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TeleRead Audio: Ingram Digital’s Frank Daniels III talks to Karen Holt on e-newspapers vis-a-vis e-books, E prices, DRM and other topics
February 15, 2009 | 7:38 am
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By David Rothman
So what’s Ingram Digital up to these days in the area of e-books?
Frank Daniels III, the company’s new chief commercial officer, talked to Karen Holt, former deputy editor of Publishers Weekly—in the Tools of Change press room last week. Click for the MP3.
Among the many topics covered:
–Frank’s most recent title. “If it has to do with customers, it has has to do with me.” Earlier he was chief operating officer of Ingram Digital.
–E-newspapers vs. e-books—how they differ. Frank worked for both the editorial and business sides of the Raleigh News & Observer, which his family owned for many decades.
–Ingram Digital’s VitalSource e-reading software, whose interactive capabilities are especially useful in education-related apps, such as dental training. Ingram bought VitalSource Technologies, of which Frank was president and CEO, in 2006.
–E-book prices, which he notes range widely. “E-books are going to be priced on convenience more than they’re going to be priced on format.”
–Kindle vs. iPhone. The device “that’s going to prevail has not been invented yet.” In fact, he’s doubts that the industry will standardize on a particular device the way the Apple iPod dominates music.
–DRM. Frank’s unabashedly pro. “We’ve not seen DRM to be any kind of barrier to a sale.” His DRM comments begin just short of nine minutes into the interview. Listen carefully, and please be civil in our comments section if you’d like to respond.
With this audio, Karen Holt joins the ranks of TeleBlog contributors. Here’s a little back story. She recorded the audio because she broke her right hand while off motorcycling in Thailand—you can’t accuse Karen of leading a dull life. No extensive typing for now, thanks.
Karen holds a masters in creative writing from Manhattanville College, served as managing editor of the Book Publishing Report Newsletter among her various jobs at Primedia, and is working, post-PW, as a free-lance writer. She’s partial to literary books—the kind, she jokes, with a readership of three or four. Among her favorite novels of the moment is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (actually a bestseller), by Junot Diaz, whom some have regarded as a Dominican-American Philip Roth.
Welcome, Karen!
(Photo by Paul Biba.)
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Comments:
Frank Daniel III sez – “We’ve not seen DRM to be any kind of barrier to a sale.”
Really? I’m a customer…and it’s a barrier to me. Yesterday, I had a choice of buying a book, hardcover or e-version, same price (no, no, I won’t go down that rat hole) and guess what? I chose to own the hardcover, rather than take a chance that DRM would cause my e-book to evaporate because the publisher went under and how likely is that, these days, Frank? Treating your every customer like a potential thief does not breed trust. Pay attention, Frank. This massive insult called DRM didn’t work for the music industry, why on earth would you think it a viable tool for the print industry?
I’m not so rabidly anti-DRM — there must be some room for compromise here — but as it stands, it is definitely a deterrent for me. I do buy books from ereader.com but not nearly as many as I would if I knew that they’d be portable as the platform/format/DRM issues resolve themselves. I’m aware that I have to think of each book I “buy” as a rental, so I’m fairly cautious about how many I rent. Which means I read a LOT of public domain instead of buying new titles.
Publishers need to keep in mind that, in the ebook arena, the freebies are a major competitor.
“Publishers need to keep in mind that, in the ebook arena, the freebies are a major competitor.”
And the reality is that it’s not just public domain titles. I primarily read science fiction and non-fiction. There is more scifi released eacfor free on the web each month, most of it CCed rather than PD, than I could possibly read in a year.
That’s what they’re really competing against. But oddly, I spend quite a bit each month buying science fiction from Baen. The main reason is I know that it will always be DRM-free and Baen actually provides an awesome service — stuff I bought 5 years ago from them I can go and download in the correct format for the ebook reader that just came out a few months ago.
OTOH, I imagine the profits aren’t quite what publishing houses want on a per-sale basis. I was looking at an interesting book on Fictionwise, and they wanted $27 for the DRMed version (which doesn’t work on my ebook reader). Are they insane? At that price and with those restrictions, it suddenly becomes worth my time to find a pirated version and do the proper conversion myself.
I don’t know what it is like on the inside, but from the outside publishers seem to be stuck in a VHS mindset when the rest of us are in a DVD world.
Frank Daniels is probably wrong — he most certainly has lost a sale or two to DRM. But that’s the wrong metric. The right metric is whether or not DRM is the best way for him to publishers to expand their market in a world where most print media is already taking it on the chin due to a collapse in business models and people having far more options for their free time.
“We’ve not seen DRM to be any kind of barrier to a sale.”
How in the world would he know? It’s not like the lost sales are visible. Maybe everybody who passes on a DRM’d ebook needs to email the publisher so they can “see” the lost sales.
I, too, have refrained from buying many books because of DRM. I only buy as a last resort; the public library has DRM-copies, but advertises them for what they are: rentals–their DRM is designed specifically to make them expire.
I’d be interested to hear who pro-DRM people honestly think they’re advocating for. Neil Gaiman said that the problem of most writers is obscurity, not piracy. I can’t imagine many writers being upset that more people would read their books without DRM.
It’s certainly not good for readers, despite what Daniels says: “DRM facilitates the inclusion of feature sets and functionalities that otherwise wouldn’t be there.”
I guess it must be publishers and distributors. It seems disingenuous to me to disguise DRM as an attempt to help consumers.