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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Trying To Apply Rules Designed For Publications To... Coffee Cans?

from the tricky-laws dept

One of the common problems that we run into all the time is seeing courts trying to apply laws that were meant for a specific scenario to a totally different scenario. Take, for example, the question of the use of a photo on a coffee can. Let's say the photo is "infringing" on some right that was originally created to deal with publications such as newspapers or magazines. How do you figure out when the coffee can was "published"? Or is it even "published" at all? And is it republished every time a new can is sold? That's an issue faced by the California court system, as it struggles to figure out what counts as publication with a coffee can. It seems the courts agree that the coffee can is covered by a "single-publication" rule, meaning that if the image on the can is infringing or defamatory, it only counts as a single publication. But, where it's still struggling is on the date of publication issue. That's because, in this particular case, there's a statute of limitations of two years from the date of publication. But is that just when the first coffee can was sold? Or is the date of publication a running tally, so long as the cans keep being sold? And then, suddenly, you wonder: wait, why are we so concerned about infringement on a coffee can?

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Do School Administrators Not Realize Students Have Access To The Internet?

from the why-bother? dept

We've had a few stories recently of school administrators trying to stop the publication of a school publication because they didn't like the contents. In some cases, the students just route around the administrator and publish online. But, an even bigger point is, what good do the administrators think they're doing in trying to censor content in the first place? Take, for example, the story of a principal blocking the publication of a student magazine at Orange High School in Orange, California. Apparently, the principal was upset about a cover story about tattoos, claiming (bizarrely) that the photo on the cover, of a (faux) full back tattoo that included the magazine's name ("Pulp") and the school's mascot, glorified "gangster" culture, specifically because the text was spelled out in old English lettering. Really.

However, the details show that the real concern had nothing to do with "gang" issues. The principal wanted the article to include extra information about how tattoos were permanent and not easily removed. As Lee Baker at the Citizen Media Law Project points out:

Although it may be helpful for students to be reminded of the difficulty of tattoo removal, such a concern should not give a school principal the legal right to suppress student speech.

Still, the bigger issue from my perspective is understanding exactly who the principal think he's preventing from "harm" in this action. It's not as if students don't know about tattoos or how to find out more info on tattoos. Those students have access to this wonderful thing we call "the internet." They can also probably walk into any number of tattoo parlors. Blocking the publication in a school magazine because the principal doesn't like tattoos hardly seems likely to actually stop anyone from getting a tattoo.

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Putting Ideas And Inventions Into The Public Domain

from the an-idea-who's-time-has-come dept

A few months back, we wondered why it was so difficult to opt out of copyright. Soon after that, Creative Commons added its CC0 license, which gets you a long way towards putting your content in the public domain (there are a few issues related to it, but it's better than nothing). With patents, the issue isn't quite the same. With copyright, you're automatically given a copyright on creative works. Obviously, that's not the case with patents. However, people have wondered how they can put their invention in the public domain, such that (a) others can benefit from it and (b) it prevents others from patenting it at a later date. Tragically, the US Patent Office tends to look pretty narrowly at what counts as prior art and requires that the information be "published," (something that is also defined very narrowly) so simply declaring an invention to be in the public domain isn't always good enough to prevent others from making a claim on it.

I was thinking about the Slashdot post above for a bit, wondering if it was worth writing this post up, when someone else pointed out that some folks have now set up Public Domain Ideas, a wiki designed for just this purpose: to put your ideas into the public domain by publishing them in that wiki. There have been some efforts in the past to create a database of obviousness, but that's pretty difficult. The big problem with obvious ideas is that they're often so obvious, no one even thinks to put them down, until it's too late, and someone has patented an "invention" based on that idea. But the idea of a wiki for public domain ideas is much more interesting -- if people really do decide to make use of it -- and if the Patent Office recognizes it as a source of published inventions for prior art. In the meantime, if you've got some good ideas to share, why not check it out?

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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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Activision Threatens EA For Agreeing To Publish Game Activision Dropped

from the once-it's-dropped,-it-stays-dropped,-dammit dept

Reader Nick sends in the news of a story that reminds us of The Watchmen saga, whereby Fox got paid for doing nothing, while Warner Bros., who made the movie and took on all the risk, had to pay out. In this case, it involves a video game, Brutal Legend. The game was developed by a development studio named Double Fine, with an agreement by Vivendi Games to publish it. However, after Vivendi Games and Activision merged, the combined company decided to drop a bunch of projects, including Brutal Legend. So, Double Fine did what any development house would have done: went in search of another company to publish it. And it found one, in gaming giant EA.

Except, now, Activision has sent a nastygram to EA saying that it still owns the rights to publish Brutal Legend, and EA is infringing on those rights. Of course, Activision has still made it clear that it actually has no intention of releasing the game, which doesn't match with its current focus. Instead, this is a pretty clear money grab -- trying to get EA to pay up. EA seems to have a good response, though:

We doubt that Activision would try to sue. That would be like a husband abandoning his family and then suing after his wife meets a better looking guy.

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Follow Up On Paulo Coelho Embracing Pirating His Own Books

from the seems-to-be-working dept

Back in January, we wrote about how best selling author Paulo Coelho was happily pirating his own books via BitTorrent, noting just how much it was increasing sales. Since he couldn't initially convince publishers to go along with it, he set up a site that pretended it was from a fan giving away various translations of his book, even though it was really run by him. He admitted it in a speech in January that got his efforts a lot more attention. TorrentFreak has checked in with Coelho to see how things have gone since he admitted to pirating his own books. Not surprisingly, the increased attention has helped drive even more sales -- even though the attention was all about how people could get his books for free. Because of that, a couple of his books are back on the NY Times Bestseller list. It also resulted in his publisher, Harper Collins, being a bit more willing to embrace the experiment, putting a new Coelho book online each month. Of course, as we pointed out at the time, this was still a really crippled and annoying-to-read way of offering free books online, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

What may be even more interesting is that Coelho isn't sitting back and leaving things as is. He continues to experiment. For example, rather than selling the movie rights to one of his books, he's running an experiment to have fans make a movie out of the book, dividing up the work. Since the book involves multiple perspectives, each person is expected to choose one perspective and film it. Coelho and his team will then piece together the movie, awarding 3,000 euros to the best film segments, and also offering up 1,500 euros to whoever composes music to go with the film. This reminds me a bit of Jonahtan Lethem's experiments with making a story of his freely available to movie makers. Hopefully we'll be seeing more such creative endeavors going forward.

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Publishers Jumping On The Free Book Bandwagon (Somewhat, But Not Fully)

from the and-you-thought-free-was-evil... dept

For many, many years, Sci-Fi publisher Baen Books has offered free downloadable books, and has found it to be a good way to generate more interest and sales for its authors. It appears that many others are starting to realize this as well. We've recently seen unknown authors and best-selling authors both embrace the concept, while pointing out that obscurity is a much bigger threat to their writing than piracy. Now, it appears that other publishers are beginning to catch on. Sci-Fi publisher Tor is giving away free e-books (apparently with no DRM, either) and the NY Times is now reporting that HarperCollins has decided to start posting free e-books on its website (including a bunch by Paulo Coehlo, the best-selling author who encouraged people to download unauthorized versions of his books). Unfortunately, these "free" e-books are ridiculously limited. They'll only be online for a month -- and you can only view them with a web connection (no downloads allowed). On top of that, the print functionality will be blocked. This seems totally pointless. For most books, it costs more to print out a copy yourself than to just buy the actual book. It's nice to see some additional support for free books, but HarperCollins plans seem akin to the music industry's first forays into online music. That is, they're designed so that the company can say "look, we're doing something!" but are so locked up that very few people will actually be interested.

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