Slashdot Mirror
Will Amazon Put Advertisements In eBooks?
destinyland writes "A book editor at Houghton Mifflin argues ebook advertising is 'coming soon to a book near you.' (Paywalled unless you go through Google.) Amazon has filed a patent for advertisements on the Kindle, and the book editor joins with a business professor in the Wall Street Journal to make the case for advertisements in ebooks. Book sales haven't increased over the last decade, and profits are being squeezed even lower by ebooks. According to another industry analyst, Amazon is being pressured to make ebook sales more profitable for publishers, partly because Apple offers them more lucrative terms in Apple's iBookstore. One technology blog notes that Amazon's preference seems to be keeping book prices low, and wonders whether consumers would accept advertising if it meant that new ebooks were then free. Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren has confused the issue even more by publishing a 'shoppable' children's storybook online, prompting a fierce reaction from one blog: 'I hope it's the last. Books are one of the last refuges in our world from the constant cry by advertisers to spend money and fill our lives with unnecessary things.'"
(Paywalled unless you go through Google.)
I apologize for not RTFA but I was brought to the same paywall whether I went through Google or not. Is it some sort of lottery?
'I hope it's the last. Books are one of the last refuges in our world from the constant cry by advertisers to spend money and fill our lives with unnecessary things.'
I would just like to say that I welcome both options. Reader A can pay a high premium and enjoy the original novel as the author intended it to be enjoyed and Reader B can pay little or nothing and try to read Fahrenheit 451 with moving advertisements marketing gallons of premium kerosene at wholesale prices (BUY BUY BUY!). And you know what? I'm really not opposed to this. Maybe the authors are and maybe it offends the your *ism but as long as they keep the old model as an option who cares? I haven't noticed a decline in my ability to purchase paperbacks and hardcovers following the advent of e-readers so why should I fear e-readers installing advertisements into books?
Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren has confused the issue even more by publishing a 'shoppable' children's storybook online ...
It's a 'storybook' except that the children are real children acting in front of a green screen that has superimposed images of chidren's-bookish scenes done up in a flash video. Congratulations, the "fierce" blog has done little more than positively re-enforce this marketing maneuver because I just watched an advertisement for children's clothes!
...
I also am a little bit annoyed that we complain about the RIAA and MPAA as clinging to an old business model and then as book publishers and retailers try something new (or are even rumored to try something new) we hop all over it and denounce it as a crime against humanity. And yet daily I read news sites laden with advertisements. The very site I write this comment on transfers my comments to you, the reader, alongside political advertisements trying to raise your ire about "ObamaCare" or "Barack the Magic Negro." Yes, yes, there are tools like AdBlock, NoScript and Flash blockers specifically designed to circumvent this but to the average reader of Slashdot, this is reality.
And despite the horror of advertising, here we are
My work here is dung.
According to another industry analyst, Amazon is being pressured to make ebook sales more profitable for publishers, partly because Apple offers them more lucrative terms in Apple's iBookstore.
This is completely the opposite of the way a "free market" is supposed to behave. Enjoy your oligopolies, America. I just take heart in the fact that if a Kindle can read it, so can any other device. I will wait for the ad-blocking readers before spending one dime on one.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
$9.99 is already WAY too much for an eBook. Why the need for advertising? ::sigh:: I guess it's a good thing that the only ebooks I put on my nook are either released for free through creative commons, or are now considered public works (or borrowed from our local library). I absolutely love my nook, but no freakin' way am I paying $9.99 for an eBook when I can pay $4.99-$6.99 for a paperback.
Living With a Nerd
can't call it a book if its a magazine, and whos paying for it?
That's my prediction.
I've seen lots of adverts for similar books in paper books before (usually right at then end of the book).
It better only be for free/trial books... but that might just bite them in the ass if people figure out how to crack it and disable the ads.
Same here as the comment in the summary. I'll not buy books with ads, and I'll return them as defective if they put them there without telling me beforehand.
I wonder how long until more people are fed up with being constantly bombarded and there's a counter-movement. We already have adbusters et al, but they don't do it. Too much counterculture. Just counter-ads would be more than enough.
But then again, the majority of people apparently enjoy being treated like cattle. Would never admit it, of course.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Earlier on /.: Amazon Wants Patent For Inserting Ads Into Books
Books have had advertisements in them for a long time. Magazines too. Usually the book advertisements were for more books, but the advertisements in magazines could be for anything.
A guitar lessons ad from a 1930 Astounding Stories.
http://ia311203.us.archive.org/2/items/Astounding_Stories_of_Super_Science_1930/asf193001006a.png
aye, there's the rub... will we have options?
Do we have the option to get our cable TV without comercials? there are a few pay on-demand channels, but as a general rule, no.
Broadcast radio? no
Magizines? no
Think like a distributer... why charge less for the version with ads in them when you can charge full price AND get the advertising money and make it the only version offered. If I were a heartless corp, I would offer the two versions, then when the next big hit comes out only offer it with ads at full price, then slowly increase the number of ad-only books till that was all I offered in about 5 years or so.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
If there are advertisements in books I pay for, yeah I'd be pissed about that and I think there'd be a backlash over that.
On the other hand, Amazon makes a lot of books available for the Kindle for free. If those books have ads I wouldn't complain, especially if that category got bigger as a result.
Not that this isn't something to worry about, but ebooks aren't the *only* sources of literature. We do have books made out of paper...I've heard they don't have advertising in them. Then again, ebooks are going to increase in popularity, and the last thing we want is a precedent of putting ads in them.
See, this is precisely the stuff that's been making me gnaw on my brain the last few weeks and even tried in "Ask Slashdot" (I think I need to reform my questions though to be fair).
Anyhow, the topic is up... there's many options out there to chase for going into eBooks but it seems that short of a plain PDF someone-somewhere is going to be done over a log. I don't want my readers being harassed by adverts or additionally even have the reseller (Amazon etc) modifying the text.
Maybe the reason why I've not been able to get clear answers thus far is that because this is simply too new a market for anything to have been determined well enough.
I'd love to offer the book through as many channels as possible - so do I just let the resellers "do as they please" and when readers moan I point the finger back and say "Wasn't me!" (or if the DRM goes to hell and everyone loses access).
Happy to hear some insights and guidance... please.
AC has a point. Advertisements in books are already common, I could find dozens easily in the paperbacks I have, so everybody can get off their high horse about how this is some kind of unprecedented sign of the contemporary consumerist apocalypse. It's the same business as usual as the rest of the last century of publishing.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Publishers should go pound sand if they don't feel like they can make enough money leeching off authors in the digital world. Perhaps the real problem is that they have all of the sudden found themselves to be completely superfluous middlemen who failed to grab the e-book device and distribution channels when they had the chance.
I can't imagine why any author would really need a publisher anymore (editors and publicists perhaps, but there's no reason editors and publicists need to own copyrights, they provide a service that authors can choose to pay for at their leisure). I want to write a book? I write it, send it to an editor I know, pay him some money, get my friend to do the cover art, put it on amazon. If i'm good, I'll get a publicist to help me advertise and get the word out. Just like authors (and musicians and every other kind of artist) before big media.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
Book sales haven't increased over the last decade...
Of course because TV has taken over as the medium of choice when it comes to a literate public.
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
Modern literature can't hope to even hold a candle to the established canon if it allows such glaring holes to creep into the distribution medium. Beyond that we seem to be giving less and less mind to the value of information, given our trend to create more and more and more. If we continue to allow this sort of dilution of culture into corporately funded blurbs then we will never see any more truly ground breaking literature. Those artists that decide to deviate from the established cultural norms won't be able to get those advertisers to support their message. We must fight against such encroachment of culture if we are to keep any medium diverse. I for one do not want to see everything become vinilla.
Many real books have a tear-out order form for other books bound right in. What about the subscription cards bound into magazines? Nothing new here.
Why am I opposed to it? Simple: it means more proprietary eBooks and more DRM, and of course, more marketing firms tracking more aspects of our lives. They are not going to allow libre software to render eBooks if they want to shove advertisements down out throats; after all, we could just remove the advertising from libre software. I want to be in control of my books, I do not want Amazon to be in control; did we not learn our lesson with the memory hole scandal?
As for the tracking, well, what if you want to read a book about explosives? What if that tips off the FBI, and they come to your house demanding to know why you are reading about bombs? Do you really think that the marketing firms are going to keep their databases secret from the government? Do you remember when the PATRIOT act was passed, and librarians publicly denounced the clause about handing library records over to the government, for the exact same reasons?
Technology is supposed to be improving our lives. Why, then, are we accepting uses of it that do not improve our lives and only serve the interests of publishing and marketing companies?
Palm trees and 8
No, you and the advertisers can fuck off, even though those 'ads' are currently limited to the last couple of pages in the book.
In past years there used to be a stiff paper ad in the middle of some books, but I have not seen that in decades.
Book sales haven't increased over the last decade, and profits are being squeezed even lower by ebooks
That makes no sense at all. Ebooks cost the same as paper books, yet there's no transportation, storage, inventory, or other costs associated with publishing them. How could ebooks be bringing profits down?
How stupid do these people think we are, anyway?
Free Martian Whores!
The belief that any plans to place advertising into ebooks would result in lower prices is fooling themselves. Look at what has happened in the video game market, not only have in game ads become the norm but many of the newer games that use them are coming out at higher prices. The likely scenario is that ads will be thrown in gradually, prices will stay the same and ad free versions will be offered for a higher premium.
It is bad enough that I pay for a magazine and get mostly advertisements. I have to time my arrival at a mainstream movie theater in order to avoid the commercials I don't have a TV for.
If Amazon did this, ebooks would be DOA as far as I am concerned.
I would not buy or use them.
In the past two months, every single paperback, and quite a few hardcovers, that I've bought or considered buying have been cheaper on Amazon itself than Amazon's Kindle ebooks. Do printers, ink makers and paper makers charge Amazon negative dollars?
And they want MORE money? WTF is wrong with these people?
"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for" society to build a better solution, they will. A massive number of IT professionals around the world have clearly demonstrated that when the world of business takes an industry down a path not in the best interest of consumers, consumers are ready, willing and able to manufacture their own solution. If book publishers (E- or otherwise) take the publishing industry in a direction unsatisfactory to the majority of readers, they may eventually find themselves in a position of irrelevance.
Advertising today is far more intrusive than advertising of 50 years ago. Yes, books have generally included advertisements for more books by the author or publishers, but when you talk about eBook advertising, you are talking about an entirely different ball game. Will the ads report back on what you read? Probably, and they will claim it is only for giving you more relevant advertisements. Will the ads get inserted into random places in the middle of the book? Probably, though they will claim that the places advertisements are displayed are chosen so as not to interfere with your enjoyment (e.g. not in the middle of an exciting section of the story). Will the ads be animated? Probably.
Nobody needs a patent to put old-style advertisements in eBooks. You do not need proprietary software to do it. These ads will not be the same as the ads you are used to seeing in books.
Palm trees and 8
It all depends on how it's done. Advertising in books is not a new thing; many paperbacks have a few pages at the back devoted to ads for other books by the publisher, or sometimes for things like book clubs. And though I haven't seen one in a while, I remember some paperbacks having a bound-in cardstock insert. If ads are limited to this sort of thing, they probably won't be a problem. They're usually relevant to the reader's interest and they're easily skippable. Where I do see a problem is if ads are done like the promos on a DVD -- Pop in the book, and have to sit through three minutes of advertising before you get to read it.
Still, the only reason why this would work is because of proprietary formats. If ebooks were published using open standards (yay, epub!) someone would just publish a reader which skips the advertisements -- just like you can get DVD players which skip straight over the "mandatory" front-matter on a DVD.
I'll just keep supporting Baen. Their whole catalog, available in open, non-DRM formats, for paperback prices. Even if they were to start including ads, they'd be easy to rip out of the HTML if they got to be obnoxious.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
I stopped reading magazines many years ago, not because I could get the same content on the internet. I stopped reading them because 50% or more of the space was advertising. If Amazon decides to insert ads into ebooks, then they'll be killing ebooks before they have a chance.
I think the idea of ebooks, free of charge, but paid for by advertisements has some merit.
I'm not saying I like it or would use it, but it brings up an important point.
Mainstream movie theaters and magazines force advertisements on you, even though you pay for those things. I think that is where a lot of resentment comes from. When it is not excessive, people don't mind broadcast TV with commercials, because the advertisers are paying for your exposure to their ads with free entertainment. People aren't laying out money and then getting spammed.
I think it sends an important idea for advertisers. They realize people don't want to be exposed to ads and that if they want the attention of consumers they have to give them something in return as well as they can't expect the consumers to pay for something they want to avoid in the first place.
Congratulate Amazon for discovering the one thing that will kill the ebook!
Seriously though if they use this technology only for periodicals how would this be different from traditional magazines except that the ads would alway be up-to-date?
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
" Book sales haven't increased over the last decade, and profits are being squeezed even lower by ebooks. "
Couple years back my wife wanted a series of books, totally forget which ones, but to get 6 crappy books I had to order 2 off of amazon, drive to books a million on the other side of town, drive to barnes and noble on the other side of town from books a million and a independent book shop
like a fucking scavenger hunt, 100+ dollars for paperback books + gas + 2 days + shipping
and I found out they had a crappy "made for TV movie-series" with Katherine Heigl
fuck books, you want them to sell more? Dont piss off your customers
... because you'll be giving me the book for free, right?
But if not, I don't want the ads. You've already made your money off me, thanks.
One or the other, guys. But not both. This is the one reason I don't subscribe to Sky - I have to pay for it AND put up with ads. Greedy bastards.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
One reason book sales and profits are limited is cost.
The cheapest of paperbacks starts at about $8 now. Books were known throughout history to be a cheap medium of the people. They are made out of paper.
If the publishers want more sales they can lowering the cost for books.
This is especially true with ebooks where the costs seem to be even lower.
I hate the idea of ebook, but if I can read one for $3 versus $15 for a book I don't care that much about I might consider it.
No need to risk pissing off an already dwindling group -- readers -- by shoving advertisements down their throats.
Ah, I see, I can 'fuck off' for stating facts. Classy. I also like how you put the reference to ads already in use in scare quotes, as though by some virtue of their location they are somehow less 'ads' than other 'ads'.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
As e-books become more popular, distribution of e-texts on the torrents has become more prevalent. More and more e-book owners are filling their pads/kindles/nooks/crannies/whatevers with non-PD books for which the author is not reimbursed a dime. Money's got to flow from somewhere if novels are to be written. If in the Brave New World nobody's going to be paying for the books they read, then we might as well open the new shelfspace to the advertisers so that the creators can make a buck from someone.
And before all the tired and tedious "but, buts..." begin, remember:
No one has a right to free entertainment.
It's up to the writer whether or not she wants to give out free promotional samples, not her fans.
The bottom 99.5% of writers aren't going to make jack from "performing."
It is not like it is unheard of as in magazines and comics. But those are not books, simply ... reading material. I have old pulp sci-fi paperbacks with adverts on the back cover, inside the front and back covers and inserts. I have seen this with old classics as well as other pulp genres. Some publishing houses even did this with hardbacks. I seem to remember some publishing lines doing this even more recently, although that fad seems to have been relegated to other reading material, like magazines and comics.
My issue with this is just how obtrusive will this be. Will we see ebook adverts that are un-skippable? Don't care which company pulls this, I'd rather vote with my pocket-book elsewhere.
One nitpick and then the rant: At least with my Nook, most the $9.99 and up books are the new releases still in HB only. I don't really have a problem with that price, it's the books that have been out in paperback for 10 years that they want $6 for that I have issues with.
Paying $9.99 for a new release can be worth it, just as previously I might have plunked down the $30 or more for the hardback from the favorite author or series that I'm really motivated to read or collect. But come on, no book that has been out in paperback for more than a couple years should cost anywhere near $6 for the eBook format, when the paperback is only a couple dollars more. I'm thinking $2 or $3 bucks tops. I don't expect them to be free, but the publishing and marketing costs were most likely paid by the HB release, all books are processed in electronic formats already so it's not like they're even having to pay someone to type in a book, it was submitted in electronic format, or was entered into electronic formats to be typeset and published.
As to ads, as long as I can get the books in the epub format for my nook, I've already found an open source editor and can delete them out if they get annoying.
Ads in general are not necessarily a bad thing, books have had ads and order forms in the back of them for decades. If they want to keep doing that, well it just tells me when that book is finished and I can close the book and open another one.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Books were known throughout history to be a cheap medium of the people.
This is so wrong, I don't even know what to say.
NYTimes gives a decent rundown of what goes in to ebook pricing, showing that they make about as much profit on a $10 ebook as they do on a $26 hardcover.
They don't give pricing on paperbacks, but going off the numbers they give I'd guess a $10 ebook will give them around double the profit that a $7 mass-market paperback does.
The full article goes on to say the reason for obscenely high ebook prices is quite simple: publishers are set up for dead tree books right now. They could face problems scaling down their current model too quickly, so they're biding time and slowing down ebook adoption by increasing prices.
I agree, as long as the ads stay similarly confined. However today's advertisers are going to want product placement within the books, and when you hit that product, up will pop a video ad that you can't skip. Or the next page will be the ad.
Can I get a pop-up blocker for my Nook?
That's the kind of advertising I think most of us fear. The "Hey you might also like these books" ads currently found in the back of many old and new books are fine. But can the advertisers, publishers and sellers fight the temptation to fully leverage the advertising potential of these modern multi-media capable readers?
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
That'd be awesome. I'd gladly flip past ads to get them for free.
Based on my run rate since getting the Kindle, that'd save me $500 a year.
Better yet, Amazon, give me a Zune-like deal where I can pay $20 a month and read any book I want. I only read them once anyway.
"Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me."
Want to "sell all that thou has" really quickly? Try eBay!
The froth at my mouth? Enough for 10.000 bud weisers... provided you can find enough american to supply the piss. I doubt it, considering amazon is taking it.
My god, and I stopped watching tv becomes of the constant advertising, haven't heard radio in years and now books too? Books I pay for? Pay through the nose for because I have noticed that despite all the savings with ebooks (basically, pay writer/editor, and that is it) the price hasn't dropped a bit.
Oh and all the bad news about print media? A lie actually. Dutch newspapers were literally printing money before 2K and right now they are just photocopying it. The recession? Good for more newspapers. Yeah yeah, some are in trouble but check their books, most likely because they spend fortunes on idiotic ventures. It is kinda like MS claiming it is going bankrupt because they are loosing money on the x-box project. It is true, they are, but they are raking it in with Windows and Office and that is what counts.
Book publishers that are loosing money do so because they got insanely ineffecient work practices and print tons of books that nobody wants to read. Rather then cry about lost revenue on books that don't sell more then 2 copies (and that is both parents are still alive), be a bit more commercial. Ebooks should have happened a long time ago, why was Amazon first? Because not a single publisher could be bothered.
Advertising in bought books? Good, give me more reasons to pirate.
Insanity, thy name is big business.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Do we have the option to get our cable TV without comercials? there are a few pay on-demand channels, but as a general rule, no.
HBO? Cinemax? Showtime? And why are you comparing books -- a single finite length of words -- to a streaming service that continually offers new and different content? Wouldn't it be better to compare books to DVDs? Your comparison of a 24/7 service that provides semi-unique programming versus a book smacks of an "apples to oranges" comparison.
Broadcast radio? no
NPR? XM Radio? If they could sell you subscriptions to FM and AM bands, I bet they would (similar to HBO/SHOW/CINE). Again, try comparing books to CDs instead of a 24/7 service of semi-unique programming. No advertisements on CDs.
Magizines? no
There are specialty magazines that don't have advertisements. It just turns out that people are used to magazines and newspapers having advertisements so they use this to subsidize the cost. Just like television used these same advertisements to pay for costs, it seems we are used to this and will accept it largely. I highly doubt it will be the same with books, albums and movies. I subscribe to Specialten and it has no advertisements. The subscription price is also outrageous. I think people put magazines in the "service" category and accept advertisements with services. This isn't always the case as ISPs have suffered from trying to put advertisements into failed DNS request redirects.
Think like a distributer... why charge less for the version with ads in them when you can charge full price AND get the advertising money and make it the only version offered. If I were a heartless corp, I would offer the two versions, then when the next big hit comes out only offer it with ads at full price, then slowly increase the number of ad-only books till that was all I offered in about 5 years or so.
The simple answer to that is to think like the consumer. Why should I could keep paying full price and suffer through advertisements, I know that they are supposed to reduce the cost unless I've been living in a cave on Mars during the advent of the internet? I have faith in the market in this one and speculate books -- both physical and digital -- will remain mostly advertisement free as most albums and movies have.
If the Kindle provides me a service to access a vast array of copyrighted books for free or cheaply, I would expect that to change though and would assume advertising would be necessary to mitigate the costs.
My work here is dung.
PDF's are not the answer. Open formats like epub are. With an open format ad blockers and the like can be created.
I tried a couple pdf formatted books on my Nook, talk about a pain, the default font size in the PDF's was either way too big or most commonly way to small, when you adjust the font size in the nook, you can get the font where you need it, but with the bdf's I tried it screwed up the formatting, and the page count was a joke, it was reporting the number of pdf pages left, not the number of page turns needed to finish the ebook.
I'll stick to epub format thanks.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Some of the most respected authors in history - Dickens, Dumas, and Conan Doyle among them - published many of their novels, short stories, etc. in serial form i.e. in magazine and newspapers loaded with ads. (And certainly any /.er who considers comic books real fiction is immune to seeing ads in the middle of the story.) Could we see the return of publishing serious works of fiction as serials in ebooks, including ads? Mind you we'd have to be able to skip over the ads just as easily as we could in paper form.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
As it happens, few would attribute to me an ideology of environmentalism, but I do wonder about how many penis enlargement products I really need to pursue happiness. Yah, the semantics here are not quite on point, but an argument against pointless excess is sort of the "ism" some are using to be anti-advertising. As a practical matter, they probably package this rather obvious principle in some sort of nutty ism. Anyway, given the general cultural level, even principles end up indistinguishable from ideology.
Now as it happens commercial speech has significant local ,legal protections. Different kinds of speech have different protection rules, but there is not a big fundamental difference between commercial speech and political speech. So one way to look at this issue is that people are complaining about a corporate "person" exercising their constitutional rights. This is a common argument form. For instance, I notice some Islamic types are exercising some constitutional rights around building a mosque in NYC and there is quite a political firestorm.
As far as commercial speech is concerned, there is actually may not be a big constitutional issue involved in effectively suppressing it, IMO.
Corporate personhood
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The corporate personhood debate refers to the controversy (primarily in the United States) over the question of what subset of rights afforded under the law to natural persons should also be afforded to corporations as legal persons.
In the United States, corporations were recognized as having rights to contract, and to have those contracts honored the same as contracts entered into by natural persons, in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, decided in 1819. In the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394, the Supreme Court recognized that corporations were recognized as persons for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment.[1][2] Some critics of corporate personhood, however, most notably author Thom Hartmann in his book "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," claim that this was an intentional misinterpretation of the case inserted into the Court record by reporter J.C. Bancroft Davis.[3] Bancroft Davis had previously served as president of Newburgh and New York Railway Co.
Proponents of corporate personhood believe that corporations, as associations of shareholders, were intended by the founders and framers to enjoy many, if not all, of the same rights as would the shareholders acting individually, such as the right to lobby the government, the right to due process and compensation before being deprived of property, and the right, as legal entities, to speak freely. All of these rights have been upheld by the U.S. courts.
etc.
The way I look at it, SCOTUS gets its cover on this from not even from Congressional statutes, but from "intent".
Ah well. This sort of issue is not going to immediately generate an estchaton, so who should actually have it on the top of their priority list? It is fun, but life is short. In the meantime, having both option A and B available would look pretty good.
As an employee of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt I'd like to point out the line at the bottom of TFA where it says "Mr. Vincent is a former book editor at Houghton Mifflin." [emphasis mine] He does not speak for the company.
Thanks for that. I did look at the ePub format previously, it's one that is sitting in the 'preferred option' pile.
Bull. Ebooks now usually cost the same as their physical counterparts, yet do incur the costs of physical production (which has traditionally been cited as the main reason for high prices). So if production costs are down and sales are the same, profits would be up.
This was tried in the past with cheap paperbacks. I don't know why they stopped.
I prefer books because they keep the ads to the front and back, which is less distracting and more useful than inline ads.
If ebook publishers/distributors choose the inline advertising method for their wares, I'll start buying printed books. It's simple as that.
At the end of the day it's a matter of 'what will the market tolerate?' It's not like there was a technical limitation to paper books that prevented them from making them like magazines where every other page was an ad. Simply nobody wanted to buy books like that. The same will hold true with ebooks. Even if some ebook publishers start to throw in tons of ads, the likely effect will be that many will leave that purveyor behind and move to other publishers who don't use such methods.
Every niche has an equilibrium state, which unsurprisingly represents a compromise between consumer taste/inconvenience and the perceived value of the service/product.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Have you considered giving something else to Project Gutenberg instead of money?
Consider (also) giving them your time:
http://www.pgdp.net/c/, or PGDP Europe (much smaller; mostly Serbian poetry), or if you're Canadian http://www.pgdpcanada.net/c/default.php or the Scandinavian Project Runeberg; or if you like the Fraktur font join Project GaGa.
They have already proven to my satisfaction that only ONE thing matters to them,
and that is domination of a market whether that domination is in fact
deserved or not.
I won't be sending any of my money to them, ever, and this latest bs is one
more good reason why.
Screw Amazon, and screw Jeff Bezos, he's a greedy jerk.
pay 25 cent more for the book.
I won't buy an ebook with ads.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Everyone can't live from advertising - someone must produce. Just think about it: everything is free and using advertising-based model. It is another bubble, people. Lots of buzz, little real value.
eBooks should definitely have more than half their readable surface be covered in ads and classified for added revenue. After all, newspapers do that, and they're one of the strongest, most revenue intensive forms of print media, right? [/sarcasm]
"I hate the idea of ebook"
What? I can understand if you don't like them, but why would someone hate the very idea of an eBook?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes.
Will the ads be unskippable?
Also, yes.
Will it annoy some people? Yes.
Will enough consumers keep buying them that the people who try boycotting won't influence them one jot? Yes.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Does it contain DRM? yes/no
Does the DRM'ed eBook allow text to speech conversion so I can listen to it during my drive to work each day? yes/no
Does it contain advertisements? yes/no
If it has DRM, and if I can still listen to it, I might still buy it depending on the depth of the subject matter. Publishers only record AudioBooks from the best-sellers lists so I had exhausted that pipeline long ago. Give me technical works. Give me something I want and I might buy it if the price is right, but then that is just my personal choice. If marked appropriately, others will be free to choose based on their own requirements.
For me, if it contains ads, then its a non-starter out of the box. I won't buy it no matter what the price. I can buy my eBooks elsewhere, in another eBook format, or download PDF/HTML/Text materials I want to listen to, for free, and convert it with 'Calibre' to a suitable format for my Kindle. I paid for that capability when I bought my Kindle, and I'm not afraid to use it the way it was designed, despite your changing our agreement and adding additional text-to-speech DRM to it after the fact. If I don't see what I want for content, or if that content is otherwise polluted with useless advertisements, then don't expect to make any profit from me. There is no requirement that I purchase eBooks from you. I'm not buying junk in eBooks any more than I buy a package of bones at the grocery store when I really want steak.
This is not capitalism, its socialism. I am looking at buying a kindle, but its only really for travel because it burns my ass that a digital copy is worth more than a paper copy.
I don't like the price difference and if I bought, ebooks its only because of time, I need the info fast. I will be supplementing my kindle purchase and ebook purchases with hacked ebooks to cover the cost differential.
Personally I think this is the single worst idea that publisher's have ever had in history, and here's why: The advertisement will yank the reader straight out of the story contained in the book. If the ads are at the beginning or like some books, especially book lines like D&D, in the back of the book, then it may not be bad. However, I'm not a naive little moron who thinks they mean unobtrusive short little ads. They probably want to put half page and full page blinking rainbow colored (when the color e-ink screens hit) ads every other page or so. Personally, I wouldn't mind paying a little bit more than the current prices for eBooks, but it may kill the market for folks like me who don't see why I should pay the same price for vapor that I can pay for a nice good looking hardbound block on my library shelf. If they can somehow find a way to put in the ads in a way that will make people see them without injecting them into the prose itself, then I may say, "Cool, this works go for it."
The only way to keep the prices of eBooks high is to create a false sense of diminished profits from the new media. If anything the margin on eBooks is far better then on traditional media. If they do not maintain this Illusion then prices will fall back and they will end up with the same low margin they have on traditional media. It's in their best interest to maintain the lie.
'I hope it's the last. Books are one of the last refuges in our world from the constant cry by advertisers to spend money and fill our lives with unnecessary things.'"
True, but most people aren't willing to pay for that. As someone else pointed out; publishers could sell ad-free and give away ad supported versions. Any bets on which ones will be the most popular?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Has not the Business Community learned yet how much the public detests advertisements. Why do they feel that simply because their product is in electronic data format that they are entitled to shove more advertisements down our throats. People don't really buy shit from all these ads do they? Where are these people, we need to stop them and then maybe the Business Community will figure out that the shit doesn't work on people with intellect. Where is my right to not be subjected to unrelenting advertisement going to be created? Is not a popup ad just as invasive as a telemarketer who would call the households trying to sell a product during dinnertime? Popup ads, and ads everywhere we look is more disturbing, and why, for the love of God, do we as consumers still tolerate this crap?
I want a National, DO NOT ADVERTISE TO ME list.
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I've seen lots of adverts for similar books in paper books before (usually right at then end of the book).
AdBlock for books.
Car analogies break down.
If you were talking about pre-printing press days you have a point, but I wasn't referring to pre-printing press days.
Throughout history... since the 19th century... you know, same thing.
I can't see how NOT cutting down trees and having huge overhead eating printing presses is costing publishers profits, but hey I only have a small business. Then I would argue that not a whole lot of books printed each year are anything but crap. That leads me to the last bit. Unlike music and movies, used books have always had a market. They are portable, do not require power, are very durable, and work in almost all conditions you would find yourself from the subway to mcmurdo station. You will also find most of the good ones are in this format and there is an insurmountable number of them found all over the world (no need for special incoding if you read english)
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Kindle is your baby. Do with it as you see fit. But the day I see an ad in a book I paid for is the day I abandon your platform irrevocably.
I looked into ebooks as i have a lot of paperback books taking an increasing amount of space in my home. What i found though was that they were priced the same or more than the physical books. What's more i couldnt believe that the latest books (in hard cover on the shelves) actually sold at the same 'hard cover' price as ebooks.. wtf? How much money are they making on those! No ebooks for me thankyou.. i'll be voting with my feet.
This is bullshit! Gee, are sales down? Maybe it's because you now charge more for an ebook than the paper version can be gotten for and everyone is simply pirating the content instead? Stupid asshat publishers have screwed their industry and are whining as Amazon eats their lunch as a publisher. Gee, where have I seen that before?! These guys should pay attention to what has occurred with the music industry.
The day ebooks rose above the $9 I had been paying for them (for well over a year!) is the day I ceased buying. That these morons cannot make a PROFIT or rather enough profit on "books" that now have no printing overhead is a complete joke and so far as I'm concerned they can go under. MacMillan http://blog.macmillanspeaks.com/ led this charge to set their own prices over Amazon - overnight prices rose as much as $6 per book. The claim that their profits are being squeezed is pure crap. The idea, from one fo the linked articles, that these new prices is somehow a panacea for Amazon is also a joke since everyone I know who owns one is pissed off about the price increases and are buying far fewer books - just like me. That includes fewer paper books too now that I prefer them electronically. The most amusing statement from these bozos was MacMillan actually stating that paper book costs are expensive to support as part of their reasoning for high ebook prices. WTF?! http://blog.macmillanspeaks.com/answers-to-some-questions-from-the-comments/#more-60 Their claim that ebooks provide special benefits over paper, are still discounted off of hardcover list (such a bargain), and are a good value even when costing more than paper books further shows how out of touch these idiots are. Wake me when I can sell them, trade them, or share them. These guys make the music industry look like geniuses!
Amazon - putting ads in ebooks is a bad idea. They will get yanked just like commercials do in TV show torrents and yeah for some reason book torrents are on the rise. I wonder why? What a complete mess....
At least authors are beginning to get a clue and self publish. Those that have been sharing numbers via blogs are making a good bit more going on their own via Amazon etc. at low prices vs using established publishers. Some of them are actually making a living getting more money from Amazon than their publishers selling their rejected books! Frankly it's a shame that it's taking the authors so long to do this - current book prices are too high and adding in ads won't make anyone happy. I'll believe Amazon is this stupid when I see one in an ebook - if I ever find one cheap enough that I will buy. I was buying several books a month at $9.99 or less, it's been at least 6months since I last bought a book and yes there have been at least 10 that I wanted. Some of them were priced as high as $15 for the ebook and were published over 5 years ago! This wasn't the case before the publishers got greedy and began setting prices themselves....
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'Nuff said.
I can search and download any book I want in an instant. Perhaps not the very latest bestsellers, but everything else. And for classics/creative commons stuff, there's always Project Gutenberg, Manybooks and of course, Baen.
To me - these sites (and aforementioned IRC channel) are like an enormous virtual library. I'm a scifi/fantasy fan, and these books seldom are single stories- they tend to run into dozens or more books.
While enjoyable to read - I don't think I could ever go back to reading the whole thing from the beginning. Hence I've read Discworld, Stephen King's Dark Tower series, Star Wars' New Jedi Order, to name a few.
If I actually went and bought these books, I'd run out of space to keep 'em. But I can quite conveniently carry them on my hard drive, or read them on my phone with Mobipocket Reader, or on my dedicated ebook reader (Infibeam Pi, a rebadged ). No DRM, no remote control shenanigans by the manufacturer, no bullshit.
As far as I'm concerned, if downloading ebooks off an IRC channel or a torrent is piracy, then so is borrowing physical books from the local library. In neither case do the publishers get paid. Show me an ebookstore that charges a reasonable price (cheaper than the physical version for starters and adjusted to local market rates depending on country rather than just directly converted from USD), and has no DRM. Baen offer their books like this, it's a pity Amazon won't.
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Advertising in books used to be very common. Early Boy Scout Handbooks had several pages of advertising at the front and back, and many, many children's books from the early part of the 20th century had advertising in the front and back. There certainly is precedent for this and I for one would be happy to see a few ads if it meant people would stop charging ridiculous prices for eBooks-i.e. less than a buck an issue for a print copy of Wired personally delivered to my house versus $3.99 for the iPad version. Shoot, the e-version of Wired ought to be FREE for print subscribers just for propping up a failing business model!
People who buy Kindles read more, I know I sure do - or did. Then the publishers got greedy, took over the pricing, and now ebooks cost as much or more than paper books if they are produced by a major publisher. Here's the latest book I WAS interested in http://www.amazon.com/Science-Fear-Culture-Manipulates-ebook/dp/B001AO0GOK/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2 It was first published TWO YEARS ago. The ebook costs more than the hardcover and I cannot lend, share, nor sell it when done.
Thank these asshats -> http://blog.macmillanspeaks.com/
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That is a really ignorant thing for them to do.
There are only 3 ways I would buy an ebook:
1. I NEED to read it immediately ( rare, if ever )
2. The content is not available any other way
3. it is significantly cheaper than a real book
Numbers 1 & 2 just are not significant factors and pricing ebooks higher takes away number 3
I want the legal right to, whenever a product is subsidised by adevertisements, buy the product without ads for a higher (but appropriate price). That applies to television programmes, newspapers in the web ( i would pay to get rid of the advertisements, at least the animated ones - until that time is ude adblock), movies in the cinema, etc.
the kindle was dead before it even hit the stores. This is just going to speed up the inevitable. Why on earth would anyone buy this when they can get any of a multitude of tablet PCs and stick whatever PDFs they want on them without ads? and without even having to pay for the books? This is the recording industry all over again. The situation the publishers are in is not one in which they can keep their current profit margin and add to it with this new technology. The situation is, this new technology will destroy your entire industry in a matter of years if you don't get off your asses, embrace it and give customers what they want. The Kindle should be free with a cellular bundle just like a smart phone. You should be able to get newspapers, books, etc on it. Subscription packages should be like cable TV. I can get the Scifi bundle for $9/month, etc... Authors should be reimbursed based on the number of downloads they generate. This will make it easier to use, than just downloading the books illegally. The ONLY way to defeat piracy is to make the legit way, easier. simple as that.
Product placement already exists in books. At least, in novelizations of movies that also contained product placement.
Surprisingly, that shoplifting passage of WarGames remains even in the Science Fiction Book Club edition of the book which scrubs all the drug references and improves the main characters' school attendance and grades (apart from the key scene about fixing their Fs in Biology and getting a D in Home Ec.).
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Really? This is the first that I've heard of this. If I redownload a book that has ads, I could see them updating the advertising for timeliness. Are the advertisers expecting the publishers to move to some sort of DRM method that requires periodic updates to keep working in order to have an opportunity to update the ads??
They expect the publisher to receive data back from your ebook indicating how much of the book you have read, how long it took you, etc. Of course the next step is to move beyond targeting ads based on aggregate data and start inserting ads into your ebook copies based on your individual profile. Link that to other profiling data (web site trackers, customer "loyalty" cards etc.) and you will find advertising inserted that is downright spooky.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Not long ago, paperback books often contained intrusive ads for products such as cigarettes.
For example, Ace Double #16640 contains a Kent ad between pages 96 and 97 of Jack Vance's The Dragon Masters. Oddly, the ad is upside-down. Perhaps it was intended to appear in The Five Gold Bands, the novel that begins on the reverse side of the Double.
These ads were intrusive because they were printed in color on stiffer, glossy stock that was bound into the middle of the book. It was hard to read nearby pages without having the book flip open to the ad.
Why are you so against that method of delivery? I have completely filled all of my shelves and getting books this way is nice - I can carry a thousand around with me if I wanted to - easily. I receive a Sci-Fi magazine this way and it's much nicer than having stacks of those around! When the content was reasonably priced I was all for it. But propping up brick and mortar business and printing presses with high prices on this is dumb! Ebooks are as easy to read as paper, more so really, so I truly like the format. Have you ever tried reading a book on a reader? Not an LCD but an e-ink reader? It's pretty easy on the eyes and I can read for hours on them...
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It would be interesting if the Kindle got a high def color screen at a subsidized price because advertisers wanted their ads in color. The free cellular link is a great feature. The day that goes away, the Kindle really is dead though, well mostly. I guess you could hook it up to your Mac via cable and purchase/download via the web instead, but it is not as sexy. Maybe kiddy-porn, I mean kindle-porn would push the color screen faster.
Do they pay me to watch their adds or do I pay to escape their adds? So much for a lazy afternoon reading some favourite Sci-Fi in the garden. Pricks.
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Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.
Unless Amazon is claiming a patent on a specific technological invention, I'm not sure how well their product will fare, in either the application or in later patent enforcement. The concept of advertising in ebooks seems to be in itself no more than a means of "organizing human behavior," or an "abstract idea" -- exactly the kind of specious "business method" patent that was invalidated in the recent Bilski decision.