What Book Publishers Should Learn From Harry Potter

New submitter Volanin writes "The e-book versions of the Harry Potter series are being released through Pottermore, and J.K. Rowling has chosen to do a number of interesting things with them, including releasing them without DRM restrictions. 'One of the encouraging things about the Pottermore launch is that the books will be available on virtually every platform simultaneously, including the Sony Reader, the Nook, the Kindle and Google's e-book service. ... even Amazon has bowed to the power of the series and done what would previously have seemed unthinkable: it sends users who come to the titles on Amazon to Pottermore to finish the transaction.'"

Comments

Only sort of DRM free?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/03/27/harry-potter-ebooks-are-not-drm-free-in-kindle-format/

Re:Only sort of DRM free?

[Bradmont]

Just buy the epub and convert it with Calibre.

Re:Only sort of DRM free?

[Bradmont]

Yeah, it can convert bewteen just about any ebook format you can imagine. There are also plugins to strip DRM, but amazon recently changed its DRM scheme, so YMMV.

Re:Only sort of DRM free?

[iceaxe]

Having purchased one DRM'ed Nook book before I got a Kindle, and one DRM'ed kindle book since then, I wised up and now I only purchase DRM free ebooks (generally epub), manage the collection with Calibre, and convert the books as needed for loading on devices.

If a book is not available without DRM, I do not purchase it.

Re:Only sort of DRM free?

[ConaxConax]

I'm betting he is doing what an informed consumer should and putting his money where his mouth is when making an informed purchasing choice, in chosing not to support and fund a business model he doesn't like.

good on her

[hguorbray]

it will take authors of her stature to claw back some author's rights back from apple and the publishers

I'm just sayin'

Re:good on her

[hguorbray]

yeah, except for giving apple 30% off the top and not being able to offer the book for less anywhere else...

which means they have lost the right to discretionary pricing and possibly from offering the book for free...

I'm just sayin'

Re:good on her

[geekoid]

30% is comes out of the publisher.

"not being able to offer the book for less anywhere else"
and that's just false.

return of the king
Apple: 9.99
http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-return-of-the-king/id503026877?mt=11

Google: 8.51
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/John_Ronald_Reuel_Tolkien_The_Return_Of_The_King?id=WZ0f_yUgc0UC&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImJvb2stV1owZl95VWdjMFVDIl0.
That's just one example.

Stop 'Just sayin' and start thinking for yourself.

Re:good on her

[tlhIngan]

They lost the right to sell the books at a reasonable price. People on Slashdot keep forgetting that the iBookstore or whatever it's called came along with negotiations that contractually forced Amazon to raise ebook prices by >50%.

No, that's not an author right they lost. They gained that right with Apple's agency model.

Otherwise what happened was Amazon was selling books at a loss (to them) in an effort to drive out everyone else from selling e-books. The publishers and authors had no right to say what price Amazon could sell at. So if Amazon decided your books were worth $1, sure they could be paying you $3 for each copy, but you won't be able to sell your next book for any more than $0.50 per copy as everyone thinks your book is only worth $1.

As well, Sony/B&N/Kobo won't be able to compete and exit the e-book market (if they have to pay $3 per book and Amazon's big enough to dump it at $1...), leaving Amazon the only player in town.

Amazon went for the wholesale model - they bought N books for $X, and sold it for $Y (X and Y have no general relation, though Y > X for a profit). Apple went with the agency model - the publisher sets the price, and Apple sells it for that price.

Consumers love the wholesale model - books are cheaper and get discounted, though publishers hate it (devalues the book) as do authors. If you want to see this in action, check out developer complaints about 99 cent games making it hard for other developers to charge $4.99 for games (better ones, of course) and such.

Of course, Amazon could be devaluing the market to be the only contender (Amazon's Kindle store is the largest after all) and with the DRM, once you're locked in and the other stores are gone, Amazon is free to jack up prices.

Re:good on her

[hguorbray]

nevertheless, apple and the big 4 publishers are under antitrust investigation in both the US and Europe over price fixing and collusion, which may or may not benefit the author, but certainly hurts the consumer

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/08/us_justice_dept_apple_ebooks/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/13/apple_ebooks_cases_cost/

-I'm just sayin' -what I think and hear and feel...

Who needs DRM

[StatureOfLiberty]

Each book is a Horcrux. Who needs DRM restrictions? :-)

A) Nothing

[pla]

What Book Publishers Should Learn From Harry Potter

They should learn form this that we wanted these 5+ years ago, preferably released simultaneously with the print version, and ideally the print versions should have included one free e-Version each.

What will they learn from this? They'll learn that they can fake it and promote themselves as "DRM-Free" by releasing material that everyone already owns in another form (and therefore piracy doesn't much matter), which continuing to burden new releases and reference material under as onerous of a lock as they can clamp on.

Funny how she went from

[geekoid]

Never releasing digital, to a digital release.

And by funny, I mean money.

Re:Funny how she went from

[hey!]

So? Is it evil to like money now?

All of the Harry Potter books are within what would be a reasonable copyright term, so she's entitled to maximize the money she makes from them. It makes perfect sense to hold back the eBooks until the hardcopy sales dropped, and she's done the right thing here, which is not to penalize legitimate users of the eBooks in the name of piracy prevention.

Re:Funny how she went from

[CrimsonAvenger]

Perhaps she decided she needed more money to give away.

Apparently, she donated ~$160 million to charity this past year, and fell off Forbes' Billionaire list as a result.

Re:Price still too high

[epedersen]

No, it costs them $0.80 to print and send you a papterback version. The cost of the content is what you are paying $7.99 for.

Why not give us the direct link?

[cpu6502]

Why link from Slashdot's summary to some other linkfarm's summary? Grrr. DIRECT link -

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-you-can-buy-the-harry-potter-e-books-now/
By Laura Hazard Owen

Re:Do you shop at just one brick and mortar?

[vlm]

How do I spread my financial details at a brick and mortar? If I buy a $20 book at a brick and mortar, I do hand over a financial document with a name and picture on it, but the name and picture are of former US president Andrew Jackson. I don't mention that's not really my name, and nobody has ever made an issue of it.

A majority of people don't pay cash. Even 20 years ago when I was working retail while going to school, people hand over their credit card to a minor who more or less can't be seriously prosecuted, and almost all of the time, nothing bad happens. Having worked both sides, I used to laugh at people who were "scared of the internet" in the 90s, as if a "rich computer guy" like myself is more likely to skim their records than a 16 year old waitress.

No DRM but has tracking

[cpu6502]

They call it watermarking, but it's tracking by any other name. "The Pottermore Shop personalises eBooks with a combination of watermarking techniques that relate to the book, to the purchaser and the purchase time. This allows us to track and respond to possible copyright misuse."

So don't copy the floppy..... er, book to your friends.

Re:No DRM but has tracking

[Transkaren]

And the problem with this - assuming it doesn't interfere with the function of the book in any way - is what exactly? It's like a registered serial number - it's *your* copy. Quite honestly, it's probably the single best copy protection method out there - both from an enforcement ("See this? It's yours") and rights (But make backups and change formats as much as you want) way.

Re:No DRM but has tracking

[Hogwash McFly]

"I don't understand potions", said Ron gloomily.
"You don't understand anything!" said Hermione snootily.
"Cut it out, you two. I'm trying to watch the Quidditch", said John Thompson, the twenty eight year old living at 17 Acacia Avenue, Surrey, credit card number 5753100085692323.

Re:No DRM but has tracking

[Red Flayer]

Except it may become problematic for assigning that copy to someone else. I'm done with it -- here, have a copy and I'll delete all my copies.

Seems like publishers have a method of getting one of the tinhgs they want -- no "used" ebook market.

Re:No DRM but has tracking

[xigxag]

It could be something subtle, non-markup-language-related like inserting zero-width space characters within the text or replacing the Latin letter "O" with the identical looking Cyrillic letter "O" in a kind of individualized code. Unless you know the exact code, or someone "diffs" two copies of the text to determine what's being done, you can't strip it. And, instead of going through a lot of trouble and potential risk to get a watermark-free copy to disperse, you might as well just tell your friend to download a rip from any one of billions of websites. Hardcore pirates have used stolen credit cards anyway, so they're not going to care about some silly watermark.

Although, I suspect we will soon be finding out what happens when Amazon et al add a term to their license saying that you agree to allow them to automatically delete any books from their, er, your device that have an "invalid" watermark, meaning anyone's watermark but yours.

Power to the content creators!

[guspasho]

This is what ebooks are made for. Eliminating the middle-man, and letting the creators own the distribution of their own works. I hope this trend continues. I'm only too happy to buy these books knowing that the creator is getting the lion's share of the profits and not some publishing house.

They didn't learn shit

[Nyder]

I've already downloaded and read all the Harry Potter books. By waiting this long to release them in ebook format, they only encourage pirating of the ebooks.

Re:Price still too high

[cpu6502]

An Ebook version of Potter has ZERO shipping cost and ZERO printing cost. There's no logical reason why the last 3 ebooks should cost 2 dollars more than the print books. In fact they should be about 2 dollars cheaper.

What they should NOT learn

[khelms]

The books may be drm free, but if you're in the US, just try and purchase the original, unedited-for-America, UK editions. You can't. The Add to Basket button is ghosted out and if you hover over the "Why can't I buy this?" link under that button you'll see.
-

"Why can't I add this to my basket?

Due to publishing restrictions, this edition of the book is not available in your country. Please choose another book language."

So, Pottermore may have bought a clue about how useless drm is, but they still don't understand that it's a global economy now and consumers won't put up with that "not available in your country/region" crap any more.