Editor’s note: Kudos to Florrie Binford Kichler of Patria Press, who sent in the essay below in response to our call for reader contributions. She is president of the Independent Book Publishers Association. Got anything on your mind? Speak up if it’s relevant. No organizational title needed.
That’s what early e-book proponents promised us a decade ago, and while we may get there eventually, my prediction is that it will take another generation to do so. The major sticking point of the e-book readers—including the Kindle—to date is that they have been limited to a proprietary format only available from one vendor. Until a “universal reader” appears that gives equal time to all content file formats and vendors, the reader’s consumption and purchase of electronic books will be restricted—as will the publisher’s profits.
Needed: Conversions to universal e-format
Whether smaller and independent publishers convert their titles to the Kindle format now or wait until the reader proves itself for the long haul is a business decision only they can make. What I would recommend is that they position themselves now for the e-book future. At the very least, convert books to the most universal electronic format available, check older publishing contracts to insure that the electronic rights clause reflects the reality of today’s marketplace, and begin thinking about a new way of marketing where pixels replace paper as the prime method of content delivery.
Excerpt from “Reflections on the Kindle,” from the Independent, newsletter of the Independent Book Publishers Association, May, 2008 issue.
I think that is what most e-book enthusiasts have been stating. I like that the Sony Reader has opened up their reader to different formats. They can read pdf and epub, etc. It’s good to see a publisher agreeing with that.
Publishers are already free to release ebooks in any number of “universal” formats – ascii text, html, pdf, epub, and others. Universal in the sense that just about any device would be able to read them.
Any device be it a desktop, laptop, pda, dedicated ebook reader, etc. can read most if not all of those formats. The universal readers already exist.
The problem isn’t the lack of “one format to rule them all”. The problem is that to date most publishers won’t release their titles into the wild sans DRM. As long as publishers insist on DRM and/or until a non-proprietary universal platform DRM scheme is adopted it is the publishers who bear the blame for the slow growth/adoption of ebooks.
I would not label the publishers as the “bad guys” here. They are trying to look out for their bottom dollar which is also the authors bottom dollar. Your talking about text files which don’t even have the potential size and bandwidth limitations of software. If I want to “pirate” a book I could do so on a web page that’s free and still probably not eat all my bandwidth. If I put adds on my page full of stolen stories I stand to make money off them.
I have not bought a reader yet but I don’t see the problem with trying to protect their investments. DRM on a book cannot be half as bad as DRM on software.
Proprietary format is not a that important. After all, paper is the most proprietary format of all with only a single title allocated to each device. The crucial issue is the different value of screen and print presentation. A high exemplar here is an on-line posting of a medieval manuscript; its an orphan unless you have a use for just such a simulation. A more ordinary text still imposes reader decision on how useful each rendition is. Value in screen presentation is just not easily allocated to print simulation. Too many non-print genres, or native electronic reading behaviors, are more highly valued in screen presentation.
Not trying to be a jerk, but I have no idea what you just said. I have not graduated college so that could have something to do with it.
It isn’t the readers, it’s the formats that the books are sold in. Most of the readers I have seen can read any popular non-DRM format available. The problem is each site which sells Ebooks having an affinity for their own version of DRM.
If there was a central marketplace where anyone could upload their stories for purchase by the general public in text format, then there would be no need for publishers and no need for DRM. Everything could be downloaded in plain text and read on any reader. The general fear though is that these stories would then be re-released elsewhere for free or for cash that did not go to the author.
This could still be done now except someone has to go through the labor intesive process of scanning titles in first. If titles were released in digital format already then the largest hurdle to pirating books is already overcome.
DaveH, I understand your perspective, but I must politely disagree (and I will attempt to use as few words as possible because I have a tendency to ramble).
1) You can’t stop people from making copies of your work. If a person could make significant advertising revenue from your work, then they will do so.
2) A centralized distribution, such as a web site, is easy to shut down. If you decentralize distribution, then you also mostly eliminate the profit motive (because it is almost impossible to make money in such a system).
3) Whether you like it or not, you are competing against the illegal copies. If the illegal version is more available, more convenient (i.e., fewer restrictions), and cheaper, then you shouldn’t be surprised when people choose the better alternative.
4) These DRM systems cost additional money to implement, maintain, and support. Additional cost means lower margins which translates to lower profit levels. If the cost is, say, 5% of your margin (a realistic but not informed number), then you need to guarantee an increase in sales of 5.3% simply to break even. Do you really think that you justify such a sales increase while selling an inferior product to a limited market (which is a side effect of DRM)?
I think we are saying similar things, but maybe I am failing to say them properly.
1) You can’t stop people from making copies of your work. If a person could make significant advertising revenue from your work, then they will do so.
* Agreed, you can’t. I play video games and they have suffered from this problem from the outset. Everytime they think they have a new and better way to protect something, a pirate breaks it. Often before the game is even released. For the consumers of pirated software the deterrant with video games pirating is the threat of viruses, sometimes patches wont work properly and so on. It isn’t worth it for most of us to even try to wade through sites looking for cracks/hacks/keys or full versions of games.
Now with books we are not downloading executables. A pirated text file is just a text file. Unless you set it up a batch file and change the extension. It would be FAR easier to steal these then buy them if the legal version is stacked with difficult DRM or it is not available with DRM your reader supports.
2) A centralized distribution, such as a web site, is easy to shut down. If you decentralize distribution, then you also mostly eliminate the profit motive (because it is almost impossible to make money in such a system).
* True, if it were made so that all these sites accepted stories submitted by the author that would eliminate the problem. Of course you lose the benifits of an editor unless the author pushes his book through a freelance editor first. For the consumers they might be afraid of downloading a horrible or inferior book. At least publishers have some sort of quality control.
3) Whether you like it or not, you are competing against the illegal copies. If the illegal version is more available, more convenient (i.e., fewer restrictions), and cheaper, then you shouldn’t be surprised when people choose the better alternative.
* I think we are on the same page here. Overly complicated site specific DRM is what is hurting the industry, for the makers of the readers and possibly the publishers and authors as well. I don’t know what the publisher/author have to give up to get their story released on a site. I do know that some publishers are not willing to go to more than a few sites. Maybe this is because those sites are using inferior DRM, but that’s just a theory.
These DRM systems cost additional money to implement, maintain, and support. Additional cost means lower margins which translates to lower profit levels. If the cost is, say, 5% of your margin (a realistic but not informed number), then you need to guarantee an increase in sales of 5.3% simply to break even. Do you really think that you justify such a sales increase while selling an inferior product to a limited market (which is a side effect of DRM)?
* Doing this once is not that bad which is why a lot of publishers are now offering their books on these sites. Also for books that are older and no longer circulating this is the ONLY method of revenue, so it’s a good thing. Doing this for 40 different DRM standards across 40 different sites probably gets tedious, and that is the problem.
I wrote this kind of fast and I have to run, but I think we are mostly on the same page.