Tools of Change for Publishing: Search Results

Kindle Device and Clipping Limits Now Lifted for O'Reilly Books in Kindle Store

Andrew Savikas
October 9, 2009 | Permalink | Listen

Earlier this year, one of our authors reported hitting some sort of undocumented limit when using the "Clipping" feature on Kindle. And then other readers discovered they were unable to load Kindle books onto either additional Kindles or their iPhone running the Kindle app because there's a limit to the number of simultaneous devices a Kindle book can live on.

While I can't speak about the terms other publishers have with Amazon (though it's a safe bet at least some of those kind of restrictions weren't Amazon's idea), because we want O'Reilly Kindle books to be available without any DRM, we asked Amazon if those limits applied to our books, and if so whether they could be lifted.

Though it took some work on their end (and they deserve credit for being receptive to our request), I'm happy to say that there is now no simultaneous device limit or clipping limit for O'Reilly Kindle books, and those changes have been retroactively applied for anyone who's already purchased one of our Kindle books. Here's the Product Details section from The Twitter Book on the Kindle Store:

As a reminder, most O'Reilly books aren't yet available on the Kindle in large part because the Kindle 1 doesn't yet support tables. But you can buy a Kindle-compatible Mobipocket version directly from oreilly.com as part of our "ebook bundles," which also include EPUB and PDF formats, which provide a nice alternative if you have a Kindle 1 and run into a table from one of our books that's difficult to read.

Just to be clear, our desire to make these books free of DRM does not mean that we are allowing our readers to redistribute copies to their friends, but to allow them to read the book on all of their own devices, and to otherwise make use of them without artificial encumbrances. If you're interested in multi-user licenses, talk to us.

Thanks again to Amazon for working with us on this.

Content is a Service Business

Andrew Savikas
July 13, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (25) | Listen

I've been a fan of Trent Reznor's music since first hearing Pretty Hate Machine in junior high school, but in the past few years I've been increasingly impressed by his attitude and approach to the economics of the modern digital media business. His release of Ghosts I-IV is a case study in how to do exactly what Kevin Kelly outlines in Better than Free : "When copies are free, you need to sell things which cannot be copied." Notice that even though the Free Download option is right there at the top, the $300 "ultra-deluxe" version is sold out (and was sold out within 24 hours of being released).

On his forum a few days ago, Reznor posted advice to aspiring young musicians eager to make it in the music business, and the advice is just as applicable to writers and other artists working in almost any digital medium and attempting to compete with the vast content available on the Web:

[W]hat you NEED to do is this - give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people's email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special - make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan. Make a premium download available that includes high-resolution versions (for sale at a reasonable price) and include the download as something immediately available with any physical purchase. Sell T-shirts. Sell buttons, posters... whatever. [emphasis added]

This is not just about using free digital content to sell physical goods. It's an acknowledgment that what you're selling as an artist (or an author, or a publisher for that matter) is not content. What you sell is providing something that the customer/reader/fan wants. That may be entertainment, it may be information, it may be a souvenir of an event or of who they were at a particular moment in their life (Kelly describes something similar as his eight "qualities that can't be copied": Immediacy, Personalization, Interpretation, Authenticity, Accessibility, Embodiment, Patronage, and Findability). Note that that list doesn't include "content." The thing that most publishers (and authors) spend most of their time fretting about (making it, selling it, distributing it, "protecting" it) isn't the thing that their customers are actually buying.

Whether they realize it or not, media companies are in the service business, not the content business. Look at iTunes: if people paid for content, then it would follow that better content would cost more money. But every song costs the same. Why would people pay the same price for goods of (often vastly) different quality? Because they're not paying for the goods they're paying Apple for the service of providing a selection of convenient options easy to pay for and easy to download.

This is not new to digital content. Why would the price of admission to see a given year's Razzie Award winner be equivalent to the price of admission to see the year's Best Picture? Because the price of admission is not for the content. It's for the privilege of seeing it early, and doing so on a big screen in a social environment -- movie patrons pay for the service provided by the theater, not for the movies themselves (here's a counterpoint on movie pricing). That's the point that Reznor and Kelly are making: think long and hard about what your customers want, and provide the service of giving that to them.[1]

"But people are still buying content when they buy a book or an album," the argument goes. Yes, they are. The same way that you're buying food when you go to a restaurant. You are purchasing calories that your body will convert to energy. But few restaurants (especially those you visit frequently) have ingredients any different from those you can get yourself at the corner store, for much less money. So it can't be true that your primary goal is to purchase food; you're purchasing a meal, prepared so you don't have to, cleaned up so you don't have to, and done so in a pleasing and convenient atmosphere. You are paying for the preparation of the food and the experience of eating it in the restaurant, not the food itself [2] (beyond the raw cost of the physical ingredients, which in the case of digital content is effectively zero).

This came up during a discussion on Peter Brantley's email list recently, in the context of what someone is paying for when they buy one of our Cookbooks (which contain "Recipes" for how to accomplish specific tasks with a particular computer language or technology, often culled and curated from material and techniques previously published in blog posts, mailing lists, or help forums). I asserted that rather than the content itself, people are paying for the preparation of that content, to the extent that it helps them solve their problems more quickly and conveniently. When you think about what we do as a service business, then it makes perfect sense: readers are paying us for the service of finding a bunch of great and interesting stuff, and putting it together in a convenient package. It's the convenience of not having to find it themself, and the concise package that saves them from having to dig through a bunch of web bookmarks or search results. I didn't buy "Home Buying for Dummies" last year because I wanted a book on home buying; I bought it because I didn't want to screw up something really important (buying a house) and was willing to pay someone to spell out all of the stuff I needed to worry about in one place. People don't buy Jim Cramer's books because they want Jim Cramer's content -- they buy his books because they think it will help them get rich, and they think paying him is a great shortcut alternative to acquiring his knowledge (knowledge, not "content") themselves. These are services, not products.

The recent (and absurd) notion put forward by European publishers to "strengthen copyright protection as a way to lay the groundwork for new ways to generate revenue online" is intimately tied up with this issue of the value of content (and therefore the value of various players in the content value chain, like authors, publishers and the latest bogeyman, aggregators and search engines). Arguing that you need to beef up copyright protection to make sure there are ways to generate revenue online incorrectly assumes that what people are paying for is the copyrighted content itself. People do not care about content, they care about themselves and their problems.

You don't get an "A" for effort just by spending time and money creating content (and you are not entitled to your business model -- you have to earn that money every day by doing something that people find worth paying for -- and they decide it's worth paying for, not you). Content only has value to the extent that someone will pay for it because it accomplishes something they'd rather exchange money for than do themselves -- and when was the last time you said "Gee, I really need some content. I could write some of it for myself to read today, but I'd rather pay someone else to do it." [3] Google and other aggregators haven't stolen any value from the creators of the content they are aggregating -- they have done what intermediaries have always done, which is create new value based on doing for customers what those customers cannot or do not want to do themselves -- the service of sorting through all that content to find the thing that solves their problem. (I use "problem" loosely -- it may be boredom, loneliness, a tax audit, an idea for a first date,...) Again I'll return to Kevin Kelly, who elucidated the role of aggregators in relation to content creators far more eloquently than I ever could:

The giant aggregators such as Amazon and Netflix make their living in part by helping the audience find works they love. They bring out the good news of the "long tail" phenomenon, which we all know, connects niche audiences with niche productions. But sadly, the long tail is only good news for the giant aggregators, and larger mid-level aggregators such as publishers, studios, and labels. The "long tail" is only lukewarm news to creators themselves. But since findability can really only happen at the systems level, creators need aggregators. This is why publishers, studios, and labels (PSL) will never disappear. They are not needed for distribution of the copies (the internet machine does that). Rather the PSL are needed for the distribution of the users' attention back to the works. From an ocean of possibilities the PSL find, nurture and refine the work of creators that they believe fans will connect with. Other intermediates such as critics and reviewers also channel attention. Fans rely on this multi-level apparatus of findability to discover the works of worth out of the zillions produced. There is money to be made (indirectly for the creatives) by finding talent. For many years the paper publication TV Guide made more money than all of the 3 major TV networks it "guided" combined. The magazine guided and pointed viewers to the good stuff on the tube that week. Stuff, it is worth noting, that was free to the viewers. There is little doubt that besides the mega-aggregators, in the world of the free many PDLs will make money selling findability -- in addition to the other generative qualities.

I love his metaphor of the internet machine ("a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly"), and it's one worth keeping in mind if you think you're in the business of selling "content," because you are probably wrong.

Update: Jim Lichtenberg kindly reminded me he gave a presentation [PPT] on the same topic at the 2008 TOC Conference. Worth a read.

1. Many publishers have actually been doing the same thing for years with hardcover, trade, and mass-market editions of the exact same content at different prices.

2. This is why celebrity chefs aren't particularly worried that doing TV shows and selling cookbooks describing exactly how to make the food they serve in their restaurants will harm business.

3. There are people who do in fact want to pay someone to write content for them as a service. They're called publishers.

Tags: business drm economics free free content journalism media music news trent reznor

Ebook Piracy is Up Because Ebook Demand is Up

Andrew Savikas
May 12, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (8) | Listen

My email, twitter, and "real-world" information stream is abuzz today with references to a New York Times story about the increase in piracy of ebooks:

“It’s exponentially up,” said David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group, whose Little, Brown division publishes the “Twilight” series by Stephenie Meyer, a favorite among digital pirates. “Our legal department is spending an ever-increasing time policing sites where copyrighted material is being presented.”

John Wiley & Sons, a textbook publisher that also issues the “Dummies” series, employs three full-time staff members to trawl for unauthorized copies. Gary M. Rinck, general counsel, said that in the last month, the company had sent notices on more than 5,000 titles — five times more than a year ago — asking various sites to take down digital versions of Wiley’s books.

The reason there's an "exponential" increase in piracy of ebooks is because there's an exponential increase in demand for ebooks:

That's not a bad thing! It's an indicator of unmet demand (and in particular for non-DRM encrypted content). I know I have no interest in buying an ebook that's locked to a single vendor or device, and I'm sure many of these "pirates" feel the same. This is a good time to revisit Tim O'Reilly's seminal Piracy is Progressive Taxation, which includes the following lessons:

Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
Piracy is progressive taxation.
Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.
Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy.
File sharing networks don't threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers.
"Free" is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service.
"There's more than one way to do it."

I'm not suggesting publishers stop sending those DMCA notices; but 3 full-time staffers? Putting those resources toward building new ways to meet that demand is a much better investment.

Coincidentally, our research report Impact of P2P and Free Distribution on Book Sales is now available.

Tags: drm drm-free ebook formats online sales oreilly pricing tim o'reilly

Over 160 O'Reilly Books Now in Kindle Store (without DRM), More on the Way

Andrew Savikas
April 17, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (24) | Listen

I'm happy to announce that more than 160 O'Reilly books are now available on Kindle (both Kindle 1 and Kindle 2), and are being sold without any DRM (Digital Rights Management). Though we do offer more than 400 ebooks direct from our website, the number for sale on Kindle will be limited until Amazon updates Kindle 1 to support table rendering ("maybe this summer" is the most specific they would get). The text-to-speech feature of Kindle 2 does work with these books. A list of currently available titles is below.

There's a lot of overlap between the kind of early-adopter crowd likely to buy a Kindle and the audience for our books. So it's no surprise that we received a lot of requests to add O'Reilly books to the Kindle store, and it's great to finally be able to get those readers the books they want. We expect to add another 100 or so titles in the coming weeks; those have needed a more detailed analysis of the table content to identify good candidates.

There were two main reasons we held our books back from sale on Kindle:

Poor rendering of complex content. Kindle 1 was optimized for the simple text of mainstream trade books (think airport-bookstore fiction and non-fiction), and lacked support for properly displaying tables or computer code, two very common elements in O'Reilly books. We knew customers would be disappointed to find much of the content of our books unusable (and likely to complain to us about it, rather than to Amazon). In this case, Amazon actually agreed with us, and after they saw how those tables looked on a Kindle 1, told us they weren't comfortable selling many of our books until they've updated Kindle 1. (More details below the fold).
Compulsory DRM. We strongly believe DRM (Digital Rights Management) encryption adds unwelcome cost and complexity to any digital system, frustrates legitimate customers who respect copyright and want to pay for their content, and is demonstrably ineffective at preventing unauthorized copying -- much of it done by people who either (a.) wouldn't otherwise pay, or (b.) resort to piracy when there's no legitimate sales channel. Other publishers are free to make their own decisions on DRM, but Kindle's compulsory DRM was inconsistent with our views on digital distribution.

Although we've been working for some time with Amazon to resolve these issues, as a stop-gap we'd been directing Kindle owners to oreilly.com, where all of our "ebook bundles" include a Kindle-compatible .mobi version that can be uploaded or emailed to your Kindle. While the table and code issues remained, readers at least had the other, richer formats (EPUB and PDF) for reference. We've now updated all of the .mobi files for sale at oreilly.com to display properly on Kindle 2 (basically undoing many of the hacks we'd done to get something passable the first time around). If you own a Kindle and have purchased ebooks from oreilly.com, visit oreilly.com/e from the Kindle browser to download the updated .mobi files directly to your Kindle. While we will also update our ebooks with Amazon as changes are made and errors fixed, they currently have no way of updating that content for customers who already purchased it.

While the rendering in Kindle 2 still leaves a bit to be desired, we felt it was an acceptable baseline, and look forward to continuing to work with them to improve the display of technical content on Kindle. (Ironically, the Kindle 2 web browser displays complex content like tables and code quite well -- check out the Bookworm mobile version if you have a Kindle.)

Our thanks do go to Amazon for working with us on this. They're a favorite target of criticism (often right here, and often for good reason), but this is a good step and they do deserve some kudos. While we'd prefer that Amazon directly supported the open EPUB standard, this is real progress in giving readers easy access to digital books without locking them in to a single vendor.

If you want to tell Amazon to hurry up and update your Kindle 1, or to improve their rendering of technical content to match Sony Reader, Stanza, Bookworm, Calibre, and others, you can drop them a line at kindle-feedback@amazon.com.

Current Available Titles

(As of April 16, 2009)

The Tables problem

Here's some screenshots showing the table problem:

How Kindle 1 (mis)handles tables:

The same table on Kindle 2:

Tags: drm drm-free ebooks epub kindle kindle 2 mobi mobipocket o'reilly o'reilly ebooks

At TOC: Cory Doctorow to Publishers: Demand Option To Not Use DRM

Andrew Savikas
February 10, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (6) | Listen

I knew Cory Doctorow would be a great wrap up to the first day morning keynotes at TOC, and he more than delivered.

He ended the keynote with a challenge to publishers: withhold digital content from any device or service that doesn't give you the option to exclude DRM. (For example, right now publishers cannot sell books on the Kindle or audio books on Audible without DRM.) He's proposing "Doctorow's Law" which I'm paraphrasing here from memory:

If someone takes something that belongs to you, and puts a lock on it that you don't have a key for, that lock isn't in your best interests.

We couldn't agree more, and it's a big reason we sell all of our ebooks (now more than 400) without DRM (and with a Kindle-compatible format that can be added manually to a Kindle), and why we don't enable DRM in our iPhone Apps either. I agree with Cory, and strongly encourage publishers to not use DRM at all for their digital content, but at a minimum, it should at least be a choice for a publisher to make.

Tags: drm ebooks economics

Amazon Dropping Non-Amazon Ebook Formats (Sort of)

Andrew Savikas
January 27, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (12) | Listen

Via Publishers Weekly, Amazon announced Monday it will stop offering ebooks in formats other than Kindle and Mobipocket:

In the future, the online retailer says it plans to offer only e-books in the Kindle format (for wireless download to its Kindle reading device) and the Mobipocket format, both of which are owned by Amazon.

A contact at Amazon has clarified that apparently this change only applies to the Kindle:

This does not apply to eDocs because they are not DRM-protected. This only applies to DRM-protected eBooks.

A follow-up question about Kindle support of EPUB resulted in a polite but firm redirect to "the Kindle team."

I know Amazon is a big company, and I know all too well how difficult intra-office communication can be even at a much smaller company like O'Reilly, but with Amazon in particular it's really easy to get the sense that the left hand has very little idea what the right hand is doing (or perhaps "third left tentacle doesn't know what the right tentacle is doing" is more appropriate).

Tags: amazon drm ebooks edocs epub formats kindle mobi pdf

Palm's webOS Represents Major Shift for Syncing and Data

Peter Brantley
January 12, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

In an article covering the Palm Pre mobile device, Ars Technica makes a very important point about how devices utilize network connectivity, and what the assumptions are underlying their models of data storage and access:

Users just make changes to their data (contacts, calendar, mail, etc.), and Palm's webOS handles committing those changes to whatever canonical data source it is accessing in the cloud. And herein lies the most important difference between the webOS and Apple's iPhone OS: the iPhone was originally designed under the assumption that the canonical source of a user's data (contacts, calendar, music, tasks, etc.) is a Mac. Palm's webOS, in contrast, presumes that cloud-based services are the canonical source for your data (with the possible exception of media, which we don't know about yet) ...

Palm's webOS does not presume any sort of tether at all. The company has totally ditched the idea that you will use this phone in conjunction with a specific "main PC" that contains the canonical, authoritative repository of your data. Instead, webOS draws seamlessly on a variety of data services--not data repositories, but cloud-based services that actively feed the device both data and critical context.

This is a deep, fundamental break with both the iPhone and previous, repository-based smartphone usage models, and it's important enough that other smartphones are bound to follow.

Tags: android cloud computing digital content drm iphone lock-in mobile mobile content palm proprietary sync webos

Point-Counterpoint: Digital Book DRM, the Least Worst Solution

Bill McCoy
November 24, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (30) | Listen

Last week my friend and International Digital Publishing Forum board colleague Peter Brantley, Executive Director for the Digital Library Federation, published a thoughtful article on TOC arguing that "digital book DRM is bad bad bad."

I rashly volunteered to offer a counterpoint. Now, let me say up front that I don't think ebook DRM is "good good good" any more than I think that of taxation, standing armies, or the proliferation of nuclear technology. But although one may dislike taxation, one may dislike even more the likely consequences of eliminating taxes (diminished schools, roads, law enforcement, ...). Peter's post focused on negative attributes of DRM in isolation. But to me, the important thing is to look at likely outcomes given various scenarios, and to consider what these outcomes would mean for the principal actors involved (authors, publishers, and readers). Not whether something is good or bad but whether it's better or worse than the likely alternative.

To me, it's pretty clear that the establishment by the industry of a broadly adopted cross-platform ebook DRM system should lead to a significantly better outcome for all concerned than if no such platform ends up getting established. "DRM" is a somewhat loaded term: to clarify, by "ebook DRM" I mean a relatively lightweight means of limiting and/or discouraging copying and use beyond publisher-permitted limits, intended more to "keep honest people honest" than to totally prevent copying. After all, a book can be scanned and digitized, or even re-keyed, with only a middling level of difficulty -- so aiming for "ironclad" DRM is not warranted, even if it were feasible.

Tags: authors books digital rights management drm ebooks publishers readers

Point-Counterpoint: On Digital Book DRM

Peter Brantley
November 20, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (22) | Listen

There is increased interest among trade publishers in pursuing some sort of "interoperable digital rights management" (DRM) for digital ebooks. There are many unlikely allies, who think that achieving a little DRM encourages publishers to move into digital spheres, and gives them breathing room. I think this is a really bad idea, and I wanted to publicly detail a few reasons.

What I've compiled is largely a list of counter-arguments; there are many affirmative defenses for unencumbered content that could be promoted. I've also numbered these paragraphs; on re-reading, they more often than not meld and intertwine as a potlatch of thoughts, and have not taken to my weak organization very well.

In a separate post, my friend and colleague Bill McCoy from Adobe will attempt to establish his own conclusions about whether an ebook DRM standard is a useful compromise, or a fool's errand. (Note 11/24/08: Bill's post is now available here.)

Tags: digital rights management drm dvd ebooks google book search movies netflix publishing

Another Sci-Fi Publisher Opts Out of DRM

Peter Brantley
November 3, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Night Shade Books has joined Baen's WebScription service. It's interesting how sci-fi is one of the genres leading the way into DRM-free ebooks. From a Galley Cat:

"Baen has successfully led the industry into the future with its DRM-free electronic publishing program," said Night Shade editor-in-chief Jeremy Lassen in a press release announcing the move. "This canny insight into the e-book market is just one of the many reasons Night Shade has chosen to partner with Baen for the launch of its e-book line."

Tags: baen drm ebooks publishing scifi

The Analog Hole: Another Argument Against DRM

Liza Daly
October 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Listen

Digital rights management (DRM) might be unpopular with the public and plagued with social and technical challenges, but at least it's a guarantee that digital books can't be pirated — right?

Not so fast. Experienced computer crackers will find weaknesses in any encryption scheme, but regular folks with basic computer skills can exploit the one weakness found in all DRM'ed media: the analog hole.

What is the Analog Hole?

The "analog hole" reflects a basic principle of physics: before humans can consume any digital media, the ones and zeroes that computers understand must be converted into an analog format that our senses can perceive. For music, it's sound waves; for video and for digital books, it's patterns of light.

If you've ever visited a major metropolitan city you've probably seen the analog hole in action: street vendors selling pirated copies of popular movies, often months before they're officially released on DVD. Most of these are "cam" films, shot in real movie theaters using camcorders. Even without access to a physical copy of the film, pirates are able to capture its analog expression: the sound and pictures as perceived by a theater-goer.

In music, the analog hole is often used to get around software preventing digital copying. A user simply plays the the desired song on their computer using the legal DRM-enabled software, and records the audio coming out of their computer. Now they have a copy of the sound recording, which can be re-imported into the computer and digitally-encoded, with the original DRM stripped out. (A similar principle is at work when DRM systems go defunct and users are told to pirate their own music, although the industry uses the euphemism "making a backup.")

Film and music companies are painfully aware of the analog hole and have taken steps to close it, either by monitoring patron behavior (as in movie theaters) or by petitioning to legally limit the recording features of consumer electronics.

Because reading is a visual experience, there is the possibility of an analog hole exploit. Unlike with camcorder copies or re-burned MP3s, there is a potential for no loss in quality. And with a little ingenuity, the process can be completely automatic.

One example: Ebooks and Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

Here's a sample digital book as displayed in Adobe Digital Editions. (This book is public domain and isn't technically covered by DRM, but the principle is exactly the same.)

I hid as much of the Digital Editions menus as I could and took a screenshot of this first page of Pride and Prejudice.

Next I downloaded some free optical character recognition (OCR) software. OCR programs can "read" images and output the words in them as plain text. It's a normal part of digitization projects, in which archival printed material is first scanned and its text is automatically extracted. At the consumer level, OCR software is often bundled with commercial scanners and fax machines.

I took my screenshot and fed it to the OCR software. Here's what I got without any special fine-tuning or spell-checking. Note that all typos are from the OCR software.

Chapter 1
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession ofa large fortune must be in want of a wife, However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.
"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?"
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.

...and on through the entire first page. This output was in HTML, ready to be posted to the Web for anyone to read.

The OCR isn't 100 percent accurate, of course, but neither are the widely-available pirated ebooks created by laborious scanning of physical books, page after page. I was also using free software that requires careful fine-tuning to get working optimally; commercial OCR software is much better, especially when combined with spell-checking.

It wouldn't be difficult to automate the process of advancing one page in Digital Editions, taking a screenshot, and passing that on to my OCR software. Once the workflow was in place, I could strip hundreds or thousands of books of their DRM in a matter of minutes.

Another Possibility: Speech Recognition

My local library is kind enough to allow me to check out digital audiobooks. Naturally they're also secured with DRM (so much so that I can't actually play them, as they require Windows Media Player and I have only Mac and Linux computers). But assuming I could play them, I'd have available to me a nice stream of professionally-produced audio.

You're using speech recognition software every time you call a customer service line and an automated voice prompts you to speak your credit card number. If that's happened to you, you also know that speech recognition isn't 100 percent accurate yet, but under certain conditions it can be quite good. Automatic speech-to-text transcription isn't nearly as far along as optical character recognition, but it's another analog hole exploit that will eventually become trivial to perform.

Does This Mean Publishers Shouldn't Produce Ebooks or Audiobooks?

No! What I hope to convey is that DRM is not a true safeguard against ebook piracy. (It is, however, a known deterrent to ebook adoption.) I've heard a lot of passing the buck on DRM: publishers claim authors want it, booksellers claim publishers insist on it. These days it's hard to find someone to publicly state that they're actually for it.

I think of DRM like this: years ago my apartment was broken into and I called a locksmith to replace the door. My landlord had authorized me to get "the best lock possible," and the locksmith obliged with a four-foot steel bolt. It was almost too heavy to turn but made a very satisfying noise when it snapped shut.

I asked the locksmith, "Is this really unbreakable?"

"The lock is, sure." He slapped the door frame. "But this is made out of wood. If I really wanted to get in I'd just kick out the door. That's why I'm honest about what I sell." When I looked puzzled he handed me his business card. It contained his name, phone number, and company slogan: "A feeling of security."

Authors and publishers should be compensated for their talent and their hard work, and the desire for DRM is understandable. Book lovers, too, want their favorite authors to succeed. But digital books are a form of technology as much as they are literature, and technologies that are successful adapt to people's needs. Is just a "feeling" of security worth the ire of good customers who want to read their books wherever and however they like?

Tags: analog hole digital books digital rights management drm ebooks ocr piracy scanning

TOC Recommended Reading

Mac Slocum
October 2, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

The Live Web (Doc Searls, Doc Searls Weblog)

The Web isn't just real estate. It's a habitat, an environment, an ever-increasingly-connected place where fecundity rules, vivifying business, culture and everything else that thrives there. It is alive.

Putting the "book" back in Facebook (Dan Piepenbring, if:book)

Despite the presence of "book" in its title, few critics to my knowledge have construed Facebook as the ultimate electronic yearbook. They focus instead on its broader "social network" applications. That's all well and good, but what is Facebook if not the quintessential model of an electronic book done right? Like its conventional print brethren, Facebook chronicles the lives of a certain network's members. It's teeming with photos and groups; its wall posts are the digital equivalent of those slangy well-wishes from your friends and acquaintances (and maybe a stranger or two).

The Origin Of The CD-Keys, Part Three (Daniel James, Penny Arcade)

Nobody added your business to the list of protected species, despite what your lobbyists and lawyers say. Find a business model that's actually appropriate to the 21st century, and perhaps scale back your expectations of vast profits accordingly (oh, and fire some lawyers and lobbyists, too, please).

Tags: drm facebook live web publishing recommended reading yearbook

"Spore" Backlash: Is DRM Officially Bad for Business?

Mac Slocum
September 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (2) | Listen

Update 9/24/08 - Responding to consumer complaints, Electronic Arts has relaxed the digital rights management restrictions on "Spore."

If the backlash to Electronic Arts' new game "Spore" serves as a sign of things to come, strict digital rights management (DRM) restrictions are transforming from consumer annoyances into full-fledged business mistakes. From Forbes:

In just the 24-hour period between Wednesday [9/10] and Thursday [9/11], illegal downloaders snagged more than 35,000 copies, and, as of Thursday evening, that rate of downloads was still accelerating. "The numbers are extraordinary," [Eric] Garland [CEO of Big Champagne] says. "This is a very high level of torrent activity even for an immensely popular game title."

Electronic Arts had hoped to limit users to installing the game only three times through its use of digital rights management software, or DRM. But not only have those constraints failed, says Garland, they may have inadvertently spurred the pirates on.

On Amazon, "Spore's" one-star customer rating is driven by anti-DRM sentiment rather than analysis of the game itself. It's likely only a small percentage of "Spore's" potential customer base knows or cares about DRM, but Amazon's star-system shorthand makes no distinction between reviewers passing judgement on the game and those engaging in DRM activism. Deserved or not, a one-star rating averaged from thousands of reviews is the very definition of caveat emptor, particularly for casual shoppers who encounter "Spore's" listing down the road.

The combination of "Spore's" long history on the gaming world's radar and the publicity push surrounding its release will undoubtedly lead to good sales in the early going (anecdotal evidence suggests this is already the case). But "Spore" is one of those hyper-immersive games that's shaped by its users, and this DRM flap may ultimately limit adoption and future product opportunities.

Tags: community digital rights management drm spore video games

EFF Looks at the Big Questions Surrounding Digital Books

Peter Brantley
August 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

At the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a post on what the future of digital books portends for pubishers and consumers:

Skeptics should remember that it wasn't long ago that many predicted that CDs would never replace vinyl, and later that MP3s would never replace CDs. You can still find great record stores that specialize in vinyl, but the trend towards digital music has been steady and unstoppable. And the music industry has paid a huge price for their failure to embrace the new technology. After first ignoring new technologies, they then proceeded to try to sue innovators, restrict users with DRM copy protection and then punish fans with indiscriminate lawsuits, none of which did a thing to stop online sharing of music. Sales are down, illegal filesharing is up, and no one has found a way to unite the industry around monetizing the sharing of digital music (though EFF has suggested a Better Way Forward).

Will the same thing happen to the publishing industry as books become digital? If the trend continues, with better devices promising longer battery life and better screen resolution, digital books will become a force to be reckoned with. Are we doomed to watch the publishing industry run through the same gamut of bad decisions that have plagued the recording industry for the last few years?

Tags: digital books drm ebooks eff law

Pirates Convince Game Developer to Drop DRM

Mac Slocum
August 14, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

"Why do people pirate my games?"

Game developer Cliff Harris recently posed this question on his blog and the onslaught of responses caught him (and his blog host) by surprise. Harris offers some interesting conclusions, but most notable is this passage on digital rights management (DRM):

People don't like DRM, we knew that, but the extent to which DRM is turning away people who have no other complaints is possibly misunderstood. If you wanted to change ONE thing to get more pirates to buy games, scrapping DRM is it. These gamers are the low hanging fruit of this whole debate.

Harris says his company will no longer use DRM on its games.

Tags: digital content drm drm-free games piracy

Rhapsody Courts Apple Crowd with DRM-Free MP3s

Mac Slocum
June 30, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Rhapsody, a digital music subscription service, is now offering MP3 downloads with no digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.

Rhapsody's subscription service remains under digital rights protection, but Reuters says the company is looking to expand its reach into the Apple-dominated music sector by making its downloads compatible with iPods.

Amazon, Wal-Mart and Napster also offer DRM-free MP3 downloads, but to date no company has challenged Apple's iPod/iTunes model. An industry analyst offers Reuters one potential explanation for Apple's dominance, and it has nothing to do with DRM:

[Apple's] success has been due partly to a seamless interface between iTunes and the iPod and because it provides a good user experience, said analyst David Card of Jupiter Research.

(Via New York Post)

Tags: apple digital platform digital rights management digitial music drm itunes music

Treating Ebooks Like Software

Mac Slocum
June 5, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3) | Listen

Peter Kent, DNAML's senior vice president for U.S. operations, brings a software-centric perspective to ebooks. In the following Q&A, Kent discusses the merits of in-book transactions, affiliate marketing, and other digital initiatives that can benefit book publishers.

Q: In your presentation at last month's IDPF Digital Book '08 you discussed treating ebooks like software. Do you feel the software model is directly related to ebooks, or are there specific aspects of the software model ("try before you buy" trialware, download ebooks through multiple outlets, etc.) that are more in line with ebook/publishing goals?

Not sure of the distinction you're making here. I think that there's much about software distribution that applies to ebooks, and why not? Ebooks are, of course, pieces of software. In particular, providing ebooks in a trialware format makes a lot of sense, and is a proven model. That's why Amazon let's people view a portion of a book, that's why Barnes & Noble likes having people in their stores hanging out reading. And of course, download through multiple outlets makes a lot of sense, too. Why wouldn't you distribute your products as widely as possible? If trialware works -- and it does -- then you naturally want as many people as possible to get the books in their hands. The large, established publishers are going to have a shock when they see the new book-distribution world. It's no longer a gentleman's game in which everyone hands over their books to a bookstore, and then they all compete on the same level. In the future the more aggressive publishers are going to go out and find book buyers even before the buyers have thought about buying!

Q: Do publishers focus too much on the "book" aspect of ebooks? Would a shift toward a file/software perspective open things up?

Some do. The more advanced publishers understand what's going on, but I do think there's still a bias toward the old method of distributing books: give your books to a retailer who puts the books on shelves. Certainly up until recently most publishers have had the idea in their mind that in order to sell ebooks they have to create the ebooks and then give them to Amazon and other retailers to sell. Little thought has gone into new methods of distribution. What may save the publishers is that new distributors will come on the scene: distributors who understand the new landscape and go out and push the books.

Q: Are ebooks available through sites like Download.com, Tucows.com and other software-specific hubs? If not, should they be?

You can already find ebooks in many software download sites, though most do not yet have specific ebook categories. ZDNet's download site doesn't have an ebook category, for instance, though it does have an ebook "tag." Download.com has a music category and a games category, why wouldn't they have a book category? Of course they will eventually, as more and more books become available. But one thing holding back the creation of ebook categories is that only free books, or trialware books, will fit. Once books from major publishers are commonly sold as trialware, you'll see the download sites pay more attention.

Q: What about ebook availability through P2P sites/mechanisms, such as BitTorrent?

Trialware books are perfect for this form of distribution.

Q: In your conversations with publishers and others in the industry, do you feel most people understand the basics of internal ebook transactions and affiliate tagging? How do you describe these concepts to newcomers?

Most publishers haven't the slightest idea about this. When I ask publishers "do you know what affiliate marketing is?" I typically get a response such as "um, well ...". So if they don't understand what affiliate marketing is, they certainly don't understand affiliate tagging. This isn't true of all publishers; Harlequin, for instance, is really good at online marketing, and certainly understands affiliate-marketing well.

So, how do I explain these things? Well, by internal transactions, I mean that each ebook is its own shopping-cart system. You reach a point inside the book that you cannot get past without paying. You enter your credit card information into the book itself (though the actual form is retrieved from a server so, for instance, the book price can be changed at any time), and when you submit your card and it's approved, the server automatically unlocks the book, so you can continue reading.

As for affiliate tagging, this is the ability to add a code to each book you distribute -- one code for each specific distribution channel -- so the publisher or distributor knows where that book came from. If you distribute through Web Site A, 10,000 people download the book, and 500 buy it, you know that those 500 people came from Web Site A. If you put the book in a magazine insert, 100,000 people buy the magazine, 10,000 copy the book to their computers, and 500 buy it, then you know that those 500 customers came from that particular magazine insert. Thus you can pay the right company the required affiliate commissions.

So these two components, along with the ability to partially lock a book, allow you to create trialware books -- try-before-you-buy books -- that can be distributed widely, through many different channels.

Q: Is there an opportunity for competing publishers to generate affiliate revenue by selling other publishers' books?

Absolutely! Books can be bundled within books -- certainly our DNL format allows this -- so a publisher might bundle several locked books at the end of the book. Those books might belong to the publisher or, in appropriate cases, from another publisher. In particular, of course, small publishers could benefit from these sorts of relationships with other publishers.

Q: What is the upside of "try before you buy" in ebooks?

A try-before-you-buy book with built-in transaction processing, and built-in affiliate tagging, opens up a whole new world of distribution options. All of a sudden, the book can go anywhere. Sell computer books? Talk with computer manufacturers about putting your books on the desktop of every new computer sold, and talk to software manufacturers about bundling the books in their software downloads. Sell photography books? Put them on the software CDs inside digital-camera packaging. Sell wine books? Give away try-before-you-buy books on wine Web sites. Science fiction novels? Give books away on fan sites. Those three things -- try-before-you-buy, internal transaction processing, and affiliate tagging -- free books from ecommerce Web sites, and provide almost limitless marketing opportunities.

Q: What viral/social aspects does your company include in ebooks? (Email to a friend, etc.)

We include Email-to-a-Friend, of course. If you try a book, like it, and buy it, that book is now unlocked. But if you email it to a friend or colleague, when it lands on the recipient's computer it's now locked. Word of mouth is hugely important in book sales; it always has been. Email-to-a-Friend is essentially a modern-day word-of-mouth feature. We also allow people to share notes. Members of a book club could highlight areas of the books, add notes, then email the highlights and notes to each other. Members can import these things, and see who said what based on the name at the top of the notes.

Q: Are ebook giveaways useful?

Of course. Companies such as Harlequin use giveaways to build interest. I think, though, that these giveaways will get more sophisticated, as publishers learn more about try-before-you-buy books. For instance, if you're giving away a book, you're hoping that the reader will come to your site and buy another one at some point. But why not create a giveaway book, a single file, that includes a book for sale at the end of the free book? Or several books from which the reader can choose?

Q: Do you recommend user tracking and registration? How in-depth should this tracking/registration be?

Of course you want as much information as possible; we're in business, after all, so we need to create relationships with buyers. Amazon does this. I like to point out to publishers that someone owns the relationship, it's just not them. If you sell photography books and someone buys one of your books through Amazon today, tomorrow Amazon will start promoting other photography books to this buyer. Some of these books will be yours, perhaps, but most won't! So Amazon's tracking, and Amazon's benefiting. Publishers are going to learn to do the same for themselves, and some already are.

Tags: analytics digital drm ebooks experimentation free software trialware

Author Notes Risks and Opportunities in Free Ebooks

Mac Slocum
May 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1) | Listen

O'Reilly author and New York Times columnist David Pogue points the way to an April post from author Steven Poole that offers an interesting look at the arguments and counter-arguments surrounding free digital books.

Last year, Poole ran his own experiment with free PDFs of his book Trigger Happy. The result: it was a "pretty good publicity stunt," but it didn't yield any notable revenue.

Although I didn't do it for the money, I was also, of course, interested in testing the idea of giving stuff away and allowing people freely to express their appreciation. So I put a PayPal button below the download. Is this, as some people say, an exciting new internet-age business model for writers and other creative types? Er, not really. The proportion of people who left a tip after downloading Trigger Happy was 1 in 1,750, or 0.057%.

Despite meager returns, Poole says the current separation between electronic and print books makes the free digital avenue wortwhile:

... the happy truth is that right now, electronic downloads don't cannibalize printed sales; if anything, they encourage them. In fact, I would gladly give away my newer book, Unspeak, in the same format right now, except that I am contractually obliged to wait until next year to do so.

But -- and this is a big but -- Poole says if/when digital delivery overtakes print as the dominant delivery mechanism, the upside of free drops precipitously:

Giving away your work in the same format in which you hope to sell it is a dangerous game, if that's how you hope to make a living.

Poole's points on both sides of the debate are well put. This is a daunting and exciting time for content creators. It's an odd period that's marked by legitmate revenue concerns as well as new opportunities to build a following. Poole's post does a nice job capturing these dueling perspectives; the entire piece is worth a read.

UPDATE: Mike Masnick at TechDirt has posted a detailed rebuttal to Pogue (and Poole) on the subject:

Just because "give it away and pray" isn't a workable business model, that doesn't mean that there aren't business models that do work. Hopefully, Poole and Pogue will eventually recognize that they're dismissing the wrong thing. They shouldn't be complaining about free (or making misleading accusations about those who simply recognize the economic forces at work) -- they should be complaining about a failure to put in place a real business model to take advantage of what will be free.

Tags: authoring authors drm ebooks free piracy revenue

News Roundup: Google Mobile App Taps Amazon for Data, Orphan Works and Copyright Confusion, Arguing Against "Freemium," Digital Marketing Examples for Publishers, DRM on Comeback Trail?

Mac Slocum
May 16, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

A Google-Amazon Mobile Application

Android Scan, one of the winners from the Google Android Developer Challenge, uses cell phone cameras and barcode recognition to tap into Amazon's review database. (Continue reading)

Orphan Works Legislation and Copyright Conundrums

Kenny Crews at Collectanea says the orphan works bills in the House and Senate impose hurdles for scholarly/research/casual uses. Crews offers a real but slightly absurd example to illustrate the point. (Continue reading)

An Argument Against "Freemium" Content

The "pay to remove ads" model -- also known as "freemium" -- is inherently flawed, argues Andrew Parker:

Why? Because the people in your audience with disposable income who are willing to pay for web services are the same ones that will self-select out of your audience for your ads. So, all that remains in your audience are people that are too cheap to opt out. That doesn’t sound like the audience that Disney (DIS), Coca Cola (CKE), or even your average direct response advertiser wants to reach.

A Comeback for DRM?

Digital rights management (DRM) discussions abated in recent months as some companies gravitated toward DRM-free formats, but the calm came to an abrupt end recently when David Hughes from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) predicted a comeback for DRM. From News.com:

"I think there is going to be a shift," Hughes said during the Digital Hollywood conference. "I think there will be a movement towards subscription services, and (that) will eventually mean the return of DRM." (Continue reading)

A Look at Book Publishing's Opportunities in Digital Marketing

Richard Bawden and Mark Harding from KPMG discuss future scenarios for book marketing and product enhancement:

With virtual worlds like Second Life and social networking destined to splinter into hubs focused on shared interests, publishers and retailers are in a strong position to leverage people's love of books ... Publishers must also consider how books on screen can enhance the reading experience, with sound and vision adding extra dimensions. Think of the crunch that the snow could make as Lucy walks through the wardrobe and enters Narnia for the first time, offering extra sensory pleasure to younger readers. (Continue reading)

Tags: amazon copyright digital marketing drm free freemium google legislation mobile

A Comeback for DRM?

Mac Slocum
May 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Digital rights management (DRM) discussions abated in recent months as some companies gravitated toward DRM-free formats, but the calm came to an abrupt end yesterday when David Hughes from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) predicted a comeback for DRM. From News.com:

"I think there is going to be a shift," Hughes said during the Digital Hollywood conference. "I think there will be a movement towards subscription services, and (that) will eventually mean the return of DRM."

Rebuttals have been passionate and pointed.

Hughes also blended argument and counter argument, defending DRM while echoing the rallying cry of anti-DRM advocates:

"People just want music when they want it," Hughes said. "It's about access. If they get that then they don't care about DRM."

In a broad analysis, Ars Technica discusses the discrepancy between Hughes' "access" comment and current DRM realities:

The problem with DRM is that users can't use the files how they want, which is why they do care. And we're miles away from the kind of magical solution envisioned by Hughes that would create the perfect, unnoticeable DRM scheme. [Emphasis from original post]

(Via Techdirt)

Tags: drm file sharing open access piracy riaa

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