Concept, analogous to TV standardization:
Require all e-book formats to be interchangeable.
And require uniform pricing and complete customer freedom
to do with an ebook what he/she can now do with a print book.
There is no reason why this should not be the law of the land.
Billy
-----------------------------
Wired.com
The Abomination of Ebooks: They Price People Out of Reading
* By Art Brodsky
* 10.02.13
This is not one of those rants about missing the texture, touch, colors,
whatever of paper contrasted with the sterility of reading on a tablet. No,
the real abomination of ebooks is often overlooked: Some are so ingrained
in the product itself that they are hiding in plain sight, while others are
well concealed beneath layers of commerce and government.
The real problem with ebooks is that they’re more “e” than book, so an
entirely different set of rules govern what someone — from an individual to a
library — can and can’t do with them compared to physical books,
especially when it comes to pricing.
The _collusion_
(http://www.wired.com/business/2012/03/case-against-apple-publishers/) of
large ebook distributors in pricing has been a public issue
for a while, but we need to talk more about how they are priced
differently to consumers and to libraries. That’s how ebooks contribute to the
ever-growing divide between the literary haves and have-nots.
The Danger of the “E” in Ebooks
We need to stop thinking of and talking about ebooks as books, and more as
we would an app or a software package: Ebooks are computer code that
display text and pictures instead of instructing our tablets to do some task.
Not only can we not legally fiddle with such proprietary software, but we can’
t “buy” it, either — we lease it, according to terms and conditions set by
the manufacturer.
The same applies to ebooks. We don’t buy them, we lease them. It may be a
long-term lease, but a lease just the same. There are limits and
restrictions on use for all ebooks, and confusingly, those limits and
restrictions
vary depending on which company is offering the product.
It’s for this reason that we should stop using terminology like “
bestseller lists” — when it really should be “most leased” lists — because
that
language of physical books reinforces a very dangerous notion of ownership.
Buyers of physical books can do whatever they want with them, from loaning
to friends as many times as they like to reselling at a used-books store.
(Note that when a book owner does this, she gets that money — not the
publisher.)
Unfortunately, such lending in the digital world comes with restrictions.
Apple’s iBooks can only be read on an Apple appliance. Amazon’s
[proprietary format] ebooks can only be read on Kindle software, lent only
once, and
only for 14 days (and then only by someone in the Amazon Prime program,
which of course costs extra).
How do such restrictions reinforce the divide between haves and have-nots?
Imagine walking into a library or bookstore and needing three or four
pairs of different glasses to read different books manufactured to specific
viewing equipment. Or buying a book and then having to arbitrarily destroy it
after say, two weeks. That’s just nuts. But it’s the current situation we’
re in with ebooks.
Art Brodsky
A communications consultant and library advocate in Montgomery County,
Maryland, Art Brodsky is working with the American Library Association on
e-book issues. Previously, he was communications director for Public
Knowledge,
a public-interest group working on internet and copyright issues. Brodsky
was also a former chairman of the Montgomery County Library Board, an
advisory group that promotes a strong and vibrant library system.
(http://www.wired.com/opinion)
The High Costs of EBook Pricing
The other way ebooks reinforce the divide is through their pricing
structures. The only ones who win are the big e-tailers, not the authors or
even
the publishers and definitely not the libraries.
Publishers, too, are subject to the pricing (and other whims) of big
e-tailers. This issue was at the heart of the antitrust case between Apple and
Amazon, where Apple was found guilty of price fixing for working with
publishers to raise the prices of ebooks because publishers were angry that
Amazon had set prices too low.
Sadly, pricing changes the game for library access altogether because
ebook distributors have radically changed the pricing from that of regular
books.
Take the example of J.K. Rowling’s pseudonymous book, Cuckoo’s Calling.
For the physical book, libraries would pay $14.40 from book distributor
Baker & Taylor — close to the consumer price of $15.49 from Barnes & Noble and
of $15.19 from Amazon. But even though the ebook will _cost_
(http://evoke.cvlsites.org/files/2013/09/DCL-Pricing-Comparison-9-3-13.pdf)
consumers
$6.50 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, libraries would pay $78 (through library
ebook distributors Overdrive and 3M) for the same thing.
Somehow the “e” in ebooks changes the pricing game, and drastically. How
else does one explain libraries paying a $0.79 to $1.09 difference for a
physical book to paying a difference of $71.50 just because it’s the
electronic version? It’s not like being digital makes a difference for when
and how
they can lend it out.
In another wrinkle: Random House, which jacked up its ebook prices to
libraries 300 percent last year, limits the number of check-outs per ebook.
This means libraries have to lease another “copy” when they reach a certain
threshold … as if the ebook had died or something. In fact, that’s the
problem some authors have with ebooks — not just that they earn less money on
them, but that “They never degrade. They are perpetual. That harms writers
directly,” as historian and novelist David O. Stewart has observed.
These authors don’t mind the high prices charged to libraries because they
don’t even like libraries to begin with. Stewart has _called_
(http://davidostewart.com/2013/07/e-books-and-libraries-not-so-fast/)
libraries “
undeniably socialist” because books can be loaned out (for free!) many times,
costing writers money from presumably lost sales. This is the same
justification book publishers use for their distorted ebook pricing.
But that’s just wrong. Most physical books in libraries aren’t tattered
and worn out, particularly hardbacks. And just because an ebook may last
forever doesn’t mean it will be read. Reader demand changes with the cultural
context: When The Help was at the top of the Times’ fiction best-seller
list for 15 weeks in 2011, readers had to wait weeks for copies to come back
to their libraries; but now, 39 out of the 79 copies of the book in my local
library system are available for checkout.
There are some enlightened authors, like Jodi Picoult and Cory Doctorow,
who have joined the _Authors for Library E-books_
(http://www.ala.org/transforminglibraries/a4le) campaign, which adds author
voices to those of
librarians and readers in support of equitable access to digital content. As
their site notes, not only are many books not even available to libraries at
any price, but those that are can only be purchased at 150 to 500 percent
more than the consumer price — “forcing us to purchase fewer copies for
library readers to discover.”
Doctorow is a big supporter of libraries, recognizing them as the one
institution “whose only interest is in promoting authorship, books, and
knowledge to the exclusion of things like shareholders or Kindle ebook sales
and
lock ins and ad sales.” He wants libraries to have his books, and to be able
buy ebooks “the same way you buy books, the same way I buy books.”
Exactly. Ebook consumers should be able to lend and resell ebooks the same
way we do with physical books — only then can an ebook truly be a book,
with all the world-opening possibilities it offers.
But it would take an act of (our currently shut down) Congress to
accomplish that small change. Such a change would have a huge impact, though.
It
would put ebooks within the reach of many more people through libraries
(which also lend e-readers); through subscription services like _Scribd’s_
(http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/scribd_book_subscription/) newly
launched one; through lower prices that resale books would bring; and through
simple borrowing or even donating of books.
When we think of most e-enabled technology, we think of creative
destruction, a kind of disintermediation that _removes extra steps_
(http://www.wired.com/business/2013/09/ev-williams-xoxo/) from common
activities. With
ebook technology, however, all we’ve got is extra layers — in pricing, in
lending, in access — essentially, the destructive without any of the creative.
Except maybe for a privileged few.
Recognizing the problem, the Connecticut state legislature _passed_
(http://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/ACT/SA/2013SA-00010-R00HB-05614-SA.htm) a law
requiring a study of pricing of ebooks to libraries. My local jurisdiction of
Montgomery County, Maryland, also _passed_
(http://www6.montgomerycountymd.gov/content/council/pdf/res/2013/20130723_17-821.pdf)
a resolution calling for
county libraries to have “equitable access at fair prices” to ebooks. But
such efforts have not been taken up in many places yet.
--
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Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
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