You Don't Own That eBook

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

When I took "property" in law school we frequently discussed property as "a bundle of sticks". If you held the entire bundle you owned every aspect of that property. But that wasn' always true. There are "Estates" that can be held for Real Property that are not the entire bundle. For example a "life estate". The holder of a life estate may use and enjoy a peice of property. They can sell their rights to another but only to the extent that those rights exist for themselves. The rights would end when the original holder of the life estats dies.

The same is true for personal property. You can own a book or a digital copy of a book without owning the right to reproduce a copy of that book. It makes sense that the publisher or author wouldn't want to sell that right as its how they make money from books.

The great difficulty that digital media create is that it makes copying so easy that retaining the right to reproduce is extremely difficult.

[TrackerNeil]

The question is how we get to that point in a world where, like it or not, many people have the ability to acquire an electronic copy of the author's text for free with a minimal amount of effort. The focus, until now, has been on the last part of the problem: making the effort required greater through the use of DRM. Has that worked? I think we can all agree that, at best, it's been a partial success. So other approaches are needed too. Authors have much more of a problem than other artists in adopting other sources of income, we all agree on that too. So where do we go from here? I think that's the discussion that everyone is trying to get to.

I agree that the concept of ownership needs to be adapted to an era in which books are distributed digitally, and as I said upthread, it is a bit strange that when one buys a Kindle book one does not really own it in the same way as one owns a paper book. That's something that can and should be discussed.

However, I find it distressing to hear so many people, whether in this thread or in real life, act as if free access to the entirety of an author's work is their right and due as human beings. I don't know where that comes from; perhaps there's some idea that when one illegally copies the work of another one is somehow sticking it to The Man. Well, in the last year I have gotten to know a number of indie authors, and most of us are lucky if we earn enough to offset the cost of the work, much less make a profit. So those who think they are sticking it to The Man are more likely sticking it to a bunch of struggling artists. Pay for art, particularly when it's reasonably priced.

Regarding stealing, I don't see much daylight between intentionally obtaining art while avoiding paying the proper cost and outright stealing, but I sense we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Tracker,

When someone copies a work they are certainly taking an aspect of that property to which they are not entitled.

[Werthead]

And if you're saying that you want Goodreads to become the main portal for ebook purchase, rather than Amazon et al, I'd be against that, because instead of being (mostly) a nice place for readers to hang out and talk about books, it would become the focus of all the gaming, fake reviews and other rubbish that Amazon currently attracts.

Goodreads does have some of that already (it's certainly not immune to Stanekitis). The problem is that Amazon is pretty awful already and using it as Ebook Central is something that should be avoided. The Steam community and ethos is much more positive and I would argue that so is Goodreads already. Building on that rather than trying to change the behemoth of Amazon is preferable.

What's really needed (apart from getting rid of DRM) is international selling, as with software. There's no logical reason, other than history and inertia, for publishers to negotiate separate deals for each individual country, and it's intensely irritating for customers.

Not going to happen. If it did, the American publishing houses would quickly dominate everything and local publishers, even those in fairly large markets like Britain, would vanish. If HarperCollins USA can directly sell books instantly to UK customers, what need do they have to sub-licence the rights to say, Orion or Macmillan in the UK (or, much less frequently, vice versa)?

Maybe it should happen, and it certainly would be more convenient for customers, but it's not a realistic short-term prospect.

Realistically, ebooks are going to have to get much cheaper to combat piracy. I think if most ebooks were priced at around $1-5 it'd probably hit that sweet spot where it's no longer worth that extra bit of hassle to go torrent them.

This is the biggest, biggest problem in the whole situation: perception. It takes a lot more money than people realise to make a book: physical production costs account for only about 15% of the book's cost on a hardcover and about 12% on a paperback. Even with that, authors rarely break even and most have to supplement their income with another job. Reducing prices further would simply drive a lot of authors out of the business altogether.

The focus, until now, has been on the last part of the problem: making the effort required greater through the use of DRM. Has that worked? I think we can all agree that, at best, it's been a partial success. So other approaches are needed too. Authors have much more of a problem than other artists in adopting other sources of income, we all agree on that too. So where do we go from here? I think that's the discussion that everyone is trying to get to.

Agreed, except that I think the argument against DRM is that it has been completely 100% unsuccessful, especially since DRM itself is legally in a very grey area (as the recent EU ruling shows) and programmes which remove DRM from ebooks are freely and legally available.

[TrackerNeil]

Tracker,

When someone copies a work they are certainly taking an aspect of that property to which they are not entitled.

And, funny enough, it is already illegal to photocopy printed work, so in a sense there is DRM there as well. As I recall, Kinko's got in big trouble back in the 80s for illegally copying materials from textbooks for use by college students, so they shut that down and changed their business model. Now Kinko's won't duplicate material they reasonably believe is protected by copyright unless the requestor can show proof of permission. And that, in my view, is as it should be.

An ebook is not like a hammer and therefore it should not be owned in quite the same way. I'm open to suggestions about making the system better (currently, publishers of ebooks are treating their customers like potential thieves), but I don't think blithe acceptance of copyright violation is the place to start.

[Shryke]

I disagree. Like I said, larger publishers either abandoned the PC platform (aside from console ports) or instituted unpopular and intrusive (not to mention usually ineffective) DRM on their games due to piracy. This is what many of these companies said, it is not my supposition. It opened up a large hole in the market for small time, independent developers to steal the spotlight (including space on the frontpage of services like Steam).

And none of that matters without Steam or it's ilk. Companies have been moaning about the death of PC gaming for ages and piracy and all that shit. None of it made a lick of difference till a good non-physical distribution platform came along. Nor did it stop them from churning out PC ports of the majority of their games.

Piracy has jackshit to do with this whole phenomenon. The only hole that opened up in PC gaming was the death of niche PC-only genres because the ROI on a niche PC-only game wasn't attractive to large developers. The gaming industry among the big players is all about big returns the last decade or so. They are doggedly pursuing the AAAAAA blockbuster model.

[PaulineMRoss]

Not going to happen. If it did, the American publishing houses would quickly dominate everything and local publishers, even those in fairly large markets like Britain, would vanish. If HarperCollins USA can directly sell books instantly to UK customers, what need do they have to sub-licence the rights to say, Orion or Macmillan in the UK (or, much less frequently, vice versa)?

And that's exactly the 'history and inertia' I'm talking about. The ebook rights can already be licenced separately, all that's needed is for a company (or group of companies) to set up an ebook-only publisher which can sell the product internationally (as software is). Physical book rights would then go to a US company, a British company, whatever, and the ebook rights would go to the international company. Baen Books manages to sell its books anywhere in the world, it's hardly rocket science.

Honestly, the more the traditional publishers dig their heels in and insist on the current business model, the more likely it is they'll be out of business by the end of the decade. The ebook is the future, they embrace it or die.

[mjgambino]

And that's exactly the 'history and inertia' I'm talking about. The ebook rights can already be licenced separately, all that's needed is for a company (or group of companies) to set up an ebook-only publisher which can sell the product internationally (as software is). Physical book rights would then go to a US company, a British company, whatever, and the ebook rights would go to the international company. Baen Books manages to sell its books anywhere in the world, it's hardly rocket science.

Honestly, the more the traditional publishers dig their heels in and insist on the current business model, the more likely it is they'll be out of business by the end of the decade. The ebook is the future, they embrace it or die.

The only time I've ever downloaded ebooks illegally is when I can't download a legit version. I suspect that I'm not alone in that. I think its absurd that I can order a hard copy of a book from England, but can't buy an epub.

[TrackerNeil]

Honestly, the more the traditional publishers dig their heels in and insist on the current business model, the more likely it is they'll be out of business by the end of the decade. The ebook is the future, they embrace it or die.

Definitely agreed. To go back to the Kinko's thing, after that came down, universities began working with book publishers to create coursepacks, which might consist of a chapter from this text and a section from that one, all done legally with royalties paid. Everyone got what was needed and the world kept turning. I think we can accomplish something similar in regards to ebooks, where publishers/authors get paid and customers are not treated like would-be criminals.

[Lyanna Stark]

I agree that the concept of ownership needs to be adapted to an era in which books are distributed digitally, and as I said upthread, it is a bit strange that when one buys a Kindle book one does not really own it in the same way as one owns a paper book. That's something that can and should be discussed.

However, I find it distressing to hear so many people, whether in this thread or in real life, act as if free access to the entirety of an author's work is their right and due as human beings. I don't know where that comes from; perhaps there's some idea that when one illegally copies the work of another one is somehow sticking it to The Man. Well, in the last year I have gotten to know a number of indie authors, and most of us are lucky if we earn enough to offset the cost of the work, much less make a profit. So those who think they are sticking it to The Man are more likely sticking it to a bunch of struggling artists. Pay for art, particularly when it's reasonably priced.

Regarding stealing, I don't see much daylight between intentionally obtaining art while avoiding paying the proper cost and outright stealing, but I sense we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

Worrying about DRMs and getting the stuff you purchased withdrawn is a different thing from not bothering to pay tho. I have a Kindle and I have a Steam account. I've never pirated books but I can tell you I have played a LOT of pirated computer games. Steam removed the need for that by making most of them cheaper and easier to access, plus you had reviews at your fingertips. If someone liked HL2, did they like this game? What about Diablo fans? They rec Torchlight 2 in massive amounts, so I feel safe buying it. Steam also works because it has a good reputation. Compare it to EA's system where people are spitting bile over it. People aren't particularly worried about having their Steam games removed.

For e-books to work, the same needs to be true for them. If we have to worry that our account suddenly gets shut down, that will force people to look for DRM stripping. Not for file sharing, but because I want to make sure I have my copy should anything happen. That's not piracy, that's making a backup. I work with databases. Backups are something we do all the time. Sure, theoretically, it's a copy, but it's not a copy that is published, shared or distributed, it's there for what happens if the system should break down. Or in the case of e-books, what happens if you get your account rescinded.

Had Amazon been better with handling account problems, then this would be a non issue, I think. Steam handles it quite well, it seems. While EA handles it badly (you can lose your account by offending someone on their forums, true story). If the acceptance for DRMs need to increase, then Amazon and their ilk will need to respect the customers better, and treat them well. DRMs can be abused, and clearly have been abused. Despite owning a Kindle and being very happy with its functionality, I normally rec people not to get one, for that very purpose. It is a risk.

From a practical point of view, I love both Steam and Amazon. They're brilliant, have a huge selection and I was surprised and happy to find how quick it was to download an e-book to my Kindle. However, I am also aware of that they rely on their reputation and that in many ways, getting that type of game or book is only a "renting" and I have no real physical copy anywhere in case they boot me out.

[Datepalm]

Which leads to the question, how much more convenient could eBooks get? What's the issue here?

Is there an issue here? I'm not saying book piracy isn't happening, (or that it's ok) but is it happening at a larger rate than in music or gaming? Getting books onto a kindle, even off of gutenberg, is pretty damned easy and convenient already, barring irritating regional stuff. (Mind, I pirated a badly OCRd copy of 1984 off a Russian website in 1997 and read it on a desktop computer. Maybe I have an odd notion of convenient.)

And....book sales are UP, publisher profits are UP, and of course, Ebook sales are through the roof. Is ebook piracy really more of an added hazard to the publishing business than the people who read books in the bookstore? Than second hand bookstores? Than online second hand bookstores with free shipping? Than libraries?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/30/death-books-exaggerated

... last year UK consumer publishing drew in sales of £1.7bn, up 36% on 2001. Adult fiction saw an increase of 44%, to £476m; and young adult and children's fiction, realm of all those pesky copiers and pirateers and downloaders, saw sales more than double to £325m.

...

B&N reported an overall increase in sales at bn.com of over 50%. For the year, Barnes and Noble's total sales across all its business were up 20%

...

Amzon sold more Kindle versions of books than paperback and hardbacks combined, and (here's the thing that doesn't get quoted so often) sales of print books were still increasing.

Amazon also announced that, in the year to May 2011, it had seen the fastest year-on-year growth rate for its US books business, when expressed in volume and in dollars. This included books in all formats, print and digital. In the UK, less than one year after opening its UK Kindle store, Amazon.co.uk is selling more Kindle books than hardcover books. And again, this is while hardcover sales continue to grow.

Let's not be naive. Any retail channel that ends up being dominated by one player will end up squeezing its producers; just ask a farmer. But Amazon is, right now, giving people what they want: competitive pricing, rapid delivery, massive choice, good customer service. And it's selling books. A lot of books.

People might be pirating more, but they also appear to be buying more books.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Dagepalm,

There is nothing wrong with reselling a book. Laws that claim that is copyright infrigmenf are crap because there is no new copy of the work created when it is resold.

[Datepalm]

Yes, yes, scot, keep talking about what you want to talk about. I'll talk about reality, ok? You're answering a question a didn't ask, on an issue i'm not arguing and in which I have no interest. Turn off the lawyer thing!

[felice]

It takes a lot more money than people realise to make a book: physical production costs account for only about 15% of the book's cost on a hardcover and about 12% on a paperback.

And another 15% distribution and 50% retailer markup, leaving 20% towards fixed costs and profit? It's not just physical production costs that don't apply to ebooks, they don't need to be shipped anywhere, and they don't take up shelf space, and there's no money wasted on printing too many. Running/transaction costs for an online retailer of virtual goods are negligible; ebooks shouldn't cost more than 25% of the price of a hardcopy.

[Shryke]

And another 15% distribution and 50% retailer markup, leaving 20% towards fixed costs and profit? It's not just physical production costs that don't apply to ebooks, they don't need to be shipped anywhere, and they don't take up shelf space, and there's no money wasted on printing too many. Running/transaction costs for an online retailer of virtual goods are negligible; ebooks shouldn't cost more than 25% of the price of a hardcopy.

Where are these numbers coming from?

[felice]

Guesswork, but they're not wildly inaccurate. This source says retailers take up to 65% of the cover price for mass market paperbacks.

[Geddon]

Where are these numbers coming from?

I don't know where she got her numbers but I do know the earlier ones (physical costs only account for 15% of the total production costs) come directly from the publishers. You know, the same people who have a vested interest in keeping ebook prices high to maximise their profits. The numbers they quote could be correct, but I would be very surprised if "hollywood accounting" wasn't involved somewhere.

I'm not sure why so many people are willing to accept those oft quoted figures without any evidence to back them up. Almost all the publishing houses are owned by six of the largest media companies in the world. If somebody from News Corp told me the Sun was going to rise tomorrow I'd double-check the next morning just to be sure, but people are happy to regurgitate information from HarperCollins (a subsidiary of News Corp) without question.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Geddon,

Because people edit, copyedit, typeset, and graphic design for free? Or is it your position that spell/ grammer check is good enough?

[Werthead]

And another 15% distribution and 50% retailer markup, leaving 20% towards fixed costs and profit? It's not just physical production costs that don't apply to ebooks, they don't need to be shipped anywhere, and they don't take up shelf space, and there's no money wasted on printing too many. Running/transaction costs for an online retailer of virtual goods are negligible;

15% is the total physical production cost, including distribution, as far as I've been told (by the nasty representatives of the Evil Empire of publishers; I wondered why The Imperial March was playing whilst they said this). Retailer markup is heavy, indeed, but the author also takes his or her cut (I believe an additional 15% for the author is standard - even on the high side of standard - for hardcovers), which is essential.

ebooks shouldn't cost more than 25% of the price of a hardcopy.

Only if you don't want any books ever published aside from the biggest mega-sellers (GRRM making $3.75 million last year rather than $15 million would have been okay; less so for the author earning £20K a year from their writing who is suddenly reduced to £5K and has to stop writing altogether). 25% less than the price of a hardcopy might be reasonable, but a quarter overall is ludicrous.

I don't know where she got her numbers but I do know the earlier ones (physical costs only account for 15% of the total production costs) come directly from the publishers. You know, the same people who have a vested interest in keeping ebook prices high to maximise their profits. The numbers they quote could be correct, but I would be very surprised if "hollywood accounting" wasn't involved somewhere.

Those percentages have been standard for a long time, since before ebooks appeared on the scene. They could still have been inflated to justify high costs back in the day, but they're not a new phenomenon.

[David Selig]

Only if you don't want any books ever published aside from the biggest mega-sellers (GRRM making $3.75 million last year rather than $15 million would have been okay; less so for the author earning £20K a year from their writing who is suddenly reduced to £5K and has to stop writing altogether). 25% less than the price of a hardcopy might be reasonable, but a quarter overall is ludicrous.

But this is assuming the amount of units sold would remain the same if price drops 4 times, which clearly won't happen. The amount of unit sales should increase significantly. How significantly is anyone's guess though, I have no idea what the price elasticity of demand is for books, apart from that it's a negative value.