Slashdot Mirror
Book Publishers Making the Same Mistakes as Record Labels?
Techdirt points out an interesting query in Slate asking why book publishers appear to be making the same mistake that record labels did with the iTunes service with DRM, and single-vendor lock-in. "Back in 2005, we noted that Apple's dominance over the online music space, which upset the record labels tremendously, was actually the record labels' own fault for demanding DRM. That single demand created massive lock-in and network effects that allowed Apple to completely dominate the market. If the record labels had, instead, pushed for an open solution, then anyone else could have built stores/players to work as well, and it could have minimized Apple's ability to control the market. Yes, everyone is now opening up (including Apple), but it took a long time, and Apple had already established its dominant position. So why are book publishers doing the same thing?"
Publishers don't read.
We're going to go through the same problem again in about ten years when those 3d printer/modelling machines get really cheap. First music, then video, then books, then "solids" or whatever they'll be called.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Have a look at Baen books: They publish everything also as downloadable without any DRM (HTML/RTF/PDF) and you can buy months (4-6 books) or individual books. Individual books cost about the paperback price, a month costs about twice that. You typically also get the first 1/3 of a book as fee sample. They also have a "free library" where you get older books in the same formats entirely for free.
Eric Flint coordinates the free library. He has a series of postings on the effect and it seems to be very postive, with older books suddenly producing significat income for the authors, which they did not before.
Of course this only works for good quality books, but for them it works. I found myself buying more and trying authors I would otherwise have overlooked.
References:
http://www.baen.com/
http://www.baen.com/library/
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Yes, everyone is now opening up (including Apple), but it took a long time, and Apple had already established its dominant position. So why are book publishers doing the same thing?"
Because book publishers and record executives have the same types of personalities and intelligence that drives people into executive positions. They have the same token MBAs and Law degrees and lawyers that all "Business" people have. They all think-outside-of-the-box the same way.
No matter where you are, if you are there long enough, you will start to think that what happens around you is normal. That is a very generic way to describe the problem.
To put it more concrete, the more time Bill Gates spend as they head of Microsoft, at Microsoft, surrounded by Microsoft, the more he got to believe that this is the way the world is. He no longer has any connections to the outside world and his own world has become one that agrees with what he thinks because his world ain't stupid enough no to.
Yes-men are liked, get promoted, you make friends with them and pretty soon everyone around you is a yes-men.
I am a volunteer cameraman. The unique thing about this job is that you become a faceless observer, the camera allows you to distance yourself from whatever you are filming yet who you are filming often assumes, because you are focussed on them (Yes, cameraman wit) that you are not just intrested but even part of their world. Once the camera is allowed in, you are part of the family.
It allows me to see parts of the world that I would never see otherwise. I don't mean shocking things like secret societies, well actually I do, because I am still at the early stage but still.
Take for instance, performance art. I have filmed pieces where the artists involved talked about the importance and meaning of what they did and how their new work was affecting the world, while a simple pan would have showed an audience of only other artists and then only because they were waiting for their turn.
It is a common thing, you see property developers talking about new plans when you can see that NOBODY cares about it, architects presenting new exciting buildings that you have seen countless times before and are never going to work out or if they do end up and windy hellholes where nobody wants to work or live.
People live in their own small world.
And so the book publishers, they live in a world surrounded by other publishers and hear the thing from people who want to work as publishers and get promotoed. So you say what you think your boss wants to hear and the boss promotes those that say what he wants to hear and pretty soon you got a system where no outside information can get in. No previous information.
Right now we are debating in the Netherlands about the selling of public utilities to foreign companies. Because that worked out so well in the US. But the people in the banks say it works so it must work. Nevermind the credit crisis caused by the same banks, privatisation is good because...
Trust me, once a system has been in place for to long with nobody to shake things up, you have a small bubble of alternate reality that you have no hope of penetrating.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
> Well, because just downloading the torrent w/o buying the product is
> theft.
No it isn't. Coyright infringement is a tort, illegal, wrong, and even a crime in some circumstances, but it is not theft.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
See Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig (particularly the chapter outlining the four types of "piracy") and the introduction to Cory Doctorow's Little Brother for a far more succinct explanation of why Doctorow put it on the internet (and still sells tons of hardcover copies, iinm it was in the NYT's top 10). you and the publishers are not only wrong, but in the publishers' case, possibly terminally wrong.
Nobody ever went broke because of pirates, but lots of people have gone broke because nobody ever heard of their work.
When Asimov's Foundation trilogy was first published, he got no royalties at all from its publisher, a small company without the means to publicize. It only started making money when Doubleday bought the rights from that small publisher and let people know it existed. It won a Hugo for all time best science fiction series.
I don't know how many authors I've discovered by checking out their books at the library, then buying other of their books later. A free download, whether sanctioned or not, helps publishers rather than hurting them.
Free Martian Whores!
Wiktionary defines a monkey trap as "a cage containing a banana with a hole large enough for a monkey's hand to fit in, but not large enough for a monkey's fist (clutching a banana) to come out. Used to 'catch' monkeys that lack the intellect to let go of the banana and run away."
I think the lure of requiring customers to buy new books rather than borrow or buy them used has placed book publishers in a situation similar to that of the monkey who can't get his hand out of the trap because he's too greedy -- or perhaps just not intelligent enough -- to realize it's in his best interests to let go.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."