BACKSTRIP

What could the Macmillazon affair mean for authors?

Now that Amazon has started putting buy links back on Macmillan books, there’s no shortage of opinions on what it might mean for the future of publishing, retail, distribution, and so on.

But here’s a question that I don’t think is being asked: how will the the relationship between publishers and authors change, and more importantly, how can authors exploit the situation?

Here’s Andrew Zack on the subject:

But can we take this one step further? Could publishers just become “agents” of authors, where the author gets a bigger piece of net?

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So, could Macmillan’s face-off with Amazon benefit us all? Perhaps. But it could also come back to bite Macmillan in a tender place. Because if it makes sense for Macmillan to change the way books are sold and priced, why shouldn’t authors try to change the way they are selling books to publishers?

(I’m not sure on the some of the maths in the article, though.)

Some vague stats on e-reader usage

NPD has released some interesting, though infuriatingly vague, tidbits on usage patterns for e-reader owners. Buried inside this press release (which seems to hang off the sloppily-worded “95 percent of e-readers owners are happy with their devices”) is something enormously interesting:

[It] seems that e-Reader owners aren’t married to their e-Readers to do their reading. About three-in-ten owners say they use at least one another device for reading e-books, such as a PC or a smartphone.

This suggests that format- and device-shifting will be important to at least a third of the potential market, which means things like DRM and device lock-ins would likely cause some dissatisfaction.

Of course, we could probably get more insight into this if the study had looked at attitudes toward DRM, but that doesn’t appear to be the case (I asked but haven’t received a reply, and the full report is behind a paywall), because If it had looked at these issues, the statement probably wouldn’t have ended with this strange quote:

“As the recent introduction of Apple’s iPad demonstrates, applications now on smartphones benefit from larger screens, and industry leaders are recognizing the importance of supporting multiple platforms by supporting multiple clients and open standards.”

I’m not sure what this means — it’s either naive about these issues, or is intentionally ignoring it. Kindle books, for example, can only be read on Kindles (or approved devices), iPad books will presumably have similar DRM and licences. Open standards? ePub is an open standard, but that doesn’t mean it’s DRM-free.

Now’s the time for some good, solid research into e-reading, and although I haven’t seen the full report, NPD’s statement of ‘highlights’ doesn’t bode well.

(If anyone with access to the report can tell me whether the study looks at DRM or EULAs, please let me know.)

What Amazon and Macmillan Aren't Fighting About

I don’t want to dwell on this, but after seeing the responses of bloggers, Twitterers and commentators to the Amazon and Macmillan spat, I think it’s worth pointing out what the argument is about — and more importantly, what it’s not about.

First, here are two concise points lifted from my Twitter stream that, incredibly, seem to sum up about 40 billion words of reader frustration.

From Denis Klotz:

Dear Macmillan writers, I understand that you are not pleased about the Macmillan/Amazon disaster, but telling me that $16 is a fair price … for an ebook that I can’t lend or sell won’t make it so.

From Doug Bolden:

ebooks are being treated as competition by their own publishers, and their ownership is still impossibly murky.

Consumers have to wade through various and changing EULAs. And the “seller” but also “agent” model only adds to it.

These two comments echo readers’ sentiments on the fight. Namely that the real issue — the thing readers most want fixed — isn’t being discussed. It isn’t even being hinted at. It’s like bandaging someone’s foot when you should really be giving them CPR.

But that’s because there are two different (though related) issues here, and this fight is only about one of them — how the e-book production and distribution chain is going to work together. More specifically, it’s about how much control Amazon can exert over publishers. Doug’s comment above notes this, but only as something that adds to the problem.

For readers, this fight doesn’t mean much, but for me, and others involved in the chain, this is huge. Monumental. EULAs, DRM, First Sale, all that stuff belongs to another fight — and one worth having — but another fight nonetheless. That’s why, for example, John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan penned a reassuring missive the other day to Macmillan Authors and Illustrators (and CC’ed to Literary Agents), but not addressed to readers. Because this isn’t about readers.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not important or that it doesn’t affect them. It’s easy to say readers are everything, and you’d be right. But it’s also easy, and equally correct, to say that the readers are ultimately best served by a functional industry and a competitive market — both of which are crucial for any discussion about DRM or customer rights.

And that’s what this is about, and that’s why I think it’s important.

Google Book Search Settlement Still Rubbish

Quick update on the Google Book Search (GBS) Settlement. At the end of last year, Google proposed a revised Settlement which was supposed to satisfy the demands made by the US Department of Justice.

Here’s what Judge Chin had to say:

“[The] amended settlement agreement suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation.”

…

“[It] still confers significant and possibly anticompetitive advantages on Google as a single entity, thereby enabling the company to be the only competitor in the digital marketplace with the rights to distribute and otherwise exploit a vast array of works in multiple formats.”

Check out full details on the settlement here, and the response by Open Book Alliance here.

(Via Publishers Weekly)

Google's cultural asphyxiation

My views on the Google Book Settlement are straightforward: solve the antitrust problem. Google will gain automatic access to your work via the Book Rights Registry on an involuntary basis, and that’s utterly insane. Squabbles over copyrights, fair use, privacy, author compensation, etc, are only meaningful in a marketplace — if the GBS goes ahead as is, then we won’t have that, and everything else won’t matter a jot. Consequently, I see them as secondary to antitrust, and the more we focus on them, the more we get distracted.

After reading Lawrence Lessig’s essay on The New Republic, it’s clear that he thinks there’s an even greater concern, and that antitrust is probably a distraction.

For the problem here is not just antitrust; it is not just privacy; it is not even the power that this (enormously burdensome) free library will give this already dominant Internet company. Indeed, the problem with the Google settlement is not the settlement. It is the environment for culture that the settlement will cement. For it practically guarantees that we will repeat the cultural-environmental errors of our past…

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Before we continue any further down this culturally asphyxiating road, can we think about it a little more? Before we release a gaggle of lawyers to police every quotation appearing in any book, can we stop for a moment to consider whether this way of organizing access to culture makes sense? Does this complexity get us something we would not get under the older system? Does this innovation in obsessive control produce any new understanding? Is it really progress?

It’s a long, but thoughtful piece that looks at the function of cultural artifacts and examines how the GBS will take us down a path that essentially makes them dysfunctional. I recommend it, even if you’re not a fan of Lessig. It also puts some context to the GBS issue, and unravels some of the complexity of the case.

What the iPad looks like...

… without Flash.

The actual stupid thing Amazon did

John Scalzi on the Amazon thing:

Note to Amazon: Real people do not give a shit about your fight with Macmillan. Real people want to buy things. When your store takes them to a product page on which they cannot buy the thing on the page, they will not say to themselves, “Hmm, I wonder if Amazon is having a behind-the-scenes struggle with the publisher of this title, of which this is the fallout. I shall sympathize with them in this byzantine struggle of corporate titans.” What they will say is “why can’t I buy this fucking book?” Because, you know, they are there to buy that fucking book. And when you don’t let them buy that fucking book, they aren’t going to blame Macmillan. They are going to blame you.

Amazon pulls its head in

Well, that didn’t last long. Amazon has “capitulated” on its decision to wipe Macmillan from its stores.

According to a post on the Kindle forum:

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy! In a nutshell, Amazon says the price is absurd (which it is), but rather than banning Macmillan and anyone who follows their lead, it will keep their high-priced books on the Kindle and let the market decide.

That Amazon initially thought otherwise just shows how complacent it had become.

Where I'm at: the 2010 Edition

Crikey. Forgot about this thing.

Well, not really, I just haven’t been giving it much attention, at least not since September. Neglect is probably the right word, which is perhaps even worse. It’s like saying to your cat, ‘no, I didn’t forget to feed you, I just chose not to.’

In fact, like a cat, it seemed to rebel in its own way. A few image links in the CSS were mysteriously severed, and I’m afraid to go back and look through the archive to see what else might be wrong. That’s why the first thing I did was rework the template into something a bit simpler, lo-fi and mobile friendly (and if it’s not friendly enough, then you can hit the mobile button at the top).

So what have I been doing? Towards the end of last year, I spent most of the time being a journalist. You can find some of my words in the printed versions of a few publications around the place. I put the finishing touches on some new book concepts for Quarto, and I’ve just started work on another book that’s due to hit the stands in December. Can’t say anything about it right now, but it’s in the general science and health category. And, of course, The Shakespeare Encyclopedia should now be well and truly out and it’s absolutely gorgeous.

I should wrap up my post-grad degree in information science this year and I’ll hopefully release a couple of game prototypes over the coming months. I wouldn’t call them games, they’re really demonstrations of particular game mechanics that tap into some core aspects of psychology. I think of them as game ‘seeds’ — hopefully they’ll inspire developers much more capable than I to build something playable around them. I’ll cover them in more detail over at Trembling Hand.

So, back to this thing (see that? My first post in four months and I’m talking about myself again). Oddly, the busier I am, the more I blog, so there’ll be more posts popping up here. I’ll try and keep them more focused on the publishing industry (specifically books), and things related to information theory, so if either of those things interest you, then stick around. Thanks to the coming of the iPad, reactive Amazonian business tactics and the Great Google Swindle, I’ll have no shortage of things to say.

Map of Banned Books

Banned Books Week 2009 is in full swing. This year, there’s even a map showing where specific books are being challenged (in the US), and the reasons why.

The map is far from complete:

There are hundreds of challenges to books in schools and libraries in the United States every year. According to the American Library Association (ALA), there were at least 513 in 2008. But the total is far larger. 70 to 80 percent are never reported.

Not too fond of book censorship? Go here.

(Via Michael Zimmer.)