Basically, the mania for "restrict the hell out of it at release" appears to be driven by a desire to get as many "sales" as possible early on. Later on won't matter as much because there's a spike in sales followed by a trail-off over a period of weeks to whenever.
Fine.
But... as with "Spore" and other games, if the legitimate customers are inconvenienced, they scream to high heaven and, as noted elsewhere, that has a direct impact on sales and the game's reputation. I was planning on picking up "Spore" right up to about a day after it was released and the screams had started. Scratch one sale. Ditto with "Sims 2."
Does the term "blowback" say anything to market-droids?
I would note, though, that it's likely to work better if you sell the hardware cheaply, because while Amazon charges about $10/ebook, each additional copy of the book costs them little more than pennies, and so provides a much better profit margin per sale.
Or to use an older metaphor, the razor is cheap, but the blades, aaah, the blades...
Amazon is clearly trying to sell the kindle for breakeven or lose-a-little and then more than make up any losses with ancillary sales of "kindle edition" ebooks. FYI, this strategy also seems to have worked pretty well for an obscure company, but I forget the name. It was Pear or Orange, or some kind of fruit, anyway.
Thank you. Apparently I jumped to a conclusion, given Tolkien's well-known troubles with Ace books for publishing LoTR in the US without bothering to pay him.
The timing of the restrictions may still be related, but the available evidence doesn't prove it.
Well, at least I've managed to clear a conclusion of at least five feet from a standing start.
Actually, since I buy a huge chunk of my reading from Fictionwise, (the other is Baen's Webscriptions(www.webscription.net) site), a 100% rebate on my credit card is effectively like getting the book for free. The 100% rebate goes into my micropay account with FW and I then use the money to buy other books I'd have bought anyway.
I got an email today from FW which is probably relevant to the timing of the implementation:
Fictionwise -- Special Newsletter 100% MicroPay Rebates -- J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings eBooks
J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" - perhaps the greatest epic fantasy series of all time - is now available for the first time in eBook format!
Now you can be thrilled by this legendary adventure again... anytime... anywhere. Read these Tolkien masterpieces on your iPhone, BlackBerry or mobile device today!
For a limited time, get a 100% MicroPay Rebate on all J.R.R. Tolkien titles, plus get 30% off all Multiformat Fantasy and Dark Fantasy and a 30% Micropay Rebate on all Secure Dark Fantasy and Fantasy titles using your credit card or PayPal at Fictionwise.com!
At the time the publishers and authors complained and sued Google, there were warnings about this happening. But the publishers and authors, who regard our pocketbooks as their property, were satisfied with the bribe... er... settlment Google offered. And only NOW, after the Big G fought alone on this front, are they complaining.
Just curious, is the tale of the Little Red Hen, who could find no help with planting, cultivating and harvesting the corn that everybody who hadn't helped wanted to eat when the work was done, in the public domain? Send a copy to the complainers and require reciting it verbatim from memory as a requirement for filing any complaints.
A Slam-Dunk Prediction
on
Cellular Repo Man
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The RIAA/MPAA will be requiring such a capability as part of any "three-strikes" legislation. That will include felony charges for tampering with the hardware that makes the kill switch possible.
I've never had any problems with text plus _italics_, and.txt files can be read by anything. For stories, that makes them about as format-neutral as you can find.
Always been electronic, and I'll keep this subscription going as long as I'm breathing. Worth every penny of what they charge and there are membership bonuses. Some of the best short fiction I can find comes out of this shop.
Fictionwise - www.fictionwise.com Carries Analog, Asimov's and F&SF. I've had subscriptions to all three since 2000 and intend to continue them until either they or I fold.
Print may be dead, but these guys publish zero-DRM and I can stuff them into my Palm and go. That was the approach that got me back into reading science fiction.
1. I'm 58 and must wear glasses to read my monitor properly. I just set the font size in my Palm to Large Bold and I don't need glasses (yet). Glasses are irrelevant. You get old enough, you need glasses to read menus.
2. As far as I've ever been informed, a Kindle book goes straight to the Kindle. You can't archive it on your own hardware and if you ever decide to move to another reading device, "your" library's useless because never-to-be-sufficently-damned Sony won't read never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Kindle, and you can't read either on a Palm, or a Netbook computer or your desktop or Scalzi's (hoped for) BrainPal(TM) or...
3. e-Ink sucks. I tried a Cybook and noticed that, for a "clean" page, the entire screen MUST flicker to black on page changes. If you have to notice that you're changing pages, you're getting pulled out of the story. Which is why I don't read MobiPocket format on my Palm. The reader flickers on page changes.
So tell me again why I should be forced to a specialized device just to read DRM-locked "books". (If they're DRM-locked, they aren't books.)
They're single-purpose devices with closed formats in an increasingly multipurpose open-format world. Why would anyone in their right mind spend about $400 on a device that is locked to proprietary formats and doesn't do much else except "read books." Just one more [expletives deleted] gadget to carry around.
On the other hand, smart phones like the iPod and Android, which can also presumably serve as schedulers, notepads, book readers, mp3 players/audiobook players and *gasp* phones?
Kindle and Sony were effectively obsolete the day they were released.
"Sims 2" came with enough intrusive DRM that I uninstalled it about ten minutes after I installed it and then went back and gunged out my system -- thoroughly.
If a game company has done "all your bits are belong to us" in the past, they will do so in the future.
So why was everybody so shocked, shocked! to find "Spore" tries to take over their PCs in the name of fighting the dread pirates?
Slashdot Mirror
They still have to get their updates from Microsoft. [long, slow, evil grin]
Basically, the mania for "restrict the hell out of it at release" appears to be driven by a desire to get as many "sales" as possible early on. Later on won't matter as much because there's a spike in sales followed by a trail-off over a period of weeks to whenever.
Fine.
But... as with "Spore" and other games, if the legitimate customers are inconvenienced, they scream to high heaven and, as noted elsewhere, that has a direct impact on sales and the game's reputation. I was planning on picking up "Spore" right up to about a day after it was released and the screams had started. Scratch one sale.
Ditto with "Sims 2."
Does the term "blowback" say anything to market-droids?
counterfeit software 'delivers a poor experience and impacts customer satisfaction
The real stuff is bad enough without worrying about "counterfeit".
You can certainly say this whole idea came out of lala-land.
Correction: "steaming video"
I sit corrected. Thank you.
I would note, though, that it's likely to work better if you sell the hardware cheaply, because while Amazon charges about $10/ebook, each additional copy of the book costs them little more than pennies, and so provides a much better profit margin per sale.
Or to use an older metaphor, the razor is cheap, but the blades, aaah, the blades...
Amazon is clearly trying to sell the kindle for breakeven or lose-a-little and then more than make up any losses with ancillary sales of "kindle edition" ebooks. FYI, this strategy also seems to have worked pretty well for an obscure company, but I forget the name. It was Pear or Orange, or some kind of fruit, anyway.
Thank you. Apparently I jumped to a conclusion, given Tolkien's well-known troubles with Ace books for publishing LoTR in the US without bothering to pay him.
The timing of the restrictions may still be related, but the available evidence doesn't prove it.
Well, at least I've managed to clear a conclusion of at least five feet from a standing start.
Actually, since I buy a huge chunk of my reading from Fictionwise, (the other is Baen's Webscriptions(www.webscription.net) site), a 100% rebate on my credit card is effectively
like getting the book for free. The 100% rebate goes into my micropay account with FW and
I then use the money to buy other books I'd have bought anyway.
I got an email today from FW which is probably relevant to the timing of the implementation:
Given that the Tolkien estate has a LOT of expen$ive lawyers to feed, the conclusion is left as an exercise for the Slashdot readership.
Aliens vs. Predator anyone?
Pwn3d before nightfall.
Nah men formalized it and called it prostitution.
Men did formalize it as prostitution, but what they're purchasing is the right to walk away after they've "done the deed."
At the time the publishers and authors complained and sued Google, there were warnings about this happening. But the publishers and authors, who regard our pocketbooks as their property, were satisfied with the bribe... er... settlment Google offered. And only NOW, after the Big G fought alone on this front, are they complaining.
Just curious, is the tale of the Little Red Hen, who could find no help with planting, cultivating and harvesting the corn that everybody who hadn't helped wanted to eat when the work was done, in the public domain? Send a copy to the complainers and require reciting it verbatim from memory as a requirement for filing any complaints.
The RIAA/MPAA will be requiring such a capability as part of any "three-strikes" legislation. That will include felony charges for tampering with the hardware that makes the kill switch possible.
Since the days of the Romans, the adage has been "Caveat emptor." (Let the buyer beware.)
Now Modern Marketing has their own adage: "Carpe emptor!" (Seize the buyer.)
Let the Battle of the Adages Begin!
I'll remember that as I micturate on their grave.
I've never had any problems with text plus _italics_, and .txt files can be read by anything. For stories, that makes them about as format-neutral as you can find.
Did you go to www.fictionwise.com?
The entry on Analog's April 2009 issue reads:
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.1 MB], Adobe Acrobat - Large Print (PDF) [1.2 MB], eReader (PDB) [310 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [230 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [251 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [813 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [263 KB], hiebook (KML) [1.2 MB], Sony Reader (LRF) [985 KB], iSilo (PDB) [207 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [547 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [601 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [390 KB]
That enough formats for you? Note, Multiformat == Zero DRM.
Jim Baen's Universe - http://www.baens-universe.com/
Always been electronic, and I'll keep this subscription going as long as I'm breathing.
Worth every penny of what they charge and there are membership bonuses. Some of the
best short fiction I can find comes out of this shop.
Fictionwise - www.fictionwise.com Carries Analog, Asimov's and F&SF. I've had
subscriptions to all three since 2000 and intend to continue them until either they
or I fold.
Print may be dead, but these guys publish zero-DRM and I can stuff them into my Palm and
go. That was the approach that got me back into reading science fiction.
"...balance between draconian DRM and fair copy protection here..."
That's like asking about a balance between McDonald's and a cow.
1. I'm 58 and must wear glasses to read my monitor properly. I just set the font size in my Palm to Large Bold and I don't need glasses (yet). Glasses are irrelevant. You get old enough, you need glasses to read menus.
2. As far as I've ever been informed, a Kindle book goes straight to the Kindle. You can't archive it on your own hardware and if you ever decide to move to another reading device, "your" library's useless because never-to-be-sufficently-damned Sony won't read never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Kindle, and you can't read either on a Palm, or a Netbook computer or your desktop or Scalzi's (hoped for) BrainPal(TM) or ...
3. e-Ink sucks. I tried a Cybook and noticed that, for a "clean" page, the entire screen MUST flicker to black on page changes. If you have to notice that you're changing pages, you're getting pulled out of the story. Which is why I don't read MobiPocket format on my Palm. The reader flickers on page changes.
So tell me again why I should be forced to a specialized device just to read DRM-locked "books". (If they're DRM-locked, they aren't books.)
They're single-purpose devices with closed formats in an increasingly multipurpose open-format world. Why would anyone in their right mind spend about $400 on a device that is locked to proprietary formats and doesn't do much else except "read books." Just one more [expletives deleted] gadget to carry around.
On the other hand, smart phones like the iPod and Android, which can also presumably serve as schedulers, notepads, book readers, mp3 players/audiobook players and *gasp* phones?
Kindle and Sony were effectively obsolete the day they were released.
"And my fear is being an obnoxious blabbermouth." - Willow
From "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Episode: "Beneath You"
"Sims 2" came with enough intrusive DRM that I uninstalled it about ten minutes after I installed it and then went back and gunged out my system -- thoroughly.
If a game company has done "all your bits are belong to us" in the past, they will do so in the future.
So why was everybody so shocked, shocked! to find "Spore" tries to take over their PCs in the name of fighting the dread pirates?