Re: NY Times Ethicist Condones Ripping Off E-books

Marion Gropen wrote:

> But, if you look closely at that tidal wave of titles, you find that
> most of them are really badly done. They're labors of love -- and
> ignorance. And it shows. Go see for yourselves. I have, and it's not
> pretty.
>
> When we open the floodgates more fully, as we are inevitably doing,
> and simultaneously make it impossible to for most authors, editors and
> other publishing pros to earn a living, we will ensure that the drek
> is what overwhelms the marketplace. It's not that the professional
> authors don't love their work, it's that they have families to feed.

I think I might agree with you more than you agree with yourself.

From the point of view of the *reader* this has been a problem for a very
long time. Think back to paper books only - I am expected to pay for a
work whether or not it is worth it to me.

I could look across the shelves, and all the paperbacks were $2.99 (this
was a while ago...). Some would be worth it - and some would not. But the
only way to sort the good from the drek was to buy them. In some larger
sense, good material might win out over bad, but I as the individual
reader didn't see the benefits. For the reader, it was "caveat emptor".

Book publishers were benefiting from this type of market. You could offer
drek, and if people bought it, they were stuck with it. Sell enough
different titles of drek, and you could still make money, even though most
buyers should only have been satisfied with something better.

Some stores did offer "goods satisfactory or money refunded" (*), but it
never seemed to be bookstores. Note that the criteria is *satisfaction*,
not just *didn't fail*.

Now we have the possibility (through many types of transfers) for readers
to find the material they like first, and *then* pay for it. They don't
want to accept the risk of non-satisfaction anymore. Why should they? They
want "books satisfactory or money refunded". But since no store is
offering this, they make it up themselves, on a sort of ad-hoc basis. It
doesn't always work very well, as we are seeing.

Figure out how to do that, and I think you will have a handle on solving
the problem once and for all - for paper and electronic.

(*: this was the actual slogan of Eaton's in Canada upon opening in 1869)

: chris smith ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
: nihil tam munitum quod non expugnari pecunia possit - cicero :



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