Publishers to make readers wait months for eBooks

With eBooks the most expensive form of reading

and delays in publishing with little or NO back catalogues, book piracy is practically becoming a necessity.

Book publishers are as bad as the record companies, trying to bleed customers dry, while short-changing authors with the minimum of expenditure to publish eBooks.

I think authors should all self-publish then the money from books sales can go to those that earned it.

By cheysuli on 10 Dec 2009

A translation is required

For anyone confused by what David Young is saying in this piece, I've provided a handy translation:

"We the executives of the book industry are as stupid and greedy as the executives of the music and film executives. Just because technology is going to change our business beyond recognition is no excuse for us to change in any way whatseoever. We will therefore continue to rip off our customers with overpriced hardback books, then we'll try and rip them off again a few months later with ridiculously overpriced eBook editions of those books. This will of course cause a huge rise in book piracy. We will do nothing to prevent this piracy. Instead, we'll wait until it threatens the survival of our industry, then we'll make up some figures on loses and whinge to the Government to make the actions of our former customers a criminal offence for which "guilty until proven innocent" will be the default state.

By David_Arno on 10 Dec 2009

Erm...

"book piracy is practically becoming a necessity"

"This will of course cause a huge rise in book piracy"

Why is it that people seem to feel that piracy is a reasonable alternative to high prices and old-fashioned business practices? If you don't want to pay the price, then protest by not buying the book, or CD, or DVD etc.

Will your life really end if you don't read the next Dan Brown novel? Why is it people seem to think that access to media is a right rather than an optional privilege?

Yes, the policy outlined above by the publishers is shortsighted. Remember however that the majority of people over the next decade or so will still buy paper-based novels rather than digital copies.

However, digital copies will eventually become the norm. In the meantime, the publishers will protect their not inconsequential investment in paper-based distribution.

By piphil on 10 Dec 2009

Arggh! What a bunch of luddites!

No one is asking for less royalties to authors from ebooks or even necessarily less profits for publishers. But they should at least pass on the savings from printing, transport, storage and remaindering, acknowledging that the customer has made an investment in the reading device.

As for timing, why not have a "hardback ebook" at a premium price over the later released "paperback ebook"?

Ebook buyers do not mind paying authors the same royalties - we just object to being gouged more for a product that costs less to produce!

By JohnAHind on 10 Dec 2009

@piphil

If you have an eBook reader and want a book and the publisher has chosen not to list it, but someone has scanned and uploaded it, what other outcome could there be?

Piracy is not always about having something for nothing, it is sometimes the only recourse.
A friend of mine is an author and she has spoken to me about her titles "going to eBook" and she has said that she gets "a little more" for eBook sales than conventional ones. However the majority of the money made goes in the publishers pocket. Also, only her last five books are available. All the rest of her books are unavailable. So I have bought the published titles and downloaded the rest. I already bought the paperback books AND I have re-bought the last five as eBooks. If I could I would rather buy the books direct from the author so she gets all the money.
This is disgust at the greedy publisher, not an attempt to escape paying for something, since I have ALREADY paid for the items (twice in five cases).

By cheysuli on 11 Dec 2009

@cheysuli

I'm not making a comment on the behavior of the publishers; they are short-sighted dinosaurs of the non-digital age, and will at some point have to embrace new technology. However, for the time being they will try to cling on to what they have invested heavily in, and have previous made a lot of money from, in much the same way the music industry is doing.

"Piracy is not always about having something for nothing, it is sometimes the only recourse."

And I say again, why do you NEED to read your favorite author's latest work? Maybe I'm a philistine and don't read enough, but I don't think anyone will become ill or die from not reading books, or listening to music. Yes, their lives will be dulled without such influences, but it is not an open invitation to break the law, as shaky as it is.

Yes, it's disgusting how little some authors get for their work. But piracy by definition doesn't help them either.

I feel sorry for those who have bought ebook readers, they are the future of the industry but they are a new technology, and early adopters of most radical technologies are likely to get burned. This is a risk unfortunately that people at the bleeding edge of technology take. But the greed of content suppliers does not excuse violation of copyright law in my mind. If it does in yours, that's fine, maybe you're right and I've got the wrong end of the stick, but I feel that paying nothing to access intellectual property that is not licensed to be free doesn't help anyone.

By piphil on 11 Dec 2009

@piphil

I agree with the *principle* of copyright law, not how it has been bent and distorted by publishers. I have never "stolen" music in my life - I buy CDs and rip them onto whatever player I have at the moment. The artist gets paid - once - and I get what I paid for when I bought the CD - the right to listen to that music wherever and whenever I want.

When and if I buy an ebook device I want to be able to use my existing rights to the paper books I already own and I want to be able to buy new books in a way that does not lock me in to the player hardware of the moment.
I feel perfectly justified in obtaining books free of charge by whatever means and in whatever format I need *provided* I have already bought them in some other format (including print).

We need to remember that copyright confers a legal monopoly on publishers and like any monopoly it needs to be regulated so consumers are not exploited. Copyright *is not* a free market!

By JohnAHind on 11 Dec 2009

Piracy = Direct Action

Unfortunately, piracy seems to be the last bastion of the general public whose interests aren't being considered by content publishers, in whatever form.

Without this form of pressure our voices wouldn't be heard.

By pedro_john on 11 Dec 2009

@All

Unfortunately, as cheysuli pointed out above, all any piracy will do is give publishers a reason to introduce more draconian DRM and increase prices.

I agree with JohnAHind that it seems odd to have to pay for the same work twice i.e. if you have a CD, it seems reasonable to be able to rip that CD to an MP3 player, and this is the approach I take myself.

(As a side note, take a look at Sony for how not to treat this sort of issue, i.e. manufacturing MP3 players whilst putting rootkit-DRM on their own published CDs to stop you ripping music to them whilst opening vast holes in your PC's security...).

There is a problem with this argument in terms of ebook readers however. An MP3 player offers extreme convenience in comparison to taking your CD music collection on the move.

This could be said for ebook readers, but I don't think it works on the same level. MP3 players work as you can move from one favorite track in an album to another, and to do this with a portable CD player and discs would be very annoying.

But who reads more than one book at a time? It's not as if you create playlists of your favorite chapters and stick it on shuffle?

Thus why do you need every book you've ever bought on a single device? If you've bought it, just read the paper book, assuming you didn't rashly decide to burn them all when you bought the ebook reader.

I cannot ever imagine the publishers saying "Yes, you've previously bought a book in paper form, here, have a legal digital copy" because it would be difficult to prove and rife with false claims.

As great as ebook readers are, I'm afraid anyone who's bought them on the understanding that their own paper-based book collection would automatically be loaded onto them was living in cloudcuckooland frankly. And until they become ubiquitous, even the idea of a free "digital" copy of a new book in print is unlikely whilst the publishers have their profits to attend to.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of copyright laws (and I understand there is much wrong with the entire system) breaking the law will not make it go away, or make the situation any better.

By piphil on 11 Dec 2009

@piphil

My library occupies many cubic metres of space and seriously clutters my home. The information density of books is woeful - it would all easily fit on a few gigs of flash memory and I'd love to have them in this form and put the hardcopy in storage.

On copyright, my point was that ripping CDs *is* a violation of copyright law, it is just that no one has ever been prosecuted for it. Unfortunately, "ripping" your own books in the same way would be such a pain that it is really impractical (except of course for commercial pirates!)

But if the publishers do try to abuse honest readers by overpricing relative to hardcopy, delaying availability (at any price), fragmenting the market by agreeing exclusive deals for particular devices or trying to make people pay again just because they want to upgrade (or have to replace) their reader, they are going to encourage a culture of piracy in exactly the same way the music industry did.

By JohnAHind on 11 Dec 2009