
The Comeback of the Century - whack
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/opinion/michelle-obama-becoming.html
======
smacktoward
My theory on this: the e-book industry shot itself in the foot with DRM.

Lots of people pointed to the way the world's music buying habits shifted from
buying CDs to buying MP3s (before it shifted again, to streaming) as an
argument for why e-books would inevitably displace printed ones. But there was
a fundamental difference between those two examples, namely that the music
industry abandoned tying digital purchases to a single device via DRM
relatively quickly, while the e-book industry held doggedly to the idea that
e-books bought from Amazon should only work on Kindles, e-books from B&N
should only work on Nooks, etc. Which made e-books notably less appealing from
the buyer's standpoint; with digital music you could have a reasonable
assurance that your purchase today would play on the device you own tomorrow.
With e-books, you could not, and you _still_ can't.

(Yes yes, I know about Calibre and so forth. I'm talking here about how these
things looked from the perspective of the average person.)

It's a great example of how all the players in a competitive market can hurt
their long-term interests by relentlessly pursuing their short-term ones. It
was in everyone's short-term interest to try and grab more market share at the
expense of their competitors by locking customers into a closed ecosystem. But
by doing so they passed up the opportunity to grow the entire market. And a
small slice of a huge pie beats a big slice of a small one any day.

~~~
chrismcb
I don't think many people care about DRM. Most people have only one reader, so
the fact their kindle book doesn't work on a nook didn't bother them. What
hurt the industry was the book publishers getting upset at Amazon and choosing
the agency route. With most ebooks more expensive than their mass market
counterpart. And the lack of sales, as you could never sale the ebook for less
than agency price.

~~~
nine_k
Try thinking about a device breaking, so you lose access to all your e-books
until you buy a new one.

Then imagine the line of devices being discontinued, or no more available in
your country, etc.

Apps sort of solve it, as long as they are maintained, and you can get hold of
a compatible device. Or maybe your book will be withdrawn because it stopped
being available, due to copyrights or other legal reasons.

In short, once you buy a music track, you own it, for personal purposes. Once
you pay for an Amazon e-book, you keep _renting_ it.

~~~
chrismcb
Yes, this is an issue, but one most people don't consider. Personally in on my
fourth kindle, either because I lost it or broke it. Your analogy is of course
broken, especially consider most music is purchaeed through iTunes of similar.
Of course I'm not renting my book, I bought it and own. And the issue hasn't
been decided in the court of law. I understand what you are saying, but the
most people don't know not care.

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open-source-ux
E-Readers (like the e-ink Kindle and Kobo) have never broken out of the black-
and-white, small paperback form-factor. Which makes them ideal for
reading...small, black-and-white paperback titles. But nothing else.

Books come in an infinite variety of shapes and sizes. E-readers and tablets
do not.

Shape, colour, double-page layouts, plus the tactile feel of paper are all
intrinsic to the design of so many books. E-readers and tablets simply can't
accommodate those qualities.

E-readers work well for reading paperback-sized fiction and non-fiction
titles, but I don't think anyone really expected them to replace physical
books.

------
hirundo
> A typical rage tweet by President Trump, misspelled and grammatically sad,
> may get him 100,000 “likes.”

Is there something in the NYT style guide requiring a minimum of gratuitous
shots at Trump?

~~~
Turing_Machine
Yes, 90% of this opinion piece consists of anti-Trump rants and over-the-top
fawning over Michelle Obama's book (which is, of course, available on all the
major ebook platforms, so I'm not sure why it's even relevant to the author's
thesis).

The rest of the piece is borderline deceptive. Ebooks from _major publishers_
haven't destroyed print sales from _major publishers_ for the reasons
mentioned by others in this thread -- the main reason being that the _major
publishers_ price their ebooks artificially high to avoid cutting into their
print sales (DRM plays a smaller role, but its effect isn't non-existent,
either).

The reason this is deceptive is because the major publishers do not own the
ebook market, or anywhere close to it. Indie ebooks are doing fine, in fact
they are curb-stomping the major publishers in this area, as a casual glance
at the Kindle best-seller lists in different genres will conclusively show.

You are being unfairly modded down for your observation.

This is not "tech news" by any reasonable definition of the term. It is
straight political ranting with a thin layer of tech-bashing on top. Flagging.

