Oh No! Nobody Reads! Oh No! It's Too Cheap For Everyone To Read!

from the accessibility-is-a-good-thing dept

We recently wrote about how booksellers were freaking out over the "price war" between Amazon and Wal-Mart, whereby they're starting to offer certain books at a very cheap price to bring in more customers. The whole thing was a bit silly. Reader Robin Trehaeven alerts us to a fantastic opinion piece in the Library Journal by Barbara Fister, a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, in which she does a superb job mocking what she refers to as the "accessibility paradox" where those who are used to being gatekeepers to information at the same time as they're supposedly promoting the benefits of greater information, suddenly start whining when information really does get more accessible. This includes those booksellers:

I'm also taken aback by the horrified response of the book industry. I thought the big crisis was that nobody reads. Now it turns out the problem is that books are so popular with the masses they're being used as bait to draw in shoppers.

Come on, guys, get your story straight! Which is it?

But most of her brilliant sarcasm is directed at those in her own profession, who both work hard to get information for free, at the same time they complain about how the internet has made it so easy to route around librarians:

It strikes me that this issue is somewhat parallel to the love-hate relationship that many academic librarians have had with the Internet. Although our complicated relationship is improving, there are still some silly assumptions floating around. Oh no, our reference stats are down! Hurrah! People are able to find answers without our help. That's awesome! Anybody can publish on the web, unlike scholarly journals which are peer-reviewed. Fine, but don't tell me all peer-reviewed journal articles are shining examples of reason and academic brilliance. A lot of them are finely-sliced research rehashing the same findings, or are closely examined and exquisitely detailed trivia. Besides, there are plenty of examples of peer review failing in spectacular ways--and examples of wonderful peer-reviewed journals that were born free online.

But this is my favorite: Unlike information you find on the web, we pay for the information in our databases, and you get what you pay for. No, actually, with what you pay for you get a lot of junk that you don't even want, but you have no choice.

You want this journal? You have to subscribe to this pricey bundle. Either that, or you purchase one article at a time for your users, something more and more libraries are doing. You spend less, but the information never visits the library--it goes straight from the publisher to the desk of one user. All the library gets is the bill. Apart from failing on its merits, the argument that paid is better than free is self-contradicting. We can't tell students that purchased information is by definition better than free and, at the same time, beg faculty to recognize how broken the current system is and please, please, please make their work open access.

It's a great overall column, and nice to see a librarian lay the smackdown on hypocrisy within the bookselling and librarian worlds.

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Booksellers Claiming That Competition And Lower Prices Are Bad For Consumers

from the yeah,-that's-convincing dept

Clay Shirky points us to a letter sent by the American Booksellers Association (ABA) to the Justice Department suggesting that a book price war between Amazon and Wal-Mart is potentially illegal. What they appear to be saying -- as Shirky also noted -- is that lower prices are a bad thing:

While on the surface it may seem that these lower prices will encourage more reading and a greater sharing of ideas in the culture, the reality is quite the opposite. Consider this quote from Mr. Grisham's agent, David Gernert, that appeared in the New York Times:

"If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10, publishing as we know it is over. If you can buy Stephen King's new novel or John Grisham's 'Ford County' for $10, why would you buy a brilliant first novel for $25? I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted best sellers take the consumer's attention away from emerging writers."

Basically the booksellers are saying they can't compete in the marketplace. That may be true, but if it's not actually harming consumers, what is the problem? There is no rule that says books must cost $25. If companies can figure out how to sell books for less, in ways that work for their bottom line, then what's wrong with that?

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Weird Priorities: Europeans Want To Digitize Books As Quickly As Possible... Just As Long As It's Not Google Doing It

from the yeah-that-makes-sense dept

Sometimes you just shake your head and wonder what people are thinking. Just as German Chancellor Angela Merkel came out against the Google Book settlement, European Commission Information society and media commissioner Viviane Reding declared that Europe needs to speed up digitizing books. Except if Google is doing it. Why? Well, as Copycense points out, it seems that some Europeans are trotting out the moral rights issue. Moral rights on copyright are not accepted under US copyright law, but are standard in Europe. But, again, this seems to show the problems of bringing morality into copyright law. Europe wants to get books digitized. The fastest way to do that is to let Google keep doing what it's doing (and feel free to do separate digitization projects as well -- but Google has a nice headstart). So, how is it "moral" to keep more books offline and unsearchable? According to German academic Roland Reuss in that Publishers Weekly story above about moral rights, "academics have gotten by just fine for the past 500 years under the old system of publishing." Yes, and people were fine having to walk everywhere or ride horses before cars came along too. Who knew progress was immoral? Ned Ludd is alive and well apparently.

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Oh No! Book Piracy Is Coming! Run And Hide!

from the blah-blah-blah dept

I have to admit that I started to read Randall Stross' latest article at the NY Times over the weekend -- Will Piracy Become a Problem for E-Books? -- but originally stopped a couple paragraphs in. It struck me as the laziest of lazy reporting tricks by Stross. It's a trend piece without a trend, basically pure filler. However, we keep getting submissions with pleas to debunk some of the more ridiculous claims in the article... so, we'll take a quick crack. The main problem is that it uses the recording industry as an example -- with bogus and/or misleading recording industry data, citing both the RIAA and the IFPI in stating that "piracy" has been a problem for the music industry. Tragically, there is no actual evidence to support those claims. Piracy has coincided with the decline in sales of recorded music, but the causal link has not been shown. In fact, we've pointed to numerous studies that showed those who file share tend to buy more music than in the past. But, more importantly, recent studies have shown that while recorded music sales have gone down, the overall music industry has grown.

All that's really happened is that technology has resulted in a shift in how the dollars are spent: more goes towards live shows and merchandise than in the past and less on recorded music. The end result, though? More money being spent on music overall and more money for musicians. The only ones who have less money? The middlemen an the record labels who were too slow to update their business models once it became obvious which way this trend was going. Claiming that the numbers from the recording industry show the "harm" done by piracy is like claiming that the numbers from the Horse Carriage Association of America show how automobiles killed transportation. Recorded music does not represent "the music industry" just as horse carriages did not represent the transportation industry.

And, of course, it's worth looking at how such "piracy" impacts other parts of the industry. In one recent study done at Harvard, if you add in the sales of digital music players, such as the iPod, the music ecosystem has grown tremendously. In fact, that's part of the reason we've argued in the past that the ebook industry, if anything, really could use more piracy, not less, because it would help drive the overall market forward, and more quickly open up new business models. Fearing piracy is a fool's game. Getting more information out to more people more quickly only opens up opportunity.

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Maybe Failing Faster Is Really The Way To Go

from the books-now-limited-to-140-pages dept

We're always on the lookout for new experiments in media publishing, so keep on submitting relevant links, folks. So here's another one. Trying to target a "gap" between magazines and books, the Daily Beast and Perseus Books Group are teaming up to publish books in just 2-4 months, giving authors 1-3 months to write and then publishing the work a month later as an e-book (and then in paperback). These books are aiming to be 40,000 words long, or around 150 pages -- which sounds like a Twitter-like limit, designed to encourage authors to produce stories that are more topical and timely. And on the logistical side, these publishers are going to use the sales of the e-book titles to help anticipate how many paperback editions to print.

It's an interesting experiment because it begins to grasp that digital goods can be used both to promote content and also to assess the market for the related tangible/scarce goods. On top of that, the shorter publishing cycle will likely be more engaging to readers who won't have to wait very long for new books to come out. However, there are some possible pitfalls, too. If the e-books are too expensive (or poor quality because they're written in a rush), then obviously the promotional aspect of the digital content won't be there. They could also soon discover that their target audience is too tuned into digital goods, and the audience that buys printed books doesn't overlap much with Daily Beast readers (so they'd need to promote on a different channel). But at least the publishers won't be stuck with a ton of printed books in inventory, so the downside risk seems lower than traditional publishing. And, actually, that reduced risk might be the key part of this publishing plan. When digital distribution costs are minimal, the strategy of "throwing everything at the wall to see if it sticks" becomes more viable. The Daily Beast's website already leverages free content with news and opinion articles, so if it can also offer unique content with a quicker turnaround time, the reason to buy its books could surface as more and more "good" authors are discovered and recommended -- and commissioned to produce new content.

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Book Authors Realizing They Need To Connect With Fans Themselves... Because Their Publishers Sure Don't

from the CwF dept

The Washington Post has a not-very-surprising article highlighting how many new book authors are discovering that if they want to be successful, their publisher isn't really a huge help (unless you're a big name), and that the path to success often involves doing a ton of "grassroots" marketing yourself. If this all sounds similar to what we keep seeing musicians do today, that's because it is. The article covers some authors who have build up a significant following using the internet and social networking tools to really get themselves out there, connect with people interested in their books and sell the books. There's nothing really new or surprising in the article, but yet another example of how the whole concept of CwF + RtB applies to book authors as well.

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Authors Take Up The Tiered Support Models Also

from the good-for-them dept

Another day, another example of content creators embracing the business models we've been talking about -- and once again, this one is outside of the music industry. Recently we wrote about movie makers picking up on tiered funding offerings, similar to what Jill Sobule has done, and now we've got a budding author as well. To be clear: I'm absolutely sure there are others doing this as well, but I just heard about this particular example. Elinor Mills has the story of an author, Robin Sloan, who has apparently put some popular short stories that he's written online for free. But now he's trying to write a whole book. But rather than go the standard route, he's self-funding and then self-publishing the project, and like Sobule, Josh Freese, and many others (um, including us!), he's offering various tiers of benefits that you get for support:

Pledge $3 or more
DIGITAL PACK. Get a PDF copy of the book and follow along with behind-the-scenes updates.

Pledge $11 or more
PHYSICAL PACK. All of the above, plus get a physical copy of the book. (The more people who choose this level or higher, the better the book is for everybody!)

Pledge $19 or more
SINCERITY PACK. All of the above, plus your book is signed, and it comes with a little surprise.

Pledge $29 or more
PATRON PACK. All of the above, plus your name (or secret code-name) is listed in the acknowledgments.

Pledge $39 or more
SUPER OCCULT VALUE PACK. All of the above, plus get three more copies of the book (for a total of four), so you can give one to a friend, donate one to the library, leave one in a coffee shop with a line of hexadecimal code scribbled across the title page...

The cool thing? At the time I'm writing this, the last one had the highest number of buyers, and the cheapest one had the lowest number of buyers. And yet the Hollywood lawyers of the world insist that people just want to get stuff for free. Not true. Provide them real scarce value and people will buy.

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The Very First Copyright Trial, In 6th Century Ireland, Sounds Really Familiar

from the a-history-lesson dept

Chris pointed me down a delightful rabbit hole trying to understand a -- potentially apocryphal -- story concerning what may be the very first "trial" over "copyright" taking place in the middle of the 6th century in Ireland, involving St. Finnian of Moville and a former pupil of his, Saint Columba -- also known as Colmcille or Colum Cille or a few other names, depending on where you look. The story Chris pointed me to is in French, but it eventually points to an English version of the story (pdf -- which, sadly, does not indicate an author!) that not only suggests that this is the first such trial over the right to copy a book, but reflects some of the same arguments we're still hearing today. Though, luckily for everyone, when Jammie Thomas or Joel Tenenbaum loses their lawsuit, it doesn't eventually lead to 3,000 people dying, as happened in this particular story.

The short version of the story is that St. Columba, a monk, apparently led quite an interesting life. The pdf goes through a bunch of details, but at some point, he decided that the best way to spread Christianity and his own teachings would be to spread the important writings he came across:

Colmcille threw himself into these labours with a zeal few ordinary mortals could match and amongst the tasks he attacked most passionately was the transcribing of biblical manuscripts. A devoted scribe himself, he recognised the shortage of books as one of the critical paths restricting the growth of the scholarship of the church, as well as of his own band of followers. Wherever and whenever he could get access to the materials he would copy and encourage his monks to copy, study and disperse the copies of books to spread the teachings of the church.

As this was happening, he became aware that his former teacher and friend, Finnian, had returned from Rome with the "Vulgate" -- a Latin translation of the bible that had been done about 100 years earlier. Columba traveled to see is friend... and the book. Finnian gladly shared his treasure with Columba, but was still quite protective of it, and wasn't keen on the whole "copying it for others' bit. So, Columba took matters into his own hands and started surreptitiously copying the manuscript at night. He was eventually spotted, and a fight ensued, which the two former friends agreed to settle via arbitration, held in the court of Diarmaid, the High King of Ireland. Finnian argued for a basic form of copyright: claiming that the book was his "property" and any attempt at copying it violated his property rights. It was then that Columba allegedly made something like the following speech (which was, admittedly, loosely translated in the pdf above):

"My friend's claim seeks to apply a worn out law to a new reality. Books are different to other chattels (possessions) and the law should recognise this. Learned men like us, who have received a new heritage of knowledge through books, have an obligation to spread that knowledge, by copying and distributing those books far and wide. I haven't used up Finnian's book by copying it. He still has the original and that original is none the worse for my having copied it. Nor has it decreased in value because I made a transcript of it. The knowledge in books should be available to anybody who wants to read them and has the skills or is worthy to do so; and it is wrong to hide such knowledge away or to attempt to extinguish the divine things that books contain. It is wrong to attempt to prevent me or anyone else from copying it or reading it or making multiple copies to disperse throughout the land. In conclusion I submit that it was permissible for me to copy the book because, although I benefited from the hard work involved in the transcription, I gained no worldly profit from the process, I acted for the good of society in general and neither Finnian nor his book were harmed."

I have to be honest: such a speech (even with the admittedly "loose" translation) seems so current that I have my doubts about the whole story having happened at all. But, since this is just for fun, let's keep going.

According to the story in the pdf, the "trial" wasn't exactly on a fair basis, as there were all sorts of separate political pressures on the king and his advisors, including some worries about by some druids that Columba might be too successful in spreading Christianity with such copied books. Think of the druids as the "recording industry" in this story, with Christianity I guess being the Napster of the sixth century. No surprise: the legacy industry had the ear of those in power, and used it to influence how the court would rule:

"I don't know where you get your fancy new ideas about people's property. Wise men have always described the copy of a book as a child-book. This implies that someone who owns the parent-book also owns the child-book. To every cow its calf, to every book its child-book. The child-book belongs to Finnian."

Yup. The breakthrough "startups" have been losing such copyright battles for over a millennium apparently -- though, of course, in the long run (thank you Gutenberg), it seems that the copiers eventually win out. So, while Napster may suffer in the courts of today, certain things, such as the spread of knowledge and content are eventually unstoppable.

And, oh yeah, the post script to the story, is that following this loss in "court" and the humiliation that came with it, there were a series of events that led to a real fight -- the so-called "Battle of the Book" that left 3,000 dead, and despite being the victor in that battle, Columba was almost ex-communicated and then eventually (if temporarily) exiled from Ireland. But, then again, he also became a saint in retrospect. I can't see the same happening for Tenenbaum or Thomas, but perhaps they'll take some solace in knowing that the ridiculous fines put on them might not be quite as bad as what Columba faced.

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Techdirt Book Reading List 2009

from the food-for-thought dept

A couple years ago, after completing my series of posts on the economics of ideas and infinite goods, I wrote up a reading list of books that were useful in thinking about all of this. With our recent launch of a book version of that series, called Approaching Infinity, I updated that list with a bunch of more recent books (basically, the books sitting on my desk again...), and wanted to share them here. For this post, I'm only writing up short reviews, but plan to revisit some of these books with much more detailed reviews, in the future. Not surprisingly, we'll kick it off with four of the books that I feel are the most important for anyone to read if they're interested in these things. Together, they make up the four books that you can get together (all signed by their authors!) in the Techdirt Book Club package.

The Essentials:

• Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars by William Patry

  Patry, long established as one of the foremost experts on copyright law, has written an outstanding text that discusses how copyright law has been twisted and abused by corporate interests who don’t use it for its intended purpose (to promote the progress of creative works) but as a tool to prop up an outdated business model. On top of this, he explores the misleading and inflammatory language used by those seeking to abuse copyright law in this manner. Highly engaging and a must read for anyone who’s worried about the state of copyright today. Oh, and as a bonus, Patry has started blogging again in support of the book, after he gave up on blogging a couple years ago.

• The Public Domain by James Boyle

  Law professor James Boyle has been one of the foremost critics of the undue expansion of copyright law over the years, fighting against things like the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. Over the years, he’s noticed a troubling trend among some to question why the public domain is even needed — so he wrote an entire book to explain why. It’s filled with story after story that highlights both the importance of the public domain and how overly aggressive copyright laws have held back the public domain and the creativity that it previously allowed. As a highlight, don’t miss the incredible chapter on the birth of soul music by Ray Charles. If today’s copyright regime had been in force at the time, we might not have had soul music at all. Think of all the great music we may be missing today thanks to current copyright laws.

• Against Intellectual Monopoly by David Levine and Michele Boldrin

  This book was on the list two years ago, but that was an earlier digital-only draft, as opposed to the full hardcover version now available. Levine and Boldrin are two well-known economists who began investigating the impacts of intellectual property, and were eventually quite disturbed by what they found. That is, they could find no evidence that either copyrights or patents actually achieved their stated intention of "promoting the progress." Instead, they found a lot of evidence that the opposite occurred — and that copyright and patent law served to hinder the progress and slow down its pace. Chock full of examples and citations to important studies, this book is a must read for anyone trying to understand the state of today’s intellectual property law and how closely it lives up to its stated purpose.

• The Gridlock Economy by Michael Heller

  An excellent addition to the literature on property law and the economics of property. Heller recognized what he refers to as "the tragedy of the anti-commons," when too many property rights get in the way of the efficient allocation of resources, and notes how this has come into play on things like patents and broadcast spectrum. If you’re trying to understand the economics of intellectual property, especially if you’re a strong believer in property rights (as we are) this is an excellent book to understand where property rights can go too far.

Intellectual Property

• No Law by David L. Lange & H. Jefferson Powell.

  This is an incredibly worthwhile read. I plan to do a much more detailed review shortly. It methodically lays out the argument for how and why copyright law as it's written today clearly violates the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law... prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech..."). The book is, at times, a bit dense to read through, but you kind of expect that from two lawyers. However, the detailed and thought provoking look at the history of intellectual property law, along with related legal concepts such as misappropriation and unfair competition -- as well as its detailed dissection of a few key court cases -- is, alone, worth the price of admission. I have some other problems with the book (including its eventual suggestions for how to "fix" copyright law), but there's so much value in the first half of the book that I'd highly recommend it.

• Patent Failure by James Bessen & Michael J. Meurer

  A must read for anyone looking to understand the patent system today. Bessen & Meurer go through a ton of the research that has been done about patent systems, and include a bunch of their own, and make the case that the patent system simply does not work for the majority of industries out there. The book is incredibly strong in detailing study after study after study that details, in an incontrovertible way, that the patent system is fundamentally broken and clearly hinders innovation much more significantly than it helps it.

• Copyright's Paradox by Neil Netanel

  Similar to No Law above, Copyright's Paradox goes into great detail showing how copyright law appears to quite obviously violate the First Amendment, and why that needs to be dealt with.

• The Patent Crisis by Dan L. Burk and Mark A. Lemley

  Mark Lemley should be a familiar name around here for his views on intellectual property, and this book certainly is a worthwhile read. It does a great job laying out the many problems with the patent system and why it often does significantly more harm than good. Where I find it a bit less convincing, however, is in suggesting that the court system can fix these problems. I agree that the current Congressional patent reform bills aren't very good, but I'm not convinced the courts will go anywhere close to far enough in fixing the system.

• Intellectual Property and Theories of Justice Edited by Axel Gosseries, Alain Marciano and Alain Strowel

  This is a collection of academic papers having to do with intellectual property, as related to not just legal and economic arguments, but philosophical ones as well. I don't agree with all of the different papers, obviously, but there's a lot to get your mind churning on different ideas and different approaches to intellectual property issues within this book.

Economics & Innovation

• Free by Chris Anderson

  By now, you should probably already know about this book, but Chris puts into book form much of what we talk about on Techdirt. My review of the book notes that it's well-worth reading, though I think he could have gone farther and could have done a better job anticipating how to respond to the obvious critiques from people who were responding emotionally, rather than based on the actual points raised by the book.

• The Venturesome Economy by Amar Bhide

  This is a fantastic read if you're looking to understand innovation in a global economy. It puts to rests various myths about globalization or off-shoring being bad for the US economy, and shows how innovation itself is global, but the key question is learning how to actually implement ideas, and how to take concepts and continually innovate, rather than just focusing on a small part of the puzzle.

• The Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason

  While it suffers from sensationalism, at times (too much so at points), the book does a fantastic job of highlighting example after example after example of how what some people feared as "piracy" was simply a leading indicator of innovation. In every case, the same pattern emerges: some existing industry freaks out over so-called "pirates," but the "pirates" are merely the market telling the industry what it wants, and what's possible. Eventually (often over massive protests from that industry) someone comes along and figures out how to deliver what the market wants -- and to do so profitably. This is a must-read for anyone who calls things "piracy" without understanding the real implications of what's going on.

• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

  A quick and easy read that gets people to rethink certain easy assumptions about economic behavior. While I disagree with the idea that the actions are somehow "irrational," I do think it highlights how there are often more variables at play in an economic analysis than a simplified analysis takes into account. For folks around here, his investigations into how people respond to "free" within an economic model (i.e., they value it more than you would expect) are particularly noteworthy.

• Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

  Pretty much anything by Clay Shirky should be required reading already, but this book is one of the best out there in getting you to understand how the old systems of production and consumption are changing due to enabling technologies, and how the old distinctions between production and consumption are melting away.

• Remix by Larry Lessig

  Not necessarily Lessig's strongest book, but still absolutely worth reading. It goes well with Matt Mason's (and James Boyle's) book above, in getting you to understand the nature of creativity, and the way in which nearly all creativity involves mixing one's own unique ideas with those that have come before.

• What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis

  While admittedly it can feel a bit preachy at times, once you get past that aspect of it, you realize that it's a manual for innovative decision making (not just in business). It's about recognizing that businesses by themselves don't get to call the shots any more, and if they don't realize that, they're probably not going to stay in business very long.

• Rebel Code by Glyn Moody

  If you want to understand how the concepts we talk about here can be applied in practice, the open source community is a good place to start. Glyn Moody has written an excellent account of exactly how that came about.

• The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain

  I actually disagree with the conclusions of this book, but there are still a number of good points raised within it, about how there's always a fight between "control" and "openness" in new technologies. Zittrain worries about the trend towards control, though I think in the end the market will settle things, and "control" will lose out to openness in the long run.

• A Culture of Improvement by Robert Friedel

  This rather epic tome goes deep into how innovation occurs in Western Society through a basic mechanism of a "culture of improvement": the idea that when something doesn't work right, we seek out a better solution. If you want to understand how innovation occurs, this is a good starting point.

• From Concept to Consumer by Phil Baker

  We've said it time and again: the real key to innovation is not the idea, but actually implementing it, and innovating to get the idea out there, and to see how you can deliver more of what a consumer needs. Written by someone who's done that many times over, this book is basically a guidebook for those looking to go from the idea stage to actually bringing a product to market. For those who think that the invention is the important stuff, and bringing it to market is just "business stuff," this is a worthwhile read.

Obviously, there have been a ton of other great books that have come out over the past couple of years, but these are the ones that I've kept close to my desk recently, and wanted to share with all of you.

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B&N Claims It Must DRM Public Domain Books To Protect The Copyright On Them

from the say-what-now? dept

Now, it's no surprise that plenty of people don't quite "get" the public domain or why it's important (though, if you are interested, you should read James Boyle's excellent book on the subject, which you can also order -- signed -- as a part of the Techdirt Book Club). And we've seen more than a few instances where people falsely claim copyright on public domain material. However, none of that really explains Barnes & Noble's bizarre and contradictory response to someone's question about why public domain ebooks were locked up with DRM (thanks Mark for sending this in). B&N is apparently offering a promotion for "free" ebooks, but it turns out that all of them are in the public domain (meaning most are already available for free online). But, oddly, these books were locked up by DRM, and someone decided to ask why. The original question goes a bit too far in claiming that the DRM "infringes" on the "right to print the works" (there's no such right, and B&N has no requirement to allow you to print), but that's no excuse for the way B&N "explains" why the public domain books its giving away "free" are protected by DRM:

We selected public domain titles as our free eBooks because these books are traditionally among our customers' favorite works of literature.... Also, for copyright protection purposes, these files are encrypted and cannot be converted or printed.

So, they recognize that the works are in the public domain... but they encrypt them with DRM to protect the copyright that doesn't exist on those works. That's convincing.

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Author Admits To Downloading Own Works: Easier Than Scanning

from the focusing-on-true-customers dept

Reader Jon R. sent in a great story about author Michael Stackpole, where he talks about embracing new technologies and tools to better reach your audience, while also ignoring things like "piracy." On the "piracy issue," he notes:

"People downloading my stories from the big torrent sites were never going to buy them anyway. It's no money out of my pocket."

Following that, he pointed out that he has sometimes downloaded his own books from torrent sites because it was easier than scanning the work himself, if he didn't already have a digital copy of it. Stackpole is taking exactly the right attitude on all of this. First, he's embracing new technologies and new distribution channels, rather than ignoring them (or worse) complaining about them. Second, he recognizes that he needs to focus on his real customers (those actually willing to spend money on things) and that he needs to provide them with real value that they'll actually pay for. Finally, he recognizes that there's little benefit in caring about those who get the works by unauthorized means, since there's a pretty strong chance that they were never going to pay for anything anyway. What does complaining about them or trying to stop them really do -- other than distract from providing good value for your true fans?

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Buy The Novel, Get A Lot More -- Including True Reasons To Buy

from the now-this-is-unique dept

When we talk about the various business models and economics surrounding "infinite goods" people always want to insist that there's some area where there are no scarcities or are no ancillary goods that can be sold. One example that's commonly cited is novels. Sure, with business books, the writer can go on a speaking tour, but with novels, what else will people want to buy? But, of course, that misses the point. There are always creative ways to get people to buy, and it's rather insulting to suggest that people are so uncreative that they can't come up with other unique ways to either sell other things or to convince people that the physical book itself is worth buying.

That's why I was excited to hear from JC Hutchins, who was telling us about the way he's selling his new novel, Personal Effects: Dark Art. First, if you buy the book itself, it comes with a lot more than just the book. In the book are various "artifacts" that are talked about in the book and are a part of the story -- such as credit cards, business cards, IDs, photos and legal documents -- all of which look and feel totally authentic (yes, including the credit card). But, even more interesting is that the story goes beyond the book itself. We've seen various video games, movies and even albums have certain "Alternative Reality Games" associated with them -- and this book does, too. If you Google the names of certain characters, you can find their webpages and blogs (and accounts on certain social networking sites). The phone numbers on the business card work. You can email characters in the story, hear voicemails and hack into different websites and emails, as well.

Oh, and on top of that, in order to help people get more interested in the story, Hutchins offers up a free audio prequel to the book designed to introduce you to the story, the characters and the "world" the full story inhabits. He also has a huge 50 page PDF file you can download, with details and info on how to host your own party around the themes in the book, with the idea obviously being to allow fans of the book to evangelize it to other friends.

And, of course, Hutchins works to come up with interesting ways to "connect with fans," including the ability for fans to "commit themselves" as patients to the psychiatric hospital at the center of the story. The story in the book revolves around a therapist at the hospital who uses an individual's "personal effects" to help treat them -- so this part lets you submit your own backstory and whatever "personal effects" you want, in order to "become a patient." It may be a little gimmicky, but it's a lot more immersive than just about any other novel.

All in all, it looks like a really fun world around the book. It helps the author better connect with fans and gives them a reason to buy the actual book -- no ebook is going to replace the overall impact here.

Now, I can probably already write exactly what the critics will say in the comments here: that (1) this seems like a ton of extra work and what if the author just wants to write and (2) this only works this one time, with this one author, in this particular genre. In response to the first point, that's true, but Hutchins actually teamed up with an alternative reality game creator, Jordan Weisman, and there's no reason other authors can't find partners, too. Second (and this is important, even though it will no doubt be ignored by the critics here): no one is saying that this is "the model" for selling novels in the future. The point is simple: there are a nearly unlimited number of ways in which authors can be creative and unique in providing people true reasons to buy books and/or other scarcities. Hutchins is just demonstrating one (or, actually, a few) that he figured out. In this case, Hutchins recognized (correctly) that such an ARG would fit with this particular novel, and that's great. I'm sure other creative writers in totally different genres can come up with creative other "reasons to buy" and other scarcities around the types of things they do, as well.

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One More Reminder That You Don't Own The Books On Your Kindle

from the ownership:-how-20th-century-of-you... dept

Lots of people have pointed out that one of the massive downsides of an eBook device like the Kindle is that you don't actually own the books you bought. Unlike a real book, you can't share it with a friend, resell it or donate it to the local library. And, in some cases, you can lose access to books you thought you "owned," based on the whims of employees at Amazon deciding you somehow abused their system. One of the big controversies over the Kindle was the TTS feature, which the Authors Guild claimed (without a shred of legal evidence) violated its rights. The Authors Guild had no claim here. It doesn't violate performance rights, because reading aloud isn't a performance. It doesn't violate copyright, because there's no fixed copy made -- and if it did violate copyright, so would reading a book aloud. Yet, for no clear reason, Amazon caved in and agreed to take away this feature.

Mark alerts us to the news that, as of May 13th, Amazon began remotely disabling the feature for certain eBooks, including many popular titles. In other words, Amazon remotely took away a feature that you used to have. That doesn't happen with a physical book. Random House doesn't get to say "oh, wait, we're now taking away the ability to dog ear pages." I love the concept of eBooks, but it's quite troubling that you don't actually get ownership of the eBooks you're buying -- and that Amazon can, at its own discretion, suddenly take away valuable features from books you had already purchased.

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Best-Selling Swedish Author Torrents Her Own Audio Book To Protest Pirate Bay Ruling

from the legitimate-uses dept

We've already seen that plenty of content creators use The Pirate Bay for legitimate distribution and promotion purposes, and now Dan writes in to alert us that a best-selling author in Sweden, Unni Drougge, is so annoyed by The Pirate Bay verdict, that she made an audiobook version of her best-selling recent novel and put up a torrent via The Pirate Bay, along with a "manifesto" in support of free file sharing. Apparently, this is getting her plenty of attention, as her book has jumped to the top of the audiobooks list (what were people saying, that the top downloaded lists never include authorized content?).

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Copyright Lobbyists Threaten To Sue Book Renting Firm In Finland

from the P2P-is-not-Pirate2Pirate dept

A bunch of folks have sent in this story about a copyright lobbying group in Finland that is threatening to sue a website that helps people rent textbooks, oddly calling it "The Pirate Bay for textbooks." That makes no sense if you understand what the site actually does. It's not hosting ebooks. It's literally connecting people who own textbooks to others, so they can rent their physical textbooks. It's difficult to see how that could be considered copyright infringement at all, let alone anything similar to The Pirate Bay. But, in this day and age, where the copyright lobbyists see almost anything as infringement, perhaps it's no surprise they'd freak out about this as well.

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Author Offers Free Copy Of His Book To Anyone Who Writes An Amazon Review

from the free-books dept

It's pretty common for book publishers to send out free copies of their books to book reviewers and publications. It's part of the publicity effort that any new book tends to go through. However, in this day and age, pretty much everyone is a book reviewer thanks to blogs or Amazon... and one author is responding accordingly. ChurchHatesTucker alerts us to the news that author Charlie Finlay is offering a free copy of his book to anyone who promises to review it on Amazon. Basically, he knows that the best way to build buzz around the book is to actually get people to read it, and giving away the book to people who will provide that buzz is probably a cost effective way to get some attention. Now, some might question whether the reviewers will be "fair" because they received the book for free -- but that's true of most professional book reviewers already.

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Book Publishers Misguided Complaints About Scribd

from the sensationalism-at-work dept

If you're a bored journalist, it's easy to create a sensationalistic story about "piracy." Just find some pre-internet industry that's dealing with the shift to online content, get a few quotes about how awful "pirates" are, and then find a company to blame for all of it. That seems to be what the Times of London did with its story about publishers freaking out over people uploading books to Scribd. Scribd responded by pointing out numerous factual errors in the original article (specifically the parts that seem to try to place the blame on Scribd, despite it being a third party platform that actually has a pretty advanced anti-infringement system in place). However, this is the quote that struck me:

Peter Cox, a literary agent and editor of the Litopia blog, said: "These people are pirates. We don't have to give in to this. We can't afford to make the same mistakes the music industry did."

Apparently Mr. Cox hasn't been paying attention. The "music industry" (he means the recording industry) didn't give in on this. It fought it consistently. And lost pretty much every battle -- often making things worse for itself by simply never adjusting to the changing marketplace. So, Cox's response is to follow their exact mistakes by "fighting" this? That's exactly the mistake that the music industry made.

Instead, he might want to take a look at what folks like Paulo Coehlo discovered when he "pirated" his own books and saw sales jump. Or what Baen books has done. Or what tons of authors have found after they put their books online for free and combined it with a smart business model. Otherwise, Mr. Cox is making the exact mistake the recording industry made while thinking (incorrectly) that trying to "stop piracy" is somehow a workable solution.

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German Book Publishers Plan To Sue Thousands For File Sharing

from the apparently-they've-learned-nothing dept

It's difficult to believe that anyone could look at the disastrous five years of the RIAA suing fans and think, "hey, we should do that too!" However, that appears to be exactly what some German book publishers have decided. Michael Scott points us to the news that the head of the German book publishers' assocation has announced plans to "sue thousands" and talked about how file sharing systems were the equivalent of organized crime. He's also demanding that ISPs implement a three strikes plan. Apparently, he hasn't discovered that file sharing of books, when done right, can help boost demand for book sales.

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Amazon Gives In To Ridiculous Authors Guild Claim: Allows Authors To Block Text-To-Speech

from the and-here's-how-we-shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot dept

Well here's an unfortunate surprise. Following the ridiculous claims of the Authors Guild that automated reading aloud of ebooks using text-to-speech software is a violation of copyright, Amazon has agreed to back down and make the TTS feature optional on a per-book basis. The company issued a statement explaining why it believes that there is no copyright violation at all, but is still making the feature optional:

Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to the convenience of listening to books and thereby grow the professionally narrated audiobooks business.

Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rights-holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat.

Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title.

While this does, effectively, allow the copyright holders to shoot themselves in the foot yet again, it's disappointing that the company wasn't at least willing to stand up for its right to offer such a feature without needing permission.

Meanwhile, if you don't mind the temptation to bang your head against the wall repeatedly, you can read an interview the Authors Guild's Paul Aiken conducted with Engadget about this whole thing. What's amazing is his inability to even understand how having a computer read aloud a book is no different than a person reading aloud the book or the Kindle reading aloud the book. He seems to think each is a different case that deserves different rights (and, of course, different licenses).

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Authors Guild Continues To Falsely Claim That Reading Aloud On A Kindle Violates Audio Rights

from the which-rights-exactly? dept

Roy Blount Jr. is a funny man. He appears regularly on the radio show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me..., and is one of their funnier panelists. But, unfortunately, I don't think he was joking when he wrote a silly Op-Ed for the NY Times defending the Authors Guild's stance that having a Kindle use text-to-speech to read aloud is somehow a violation under copyright law. Blount, who's the President of the Guild, seem to be arguing not from a legal perspective, but from a "but this is how we want it to be" perspective. That's because he has almost no legal argument at all. Using text-to-speech to read text you legally own aloud is not copyright infringement. It's not a "fixed" version of the material, and it's not a public performance. So, rather than come up with a legal justification for such a ridiculous claim, Blount resorts to this: "audio books are a billion-dollar market."

This is the "but the old way of doing business made us so much money, so any innovation must be illegal" argument. You know what else was a big market at one time? Horse & buggies. And Gramophones. And 8-tracks. But technology made them all obsolete at some point or another, and that wasn't illegal. You don't get to cling to an old business model just because it made you lots of money. Sometimes new technologies come along, and they provide a better experience for people, and the market changes. Already it's a stretch to say that a TTS read-aloud of a book really "competes" with an audio book, but even if it did one day, that doesn't necessarily make it illegal just because Blount and the Authors Guild wishes it were so.

Finally, Blount responds to criticism that the Authors Guild's stance goes against readers for the blind or the ability to read aloud to your kid at night. He basically just says "no, that's not true." But he doesn't explain why. That's because there is no good explanation, based on what the Authors Guild has said concerning "audio rights." Basically, the Authors Guild is trying to pretend copyright says what it wants it to say, rather than what it actually says. And, when people have pointed out examples of how the Authors Guild's interpretation of copyright is bogus, their response is "well, we didn't mean it for that." They are, of course, missing the point. Those examples aren't to show the full impact of what the Authors Guild is claiming. They're to show that the Authors Guild is wrong in what it thinks copyright grants them. For a group of "Authors" they seem to have trouble with basic reading comprehension.

Update: John Paczkowski has a great post on this, comparing Blount's statements to those of John Philip Sousa a century ago, complaining about the introduction of "playing and talking machines" and how they would destroy music.

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