
The Abomination of Ebooks: They Price People Out of Reading - Oletros
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/10/how-ebook-pricing-hurts-us-in-more-ways-than-you-think/
======
VLM
I have to borrow p-books from my local library (plus or minus interlibrary
loans).

I have no idea why I can't borrow an e-book from a shady .ru site on the
internet if I want. Or a perfectly legit site in the .uk

Therefore there seems little reason to charge my physically local library an
enormous amount of money other than to encourage piracy in order to discredit
ebooks as a technology. Perhaps an alternative plan is to get local libraries
out of the e-book business and keep e-books online (presumably tightly
centrally controlled)

My local library used to do books, but now its a downscale free internet cafe,
complete with vending machine coffee, along with being a homeless shelter and
free day care operator. I think they still have about half their books. But in
a business that's pivoted almost completely out of books and into daycare and
related areas, I don't think the price of books really matters anymore.

~~~
quanticle
>I have no idea why I can't borrow an e-book from a shady .ru site on the
internet if I want. Or a perfectly legit site in the .uk

It's illegal, and if you're caught you can be sued for millions of dollars.
I'm no lawyer, but I think the maximum penalty for copyright violation is
$150,000 per violation in the US. Even "borrowing" 10 books with your plan
could land you with enough fines to wipe out your home (if you own one) and
all your savings. It's one of those things where the chances of getting caught
are small, but the consequences of getting caught are commensurately massive.

~~~
ghshephard
What people fail to note, is that the laws are against illegal distribution,
not downloading.

Are there any laws against illegal downloading? And, how is the average person
supposed to know if Apple/Amazon/etc.. are legally allowed to distribute the
content they are selling you?

------
ghshephard
The tragic part (for authors, publishers, the writing industry in general) -
is that there is absolutely no way to apply DRM to a book, and the electronic
duplicate of it (scan) is a 100% faithful replica.

Steve Jobs was absolutely correct when he said to the publishing industry that
if they didn't immediately create a low-price, convenient, electronic version
of their environment to compete with those that didn't care about copyrights,
that they would soon find themselves in the same place the music industry did.

Books are also much, much smaller than music, and so, it's pretty trivial to
get all the books that you'll ever be able to read in a relatively small
download.

Publishing industry is shooting themselves in the foot if they don't examine
what happened to the music industry and start making adjustments, and soon.

~~~
jonnathanson
The fallout is going to be worse here than it was for the music industry.

At least the music industry had the convenient escape hatch of huge concert
revenues to make up for the loss of CDs. The publishing industry has no such
equivalent. Authors go on book tours, sure, but those tours are not exactly
raking in the dough for themselves or their publishers; they're just marketing
expenditures designed to sell more books.

~~~
dkokelley
I'm going to disagree here. Music makers have a way to convey the work in
slightly different mediums (CD sales and live concerts, not including
externalities like merchandising and music licensing). Book publishing has
similar paths to monetization. While a live book reading probably won't
generate as much revenue as a live music performance, books can be adapted to
the screen. The stories are now acted out in a movie. Granted, not all books
get turned into award-winning movies, but not all bands become huge-venue
concert successes. I think it's a fair comparison.

~~~
ghshephard
100% of bands have a way of making significant money beyond records sales - In
fact, for many of them, most their annual income comes from touring/T-Shirt
Sales/Posters - not the selling of their actual CDs. I have some local bands
in the Bay Area that I've spent a couple hundred dollars on in the last 5
years, that only have one or two CDs (which they probably got $3-$4 in income
from). Take a cover band like Super Diamond - They have a _single_ CD, and
frequently pack the venues they tour. I don't even want to think about how
much money I've spent on them in the last 10 years....

With Book Sales - the equation is the exact opposite. 95% of Authors revenue
comes from Book Sales - not movie rights/public readings/etc... If they let
the digital market get away from them, it's going to kill them in a way that
the music industry was able to find alternate revenue streams from.

~~~
dkokelley
Well now we are getting into revenue models as it applies to
creators/publishers/record labels/etc. For some bands, the only money they
make is from merchandise sales, because the record label contract dictates
that the CD sales go to the label. That doesn't mean there isn't money in the
albums. Likewise, book authors may not get movie rights, but someone in the
industry does. I'm looking at the equation from an industry overview
perspective. The music industry sells music AND bands. (You don't buy
merchandise because you like a song. You buy because you like the band.) the
book industry sells stories and characters.

Actually, I'm selling myself a little short here, because I'm only considering
the fictional book publishing industry. If we include nonfiction categories,
the alternative revenue possibilities open up even more. For instance, book
authors get speaking engagements with fees that would put some bands to shame.

------
Nursie
The lending thing really gets to me. Why the hell can't I lend my ebooks to a
friend? I'd lend them the paper book and there's nothing wrong with that, so
why the hell shouldn't I be allowed to do the same with the bits I just
'bought'.

This is the major reason I can't recommend a kindle to my mother. She and her
friends exchange books all the time, it's part of reading for her.

~~~
DanBC
Ebooks kill things like book crossing
([http://www.bookcrossing.com/](http://www.bookcrossing.com/))

I'm going to spend thousands on books over the rest of my life, and it's very
frustrating that I won't be able to leave those to my family when I die.
Unless I break the law to remove DRM.

~~~
pnathan
FYI: The company I work for does e-books in a fairly niche market and while we
do have DRM, we have mechanisms in place to transfer ownership relatively
painlessly. The fact that Amazon etc don't make that simple is not per se
intrinsic to e-books.

~~~
Nursie
That actually sounds very good. A relatively easy transfer-of-ownership thing
is what's missing for me in the ebook world. It would allow ebooks to be part
of small office-based libraries, or lent between friends, these are good
things.

------
ZanyProgrammer
"Amazon’s ebooks can only be read on Kindle devices, lent only once, and only
for 14 days (and then only by someone in the Amazon Prime program, which of
course costs extra)." That's totally wrong. I'm not a Prime member, and I've
lent a book. I also read Kindle books on my iPad using my Kindle app, and you
could just as well use the Kindle app on any other Android/iOS/Windows 8 or RT
device.

~~~
untog
_I also read Kindle books on my iPad using my Kindle app, and you could just
as well use the Kindle app on any other Android /iOS/Windows 8 or RT device_

True, but that doesn't tackle the issue of price entirely. If we lived in an
e-book only world you would have to spend nearly a hundred dollars before you
could read a single book. That's not great. If the books were considerably
cheaper it might be justifiable, but they aren't.

~~~
aaronem
You can read ebooks on even a quite low-end smartphone; all you really need is
a display large enough to present readable text. There are lots of cheap
Android phones out there; you can get them subsidized on a cell contract and
not pay anything out of pocket, or go prepaid instead and spend around $50 for
a device capable of running Kindle for Android.

Sure, there's a small initial barrier to entry, in the sense that you have to
have _some_ device, where a paperback novel has no such constraint. On the
other hand, how many paperbacks does $50 get you these days?

~~~
aaronem
Excuse my imprecision; I should've said "how many new mass-market paperbacks
does $50 get you these days?" Most of what you find in a used book store isn't
available in ebook format at any price, at least in my experience of used book
stores.

~~~
untog
_Most of what you find in a used book store isn 't available in ebook format
at any price_

Which is precisely the problem. eBooks destroy the very valuable (particularly
in a societal sense) used books market.

------
seabrookmx
I remember when discussions like this happened all the time over Apples DRM
music.

Enough people bitched and complained, and now when you buy music on iTunes it
comes with twice the bitrate and has no DRM. Why? Because it helped their
sales. I made my first iTunes purchase the week they went DRM free, as their
service was more convenient than digging up a torrent for an obscure album.

I think (and really hope) it's only a matter of time before the same happens
with EBooks. If I could buy non-DRM epubs, I would do it all the time just for
the convenience. It saves me having to dig it up on the internet, or fiddling
around in Calibre to get the thing readable.

~~~
fancyketchup
Plenty of people were buying music from iTMS before they stopped using DRM.
"Fighting the music industry for your right to DRM-free music" is just an
example of the Jobs' Reality Distortion Field at work.

Apple has an effective monopoly on portable music players. They have lost some
grip in the past few years with the popularity of Android phones that also
play music. However, the iPod Classic owned over 90% of the market for hard-
disk mp3 players and iPods collectively owned over 50% of the total market
around the time iTMS dropped DRM. The remainder of the market was fragmented
between Sony, Microsoft, and other players. That meant that FairPlay was your
only option for selling DRM-encumbered music.

That gave Apple tremendous leverage over the music labels. Nobody was going to
switch from an iPod to a Zune because it meant giving up a library of DRM-
encumbered music. And nobody could sell iPod-compatible DRM-encumbered music
without going through iTMS (which was already the only venue for selling to
well over half the market).

So they did what any rational business would do: Start selling DRM-free music
through Amazon (which people could play on their iPods) and push Apple to drop
DRM from iTMS. It was actually quite funny to see everyone patting Apple on
the back for "fighting for the little guy."

DRM-free ebooks aren't going to happen for a while because there are still too
many vendors. Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple, Sony, and others all operate
ebook stores. If one ebook store gets too uppity, publishers can just take
their books elsewhere without having to resort to the music industry's
tactics.

------
mseebach
His point is that ebooks and libraries are an unsolved problem. Fair enough.

But e-books are evil, an abomination and they price people out of reading?
That is incendiary hyperbole with no foundation in fact. Incidentally, the guy
is a lobbyist for libraries.

Yes, ebooks are different from paper books. They don't loan easily. They don't
resell for charity well. They don't give a room that smell of paper, nor can
you display them so house guests can see how smart you are. They do however
have tons of other benefits. Things change. Problems appear, and so some
people see an opportunity to write op-eds lamenting the passing of the world's
glory, others try to fix them.

Libraries are a funny thing in a world where media is only artificially
scarce, and the article doesn't even try to recognize this. If libraries
allowed unlimited lending of all new books, nobody would buy new books because
they can get the exact same experience from the library, so publishers
obviously aren't going to allow that.

~~~
RougeFemme
>>If libraries allowed unlimited lending of all new books, nobody would buy
new books because they can get the exact same experience from the library, so
publishers obviously aren't going to allow that.

I know I'm in the minority, but I love having my own library. I would continue
to buy new books regardless of the library's lending model because I enjoy
having my own copy that I can re-read whenever I want to.

------
shmerl
So, the main complaint of the author (besides the pricing) is that e-books
come with DRM. But fortunately not all, and DRM free e-books exist as well.

Reselling digital goods is a whole controversial topic. Since once you claim
it all should be DRM free, you can't try to prevent cheating by controlling
anything.

------
migrantgeek
I wonder how the cost of ownership breaks down over time.

A library pays $15 for a physical book that requires re-shelving, index cards
to be made and kept up, time spent searching when someone misplaced the book,
floor space, shelving, off site storage, etc.

There's cost for storing ebooks too but a couple of Dell servers and a backup
provider could handle even a fairly large library with less labor (probably
the highest cost).

I don't know much about the library world so maybe $78 for an ebook is
terrible but owning a thing isn't a fixed cost like the article pretends it to
be.

~~~
aaronem
I'd be interested to know how library ebook lending actually works. Are the
original files hosted by the library, or does the library instead pass some
sort of time-limited token to the reader which the publisher redeems for a
copy of the text? I don't know anyone who works for a library, and I've never
borrowed an ebook from a library; I'd be obliged to anyone with domain
knowledge who'd care to describe the process here.

~~~
joe5150
I don't know of any public libraries that handle their own general ebook
lending. They use services like Overdrive, and in the case of Overdrive how
the actual ebook file is served depends on which type of ebook it is. For
ePubs, the file is downloaded directly and managed with Adobe Digital Editions
(Overdrive's ePubs are generally all protected with Adobe DRM). For Kindle
books, the Overdrive site directs the user to the Amazon site (with some kind
of authentication token) where the user can have the book sent to his/her
Kindle device.

------
jahewson
Ebook pricing needs to be sorted out, but this article is wide of the mark.
The author argues for ebooks to be identical to physical books, but forgets
that physical books have restrictions too.

 _> Ebooks are computer code [...]. We don’t buy them, we lease them._

This implies that books aren't licensed but they are. The paper and glue isn't
but the text is.

 _> It’s for this reason that we should stop using terminology like
“bestseller lists” — when it really should be “most leased” lists_

Why not do this for paper books too? The copyrighted content in them is under
a license to you.

 _> Buyers of physical books can do whatever they want with them_

No way. Can I photocopy the book and sell copies of it? No. Can I write my own
book using the books characters? No. Can I sell large quantities of them into
foreign markets? No. Can I lend it to multiple people simultaneously? No, at
least not without copying it which isn't allowed.

 _> ebook distributors have radically changed the pricing from that of regular
books. [...] For the physical book, libraries would pay $14.40 [and for the
ebook] libraries would pay $78._

Is that really such a radical change though? As the article later notes a
library might buy as many as 80 copies of a major bestseller, which in this
case is $1152. Yet the e-book is only $78. In order to compare these two
numbers we need to know how many times the ebook can be lent out
simultaneously, but that number is missing...

 _> Random House [...] 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._

Physical books will fall apart ("die") at some point, especially those
paperback bestsellers. To make a fair comparison we need to know the ebook
limit and the lifespan of a popular paperback, but those numbers are missing
too...

 _> 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,”_

It's a quote, but it contradicts the previous point! 'Ebooks are bad because
they expire, no wait, ebooks are bad because the don't expire!' Which is it?

 _> These authors don’t mind the high prices charged to libraries because they
don’t even like libraries to begin with. [...] books can be loaned out (for
free!) many times, costing writers money from presumably lost sales._

Any evidence for this? It sounds a lot like the anti-piracy myth. Could people
reading and talking about books perhaps boost sales? Do some authors in fact
like libraries? Maybe they even spent some time there at some point?

> Most physical books in libraries aren’t tattered and worn out [...]

That's because the worn-out books have been shredded.

 _> Ebook consumers should be able to lend and resell ebooks the same way we
do with physical books_

Well, an ebook that is exactly like a physical book is an ebook that is
artificially restricted to be lent out to one reader at a time. But that's
what this article is arguing against. What exactly is the author advocating?
What should an ebook be? That's the genuine question which goes unanswered.

~~~
Nursie
>> This implies that books aren't licensed but they are. The paper and glue
isn't but the text is.

You own the paper book. The words are protected by copyright, sure, but that's
not the same as the restrictive lease that ebooks are subject to. Very
different beast.

~~~
diminoten
What, specifically, makes it a different beast?

~~~
yk
A license is a contract one side drafted and the other side did not read.

~~~
RougeFemme
. . .or read and assumed, rightly or wrongly, that they could live with the
limitations of the license.

------
nasalgoat
When I tried to sell my massive collection of Sci-Fi paperbacks, I couldn't
give them away.

Since they seem to effectively be worthless, ebooks at least give me
convenience.

------
panzagl
Anybody who thinks they own physical books is more than welcome to join me on
my bi-annual trips to Goodwill and help me unload.

