Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Notes From a Revolution


So I decided, if I'm going to be selling these ebooks, I really should have an ereader.

At the time, the only ereader available in New Zealand was the Kobo. I bought one, and I was delighted.

The Kobo came with 100 books loaded, free-domain classics. More were available through Whitcoulls's website, the Kobo site itself in Canada, or pretty much anywhere else books were sold in .epub or .pdf format.

I made a few quick purchases, loaded that puppy up through the USB cable and I was off and running. The Kobo only has one control-- a soft blue square that lets you toggle directions and middle-click. It's your book-selector, your page-turner, your menu-caller-upper. With the Kobo, your right thumb does it all...

Fast-forward a month, and Amazon's Kindle is available here. Naturally, I ordered one of those too! And just as naturally, I began to compare:

The Kindle boots a little faster than the Kobo, and it lets me turn pages with either hand. Ebooks are easier to find for the Kindle (Amazon seems to have pretty much everything)-- I had to do a bit of hunting to find titles in .epub for the Kobo. On the other hand, the library on the Kobo is easier to navigate, and there's less chance of accidentally turning twenty or thirty pages because you stuck it in your pocket or set a bowl of peanuts down on the button. Overall, I kept the Kindle, though I do still miss the Kobo.

Now, the Revolution:

First thing I noticed was that my ereader was doing to my bookshelf what my iPod did for my CD rack. It only took a couple of days to go from the 'shock of the new' to regarding my books as heavy, clumsy, unwieldy antiques. Only the best-printed pages matched my ebook, and even then the font size simply refused to change. Mostly, my paperbacks and softcovers are brownish paper and grayish print, and even my new James Lee Burke featured paper so thin I could read the back of each page through the one I was looking at.

An ereader is also portable. Wildly, madly, beautifully portable. I can set it on the table or balance it on my knee while I eat, lay it on the counter while I cook, even set it on that shelf at the back of my shower so that I can read while I wash. (Yes, I'm an addict. And these gadgets are the Cadillac of crack-pipes!)

And when I read in bed, one arm out above the covers? Well, no more thumb-and-pinky page spreading, no more laying the book on my chest to turn the pages with my thumb. Just click. Click. Click. Page after page after delightful page...

That's the good. Now, the bad...

DRM: *Fuck* DRM. I want to be diplomatic, but this blog isn't titled 'Moderate Speeds and Caution'. Basically, the idea that I can't read a book and enjoy it enough to pass along to friend strikes me as bullshit.

Think about your favorite authors and how you found them. That second-hand bookstore or garage sale, that battered paperback left with the magazines in a coffee shop, that book a friend passed you after she finished it, telling you how great it was. Those 'pirate' (in the sense the publisher didn't get paid for my reading it) books led me to 'real' purchases. Often several times over, as I passed my favorites on and replaced them, passed them on and replaced them. None of that is possible with copy-protected ebooks, and if you ask me, it's a fine example of publishers stabbing themselves in the eye. An artist's greatest enemy isn't piracy, it's obscurity.

The corporations pushing for DRM say they're protecting the rights of artists, but the fact is they don't mind costing an author a sale as long as it keeps them from losing a dollar. And yeah, there's a very special mindset out there that thinks of second-hand sales as a form of theft. Public libraries must make these folks foam at the mouth.

Formats: As I mentioned earlier, finding .epubs wasn't always the easiest thing. And buying them online was often like pulling teeth. Amazon's got it all over their competition in that regard. Fortunately, there's a free program called Calibre that converts between formats with no trouble. Look into it.

Geography: Now, this is another rant at the asinine behavior of major publishers. (I can almost hear the print deals being taken off the table now) Why is it that I can buy a paperback by, say, Duane Swierczynski from Amazon and they'll mail it right out to my house, but if I try to download THE SAME BOOK they give me a song and dance about how it's only available in North America?

Is the publisher going to get paid? Yes. Will they get paid MORE for the ebook? Yes. Is there any compelling reason for me to wait for an Australasian version of the ebook to come out? No. So why the fuck are they dicking me around? I don't know.

Writers, let me ask you this: How many readers would you not have today if no one could ever lend your books out, or give them to friends when they were finished? And how many sales would have been lost if you had to wait for your publisher to sell foreign rights before an overseas customer could read your book?

There's a revolution underfoot, and the old tyrants are trying to use it as an opportunity to tighten the noose...

11 comments:

Sidney said...

We're in a new world. Have you heard of Stanza? I think it's actually owned by Amazon now, but it will help you get almost any kind of e-text ready for just about any format. It's pretty handy and user friendly.

Charles Gramlich said...

I think they're gonna have to loosen up on that "only once it's in an Australian" form thing. As for the lending of books. Yes indeed, I found many of my favorites through "borrowing" in the early days. L'Amour and MacDonald for example.

Steve Malley said...

Sidney, I hadn't. when I went a-googling for solutions, Caliber was the first I found. Thanks, though! :)

Charles, I just hope the publishers show more sense than the record companies did. SO far, I'm not heartened.

Still, I do loves me some ebooks! :-D

cs harris said...

Interesting, Steve. More and more people I know are getting e-readers. I'm tempted simply so that I could download old 19th century research books available now online. And it would be really nice not to have my house filled by my spouse's endless purchases.

I'd never thought about the foreign sales/ebook thing or seen it addressed. Huh. A good reason to just go ahead and sell World English rights.

As for used copies... Well, I think it was great when it was just friends passing along books they liked to friends or your daggy little neighborhood used bookstore. But when Amazon started selling used books, EVERYONE's print runs tanked. Now we have El Libris, Bookmouch, etc, The publishing industry is still suffering from the damage inflicted by online used bookstores. So yeah, I like the fact ebooks can't be passed on. If a reader likes a book, they can still tell a friend about it.

Steve Malley said...

Hi Candy! You've got a good point about the scale of used trading going on now. Or, for that matter, the discount-dumping of remaindered books.

I guess I wouldn't mind DRM too much if it worked liked iTunes, where you can install the file on up to five devices. That would allow some passing around for those of us honest souls.

Because one thing about ebooks: it's dead easy to strip their copy-protection. A quick google search for a conversion program also threw up several DRM-strippers. I kinda think publishing is now in the same boat with music...

Erik Donald France said...

In libraries we're also trying to figure out how to lend out ebooks as freely as possible~ it's kind of strange, given that theoretically we could "lend" them indefinitely, but still treat them as physical 3D books.

Rick said...

I've never published in an eBook format, but after reading this post and the comments, I'm going to get moving in that direction. Print may be still standing, but not for long.

Shauna Roberts said...

I discovered many authors by having friends lend books to me. And I've lent books to friends many times in hopes they would become a fan of the author's as well. They need to work out some way to do this with ebooks.

Another annoying feature of Kindle: I downloaded the free Kindle reader for Macs so that I could read my Kindle books on the computer screen if for some reason I wanted to. However, the Kindle reader will only read books I have bought at Amazon, and even then I have to redownload them to the Kindle reader. I have gotten Kindle-compatible books other places beside Amazon, and there is no way to read those on the free Kindle reader. WTF?

Lana Gramlich said...

I'm glad you're enjoying the e-readers. Sorry for the BS trouble, though. I hear you, totally. We're supposed to live in this infinitely small, plugged-in world, but NOT if you're from here or there. Puh-LEEZE!

Steve Malley said...

Erik, librarians here wear a look of vague panic when I show them my Kindle. No idea why.

Shauna, I've made my Kindle offerings DRM-free. Folks can copy them as often as they like, to as many devices as they like. And I believe the more that you folks give away, the more readers will come back to me. :)

Lana, I can't believe how lame it is. I can import the hardback, paperback or audio book no problem, but I can't download the ebook. It's not that big a deal to work around, but dammit, I shouldn't have to cheat the system to read!

Steve Malley said...

ANd apologies, my friends: For some reason those comments got stuck in blogger, 'awaiting moderation'...