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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.'"
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/03/27/harry-potter-ebooks-are-not-drm-free-in-kindle-format/
Each book is a Horcrux. Who needs DRM restrictions? :-)
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.
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.
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'
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
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
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.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
Be seeing you...
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.
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"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.