Publishers Determined to Kill E-Books

As an indie author, I&#x27;ve paid more attention to what&#x27;s going on in publishing than the average person over the last few years. This article has some things I could quibble with, but the overall premise is, I think, true. Publishers don&#x27;t like the ebook market, and my guess is that it&#x27;s because of how little control they have over it.<p>In the world of ebooks, indies actually have the upper hand. For one, we don&#x27;t have the overhead of big publishers, so we can sell ebooks at more reasonable prices (while pocketing more than authors with traditional contracts). We have the ability to move more quickly and thus take advantage of new features (like Amazon&#x27;s ad platform) earlier. We can sell worldwide with a click, instead of negotiating messy contracts.<p>With print on demand, we can also have our books in print. But publishers definitely have the upper hand there and, I presume, always will.<p>Also, as an indie I have the option to make my books available DRM-free.<p>Personally, I _like_ ebooks, especially for fiction. They weigh nothing. They have search. My highlights can get aggregated together. I can switch devices and even switch between ebook and audiobook. Further, I think there are very few print books that actually have real resale value, so that&#x27;s not a big factor for me.

&gt; So why have eBooks failed so miserably, when other media such as movies and music now sell and rent so well online?<p>Repeat after me: the average person doesn&#x27;t read. The market for ebooks is a fraction of the market for movies and music.<p>OTOH, there is a viable market because there are such things as &quot;avid readers&quot; (people who read more than one book a month.) Those are the people ereaders are made for.<p>I predict that ebooks will be like jazz records: they not terribly popular, but they&#x27;ll still be made because there&#x27;s a devoted audience.

Slightly off topic, but I often wonder why there is no backlash on print media regarding the environmental aspect of this whole publishing industry. Most books are mass-printed, shipped to warehouses, then shipped to local sellers (or e.g. Amazon, that ships a single book to a buyer) - and the (huge) non-sellable rests are either deeply discounted or completely dumped. If you see a pile of the latest &quot;bestseller&quot; at the local store, its almost guaranteed that only a fraction is sold, the rest will be disposed.<p>Moreover, most print books, magazines and newspapers aren&#x27;t even fully read by the buyers, let alone multiple times. Its a huge industry producing, promoting and selling mostly single-use items.<p>And the used market for most books is virtually non-existent: I had to move a couple of times and the paper weight was one of the biggest hurdles. I dumped lots of books because I couldn&#x27;t find a buyer on the used market (handling would far exceed the value of the books, some companies buy used books only based on weight and condition) and even libraries and social services like the Caritas declined to take used books.<p>So, I&#x27;m really wondering why we as a society aren&#x27;t more demanding on the sustainable side of the publishing business, especially the environmental effects. Ebooks could perhaps be a much more environment-friendly alternative, but I agree that publishers and market places have done a lot to make them less attractive, affordable and available for most readers in comparison to printed alternatives.

&gt; So why have eBooks failed so miserably, when other media such as movies and music now sell and rent so well online?<p>[...]<p>&gt; Then there’s the question of what you get for your money with an eBook. According to the publishers in that recent case in the CJEU, you get a perpetual licence (not ownership) to access their copyright content, which never deteriorates in the same way that physical books do. As a result, the publishers claimed successfully, you aren’t free to sell on your licence, and can only do so if they, the copyright owners, agree. In other words, you pay much the same price for something which immediately on purchase becomes worthless.<p>Well... what&#x27;s the difference there? That doesn&#x27;t seem like it, since it&#x27;s no less true of movies or music.<p>Actually, my guess is that most people never read most of the books they buy. Maybe they intend to, but it ends up mostly being some kind of affirmation of the kind of person they are. While the e-book experience has a lot to recommend it if your object is actually to read a lot of books (particularly outside the house), it doesn&#x27;t do much to burnish your bookshelf.

&gt; <i>So why have eBooks failed so miserably, when other media such as movies and music now sell and rent so well online?</i><p>Well let&#x27;s look at the technology involved:<p>Books have been around since writing and evolved from clay tablets which we can still &quot;read&quot; to this very day so long as the text is intact. Nothing other than your eyeballs and hands are needed to interface with a book. No batteries, headphones, passwords, or wires. Plus reading a book is quite a different experience as your mind is actively painting images and creating sounds. Video and audio can present some wonderful sensations but ultimately arent as personal as the creations of your minds eye (and ear). So books as they are work very well and do exactly what they were meant to do. Plus reading on a screen sucks and who wants to buy another electronic gizmo with a good screen like e ink which will become obsolete, fail, or have your book deleted after some DRM copyright spat? Please no.<p>Video and Audio NEED electronics. They are already hamstrung with a technological need so consuming via digital means is much more practical. And as far as physical media goes nowadays, it&#x27;s less convenient than streaming. Though Music still enjoys a strong association with the medium being an art so it goes hand in hand with physical collecting which is why you still see tapes and vinyl. Like a book, you want to be able to hold it and also enjoy the art work. Some artists even release ultra limited handcrafted cases to house said physical media adding a more personal touch.

I can&#x27;t help but compare this to the tabletop RPG space, something I&#x27;ve gotten into recently for inspiration.<p>Over the last few months I&#x27;ve spent a good deal of money at DriveThruRPG. Distributed via (usually) watermarked PDF, with limited security.<p>Prices are cheap, and often the electronic version is included for free if you get a print on demand version.<p>Buy a product and want to get a bundle it&#x27;s in later? Bundle price of the product is discounted (not the price you pay, which is fine).<p>When I was buying electronic versions of programming books about a decade ago this is what I was hoping for. Instead I have useless files since they can no longer authenticate.

I hate that I need to break DRM to keep a copy of an ebook. There was that famous case where Amazon found out they didn&#x27;t have a license for a book in Canada and pulled it from everyone&#x27;s devices. The book? Orwell&#x27;s 1984.<p>We have DRM free music from BandCamp, iTunes, CDBaby, AmazonMusic and others. But the only place to get DRM free books is Kobo, and it&#x27;s not a huge selection.<p>Offer me a DRM free book where most of my money goes to the authors and I&#x27;d be all over it. This recent trend has lead me back to pirating the larger or older titles.

The title is misleading and makes it sound like the publishers are actually trying to kill e-books which is not the case.

When e-books came along, I can only assume publishers panicked and said &quot;we have to protect these books from being copied somehow&quot;, so they crippled them with DRM, created their own standards, and so on. Years later, the only way to <i>comfortably</i> enjoy a purchased e-book from a major publisher (that uses DRM technology) is to:<p>* Pay for the crippled e-book and download it to some Adobe application that is only used to unlock your crippled e-book.<p>* Use a plugin for an open source application to strip the book of the DRM, creating a real e-book.<p>* Send your &quot;pirated&quot; and de-DRM&#x27;d e-book to your device of choice as it can now be easily converted.<p>The whole e-book market is backwards and is reminiscent of the way music was being sold around ~2005. You were forced to buy a CD so you could rip it to mp3 files and put them on your device. Sell mp3 files directly? Oh no, we can&#x27;t do that, anyone can copy those! (Except you can, of course, copy the mp3 files created from the CD, so your guaranteed sale is one disc).<p>Then comes the argument about making piracy uncomfortable: &quot;Sure, books can be copied, but if we at least make them annoying to copy, people will gravitate towards buying them through legitimate channels&quot; -- except they won&#x27;t, because the reason people aren&#x27;t buying through legitimate channels in the first place is the same reason for e-books as for music: they suck. They create problems for the users, they are price-inflated and overpriced (to prop up the dying physical copy-part of the industry), so everybody hates them.<p>I&#x27;ll buy a book online if it lacks DRM, but only then. Humble Bundles are great for this. But, if you publish a book and you use crippling DRM technology because you&#x27;re scared of being copied, you are making the book market a worse place for everyone, and you are contributing to the problem. Only an absolute fool would think that going back to physical copies of books is the right move here -- and if that turns out to be what happens, I will gladly dedicate my time to digitizing books made by these consumer-hating Luddites, and spreading them online against their will.<p>Find a new model, or die like the rest. Stop being scared of change, it&#x27;s getting old.

I&#x27;m finding the article&#x27;s arguments pretty unconvincing.<p>eBook prices might be high, but as I&#x27;ve grown older I&#x27;ve realized that the price of the content is typically well below the opportunity cost of consuming it. If a good portion of that money makes it back into creators&#x27; hands, I&#x27;m satisfied.<p>The author spends some time complaining about the lack of first-sale doctrine, which is just a relic from the time when all content came on costly physical media. It would be wasteful to be forbidden from selling a book that you no longer want to read, so the reasoning went.<p>The arguments get even more nonsensical (&quot;eBooks don&#x27;t appreciate in value&quot;, &quot;You can&#x27;t photocopy them&quot;)<p>Meanwhile, they totally miss my biggest issue with eBooks: that they give significant power to platform providers, who may demand unreasonable concessions from authors and publishers.<p>In the process of writing this, I wondered if there was a Bandcamp for eBooks. HN had an answer: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18704436" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18704436</a>

For me, ebooks are life changing. I read around 100 to 150 books a year and i can carry an infinity of books in my pocket no matter where i am at in the world! And, 99% of the time ebooks are cheaper when i compare....<p>I put ebooks right after electricity and i dearly hope my print books disappear.

I have a Kindle, but I often find myself buying the physical copy of books just for the satisfaction of having something I can physically touch. It&#x27;s the same reason I go and buy physical copies of games from BestBuy when I can rather than buying games from Nintendo&#x27;s e-shop.

No worries, everybody will pirate e-books, just like it happened with music.<p>Indie publishers will make some money, probably more than going through a publishing house because they can sell directly to the customer and cut out the publisher. A 70% cut on eBooks sales is outright theft imho. If I were a book author and Amazon took a 70% cut, I would rather publish it online for free under a license that prohibits commercial distribution of the work (in exchange for money).

&gt; Did you give or receive any books for Christmas? If so, were they physical books, or electronic ones? I suspect that, while many of us have exchanged real, printed books as presents, eBooks were far less popular, and unless you give a voucher, they’re almost impossible to give as presents anyway. So why have eBooks failed so miserably, when other media such as movies and music now sell and rent so well online?<p>Huh? You can&#x27;t give digital copies of movies, music, or games as Christmas gifts for exactly the same reasons. What is this paragraph supposed to have established?<p>&gt; eBook readers are still incredibly primitive, and won’t even let you refer to two or more sections of the book at the same time. You can’t photocopy them, copy quotations, or do anything remotely advantageous.<p>Kindles have supported copying quotations since at least 2010.

One problem with e-books is that you have nothing to show for it. Books have lost their collector value.

I love ebooks. I also hate drm so I only &quot;buy&quot; drmed ebooks if I can strip the drm and usually convert it to epub.<p>I do wish that the highlights I make were actually saved to the epub file rather than in a separate file that is difficult to transport to another device.

New to me that ebooks have failed. I almost never buy physical books now.

No! Since buying a Kindle I don’t have nearly the same guilt over my stash of unread ebooks compared to the reminder I see of physical booms. I read a lot, but not as much as I buy. :&#x2F;

I have a Kindle which I loved and used to be my main way to read books when I lived in a third world country.<p>I&#x27;ve pretty much abandoned it since I moved to a next-day Amazon delivery country. Dead-tree books are much more convenient in the ideal case when I&#x27;m in a comfortable position at home, and I never have the foresight to buy an e-book to read something on vacation without having to carry a physical tome of whichever book I&#x27;m reading right now.

This is why I love Manning Books. I actually ordered a book off of Amazon that I forgot was produced by Manning, and I went to cancel the order and get it from Manning instead. That way I got the print version, the digital version and even free digital of the older editions of it. They&#x27;ve won me as a customer in that I&#x27;ll always order off them if they have a book I want even if it&#x27;s available on AMZ.

Publishers don&#x27;t need to kill e-books, they were never a good product to begin with, which is why they&#x27;ve mostly failed to replace paper books.<p>The author missed the most obvious reason e-books have hit a wall. Compared to hard-copy books, e-books offer a vastly worse user experience, with the only benefit being lower price and easier storage.<p>Paper books are incredibly durable, easy on the eyes even for very long periods of reading, affordable, and a nice break from staring at a screen all day. Even children prefer paper books to kindles and other e-readers, so it&#x27;s not a matter of nostalgia or people refusing to change. Paper books are just a really great user experience as far as media goes.<p>The comparison to other media like music and video is also completely wrong. Records, tapes, video cassettes, etc. are all new technologies, less than 100 years old in most cases. So eight-tracks and CDs getting replaced with mp3s and streaming services is a case of a new technology being displaced by a slightly newer technology. Books on the other hand have had centuries, even millennia to develop and perfect the user experience, which they largely have (I can&#x27;t take credit for this last argument, Nassim Taleb points this fact out in his Incerto series).

Worse the latest gen kindles have firmware&#x2F;DRM that can&#x27;t be cracked (yet).<p>I was sorta OK with all their bullshit because I knew I could break it (for personal use&#x2F;backup)<p>Might need to steal my mom&#x27;s ancient kindle

This is how an industry sets itself up for disruption.

I can&#x27;t read a space fantasy&#x2F;sci-fi book on the same device that has my addictive free cell game.

Amazon has a monopoly and monopsony in the ebook market. Oddly, the department of just does not seem to care. Their recent test of “does it hurt consumers” is too narrow. In this case the monopsony is hurting the entire industry.

Physical books are gone. The people who actually read books have already switched to e-books. I haven&#x27;t bought a single physical book since i bought the first iteration of the amazon swindle.<p>Some people who also read books will try to refute this argument, saying they still buy love and read physical books. So do i. I love physical books. I love them as a commodity. I love holding them, reading them, putting them on display after finishing them, but sadly, it&#x27;s simply not convenient for someone who really reads. When i finish one book and want the next in the series, when i find out about a book that i am actually curious about what it is saying, i will simply get the e-book. The desire to read and convenience simply wins.<p>I thought the last iteration of the generic ebook reader was my last purchase because it had the backlight, but now they came up with the yellow backlight so i have to buy this. Blue light causes macular degeneration and yellow light is so much more comfortable.<p>Ebook readers are like a dream come true. When they came out, i thought wow, truth is probably solipsism.