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I know I should stay clear of Amazonfail, but I just want to say that a publisher which can't make a profit selling $9 etexts (or $5, or $2) deserves to go bankrupt. If amortized editing and design costs are really the lion's share of a physical book, the system is deeply, deeply broken.
(Even applying design costs to the etext version is largely ridiculous. How much design work does an etext need? I'd prefer it as a raw text file anyway, but a LaTeX-generated PDF would also be just fine as well. The only reason for fancy design in the first place is to catch people's attention in a store. Etext selection and browsing is nothing like that, so why bother with it in the first place? Tradition? Snob factor? Anything that can't be seen in the scaled down image of the book cover in an Amazon listing is a complete waste of money.)
I remain unconvinced of the long-term viability of selling data as a business model. But if you want to find a way for authors to make money, don't make it even harder by trying to defend these dinosaurs at the same time.
(Even applying design costs to the etext version is largely ridiculous. How much design work does an etext need? I'd prefer it as a raw text file anyway, but a LaTeX-generated PDF would also be just fine as well. The only reason for fancy design in the first place is to catch people's attention in a store. Etext selection and browsing is nothing like that, so why bother with it in the first place? Tradition? Snob factor? Anything that can't be seen in the scaled down image of the book cover in an Amazon listing is a complete waste of money.)
I remain unconvinced of the long-term viability of selling data as a business model. But if you want to find a way for authors to make money, don't make it even harder by trying to defend these dinosaurs at the same time.
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One issue that is going to HAVE to be dealt with effectively in order for e-books to become truly popular is this: once you buy a physical book it's yours until it falls apart, which can be decades. I have books that were my grandparents'. An e-book is only good until either the file gets corrupted, or until the new edition of your reader doesn't read the old file format.
If I buy a book, I want to be able to go on reading it for years, if I feel like it. An e-book won't give me that, not yet.
And there is also the issue of piracy. Right now e-books are pirated the moment they become available, whether they have DRM or not. DRM-free advocates insist that they want to be able to do whatever they want with their e-book once they pay for it and that publishers don't try to keep you from re-selling the physical books they produce. What they aren't addressing is the fact that physical books have rights management built in. Once you buy a physical book, you can certainly lend it to friends or sell it to someone else ... but only one person at a time. You cannot physically lend it to 10,000 people at a time, and you cannot give it to *anyone* else and still keep it for yourself.
This isn't an issue for people who create for fun, but it most certainly *is* for people who create for a living ... and let's face it; most quality work is put out by people who put effort into becoming skilled, and, just like other types of people who do skilled work, they want to be paid for producing quality work, and preferably be paid enough that they can do LOTS of quality work, and continue becoming even more skilled.
Which brings me to why self-publishing is looked down on: once the printing press was invented and became readily available, anyone who could afford one could publish their own writing ... which led to some truly execrable work. Satyr suggests you read a book called Really Bad Poems, which is a collection of poetry mostly published around that time (the 1700s). Vanity press has no quality control, which leads to exactly the quality you'd expect--none. Which is why self-publishing is looked down on. One way to create a better product is to put quality control in place; in the case of writing that means several different kinds of editing ... and most authors just do not have those skills OR the willpower to use them on their beloved children. And if you want to get paid for having THOSE skills, you have to go to someone who utilizes them--a publishing company. (I have a friend who does freelance editing; she doesn't really get enough business to eat on.) So, the one reliable source for quality writing is ... publishing houses. Because that's where the editors are.
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somebodystopme
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Piracy also solves your final problem. Quality control isn't a problem if the content is free! Just keep downloading until you find something you like. That sounds flippant, but it sure works in the rest of my online life.
(As a more out there approach to the issue of editors, we might want to think about social forces. Everyone wants to be an author because it's sexy and glamorous. Seriously, how many people do you know who haven't tried writing at some point? Very few want to be an editor, obviously. But people *are* willing to donate their time in other unsexy, unglamorous ways. Maybe what we should be thinking about, if we want to guarantee good editing in the post-IP world, is how we reward editors with social capitol. The fanfic world probably has the right idea, explicitly thanking 'beta readers', making that something of an honor, particularly if the writer is well liked. Reputation economies are how things get done in post-scarcity environments, so maybe we need to start putting some real thought in how to engineer them for optimal results.)
Piracy also hurts people, true. But it sure seems to be inevitable, so maybe we should just be glad it has some good benefits too? I didn't really want to get into this here, but I'm not sure where else to go with that. We obviously can't stop it technologically. We *might* be able to legally if we mandate locked-platform computing, universal DRM, and generally break everything that is good and wonderful about the internet. Which, of course, no one (here) actually wants. But until I see a working alternative, hand-wringing about it seems entirely pointless. Yes, it would be nice if people could get paid for their work. It would be nice if I could make a living blacksmithing, but no one is distorting the legal system to guarantee *that*.
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I think copyright is much more defensible, insofar as it's *hard* to create a worthwhile artistic work, but incredibly easy to duplicate it. But I agree there is zero public good in nigh-indefinite copyright periods, and significant public harm.
But with that said, most of what I consider the greatest works of humanity were created before copyright existed. If we got rid of copyright, people would still be creating stuff.
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I don't think I understand the point in that. It'd be like having a book with one of those greeting-card chips in it so it sings while you're reading.
(for reference, this (http://www.pjrc.com/mp3/) is my mp3 player, which has been running a 120 gig hard drive for ten years now.)
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Or until the publisher decides to take away the book you "bought" (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html), or until the publisher's distributor's webserviceprovider's IT-company's DRM server goes offline because someone forgot to pay someone else, or...
Besides, ebooks don't smell like old books. I *like* reading my granddad's old engineering texts. There are funny notes in Danish in the margins.
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...I totally missed that PDF had become an open standard.
Publisher didn't support PDF for years because Adobe wanted to charge us $100/box for it.
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Yes, as you no doubt know, but sure, I'll play along. Particularly in those players used to manage material carried about on smaller, more portable devices.
I don't think I understand the point in that. It'd be like having a book with one of those greeting-card chips in it so it sings while you're reading.
Many of us find the visual art useful for organisational purposes. Some of us are more visually-oriented than you. Learn it, live it, love it: "Everyone is not the same as me."
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(by which I mean my comment was not sarcasm, it was surprise.)
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I buy stuff from webscription.net where I get a set of HTML files to download and keep. And they generally cost about $6 rather than $10. (More when they're brand-new, but that doesn't bother me.)
I can't imagine paying for any book-on-computer that *isn't* in HTML - I like putting things in my browser so I can adjust and resize to my heart's content. Reading things in PDF is painful. And I certainly don't want to buy something tied to a proprietary device that can be snatched away...
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And for me, and my lifestyle, which at this point isn't big on owning a lot of physical stuff, owning a lot of physical books is a giant pain in the ass. I'm not saying I don't like them, but they're heavy, they take up a lot of space. and I have three pretty decent reader options (my lenovo tablet, my touchbook, and my phone). I don't have a problem with paying for content. I am not generically opposed to any possible form of DRM... I just haven't yet seen one which is appropriately archival. Bah.
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I would never in a million years argue with you about how physics work.
Why do you keep arguing with Dami and I - both of whom know writing and publishing through years of professional experience - about how publishing works?
As I've stated before, intellectual property isn't "data." Data is the vector for a creative work, not the process involved in that creative work, nor the true result of it.
The "data" behind a creative work involves many, many hours of skilled labor (the skills of which are won through training and even more time and labor) on the part of many people. Making it commercially viable - in any format - requires even more.
Think of a book (any format, any subject) as an airplane.
By the arguments you've given here, all pieces of metal should fly. And flying metal should be free.
After all, the technology exists to make metal fly.
The potential of metal to fly has been shown.
The process involved in making metal fly has been commonly known for decades.
And people make metal fly simply for the love of doing so.
Are you planning to hop on a piece of steel and expecting it to take you to Paris?
Does the metal fly because it is composed of atoms, or because it has been shaped by skilled labor and technology?
For that matter, will you fly an airplane made "for the love of it" to Paris?
And do you see the future of aviation being made by people who craft airplanes for free?
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The plane thing is a completely specious argument, and you know it. Atoms are not like data. You cannot copy atoms for free. You cannot send atoms across the world for (basically) free. If you take atoms from someone, they no longer have the atoms. They are radically different things, and applying the logic one to the other will only lead to really silly outcomes.
That said, there is growing interest in open design projects. I might be suspicious of a physical plane being given out for free, but the data of a plane design? Sure, I'd consider that if I finally get around to building my own plane. Data != atoms. A free physical plane is suspect because of the work and materials needed to make it. A copy of a plane design is just as good as the original -- maybe better, if this means many people are building them and working out all the bugs.
I'll also point out that the margin in small plane manufacturing is pretty much zero, so in fact many are made "for the love of it". Why are you so down on things being done for the love of it? I'd rather live in a world where that was the default, instead of feeling obliged to work a job you hate just for the money. If we're getting to choose our imaginary social and technological structures, that is, like you seem to be doing in wanting to ignore the very real issue of piracy. It exists. It's going to get worse. We need to be working out how to deal with it, instead of wringing our hands and whining.
For instance: musicians haven't really been harmed by music piracy, even though revenues for the publishers have dropped quite a bit. Why? Because musicians make money from concerts, a non-piratable experience instead of raw data. There is not analogous thing that writers currently do. There are readings and signings, but will people pay for them? I'm dubious. As a first step, we need to be thinking about what to replace signing with, if there isn't a physical object. (Collectible figurines, related to the book, maybe? The cover art on high quality postcards, which are signed? Comic artists will do custom sketches, maybe that can be adapted?)
If you want to defend your profession from being obsoleted by technology (a sad thing, but hardly an unusual thing), then let's start thinking about these things now. I'm not against you, really I'm not. I'm just desperately trying to get some serious thinking going about these issues, and I keep falling into the same antagonistic traps that everyone does. It's emotional for you, because it's personal. It's emotional for me, because it's so blazingly obvious that massive change is inevitable here, and I don't have as much patience as I should for people who don't accept that.
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That activity cannot be "obsoleted by technology," and until you understand this fact, we are not having a reasonable discussion - we have you standing atop a pile of ill-reasoned, erroneous data and offending your friends with your willful misunderstandings.
If you were to sit down - as I have, many many times - with the raw output of unedited text that passes for "writing" among the majority of people, you would understand that the difference between 3000 words of "hurtcbn;JKDFNHm,ngielelpthinlknD GHABBA HEYboggleighuihu" and "a sentence that is legible and comprehensible" involves years of training and labor on the part of people like me.
Language is a technology. Ideas are technologies. The refinement and transformation of the methods of storing and transmitting those technologies does not change the technologies themselves, nor does it eliminate the need for people who understand them.
Yes, a massive change is inevitable. I've been saying that myself for years. But a change in the publishing industry business model does not suddenly eliminate the technology of writing, much less the need for people who understand it.
And no, it does not suddenly mean that people who write, edit or typeset will suddenly offer all their skills and labor for free.
sure, there are people who do, and who will, create "data content" for free. Some of it is even good, though quality's pretty hard to find. From where, exactly, are they drawing their modes, materials and inspirations? From people who do it professionally. And why are they posting their stuff out there for free? Because most of them openly aspire to do it professionally themselves someday.
Doubt me? Try to find an original analog to War and Peace, Origin of the Species or even Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone - comparable on all levels of quality - posted for free on a website. And then find someone who has created high-quality "net original content" who's not using it as a showpiece to score a place in the existing industry.
The crafts of professional-level writing, editing and publishing make all other technologies possible, too. Without them, you have a vast realm of incomprehensible gobbledegook that may or may not be accurate in any way. That copy of a plane design you mention? Written by writers, checked by editors, laid out by graphic designers, and based on the work of other writers, editors and designers who did the work upon which that copy is modeled.
You enjoy a book full of scientific information? Thank the writer who could assimilate the ideas and data therein into comprehensible form (not to mention the ones who did the same with the data and ideas that writer employs); the fact-checkers reading the work of other writers who did the same thing; the editors and proofreaders involved in the tightening of sentences and the elimination of (most) mistakes; the typesetters who worked that raw text (in whatever medium, be it hand-scribed pictograms or electronic pixels) into a readable and reproducible form... and finally, the parties who managed the resources involved with getting that reproduced "data" into your hands, wherever you might be.
These people are not "obsoleted by technology." The method of delivery might change, but the skills remain the same. Unlike a horse-shoe, a book cannot be stamped out by a die. The pages can be, but the content cannot.
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Fishie, when I read posts like the one above, I feel like a biologist confronted with a creationist:
"Here are the facts."
"But my facts trump your facts."
"My facts come from observation, experience and reproducible results."
"My facts are correct."
"I can prove otherwise."
"I disbelieve in your proof because I'm right."
And so it goes...
Does that analogy successfully communicate the essential (and emotional) dilemma at hand? :)
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