News on e-books

[PennLady]

Found this on Salon and wanted to pass it along. More links at the bottom of the article for more info on the whole e-book/DRM/etc issue.

http://www.salon.com/2013/03/01/do_you_truly_own_your_e_books/

 

[i_would]

Article uses DRM wrong. They call it "digital rights management", which it isn't. The R stands for Restrictions. It's got nothing to do with rights, not of the author/publisher, not of the buyer/reader. All about applying restrictions - locking both author/publisher and buyer/reader into their platform.

And all the while not doing anything about piracy, as all DRM can be broken (by nature), and most schemes are not broken already, and it has to be stripped only once for the book to be DRM free on the torrent sites. It may even add incentive for the pirates (bragging rights).

So authors, if you wish to sell your work, remember to use a publisher that publishes DRM free. That doesn't mean you still have full control over your work (publishing contracts and terms still apply), at least you don't fall into the DRM trap, restricting you (yes, that's that R again) to just a part of the e-book market.

 

[RodenAddison]

So authors, if you wish to sell your work, remember to use a publisher that publishes DRM free. That doesn't mean you still have full control over your work (publishing contracts and terms still apply), at least you don't fall into the DRM trap, restricting you (yes, that's that R again) to just a part of the e-book market.

I agree with i_would. If someone wants to buy my book off of amazon as kindle and change it to epub using something like calibre... how would that harm me as the author? Further, I think a lot of people will sometimes obtain a book in an illegitimate manner and then buy a copy because they enjoyed it. I have done that myself. It's frustrating to have an ereader that is locked into a particular file format and find the book you want isn't available for it. It's about selling their readers, not offering a service. Don't even talk to me about .pdf's. Oh, the horror.

 

[D_Lynn]

Thanks for sharing this article, PL.

I was hoping to see a link to some news about the class action law suit between the Indies and the monopoly of 6 publishing houses & Amazon. Do you have one bookmarked, by chance?

 

[Handley_Page]

Article uses DRM wrong. They call it "digital rights management", which it isn't. The R stands for Restrictions.
It's got nothing to do with rights, not of the author/publisher, not of the buyer/reader. All about applying restrictions - locking both author/publisher and buyer/reader into their platform.

That's not how Wiki sees it.

Digital rights management (DRM) is a class of controversial access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders, and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale.

. . .
Some opponents, such as the Free Software Foundation (FSF) through its Defective by Design campaign, maintain that the use of the word "rights" is misleading and suggest that people instead use the term "digital restrictions management".[7]

Not being an author of an e-book, I cannot express much by way of an opinion one way or another about it, but I noticed in the technical press recently that DRM is being used as an excuse to further control what happens to an electronic text. (It can, for example fade form your Kindle or whatever device, which I think is wrong because you've paid for it and may expect to keep a copy as you would a paper book.

 

[PennLady]

Thanks for sharing this article, PL.

I was hoping to see a link to some news about the class action law suit between the Indies and the monopoly of 6 publishing houses & Amazon. Do you have one bookmarked, by chance?

No, sorry. But if I find something I'll pass it along.

 

[i_would]

Well yes I know the formal name is "rights" but I really call that a misnomer. And yes I'm an opponent if you didn't figure that.

Opponent in two ways. As a consumer, as my rights are taken away. As someone who is rather tech savvy, seeing it just doesn't work, and that by nature it can never work.

Example: pdfs can have DRM on them, so e.g. you can view them but not copy/paste bits of information. Once I ran into that on my iBook with Apple's pdf viewer. It didn't let me copy. On another computer, same pdf file, no problem doing that copy. That software didn't "support" the DRM, it simply ignored the "don't copy me" flag.

Most DRM protection is stronger of course, but it depends on the software that runs on the user side to do it's dirty job. DVD is encrypted (and has some other highly irritating "features" such as non-skippable commercials), but the key to the decryption is present in any DVD player, or DVD playing software on a PC. One person managed to kindle the key out of one piece of software, and the complete scheme was broken.

BluRay is stronger yet, but also as good as completely broken for the very same reason. It took quite a while though, but as some in the techies community say: "give a hacker a challenge (break DRM), they will take it up. The tougher the challenge, the harder they will work on it". Amazon's e-book DRM can be stripped using various software tools freely available online, making it completely ineffective and a mere annoyance to end users.

The only thing it does (and that's what killed DRM in music!) is to limit the number of sales channels for the publisher/creator, and giving power to the distributor/reseller. Apple had iTunes, and got a like >80% market share with their iPod music player, and like 95% market share of digital music sales. Now Apple as distributor could set the price at which they wanted to sell the music, and tell labels how much they could get for their music. The labels had no choice but to go through Apple if they wanted DRM on their music, giving Apple enormous power over the labels. Currently most if not all music online is available DRM-free from various competing retailers, it was the only way to break Apple's market power. And, of course, iTunes' FairPlay DRM scheme has been broken long time ago as well.

 

[sr71plt]

Funny that this discussion would be from the consumer perspective on the AUTHORS Hangout. Looking at the issue from the author's perspective, the ability for a consumer to copy equals the ability to have my work and redistributing it without paying me my royalty on it. So, stealing my work from me without paying me anything for having produced it. On the AUTHORS Hangout forum, perhaps this is where the discussion should start--maybe what can be done to take care of the author and publisher and the consumer who paid for it but not for the consumer who didn't pay for it.

 

[oggbashan]

For years there has been an on-going discussion in the UK among authors and secondhand bookdealers about whether a commission should be paid to the author/publisher on resale of a secondhand book.

So far it has been accepted that the author/publisher earn their money from first sale. Even that isn't simple.

Some books are supposed to have been pulped because they are defective or damaged. Yet they have been sold in bulk after removing the original covers for paperbacks or after removing the title page if hardback. I have seen many such books circulating and being sold as secondhand. Such books have not paid the author/publisher in full or even not at all.

Remaindered books are similar. The author/publisher gets very little money from remaindered books that are often sold in bulk by the tonne.

Now that most secondhand bookdealers are computerised, it would be feasible to count secondhand sales of a particular author. But it wouldn't be a level playing field. Secondhand books are also sold in charity shops, at boot fairs, school fairs etc. Should they also pay a commission on books sold for a few pence?

What concerns me as a reader is that I have to pay MORE for an e-book than a paperback, and the terms of the e-book sale suggest that I haven't bought the book, just leased it for a particular platform as long as that platform continues to exist. Why am I paying more to lease than I do to buy?

I think that publishers are ripping off their authors and their customers.

Nothing new then.

 

[sr71plt]

What concerns me as a reader is that I have to pay MORE for an e-book than a paperback, and the terms of the e-book sale suggest that I haven't bought the book, just leased it for a particular platform as long as that platform continues to exist. Why am I paying more to lease than I do to buy?

I don't think it has occurred to many e-book "buyers" yet that they are only leasing the book. A few more realized that, I think, this past December when a major distributor went under (Fictionwise) and "owners" of books bought through that distributor had to go through some hoops to switch where their e-books were accessed from.

I don't know of many e-books costing more than the paperback version, though, Ogg--except maybe mainstream e-book that you also can buy for practically nothing secondhand--which, as you noted, is screwing the author for a share in profit from an otherwise lost sales opportunity.

(And, yes, there's no reason for an author to approve of either libraries or second-hand bookstores.)

 

[bashfullyshameless]

I have had two people, ever, get upset about there being any sort of DRM on my work from Amazon. Neither of them made anything close to a coherent argument.

There's a website out there where a guy is offering $50 to anyone who will give him cracked copies of my two e-books. He's offering $25 each for two books that he could get from either Smashwords or Amazon for $3.00 ... but he doesn't want to buy them at that price because, what, I'm an oppressive capitalist demanding an unreasonable and insulting three bucks for a novel? Weird.

 

[PennLady]

I don't know of many e-books costing more than the paperback version, though, Ogg--except maybe mainstream e-book that you also can buy for practically nothing secondhand--which, as you noted, is screwing the author for a share in profit from an otherwise lost sales opportunity.

(And, yes, there's no reason for an author to approve of either libraries or second-hand bookstores.)

I've seen a number of instances of e-books costing more than the paperback. I don't go looking for it, so I can't hazard a guess as to how often it happens. The ones I've seen have varied anywhere from about $1-$5 more than the paper, or at list print, version. I can say that in the instances I've noticed, it's been a newly-released book. Not sure if the prices even out or reverse the longer the book is out.

The whole e-book business still needs time to settle out, I think and there will be a lot of bumps. But I don't think it will go away.

 

[oggbashan]

...

(And, yes, there's no reason for an author to approve of either libraries or second-hand bookstores.)

In the UK and Ireland, registered authors are paid pence for each time a book is lent by a public library (Public Lending Right). This is an extract from the scheme's website:


It is not possible to predict whether you will be entitled to a payment, or how much you can expect to receive as this depends on the popularity of your registered books, and the ‘pence per loan figure’, which changes each year.

The table below shows the payments made to registered applicants for the UK PLR scheme in the last payment round (February 2013).
Payment Band No of payments made
£5,000 - £6,600 313
£2,500 - £4,999.99 392
£1,000 - £2,499.99 824
£500 - £999.99 956
£100 - £499.99 3,524
£1 - £99.99 17,178
Total Recipients 23,187

You will not be surprised to learn that the UK governments have cut the 'pence per loan' in recent years so that authors earn less and less despite inflation, and yes, they have to declare any income and pay tax on it... £6,600 a year is the maximum payout for any book. At 5 pence per loan, J K Rowling ought to have been paid much more than that.

 

[sr71plt]

In the UK and Ireland, registered authors are paid pence for each time a book is lent by a public library (Public Lending Right). This is an extract from the scheme's website:

At least you lot are doing something for the authors on it. Not so in the "let's have free access" United States.

(That said, I've had six mainstream novels in UK libraries for up to twenty years, and I've never received a check)

 

[Bramblethorn]

Funny that this discussion would be from the consumer perspective on the AUTHORS Hangout. Looking at the issue from the author's perspective, the ability for a consumer to copy equals the ability to have my work and redistributing it without paying me my royalty on it. So, stealing my work from me without paying me anything for having produced it. On the AUTHORS Hangout forum, perhaps this is where the discussion should start--maybe what can be done to take care of the author and publisher and the consumer who paid for it but not for the consumer who didn't pay for it.

Here's a professional author's take on why DRM is a bad thing for authors (and everybody else except a cartel). He goes into more detail here, including Tor's decision to drop DRM.

In brief: once a reader has bought DRM-ed e-books in Kindle format, they can't shift platforms without leaving those books behind. That inhibits competition, which makes it easier for Amazon to increase its market share... which then puts them in a position to dictate terms both to readers and to publishers.

Also: "This summer, Microsoft is turning off the DRM servers for Microsoft Reader. This means that people who bought Microsoft Reader ebooks over the decade since 2002 now find that their ebooks are trapped inside a rapidly ageing, obsolescent slab of plastic and glass. In another 5-10 years, 95% of those books will be unreadable because the machines they're locked into were designed by a CE industry obsessed with the 2-3 year upgrade cycle — they're not durable. This is actually one psychological driver for piracy — people who have paid for a book resent being expected to pay for it again due to an arbitrary-seeming lock-in onto an aging piece of hardware. From their point of view, honesty is being punished. "

 

[sr71plt]

I'm not sure what part of "you'll just have to buy the book again" if you want it in that form and that place is to the detriment of the author. Yes, yes, I understand there is good argumentation on the consumer side too. But the author's perspective is pretty much missing here--on the AUTHORS Hangout forum.

(But, no I haven't read that article yet. Am working on a pretty heavy editing and writing day.)

 

[PennLady]

I'm not sure what part of "you'll just have to buy the book again" if you want it in that form and that place is to the detriment of the author. Yes, yes, I understand there is good argumentation on the consumer side too. But the author's perspective is pretty much missing here--on the AUTHORS Hangout forum.

(But, no I haven't read that article yet. Am working on a pretty heavy editing and writing day.)

I imagine that since many of us who write for Lit don't have a whole lot of commercial stuff going on, the consumer viewpoint may be represented more. I'd like to find something fair all around. I know, for example, that most people think/want e-books to be very low-priced, but that undervalues the author. The actual product -- the e-book -- may not have much overhead costs (no paper, no storage, etc.) but the author spent time on it and you need to be willing to compensate the author for that time.

(Digression: having worked a bit in the news biz, I think this discussion has a corollary over there. I think newspapers should have charged for their stories from the start.)

There is an argument to be made for sharing. I've found a lot of music, for example, for free that has encouraged me to buy more. Or I've shared it and those people have bought more. Same with books, although probably not as much. If I buy a book I can lend it to someone and yes, that's no cost to them. But it might result in them buying another book by that author which they might not have bought had they not read the book I lent them.

It's all rather nebulous except for the point that I do think authors should be compensated fairly for their work.

 

[JackLuis]

I was reading this thread yesterday and had a question, slightly off topic.

For E books, how long are they and if they were priced by word, what's their value, per 1000 words?

The reason I ask is I have a 250Kw word story and another 200 K expansion in notebooks. I thought about segmenting the story and selling it in ~25Kw segments at what ever price gets me the best split of the profit.

That way I could sell 8 segments (Chapters?) for $2 each and end up selling my complete story for $16-20. And hopefully sell 2000 copies

The story is kind of a Soap Opera with many characters the appear in different segments and reappear later. Hopefully it would be like peanuts, once you start, the reader is never satisfied until the last milf was laid to rest.

Good Idea?

 

[sr71plt]

First to PennLady: an author's profit from an e-book is well above what the author can anticipate an equal-sized print book. I make $1 or less on a mainstream print book after everyone takes his/her cut. Usually almost twice that on an e-book (or half or a third the size of a typical mainstream novel), even by going with a publisher and with per-unit low-ball pricing. I'm doing very well with novellas (25,000-40,000 words in e-book terms), whereas they wouldn't even be cost effective to print in the mainstream.

To Jack: The ideal price point for an e-book is $2.99 for something in the 30,000 to 50,000 word range. It can go down to $.99 for a short story. I've seen 2,000-word short stories on best-seller's list at online distributors selling for $.99. What to try not to go over is $8.99. I have a 260,000-word anthology at that price, which was a best-seller because it's about a fetish. But my publisher tries to keep the prices below that. You can check all of this out yourself. Go to Allromanceebooks.com, which gives both price and wordage on books. You can see the range of pricing and you can check out what's being asked for books similar to yours in content and wordage.

 

[JackLuis]

-
To Jack: The ideal price point for an e-book is $2.99 for something in the 30,000 to 50,000 word range. It can go down to $.99 for a short story. I've seen 2,000-word short stories on best-seller's list at online distributors selling for $.99. What to try not to go over is $8.99. I have a 260,000-word anthology at that price, which was a best-seller because it's about a fetish. But my publisher tries to keep the prices below that. You can check all of this out yourself. Go to Allromanceebooks.com, which gives both price and wordage on books. You can see the range of pricing and you can check out what's being asked for books similar to yours in content and wordage.

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm not sure what part of "you'll just have to buy the book again" if you want it in that form and that place is to the detriment of the author.

Two things.

The first is that a reader faced with that scenario is less likely to buy the book even once. People get pissed off at the prospect of being expected to pay again just to enjoy the use of something they've already paid for, and they're more likely to go torrent it than say "please sir may I have another?"

The second is that - for reasons discussed in those articles - it creates barriers to competition that may allow Amazon to establish market dominance, and that's really bad for the people upstream because it gives them control over prices. (Wal-Mart has a similar relationship with its wholesale suppliers; it's really good for Wal-Mart, but awful for the suppliers.)

 

[i_would]

Funny that this discussion would be from the consumer perspective on the AUTHORS Hangout. Looking at the issue from the author's perspective, the ability for a consumer to copy equals the ability to have my work and redistributing it without paying me my royalty on it. So, stealing my work from me without paying me anything for having produced it. On the AUTHORS Hangout forum, perhaps this is where the discussion should start--maybe what can be done to take care of the author and publisher and the consumer who paid for it but not for the consumer who didn't pay for it.

OK, author pov.

DRM is restrictive on the author as well (yes, that's that same R). It restricts an author to certain publishers, so if you go on Amazon with their DRM you can only sell to people using a Kindle, if you go to Barnes&Noble you're limited to the Nook. I have no idea on market share of those devices in the total e-book market but no matter what you restrict yourself to a section of the market only.

DRM is also largely ineffective. The problem of DRM is that the key to unlock the content is in the end user's hand. That is by nature so: without the DRM keys to your e-book you can not read it. Those keys are buried somehow in the Kindle and similar devices and software versions. So it is only a matter of time (and then you're usually not talking years, but rather months or sometimes even just days) before the keys are extracted and the DRM protection is completely broken.

People that want to copy your works, will do so. You're not going to stop it. Making it hard, may result in making them want it even more - and it takes only one person to successfully bypass DRM and the rest of the world can copy it from The Pirate Bay.

In the case of DVD and BluRay it's even worse: pirates don't have to bother breaking the DRM as they would just copy the disks DRM and all. All DVD players can decrypt the DRM anyway. For e-books it's a bit harder as they are limited to a single vendor's devices, making it possible to link an e-book to an individual device. I don't know enough of how they do it to know whether that's the case.

And finally, there are people that believe DRM puts off potential buyers, while there are none (other than some authors maybe, I'd call that wishful thinking though) that believe it helps sales, considering the restrictions on your market and how many buyers loathe DRM. It's really irritating to not simply be able to make a backup copy of some digital work that you bought, or (worse) to know that at a whim of Amazon you could lose the work you bought (which has happened as a matter of fact with the book 1984).

 

[lovecraft68]

Two things.

The first is that a reader faced with that scenario is less likely to buy the book even once. People get pissed off at the prospect of being expected to pay again just to enjoy the use of something they've already paid for, and they're more likely to go torrent it than say "please sir may I have another?"

The second is that - for reasons discussed in those articles - it creates barriers to competition that may allow Amazon to establish market dominance, and that's really bad for the people upstream because it gives them control over prices. (Wal-Mart has a similar relationship with its wholesale suppliers; it's really good for Wal-Mart, but awful for the suppliers.)

Right all the way around. My company has done business with wal-mart and they can make you, but much more easily break you with their rules and "penalties

As for Amazon they are getting to the point where they should consider themselves lucky someone is going to buy it once.

In addition to doing anything within their power-short of saying "indy be gone" to force out self published authors their sales are way down down in general, including "traditionally" published books

There are a lot of variables as to why and I'm not going to go on and on about it, but I'm starting to think they have had one too many "Victories" in court, but the court of public opinion is causing people to drift away from them and go to other platforms.

One was B&N which makes it even more mystifying the fools over there are somehow on the brink.

 

[JackLuis]

While doing research I found this:


Guest Post: What’s Hot in Romance? from All Romance eBooks

Vampires and Shape shifters at #3?

 

[sr71plt]

OK, author pov.

DRM is restrictive on the author as well (yes, that's that same R). It restricts an author to certain publishers, so if you go on Amazon with their DRM you can only sell to people using a Kindle, if you go to Barnes&Noble you're limited to the Nook. I have no idea on market share of those devices in the total e-book market but no matter what you restrict yourself to a section of the market only.

You don't go just one distribution route or delivery platform and you don't suck into any distributor's program that restricts you just to them. It can certainly become harder to do that as programs change, but it isn't that hard now. Everythings going to change. If you wanted to take full advantage of the e-booking wave, you should have been on it a year and a half ago.