out Of Some Blog Posts
The idea of being able to produce smaller books, much more quickly is really quite appealing. And the legacy publishers still just aren't getting it.

Probably don't want to get it.
-IainB (December 05, 2011, 09:01 PM)

Oh...I think the "legacy" publishers "get it" just fine. It's the kiddies piling on the bandwagon for some quickly cranked-out 'get rich' anecdotal 'biz' books that are missing the point so far.

What's much more likely to happen for most of this "new" publishing market is the reading public will quickly tire of all the garbage that's being shoved into ebook format as quickly as possible. Much of the hype I'm seeing with this stuff strongly resembles the nonsense surrounding 900 phone number "business opportunities" way back in the 90s. Some folks will make a fortunes. Then hordes of johnny-cum-latelys will pile on the bandwagon. Then the public will wake up to what it's getting served and drop all of them like a bag of day old garbage.

I friend of mine bought Cuban's book. I took the opportunity to give it a read. I'm very unimpressed despite its best seller status. While it may be popular - I can't say I consider it a good book although YMMV.

I think even Mssr. Cuban isn't so sanguine as to call his 'book' a legitimate win:

Were you surprised at the immediate great sales?

I had no idea what to expect. I literally didn’t ask anyone what a good number would be. So when it popped up on the bestseller lists and at the top of all business books, I was truly surprised.

This is new to me. This is new to the industry. From here, hopefully I will be able to figure out whether this is just a one-off situation, or something that I or others can replicate.

Maybe I just got lucky.

Yes. I think maybe he did at that.

IainB · « **Reply #87 on:** December 07, 2011, 03:54 AM »

@40hz: Oh. I see what you mean. Yes, maybe this "new" market state has a lot of "settling down" to do yet.

Separately, I see the FT is reporting that:

Online retailer [Amazon] acquires Marshall Cavendish children’s books in bid to secure bigger share of ebooks and take on Apple’s tablet.

Growth by acquisition is usually a valid business approach, and the bonus is that it narrows down your potential competitors too.
Oh, but wait...I wonder which comes first?

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #88 on:** December 07, 2011, 04:22 AM »

Its an interesting choice of acquisition though - I would have though that one of the areas that the Kindle really isn't good at is children's books - simply because the technology doesn't have a large enough screen or colour for pictures.

40hz · « **Reply #89 on:** December 07, 2011, 06:43 AM »

Well, it seems the real business model is Balkanization of a given market.

That means eliminating open standards and non-proprietary storage formats. Which I guess now includes paper books.

Funny thing is that this had been tried before with early music recordings which were matched to specific brands of players. It wasn't until the standard 78 and LP formats emerged that records really took off as a product. Same went for phone technology. That market didn't explode until after governments stopped granting telcos the power to decide what devices could be connected to the networks.

Quadraphonic sound never made it because of competing non-compatible disk formats. Sane went for early laserdisc technologies, and to a lesser extent Sony's technically superior Betamax. The buying public refused to pay the stiff premium it would cost. Sony refused to license Betamax to content creators for reasonable terms. Enter VHS - and the rest was history.

Looks like ebooks are going to go through the same learning curve.

Eventually I think ebook distributors will realize closed formats and locked systems don't increase market opportunities, they damage them. In their desire to own the entire ebook marketplace, and play troll under the bridge, they're only hurting themselves in the long run.

Let's just hope it doesn't take another 10 years before they figure that out. $:-\$

IainB · « **Reply #90 on:** December 08, 2011, 09:31 PM »

Its an interesting choice of acquisition though - I would have though that one of the areas that the Kindle really isn't good at is children's books - simply because the technology doesn't have a large enough screen or colour for pictures.
-Carol Haynes (December 07, 2011, 04:22 AM)

That's an interesting point.
As @wraith808 said:

My daughter was very skeptical about this whole e-book thing. Then I took her into Best Buy to look a the Nook color. She fell in love with it.
-wraith808 (October 25, 2011, 11:27 AM)

So the Nook (not the Kindle) sounded like a really good idea - for kids at any rate. I asked my daughter Lily (aged 10) about it and she's mulling it over. She and I went out a couple of days ago to a secondhand bookstore and a children's bookstore (new books) and she bought a whole stack of real hardback and paperback books with her birthday money. I idly wondered at the time whether some of these might be available as ebooks.

IainB · « **Reply #91 on:** December 08, 2011, 09:33 PM »

Well, it seems the real business model is Balkanization of a given market.
That means eliminating open standards and non-proprietary storage formats. Which I guess now includes paper books.
-40hz (December 07, 2011, 06:43 AM)

Yes. Absolutely.
And even if the approach might have failed in other media previously, it seems that you can't keep a good Balkanization tool down.

wraith808 · « **Reply #92 on:** December 08, 2011, 10:23 PM »

So the Nook (not the Kindle) sounded like a really good idea - for kids at any rate. I asked my daughter Lily (aged 10) about it and she's mulling it over. She and I went out a couple of days ago to a secondhand bookstore and a children's bookstore (new books) and she bought a whole stack of real hardback and paperback books with her birthday money. I idly wondered at the time whether some of these might be available as ebooks.
-IainB (December 08, 2011, 09:31 PM)

My daughter is 10 also, and the books that she was anticipating are all on the Nook Color. One of the things that I still don't like about ebooks is the fact that you can't get them used. I'd understand it to a certain extent if they cost less than dead tree pubs, but they don't, so they really need to put a way in to transfer DRM. They won't, of course- they don't like the used book market either. Another thing I very much don't like now with the way that the book market has shaken out is that eBooks are never on sale anymore. I built up my considerable collection at fictionwise.com with their sales and their book club. I miss that.

On another topic, as I said above, I like this topic (Amazon and publishers) and I like the ebook topic in general. However, this particular topic is so fragmented that when it comes up in your unread topics, you don't know what to expect, and the conversations are very interweaved and especially later if someone peruses it or tries to find something, there really won't be a good way. Is it possible to separate these into topics in the future, or just make it obvious that this is a mish mash of information?

superboyac · « **Reply #93 on:** December 08, 2011, 11:04 PM »

So the Nook (not the Kindle) sounded like a really good idea - for kids at any rate. I asked my daughter Lily (aged 10) about it and she's mulling it over. She and I went out a couple of days ago to a secondhand bookstore and a children's bookstore (new books) and she bought a whole stack of real hardback and paperback books with her birthday money. I idly wondered at the time whether some of these might be available as ebooks.
-IainB (December 08, 2011, 09:31 PM)

My daughter is 10 also, and the books that she was anticipating are all on the Nook Color. One of the things that I still don't like about ebooks is the fact that you can't get them used. I'd understand it to a certain extent if they cost less than dead tree pubs, but they don't, so they really need to put a way in to transfer DRM. They won't, of course- they don't like the used book market either. Another thing I very much don't like now with the way that the book market has shaken out is that eBooks are never on sale anymore. I built up my considerable collection at fictionwise.com with their sales and their book club. I miss that.

On another topic, as I said above, I like this topic (Amazon and publishers) and I like the ebook topic in general. However, this particular topic is so fragmented that when it comes up in your unread topics, you don't know what to expect, and the conversations are very interweaved and especially later if someone peruses it or tries to find something, there really won't be a good way. Is it possible to separate these into topics in the future, or just make it obvious that this is a mish mash of information?
-wraith808 (December 08, 2011, 10:23 PM)

This copyright craziness is killing any enjoyment in life. The used book experience from back in the day was a great for multiple reasons: it was cheaper to buy for people who didn't need a brand new book, it gave some mom and pop type people a chance to make a living running a used bookstore, it gave books a nice aesthetic quality (what about the experience of finding an old book at someone's house? that's gone)...all sorts of nice things are gone now because of all this. ARRRGHGHGHGH!!!!

IainB · « **Reply #94 on:** December 09, 2011, 12:56 AM »

This copyright craziness is killing any enjoyment in life.
...
...all sorts of nice things are gone now because of all this. ARRRGHGHGHGH!!!!
-superboyac (December 08, 2011, 11:04 PM)

Well, it'll not happen instantaneously or overnight, and I suspect that we will be able to buy new and 2nd hand paper books for a long time yet - unless their digital competition acquires the stock and burns it all, that is.

I must admit that when I realised that CDs were going to replace my vinyl LP collection, I was a bit sad when I gave them to a local charity shop, but I was delighted when they started to bring out most of that old music, digitised on CDs - and it sounded better! In fact Motorhead's "Killed By Death" had never sounded so good.

IainB · « **Reply #95 on:** December 09, 2011, 01:22 AM »

On another topic, as I said above, I like this topic (Amazon and publishers) and I like the ebook topic in general. However, this particular topic is so fragmented that when it comes up in your unread topics, you don't know what to expect, and the conversations are very interweaved and especially later if someone peruses it or tries to find something, there really won't be a good way. Is it possible to separate these into topics in the future, or just make it obvious that this is a mish mash of information?
-wraith808 (December 08, 2011, 10:23 PM)

I like this topic too. I find it very interesting. Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude and ignore your earlier comment that you found this thread confusing, it was just that I couldn't see how to easily make it less so.
I think that what has happened is that the scope of the discussion has enlarged as our discussion has kept nudging its contextual boundaries outwards. I notice that happening to quite a few discussion threads in this forum, but I don't think that is necessarily a "bad" thing per se. We could split this discussion up and branch it off somehow, I suppose.

Personally, I would blame @40hz and @Carol Haynes for any confusion. They are repeat offenders and keep digressing all the time and throwing red whales into the discussions, and they often have spelling mistakes in what they rite. It's got so off-topic that I nearly lost sight of the fact that this thread was originally started off by @superboyac in December 2009 on the subject of "Why are there not enough pictures of Angelina Jolie being used in forum posts?" (I'm with him on that one.)

I kid you not. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #96 on:** December 09, 2011, 04:37 AM »

On another topic, as I said above, I like this topic (Amazon and publishers) and I like the ebook topic in general. However, this particular topic is so fragmented that when it comes up in your unread topics, you don't know what to expect, and the conversations are very interweaved and especially later if someone peruses it or tries to find something, there really won't be a good way. Is it possible to separate these into topics in the future, or just make it obvious that this is a mish mash of information?
-wraith808 (December 08, 2011, 10:23 PM)

To be fair this topic isn't about the second hand paperback market either

Personally, I would blame @40hz and @Carol Haynes for any confusion. They are repeat offenders and keep digressing all the time and throwing red whales into the discussions, and they often have spelling mistakes in what they rite. It's got so off-topic that I nearly lost sight of the fact that this thread was originally started off by @superboyac in December 2009 on the subject of "Why are there not enough pictures of Angelina Jolie being used in forum posts?" (I'm with him on that one.)
-IainB (December 09, 2011, 01:22 AM)

Thanks for that - the man who writes the longest and most convoluted posts in the entire forum

By the way write has a w in it

IainB · « **Reply #97 on:** December 09, 2011, 06:34 AM »

To be fair this topic isn't about the second hand paperback market either
-Carol Haynes (December 09, 2011, 04:37 AM)

Yes, that kinda puzzled me a bit.

By the way write has a w in it
-Carol Haynes (December 09, 2011, 04:37 AM)

Sorry, I couldn't resist doing that. I think I was in a Puckish frame of mind at the time.
(By the way, have you cleaned up those misspellings on your website yet?)

40hz · « **Reply #98 on:** December 09, 2011, 06:57 AM »

Personally, I would blame @40hz and @Carol Haynes for any confusion. They are repeat offenders and keep digressing all the time and throwing red whales into the discussions, and they often have spelling mistakes in what they rite.
-IainB (December 09, 2011, 01:22 AM)

I think that's the difference between attempting to have an intelligent discussion with someone - and starting a debate.

I'm frequently interested in discussing something. I seldom have the patience to enter into a debate.

Debates are so...competitive, don't you think? (As you may have surmised, I'm not the competitive type.

)

As for the digressions...well, that's how my mind works. I'll start by focusing, then free associate, then weave whatever insights I've obtained back into the context if I find they have merit. It's a subset of the practice commonly referred to as "brainstorming." Or a manifestation of me attempting to "think outside the box" if you will. It's practice which I've found generates useful and surprising results more often than not.

Spelling errors...ah yes...spelling errors! Guilty as charged, although I can't claim full credit on that score. I'm ably assisted by the incredible (in the truest sense of the word) spellchecker on my iPhone. In addition to guessing wrong 7 times out of 10, it has an odd tendency to 'correct' things after I tell it to leave well enough alone. Why it can do that while missing glaringly obvious spelling errors is anybody's guess. (I personally suspect the chip inside the iPhone isn't a chip at all but rather some Frankenstein-ish Area-51 technology that uses brain sections taken from feral cats!)

Regarding the "red whales" (interesting phrase...is that you own coinage?), I'm not quite sure what you mean beyond the inference that a remarkably large 'red herring' gets tossed into the discussion from time to time. If so, I disagree on that point. At least insofar as my understanding of the term 'red herring' goes. Red herrings are an attempt at diversion. Which is not at all the same thing as a digression. Diversion finds its uses in argument and debate. Digression's fair countenance is more to be seen in discussions. But I digress...

Um...have I mentioned yet how I'm not into debates?

wraith808 · « **Reply #99 on:** December 09, 2011, 10:16 AM »

To be fair this topic isn't about the second hand paperback market either
-Carol Haynes (December 09, 2011, 04:37 AM)

Oh, I know... I was just adding to the confusion since it's already here.