Of e-books, DRM and Chinatown buses

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By David Rothman

I hopped aboard a Vamoose bus and paid just $25 to go from the Washington, D.C., area to  New York for O’Reilly Media’s Tools of Change Conference. I could even use WiFi en route.

Who’d have thunk? Many and perhaps most airlines are still puzzling out the WiFi issue.

So just what do $25 bus fares have to do with e-books?  Plenty. What a great example of niche-filling—and of the possibility that minor players just might steal business away from the big boys if the latter don’t wake up! Here’s a little background from Lasr Leisure and Sports Review:

The most recent development in the U.S. bus industry has been the “Chinatown bus” phenomenon. Several years ago a few enterprising business people in New York’s Chinatown started running buses from Chinatown in NY to Chinatown in Boston, charging less than half of what traditional bus companies did and a fraction of what it cost to take the train or fly. They targeted Asian immigrants who wanted to shop or visit relatives and needed inexpensive and convenient transportation. Although the buses were modern and comfortable, the service was bare bones—no advertising, customer service, or bus stations. Customers simply went to the bus stop, waited for the bus, and paid the driver upon boarding. For those willing to do without frills, these companies offered virtually the same service as Greyhound at a substantially lower price. Before long, word spread about the service and all kinds of travelers started using these bus lines. They became especially popular with students, budget travelers, and people for whom the service was simply more convenient.

Soon more bus companies duplicated this model and started offering service in other markets. Now you can find this type of bus service in Philadelphia, Virginia, Washington DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco. At this point the term “Chinatown bus” is used more loosely to describe this sort of low-cost/low-frills service. Many, if not most, of the companies do not have Chinatown as there main location and may not cater to the immigrant population at all. When these companies first started operating, concerns were raised about safety standards. There is still controversy within the industry about whether these low-cost bus companies are complying with the same regulations as the traditional companies. Nonetheless, all bus companies operating in the U.S. must undergo the same inspection standards and must comply with the same rules.

Well, it isn’t as if books aren’t  100 percent devoid of legal risks—not just copyright ones but even lead-related complications; and given Amazon’s arrogance toward publishers and ePub, maybe the industry actually needs more regulation, through changes in anti-trust laws. Still, a defective book isn’t likely to leave you bloody in the middle of Route 95.

Instead of the Chinatown bus model, however, we’ve seen independent stores shut down, and some are even saying that the book industry should be still more blockbuster-focused. So much for niches, eh? Here, though, are a few for which e-books might be well suited–both in fiction and nonfiction:

• Ethnic books. The ethnic angle certainly has worked for bus companies in the Northeastern Corridor and elsewhere, and in other industries.
• Those aimed at America’s growing elderly population. “Between 1990 and 2020, the population aged 65 to 74 is projected to grow 74 percent,” says a government-originated document. The elderly have more leisure for reading. See past TeleBlog posts on e-books as the new large print.
• Locally and regionally targeted books.

The DRM angle

Yet another point comes through. The Chinatown buses are successful in past because they’re so convenient. I caught a $25 NYC-to-DC MegaBus after I saw one of the company’s buses in front of the Penn Central Station complex, with the ticket booth directly across the street. But first I made a phone call—to cancel my $110 AmTrak reservation.

A lesson for DRM-fixated publishers and those who love eBabel? You’re the Greyhounds and AmTrak. As more and more people learn they can’t own DRMed e-books for real, that could be a problem for big publishers who insist on “protection.” The readers just might go across the street.

Related: New York Times article that among other things tells how low-cost competitors have forced the Greyhounds to slash fares.

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