ebooks and DRM

TRX
April 15, 2012
148:
> Imagine, in a fit of not-being-dicks,
> that the big publishers got rid of
> DRM tomorrow. What changes?

Pretty much nothing, I expect.

*Most* of the casual readers I personally know buy a new book, read it, and then give it away or toss it in the trash. Reading the same book twice isn't on their radar. (and a majority of those people only read new books; they wouldn't touch a used book with a stick)

If their locked-in reader device stops working, all they've lost is the book they are reading at the time.

If you both read books more than once *and* keep more than a handful of books, you're out there on the edge of the demographic curve with people who talk to giant invisible rabbits.

TRX
April 15, 2012
162:
> You suggest that the book start off
> ata high price, and then drop.
> Consider the options for the reverse
> to happen, and what it would mean in
> the sales model

"If you want it, you pay the price?"

The only hardbacks I buy are engineering or other reference works, and since I've found quotes in later works often seriously misrepresent information in earlier works, I buy a lot of out of print or antique books. Once anyone slaps the word "collectible" on something, the price jumps substantially.

TRX
April 15, 2012
164:
@88:
> I have read many descriptions of this phenomenon, but are there actual, documented cases of this happening on a wide-scale? Or even an individual scale?
--
[waves hand] Over heeere!

TRX
April 15, 2012
170:
> And if authors aren't being paid,
> then the quality of writing across
> the board will fall.

...and your point is? It's all "product" to the publishers, and the content between the covers is almost irrelevant. The important part is the cover art and blurbs that persuade you to buy the book; once the cash register rings, game over. If you liked it, you *might* buy another book by the same author, but that's nothing compared to the initial sale.

As for stuff to put between the covers, there are plenty of people out there who would be delighted to be a "real published author" for $100 and a box of author copies.

[cynicism mode only slightly turned up from default]

TRX
April 16, 2012
331:
> You need to be able to hit a button
> and have all the Kindle books on your
> Amazon account appear in your Google
> account.

How are they going to do that? Bear in mind there's no wifi here, and even if I was inclined to pay for some kind of cellular-data service for a phone/pad thing, I regularly travel to places where there's no cellular (or dialup) phone service. And those are the places I'd most want to bring a reader device to.

Considering how few bookstores there are to serve the population, I'm guessing the vendors' attitude would be "F you, we have enough customers in urban areas, we don't need you."

TRX
April 16, 2012
336:
> Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff
> Bezos. And today it's the world's
> largest online retailer.

You know, looking through this thread, I realized Amazon reminds me a lot of another company - Sears, Roebuck & Co.

Back in the late 1800s, Sears offered something nobody else (in the USA, at least) was doing - a printed catalog where you could browse tens of thousands of items, from light aircraft and prebuilt homes to buttons and tableware. Just flip through the catalog and write your selections on one of the tear-out order forms, drop it in the mail, and you didn't even have to hitch up the horses and drive them to town.

Basically, the same thing Amazon is offering - a comprehensive catalog, fast (for the day) service, and things you probably couldn't buy locally, delivered right to your door.

Sears ran atop the US Postal Service - catalogs went out that way, orders came in that way, and orders were delivered that way. Amazon runs atop the internet and still uses the USPS for some of its shipping; at least, that's how some Amazon orders have shown up at my door.

Sears had a hammerlock on retail sales for generations. It finally ran head-on into something new - the local department store. Plus some suicidal mismanagement, of course. And now the wheel has turned again.

Looking further into the future, it's interesting to speculate what new thing might bring Amazon down.

TRX
April 16, 2012
338:
@336:
"local department store"

Make that, "local chain store."

TRX
April 17, 2012
425:
@396:
> Accelerando-style rating system

[Like] ?
[number of followers] ?
[tipjar hits] ?
[GBH threats per hour] ?

I don't remember Charlie putting much detail into that. It wouldn't be an easy system to design, because you'd be looking at multiple levels of metadata. Not just the ratings, but the people who make the ratings, and the ones who rate them, and little fleas to bite them, ad infinitum.

Remember, you'd have to figure out how to defend it all against people gaming the system, like the war between the search engines and the spam sites.

There was a considerably simpler system in Glasshouse, but that was more of a bludgeon than anything else.

The *intent* of a reputation system might be to establish a credibility rating for dealing with strangers, but in practice... consider, say, the Japanese Army schools of the 1920s and 1930s, or groups of fundamentalist Wahhabi, or neo-Nazi skinheads. There's a tendency of people online to cluster in little pockets where everyone thinks pretty much alike. When that happens, social pressures tend to urge conformity, often laced with extremism. No doubt Osama bin Laden's reputation rating would have been solid gold among his social group. Same with Jim Jones and his people in Jonestown, for that matter.