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“If it were my money, there’s no way I’d put up with this cr*p”, says young reader
August 26, 2010 | 9:26 am
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By Paul Biba
I just had to reprint this comment by Clytie Siddall. The comment was in response to Joanna’s article Publishers, rejoice!:
Today I spent some time hunting down in ebook the next few volumes of a series my teenage daughter had started. I’d bought the first volume (The Colour of Magic, by Terry Pratchett) from Fictionwise in the halcyon international e-reading days before geolimitations were imposed. She read it this week, and was happily anticipating the next volume in the series.
I found the ebooks at Borders Australia, and bought them. The ensuing conversation:
Her: OK, so I just get this from your Bookshelf and open it in eReader.
Me: Unfortunately, no. I can’t get it from Fictionwise, and I can’t get it in that format.
Her: Why not?
Me: That’s a good question. I’ve been looking for the answer for several months now. You know I’ve got a dozen different readers on my iPhone?
Her: Yes, but… I thought I wouldn’t have to go through all that cr*p.
Me: You and the rest of the reading public. Borders have it in ePub–
Her: So I can open it in Stanza!
Me: Um, no.
Her: Why not? Stanza does ePub.
Me: Yes, but these books have DRM.
She gives me a disgusted, iTunes-generation look
Me: It is doable, sorta. You need to download the desktop reader, and the iPhone reader, and log in to my account at Borders…
After half an hour of setup, we’re still waiting for the books to download
Her: If it were my money, there’s no way I’d put up with this cr*p.
(She gives up and starts playing video games)
There you are, publishers: one keen reader and customer of the future.
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Comments:
Okay blanket response to several people in one post…
Ania- nope..sorry. Pro DRM/anti piracy argument doesn’t work. I and many others use “pirate” sites to share music you can’t get any other way. because it doesn’t exsist on CD. A good bit of the stuff I’ve downloaded is stuff that someone with the equipment and software and ripped of a 12 vinyl album..because you can NOT get the stuff on CD. The rest? A long laundry list of albums and artists I wanted to try before I buy. So I get a couple or several songs off the P2P sites and give a listen. maybe if music stores with listening stations hadn’t gone the way of the dodo bird, there wouldn’t be so many P2P sites.
Howard..stripping is not that difficult to learn if…. you either *take the time* to learn, like anything else it depends on how bad you want it, and the effort your willing to put forth. I won’t lie thought, it also helps if you [like me] have a number of tech savvy friends to do it for you. DRM is a crock of crap and always has been. I’ll give you a perfect example. Baen books has been doing e publishing for many a year. They offer their ebooks in multiple formats and DRM free. Hell they encourage you to share their stuff to other people to get new readers.
It hasn’t hurt their sales..it’s helped. Their readers[like me] are rabidly loyal. In many cases, most of us buy not just the ebooks, but the treeware [books printed on paper and bound] as well. Why? because they treat us as friends and family, not criminals in need of prosecution and persecution; and not just as walking wallets. They also, unlike the other publishers offer their ebooks at obscenely reasonable rates. I can get Electronic Advanced Readers Copies of novels for $15 3-5 MONTHS before the treeware hits the shelves. The rest of their Ebooks? Are by and large less than $10 and most are the price of a mass market paperback, $7.99. The rest of the ‘Big Boys’ in the publishing world are peddling their crap for the same prices or more than they charge for hardcover novels. EXCUSE ME! It costs you less for ebooks but you charge the same as you would for treeware? kiss my hairy rectum. On top of that , their garbage is all loaded with DRM. Just for an example of how little Ebooks and sharing are hurting Baen sales..I give you the title Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia. Was released as ebook and mass market paper back. The paperback is now in it’s FOURTH Printing Run.
I, having worked in the book industry, am saddened to say that most of the other publishing houses[including the bigboys] and authors have pissed me off so bad I wouldn’t touch their crap even if you DID give it to me free of charge. Although to be honest, most of it so bad anyway my only use for it is as toilet paper…or maybe as kindling for starting a fire. Like anything else there are a few exceptions to that rule but; I can count the number of those exceptions on one hand.
OK folks,
I have to disagree with the whole protected book thing. It does not help and has only created a generation of people who feel pirated material is good. I posted a link to a Free Book library ran by an international publishing house. http://www.baen.com/library/ The give away books, and sample chapters and none are encrypted. This allows people to take the books and load them in autoreaders for dyslexic and blind people. It also gives them a wide audience.
Eric Flint the author tells why he and Baen are big believers in free books. IT BOOSTED THEIR SALES!!! The first taste is free. You get to sample it and if you like it you buy it! Or you buy other books in the series! If musicians gave you 2 of the 3 verses and you liked it would you buy the song? What if you got 3 unreleased songs from an album, would you buy the rest of the album?
DDR and other anti copying software does not have a positive effect on books in the overall and has probably hurt music in the long run.
Brad..pretty much what I said. Except you weren’t as long winded as I was.