Re: Re: What kinds of Books are pirated and made into EBooks?

From: "Marion Gropen" 
<there's an awful lot of snipping going on ;-)>
> 
> The iTunes model -- cheap, easy, secure, and good enough quality -- is  
> one that we're trying to replicate via the Kindle, and other mass  
> market sites. That may be enough to pull us back from the cliff edge  
> that the music industry has fallen over. We can only hope.
> 
> 
> Marion Gropen
> Gropen Associates, Inc.
> By-The-Question Consulting,  Tools for Publishers, & Classes
> www.GropenAssoc.com
> Her blog: www.GropenAssoc.com/blog


Marion,

You had me mostly nodding all the way up to here. 

The bigger problem is that book publishing is emphatically not music publishing.  You gave a good example of one aspect of that over performance art. And I'd add there that, even in the days that Dickens earned well from it, he was a rare phenomenon.

What is actually happening is that one class of reader - the handheld user - is seeking special treatment, and the pirate is flying on their coat tails. Handheld DRM, like the Kindle, is about book club style systems, where the retailer is offering a service. This set of restrictions is neither publisher nor author initiated. Users of the Kindle, and other such devices, contract for that service with their purchase of the device. In the case of the Kindle the contract is with Amazon.

Amazon flexed its big gorilla muscle to bully publishers to serve the Amazon business model - this was, maybe still is, how Woolworth ran contracts with suppliers before it would destroy or take over that company. Others try it on too.

My take is that all these remain experiments. Apart from a few voracious readers most people - Erica spelled this out well - don't wish to plough through the slush pile to find the occasional gem. But gatekeepers have to be paid for. Authors have to be rewarded for their efforts. Designers and accountants have to be paid for their services.

It is far too early to know if the Amazon  and Google grabs will enable or stifle that. Or if the current experiments will work at all. I do not see how any but the big sellers will work on the Kindle model, and the middle rank authors already face enough hell.

I am much more convinced by the POD progress, where it looks like the 40s and 50s regeneration of publishing with vibrant and innovative samll publishers and publisher-authors. The older movement was publisher-booksellers. Thus history repeats with variations!

I do not see, myself, exactly how the digital formats will fit into this; but I know it is being resolved. I suspect it will take its place as the 'new paperback', last in the line of releases. Meanwhile it is looking very much as though law and policing of piracy will be tightened. Copyright does serve the community. Taking control away from the author or their licensee in any way is destructive of all. Keen readers and downloaders helping that process imitate suicide bombers.

Joseph

Joseph Harris - Debt Control Man
http://www.controlyourdebtcrisis.co.uk
Author: Control Your Debt Crisis on Your Own Terms
http://twitter.com/debtcontrolman 
SAQ - SAve the cheQue


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