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E-book standards should be for Pat Conroy lovers and grandmas, not just techies
August 14, 2009 | 3:13 am
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By David Rothman
I’ve been reading the latest Pat Conroy novel, South of Broad, which, alas, contains too much bathos—a letdown from, say, The Great Santini.
Meanwhile I’m trying to envision who might love his new Charleston saga, and I suspect they’re mainly a paper-ish crowd of graying boomers who’d shudder at the thought of buying a Kindle or Sony Reader.
How to turn the Pat Conroy lovers and grandmas—two groups that probably overlap—into e-book enthusiasts?
One way is to make e-books as easy as possible to use. And that is why I continue to be grumpy over a New York Times piece that made casual readers think that Adobe-DRM’ed Adobe was an open format. Especially I object to Brad Stone’s sentence: “After the change, books bought from Sony’s online store will be readable not just on its own device but on the growing constellation of other readers that support ePub.” But wait! What if Amazon goes for ePub. Will we then see Amazon-DRMed ePub? Or how about Apple? Could Apple-DRMed ePub be in store for us?
Functionality over technicalities, please
Some people with a tech background, including Evan Leibovitch—whom I’m pleased to have among our latest contributors—will note that the core format of Adobe-DRMed ePub is still nonproprietary and that “protection” is optional. But let’s think practically. Just how might Conroy lovers feel when they they they’re buying a book that will “play” on any machine but then get caught up in a DRM gotcha? What’s more, Evan’s Macrovision parallel jut doesn’t apply, since we don’t yet know who’ll win the e-book-tech wars.
If we really want to make e-books Grandma-simple, then the industry should drop DRM or settle for social DRM. Meanwhile the New York Times has ill-served its reader by letting so many of them confuse Adobe-based “standards” with a genuine nonproprietary approach. If nothing else, why can’t the Times open readers up to the possibility of social DRM? I’m absolutely convinced that the Times isn’t deliberately carrying water for Adobe or Sony, but, unwittingly, it in fact comes across that way. I continue to hope that the Times will run a clarifying follow-up.
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Comments:
In some ways, this reminds me of the healthcare debate, where many people are trying to scare others into thinking a govt-sponsored healthcare program will be the ONLY program we’ll get, instead of just one of several choices.
Not that I’m saying, David, that you’re being alarmist about Adobe DRM, because the concerns are real… just that you often speak of it as if every book vendor will have no choice but to sell DRM’d e-books on all of these ePub-playing devices. I don’t think that’s the case.
Sure, I expect Adobe DRM to be out there. But I also expect savvy consumers will let each other know, “The books from XYZ can be transferred from my machine to my husband’s.” “I had to replace my reader, but I didn’t lose my books from ABC books.”
Even Grandmom can understand that.
So, in the long run, we’ll see non-DRM stores selling well, thanks to word-of-mouth and consumer reporting sources, leaving the rest to eventually give up on DRM in favor of other, really workable methods of protecting their interests. (Don’t get me started on what those will be…)
And so, let’s concentrate on getting standards in place, and trust that the market, working with consumers, will work out the rest.