Will Books Be Napsterized?

langelgjm writes "An article from yesterday's New York Times asks the question: will books be Napsterized? So far, piracy of books has not reached the degree of music or movie piracy, in part due to the lack of good equipment on which to read and enjoy pirated books. The article points to the growing adoption of e-book readers as the publishing industry's newest nemesis. With ever-cheaper ways to conveniently use pirated books, authors and publishers may be facing serious changes ahead. This is something I wrote about three months ago in my journal, where I called the Kindle DX an 'iPod for books.'"

Comments

More on the "iPod for books"

[langelgjm]

The relevant part of my journal entry follows:

Now to other thoughts. I can sum these up simply: the DX is an iPod for books.

Think carefully about what that means. What are most people's iPods filled with? We'll not kid ourselves: pirated music. Of course pirated books and texts have been on the Internet for years, long before the MP3 reached its zenith. But just as the iPod made listening to those MP3s simple and enjoyable, to really enjoy a pirated book, you'll need an e-book reader, unless you want to read on the computer or print it out. Now, even e-book readers have been around a while; however, there are a variety of formats, and conversion between them is not always simple. PDF, on the other hand, is an extremely common and widely used format. This means that one could load up their DX with hundreds of pirated PDF books, all in one portable, simple to use package.

I won't be bold enough to call this a prediction, but rather a possibility: with the increasing adoption of e-book readers, particularly those capable of reading PDFs, we might witness digital book piracy on a much wider scale than before. I doubt it will ever reach the levels of music piracy, since books require a much larger investment of time to digest, but I do think it will increase markedly. The interesting thing about this is that while music piracy seems to cluster around recent and highly popular works, I don't think this will be as much the case with book piracy. Don't get me wrong; you can find all of J. K. Rowling's or Stephanie Meyer's works on The Pirate Bay, but you can also find the works of Isaac Asimov and Ayn Rand. Slightly older books such as the latter, despite not being classics of all time, still elicit continued interest. So, when book piracy increases, sure, we'll see this year's bestsellers being shared, but we'll also see a lot more books published between 1923 and 1980 being shared than we see music from that time. This also means that we'll see a lot of books that, while still under copyright, were written by authors who are now dead. And if the copyright debate turns toward digital book piracy with even partially the same furor it has over music piracy, it's going to be a lot harder to convince people to feel bad about violating the copyrights of dead authors.

If there are any Star Trek fans reading this, you'll recall the PADD - an e-book like device ubiquitous enough to be carried in stacks, lent to friends, and forgotten carelessly. The DX is the first step in that direction. Like all consumer electronics, the price will drop eventually (remember how expensive the first VCRs and DVD players were?). And the idea of having free, wireless access anywhere in the U.S. to a sizable library of public domain works at Project Gutenberg is pretty inspiring. Imagine expanding that idea so that anyone with an e-book reader had access to a universal library of books. It'll be possible... let's hope that copyright doesn't stand in the way.

Re:More on the "iPod for books"

[russ1337]

On the other hand, a well stocked digital library that functions like Netflix or like a physical library with a reasonable monthly fee could nip mainstream e-book piracy in the bud.

The publishers have a massive opportunity here, like you say, to nip piracy in the bud before it takes off. They'd need to partner with the leading e-book distributors (such as amazon) quickly, and grow that market share soon otherwise, napsterizing will occur simply due to the convenience.

Unfortunately the publishers want us to continue to follow their business model of purchasing hard books, and are reluctant to change their business model to suit the customers needs.

Also, the publishers are so fragmented, they'd never agree collectively agree on how to implement a new business model.

Re:More on the "iPod for books"

[Anonymous Coward]

If there are any Star Trek fans reading this, you'll recall the PADD - an e-book like device [...]

Why would a Star Trek fan reading your posting cause me to know of something only he would know of?

Re:More on the "iPod for books"

[Hatta]

If there are any Star Trek fans reading this, you'll recall the PADD - an e-book like device ubiquitous enough to be carried in stacks

Unfortunately, they only carry one document at a time. Otherwise there would be no reason to stack them.

Re:More on the "iPod for books"

[Lumpy]

I agree.

step 1- Ebooks need to be 1/2 price of the printed book OR LESS. sorry but they simply have rampant greed going on in the ebook arena. I am not going to buy your latest ebook if it costs as much as the fricking hardcover.

So if they want to nip this in the bud, tell the freaking publishers to stop being greedy assholes and reduce the MSRP on all books and pull in their profit margins to that of a printed book. it is NOT cheap to print a book, pass that fricking savings on to the reader.

Re:More on the "iPod for books"

[cerberusss]

The relevant part of my journal entry follows:

Now to other thoughts. I can sum these up simply: the DX is an iPod for books.

Think carefully about what that means. [...] PDF, on the other hand, is an extremely common and widely used format. This means that one could load up their DX with hundreds of pirated PDF books, all in one portable, simple to use package.

My first question is: have you ever tried to read a file in PDF format as an e-book?

You have an awful lot of opinion on something which I guess you have not tried.

PDF as a format for an e-book reader is a very bad format. The e-book reader cannot nicely fill out the screen with text; the point of a PDF is that the markup is page-perfect. Thus you are constantly either centering the page if the zoom is correct. If the zoom is not sufficient for your e-book reader, then you are even moving the page for every line you read.

short answer: no

[plasmacutter]

Recent reports of pilot programs with the kindle show the fundamental difference between the way people experience movies and music and how they experience books.

There is no tangible difference between a downloaded song/vid and one which is on dvd, tv, or radio.

This is VERY different from how books are experienced.

Reading text on a video screen is very taxing on the eyes. Additionally, and especially in the case of textbooks, interaction with the paper media is something which is important to readers. While its very logical in the case of texts with the capacity to scrawl notes in margins, highlight passages, and tape stickies to pages, there is also an emotional/comfort aspect to the interaction with the paper itself which is simply not there on digital versions.

Despite being a heavy tech head I will still print out any extended text to dead tree media because it's simply more comfortable and convenient to access in that manner.

While I'm about a generation removed at this point, the pilot programs with current university students show the same attachment.

I personally would love to see neurological and psychology experts convene a joint study on this to determine exactly why this is the case.

Re:short answer: no

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not for you, but since I got my Kindle DX I've been reading books four times as much as I had previously. Reading text on the Kindle is not taxing at all. I have literally spent a quarter of my weekend reading on mine.

Granted, I can't make notes in the margins for journals/papers, but with a legal pad beside me it isn't so bad at all. And who takes notes when they're reading novels?

Seriously, find yourself a friend who has one of these and give it a try before you knock it.

Re:short answer: no

[commodore64_love]

>>>Reading text on a video screen is very taxing on the eyes.

I thought the Kindle was supposed to mimic the look of paper? Doesn't it use electronic ink? (shrug). Maybe I'm thinking of some other e-book reader.

Personally I don't care where I read stuff. I read most of Asimov and Heinlein's work when I was a teenager on my Commodore 64 and a TV screen (i.e. blue colored and slightly blurry). I read Harry Potter on a laser printout that was shrunk to 9 pages per page. My coworkers said, "How can you read that?" but it didn't bother me. And of course I've read downloaded stuff on a modern PC during my lunchbreak. None of these mediums have stood in the way of me enjoying the book.

Re:short answer: no

[vlm]

Reading text on a video screen is very taxing on the eyes. Additionally, and especially in the case of textbooks, interaction with the paper media is something which is important to readers. While its very logical in the case of texts with the capacity to scrawl notes in margins, highlight passages, and tape stickies to pages, there is also an emotional/comfort aspect to the interaction with the paper itself which is simply not there on digital versions.

Such an old, tired slashdot meme.

Netcraft confirms, in soviet russia, with natalie portman, MP3s will never become popular because they don't have paper media artistic covers and special liner notes to interact with, and needless to say they are very taxing to listen to because they don't have that "vacuum tube" sound. Also all music listeners interact with their paper media, just like ALL readers scrawl in their books.

Re:short answer: no

[Logic and Reason]

When dealing with physical books it's almost inconceivable that you mishandle the book and accidentally "turn the page".

Really? You've never dropped a book and lost your place? Or been reading a new textbook with a stiff spine and had the pages turn on their own? Or been reading a book outside on a windy day?

When using an e-book reader it's very easy to accidentally push a button and lose your place.

I don't know if existing e-book readers do this, but it should be very easy to implement a place-saving feature. On the iPhone, for example, most apps will save their state when you press the Home button, so you can re-launch the app and pick up exactly where you left off.

E-book readers are $300 or $400 device you have to get to to read electronic books, why do that, when they can buy real physical ones at the bookstore for relatively little expense?

But they won't always be so expensive. What happens when the reader is cheaper than a single new book? (See the Nintendo DS.)

For entertainment purposes, it's almost inconceivable that you read more than one book at once... so what's the benefit in having a device that lets you store multiple books?

Maybe not simultaneously, but I am currently in the middle of three or four books that I'm reading for entertainment or learning. It would be nice to be able to take those with me on trips without having to devote the space for multiple books.

To boot, the DRM-laden electronic books are almost just as expensive as the physical ones, and you can't lend them to friends. To boot, you can't place them on a photocopier and make copies of particularly interesting sections to use in a paper, personal momento, etc. You can do less with the e-books than you can physical ones.

Hence the book piracy.

I think there's a stronger feeling of ownership and control over a printed book. as if the text belongs to you, and reading is a very tactile experience, where you are involved.

It's certainly true that you have a greater sense of ownership with a physical book. But then, you never really owned the text in the first place due to copyright.

You can rip a page if you don't like it, you can doggy ear, or bookmark pages with significance to you.

I've never felt the desire to rip a page out of a book. And don't most e-book readers provide bookmarking functionality superior to doggy-eared pages?

The book is on your shelf, it's more secure that way, you can always get to it whenever you want. Your dead tree book can't fail you, the batteries cannot die. No one really wants to steal it, and it's easily replaced, you can take it in public without fear.

But it can get flooded or burned or torn or peed on or lost... An e-book reader is also susceptible to many of these things, but you can just keep a copy of your books on your PC (which you also back up, right?). And the theft and replacement issues will all but disappear as readers get cheaper.

It's easy to lend to friends.. just hand them the book.

It's even easier to email or IM them a small .rar file or a link (depending on how often you see them in person, I guess).

You get two pages of text side-by-side. Typical e-book readers just provide you one continuous page, so the experience is completely different.

It's different, but is it significantly better? How advantageous is it that you can see two pages at once in a paper book?

It isn't really the same thing

[damn_registrars]

Music is expected to be portable. You can listen to music while you drive, walk, work, etc. You generally can't read a book while doing any of those things; and for at least the first you are an idiot for even attempting such a feat.

Sure, electronic books could be pirated, but it seems unlikely that it would be as widespread, as there isn't really the same market for electronic books as there is for electronic music formats.

Re:Textbooks

[tabrnaker]

And for that matter how do you enter a benzene ring into a search query?

benzene ring

Re:Textbooks

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I agree. And let me throw in my experience (I am a grad student right now).

First off, I have noticed that Chinese and Indian students have outright pirated paper copies of books. Yup, that's right, full paper softback copies of all the hardback books that are being sold in the university bookstore. They get them from back home in India or China for about $9. That's compared to the hardbacks that push $160 for engineering texts on Amazon, let alone the bookstore.

Secondly, it is more and more common for students to have PDF copies of textbooks, AND the solutions books that normally are for professor and/or TA use. There is an active "underground" community online of "I will trade you X book for Y and Z book". All in PDF form.

I registered for a class, and my bookstore was out of the book. They weren't planning to order it for the summer semester. I went online, and the hard copy was $150. Available in 20 (!) days from Amazon. Google books had the textbook online, but huge sections were missing.

After about 20 minutes of googling, I was able to find the full PDF version of the textbook online. Downloaded 25MB of PDF, and I could start reading the chapters for class. And, as the parent post said, search through it for extremely quick content lookups.

Yes, I feel bad about getting the book this way, but it was the only way I could get the book immediately! :(

I ended up not using it much because the Professor's lectures were so thorough, but with the ease of getting PDFs of textbooks online, soon students are not going to be ashamed of downloading text, especially when they will download music illegally for a $1 song, when textbooks are 200 times more expensive (like for some Biology/Chem books).

Re:Not for a while

[ceoyoyo]

I think that's the wrong way around - the reason we haven't seen more widespread piracy of books is because they're difficult to pirate. You have to scan them in. That's a huge pain.

With more books being sold in a digital format, we'll see more piracy. Then it will increase again when there are good e-book readers.

There wasn't a lot of music piracy before CDs delivered nice, easily copied digital music and the Internet provided a way to share it. Napster started up in 1999. There were very few mp3 players around then, but lots of people downloaded mp3s to listen to on their computers or burn to CD.

Re:Not for a while

[gmuslera]

Technology is converging to giving us better reading devices, not specially for ebooks, but for amount of information need to be read anyway. Before LCDs popularized reading in CRT really sucked. Palms, big screen cellphones, notebooks, LCDs improved on that. Ebook readers, good screen resolution cellphones, netbooks and tablets, even the XO are the newest improvement in that direction. Where you draw the line? Probably depend on how much you want to read that, but for a lot the tech is already here.

Re:Textbooks

[iammani]

For $DIETY's sake they are NOT pirated copies. Indian and Chinese editions of books are sold cheaper by the publishers themselves.

Here is an example of such a case... Distributed Operating Systems & Algorithms by Randy Chow costs $98.80 in the US, amazon offers it for $88.92 [1]. While in India I can purchase the same, marked as Indian edition, for Rs. 423 [2], ie, $8.88.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Distributed-Operating-Systems-Algorithms-Randy/dp/0201498383
[2] http://www.flipkart.com/distributed-operating-systems-algorithm-analysis/8131728595-tu23fw2bbb

Just like music?

[OpenSourced]

Bet for more. More pirated than music, I'd say.

I bought a small cheap reader, a Cybook. The thing is far from perfect. The screen is worse than others that I've seen, there are no tree structure in the library, and it hangs about once in ten boots. But it's still a wonder. It's thin, light and you can have a thousand books there. I'm now addicted to the thing. Read mostly novels there, no PDF stuff.

Then my brother lent me an SF book from Poul Anderson. Heavy stuff, and I don't mean the plot. The book was heavy, more than seven hundred pages of thick paper. The thing bent my hands down when reading in bed. So I reasoned that the text might be online. Went to the net, found it, downloaded it and presto! it was in the eBook reader. The pleasure of reading was back.

Books are much more pirateable than music, because they are much lighter. You can put ten books in a song. A couple of Gigabytes of books is enough for a lifetime, and you can transfer them in few hours. I have read these ideas of books being an object of love and desire in themselves, and I even thought I was in that camp, till I found out how fast I ditched them paper books. No regrets, no looking back. If I ever miss the sweet smell of paper I can crush a torn page under my nose while reading the odorless ebooks. I just need a better reader and paper books are history for me. And I'd say that also goes for the most of the rest of the world, at least the part that reads anyway. I have to pry my reader from the hands of everybody whom I lent it, for reading something only available online, for example.

Put a good-enough reader out (and no, the Kindle is not yet it), and you can start re-defining best-sellers the platinum disc way. Books will be leaked before they are printed, and almost nobody will make a living writing. Well, that last part is mostly true nowadays too, so perhaps nothing will change that much. But the pirating of books, by being ten times easier to pirate than music, and a thousand times easier than films; and providing a best overall experience IMHO, will be incredible. And now, with the Kindle and others, you'll begin to get better quality from the pirated ebooks. Now is mostly OCR, but soon will be mostly well-corrected for-purchase ebooks, unprotected after buying, and released to the wild masses.

Books napsterized? They'll make Napster look like a joke.

I'd say sell publishing companies' stock and shelve those plans of richness and fame by becoming a best-seller author. Ah! and welcome to the Data Century.

Inconceivable

[pitterpatter]

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

When dealing with physical books it's almost inconceivable that you mishandle the book and accidentally "turn the page".

My experience with physical books has been that if you take your hands off the book or drop it, it turns its own pages.

the ability to scribble free-form notes (typing is too cumbersome/inconvenient for such notes)

I would much rather type than scribble, if for no other reason than that I would like to be able later to read what I wrote.

...so what's the benefit in having a device that lets you store multiple books?

How about to take on an extended trip on which you would have time to read four or five or more books. Also, I'm inevitably reading more than one book at a time for entertainment purposes, so to me it's almost inconceivable to have only one book going at a time.

You can rip a page if you don't like it

Seriously? I - I - I - don't quite know what to say. How would you remember the precise details of what you didn't like? How would you stir up the embers of your indignation? How would you lend it to a friend after it's been modified that way?

I agree with the rest of your post, especially the part about the dead tree book being unable to fail you. Of particular importance to me is the concept that no one can modify it without your knowing about the modification.

One reason why book piracy hasn't taken off...

[jim_v2000]

There are these places called "libraries". They have books there, and you can read them for free. You can even take them home with you!

Why not ask the *REAL* questions

[Crypto Gnome]

NYTimes are running an article about the outcomes of the new wave of eBook readers.

Of course, despite having pretensions of being "a quality newspaper" with "real journalistic integrity" they're too scared to ask the real questions:

Like, for example, "Will the book and print media industry learn from the mistakes of the Music and Film Industries as new digital technologies (in this case, pervasive and cheap eBook readers) are embraced by the public".

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

.... a *large* percentage of piracy is due to the *ludicrously insane* policies of the distribution businesses (not all of it , some people genuinely believe its 'free', and some will 'pirate' because they can and believe they won't get caught)

• can't get that movie in (some foreign country) until at least 6 months after its been released in the US (for gods sake, WHY? - do they *REALLY* believe Americans will stop watching it once some other country can?)
• can't get that CD, EVER (sorry, that's the "made in amsterdam" release, it has two additional tracks and will *never* be released in America) {again for the love of all things bright and shiny, WHY?} (and no I'm not talking about content bumping up against American Anti-obscenity laws or something like that, just plain old crap-for-brains distribution policies)
• the "electronic" version of that book costs *more than* the first-run hardcover, leather-bound-and-gilded-writing version, signed by the author (WHY? you hand the hardcopy to an eTailer and LET THEM DO ALL THE WORK, WHY are YOUR charges per sale to the eTailer SO INSANELY HIGH?)
• I refuse to release this into *that brand eTailer* (even though they are the BIGGEST and MOST POPULAR eTailer in existence), you have to buy MY Hardware, and shop in MY eStore, to get this content (apparently they think that after buying twelve different digital gizmos *and a large backback to carry them all in* we still have money left to buy content)
• And did I forget to mention that MY hardware will NEVER support Your Preferred Operating System (NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER, SCREW YOU, CONSUMER)
• it's NOT ENOUGH that I charge you, the end customer like a wounded bull (Elephant, that is) for content, but I SCREAM to the highest heavens that "the INTERNET is STEALING FROM ME" (and by that I mean the ISPs themselves) and claim that THEY TOO owe me BAZILLIONS OF DOLLAAAAAZ (mwuhahahahahaha)
• Oh Yeah, and last but not least, I Want My Cake And I Want To Eat it Too (canada 'piracy tax', and other insanities)

The modern "content distribution industries" (MPAA, RIAA, screw-everybody-AA) are destroying their industries, and claiming that rampant copyright violations are hurting 'the poor starving musicians".

I *used to* spend a fair chunk of $ on "content", now I spend relatively little - but I'm not 'pirating' either. I Just Don't Buy Their Crap Anymore.

If I *really* wanted to be repeatedly beaten with a baseball bat with large nails stuck in it, and pay for the privilege ... well there's "special clubs" for that ;-)