Fighting over books

I recently read Christopher Wright's take on Hachette v Amazon fight over ebook prices, and agree with just about everything he says (there are a few things I have no opinion on, because, for instance, I've never used, or even heard of, ClearSpace).

One thing that bothers me, though, is a qualification on his central thesis (emphasis his):

For those of you unwilling to go through 18 years of comic archives, here’s the short version: every company in the computer industry behaves like a sociopath. They will do good things for you for as long as there’s profit in it, but as soon as it reaches the point where they don’t have to, they immediately flip to abusing you, relentlessly, all the while telling you there’s nothing they can do about it, and it’s probably all your fault.

The qualifier is "in the computer industry". It's all companies (or at least all publicly-traded ones). Take a look, in particular, at the telecomm industry, for some other examples. Or the insurance industry, particularly before the ACA forced them to clean up a few of the more egregiously sociopathic behaviors they exhibited (not to get too sidelined, but while I don't think the ACA is great, it's an important step in the right direction). Or the banking industry, with how they tried to crash the entire global economy. It's a widespread problem, and the DoJ antitrust division should be doing more about it. And that definitely fills in my opinion on AT&T trying to buy DirectTV and Comcast buying Time-Warner Cable.

Anyway, to get back to the specifics, Amazon's monopoly-seeking practices are why I thought the DoJ was completely barking up the wrong tree in going after Apple under anti-trust law for its Most Favored Nation (MFN) contractual requirements.

And why I refuse to buy non-free Kindle books; they're not only proprietary formats, but also protected by DRM. Those are both monopolistic practices that I refuse to endorse. The DRM also means that you never actually own an e-book. Amazon can (and has, in at least two cases) revoked access to books that people had "bought".

Also, I have a small defense of Microsoft; their file formats were just straight memory dumps of what the program used. This made disk access very fast for reading and writing, but also made for a very f-ed up "file format". So the format changed whenever MS's internal data structures changed. So it wasn't always a matter of trying to throw off competitors. Maybe even never, although I'm disinclined to get MS the benefit of the doubt.

Amazon seeing if it's close enough to monopsony

I've read quite a bit about Amazon's recent (and ongoing) fight with book publisher Hachette, where they're trying to force Hachette to give them a better deal.

And apparently that's just a sign of things to come, because they're now working the same playbook (ie: screwing their customers) against Time-Warner.

If they're going to keep taking this kind of heavy-handed approach (and hosing their customers with lack of availability), that's not going to work out well for them.  And it's an odd thing for Amazon to do, as they're a remarkably customer-centric organization.  I guess we'll see.

Useful note

I just found out, a couple days ago, that amazon has another storefront, which gives 0.5% of purchases to the charity of your choice.  Very cool for helping whoever you like.

App store cut

The other detail I wanted to talk about, with respect to the ATP show, is the money going to the App Store.

I can see where John is coming from, as far as volume discounts are concerned.  And maybe that's a reasonable way to go.

I disagree a bit, though, insofar as I'm not at all sure Apple is making a mistake is drawing a line at "30% or bust".  I guess I'm mostly in agreement with Marco on that, and that it didn't matter to Amazon.

But the reason I wanted to comment is to note that this does present an interesting opportunity for Amazon.  Since Amazon never allowed in-app purchases of books on iPads (a reasonable position, coming from them, I think), they never had any idea of whether that was working out well for them.

But for comiXology, they've got historical data on purchasing, so they'll know whether it's worth keeping out in-app purchases there.  I'm wondering whether it'll be enough money that they'll re-enable it in the near future.

My bet is that it'll prevent new people coming into comiXology, and cut down the people still using it by a large percentage (basically to only those people doing, in effect, monthly subscriptions).

I guess we'll see.  I wish we'd be able to see the dollars change, but Amazon would never do that, whether it was good or bad.

Super-prime?

I got an email this morning from Amazon, saying the price for Prime will be going up at next renewal.

Not good news (we've been using it for years), but not terrible.  They have added streaming video, and that has been good.  I've found a couple of truly excellent shows that way (Sherlock and Downton Abbey), and the kids use it to watch Sesame Street or Bubble Guppies.

And those were not there when we started.  Back then, the advantages were that you always got second day shipping (sometimes it ended up as second day, even when you ordered standard shipping), could upgrade to overnight pretty cheaply (I've only used this a couple of times), and didn't need to worry about the order minimum.

The latter was the biggest factor for me, and that's actually become less of an advantage as you now have some items that are 'add-on' items which require meeting that minimum, even if you have Prime.  I must admit to getting pretty annoyed at those.

Let's hope that the price increase leads to more service (music streaming is rumored).

Light goes out?

I just ordered some LED light bulbs for the house recently.  I couldn't remember which ones I wanted to get (I knew they were Phillips, but nothing more), so I did a search on 'led light bulb' and clicked until I saw a page that said that I had ordered them before.

Unfortunately, the ones I really wanted were the L-Prize ones (which I'd also ordered before), which are a bit brighter and use even less electricity.

I figured I'd just return the ones I'd bought, and get the right ones.

Then I saw how much it was going to take to ship them back (about $8 for five of them), and had to think a bit more.  I worked it out, and the two lights use little enough electricity that the return price, combined with the difference in purchase price, was about the same electricity (would have been a bit of an edge in favor of return, if I was in California, I think).  So I guess I'll just keep 'em and get the right ones next time.

And I think I'll put a note in an amazon review, to keep anyone else from making the same mistake.

Looking more at the Kindle

i've talked a few times about Amazon's Kindle before. And perhaps it's a little odd that I have, given that I still haven't bought one, and still don't have any plans to do so (actually, having bought an iPad not too long ago, it's less likely now than it was a year ago).

But I think it's interesting what they're doing, still. They still haven't gotten rid of DRM, so that hasn't helped.

But they did bring out new devices recently. I must admit to not thinking too much of the Touch or Touch 3G (that is, if I was actively in the market for a Kindle, those would not have gotten me to purchase). The only thing they've really got going for them is price.

What was more interesting is the Fire. It won't replace an iPad (the screen is a really big difference. Literally and figuratively), but it does seem pretty nice for a limited-purpose tablet.

But they wanted to brag so much about the browser technology, saying how revolutionary it is. Well, it's interesting, and if the work behind it does, really, go all the way to the browser, that's more interesting, though probably not in a good way. My point in bringing it up, though, is that it really isn't revolutionary.

Ok, enough catching up to the present. The main reason I was writing this article, though, is because of Amazon's announcement today.

What? They're lending e-books for free, now? Yep. Interesting idea to drive sales of devices. Will it work? I don't know, but it wouldn't hugely surprise me.

Of course, you could argue that any Amazon e-book purchase is actually a rental, given their DRM. It won't get me to buy, even though I already have prime membership, but, as I said, it's interesting. I'm curious to see how well it works.

But a Tiny Bit Sad, as Well

It's been seeming likely that this would happen for quite a while, but now it's actually happened. Borders has declared bankruptcy. They aren't completely liquidating; from what I understand, they got a loan to keep some of the stores running for at least a while longer, but they're essentially gone.

And that makes me sad, because I remember how I felt when I went into a Borders. Given that Waldenbooks (owned by Borders; not sure if they're now all gone), B Dalton (later bought out by Barnes and Noble; not sure if any of these are still around), and Crown Books (became, or were bought by, Books-A-Million some years ago) were the only bookstores at the time, it was really exciting to see how many options were available in a Borders.

But I can see how I didn't help keep them around, either, despite how cool I used to find them. I haven't bought a book at full price at Borders in years. When they've had 30-50% coupons, I've bought a few books here and there, but I've mostly bought all my books at Amazon for many years.

Reading Dad?

Amazon, in the same spot where it's had an ad for Kindle for the last year or so, now has one that says, "Is Dad a Reader? Give Kindle..."

You'd think Amazon would know, better than anyone, what the likelihood of Dad being a reader is, though. I remember hearing on NPR a couple of years ago that the average American male doesn't read a complete book after finishing high school. (They were interviewing an author who'd written a book about the circumstances leading to that. I wish I could remember the author or the book.)

As you can tell, by the fact that I remember it from so long ago, I was more than a little shocked at this. Well, shocked and disturbed. As someone who's read a book a month or more since at least elementary school (and that's not counting all the technical books, which are almost never read cover-to-cover), and who first read The Lord of the Rings when he was eight, this absolutely blew my mind. Actually, since most of my friends also read regularly, this was really outside of my experience.

Every so often, you get a reminder (sometimes pleasant, sometimes painful) of how far outside of the average your own existence can be. This was one of those times.

In any event, getting back to the point, what does this say about Amazon's ad? I gotta say it sounds either stupid or disingenuous, and I'm leaning toward the latter given that I can't imagine Amazon wouldn't know something that fundamental about the book market.

Kindle moving in right direction?

Just ran across this press release about a new Kindle policy coming soon. It would seem that Amazon is also thinking that Apple will release a tablet competing with the Kindle soon.

I wasn't sure what to make of it until I got down to

# The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99
# This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book
# The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights
# The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.

Particularly of interest to me in that is the second one. Electronic copies with a marginal cost of six cents should not cost the same amount as physical copies with a marginal cost measured in dollars. Frankly, that should be more like 40%, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Now if they just ditch the DRM, I'll definitely be going for a Kindle. Well, unless the Apple tablet is better (which it probably is :).

Query for the publishers out there: Why isn't this a no-brainer to do with for out-of-print books? Costs are minimal (and, hell, could probably be reduced to virtually zero by working with the Google book-scanning project), and it would serve as market research. That is, if a soft copy sells more than a certain number of copies, use it as a guide to bring the book back into print.

drm evil revealed

I mentioned previously that DRM was the main reason I wouldn't be buying a Kindle, despite some definite benefits to it. As an object lesson in why DRM is so evil, we find out that Amazon has disabled text-to-speech for certain books retroactively.

I'm not a big fan of audiobooks, in general, but this is pretty sad. Especially when there seems to be no legal reason to do so.

kindle dx, huh?

Well, it sounds interesting. It doesn't address either of my major concerns with the kindle, and it doesn't make them look as silly as I'd speculated, since it's just a better model, rather than a replacement.

It does add native support for PDFs, though, which might be good enough to convince me. And the larger screen certainly doesn't hurt.

As an educational tool, too, it's intriguing. I wish it'd been available when I'd been a student. I killed my back when I was in college (well, high school didn't help, either), since I tended to carry all of the books I might need on any given day. This was frequently twenty pounds of books, and I made things worse by carrying them over one shoulder.

So the thought of carrying all the books for my entire time at school in less than a pound of weight is quite seductive.

It's especially attractive if there's a good way to search the titles that it holds. Man, that would have made references a breeze.

When I was growing up, despite being into D&D and similar pursuits, I was always glad that I had been born when I had. But technology marches on, and now I wish I could be just growing up. Funny how that works.

I must say, this is sounding better and better, the more I think about it. I could get it, and get all my technical books in pdf form; that would rock. Plus I've already got a large number of comics in pdf... this is sounding better and better.

Kindle thoughts

I was always pretty skeptical about electronic books replacing real books. The extra eye-strain from reading on a screen always made it seem pretty far off. That has improved a great deal with LCD screens over CRTs, and I suspect that LED-backlit LCDs are probably even a bit more of an improvement in that category. But it wasn't until I saw a Kindle screen that I thought it might happen before too much longer.

That isn't to say that the Kindle is that much better than its competitors. Honestly, I don't know; I haven't seen the competition. But I get the impression that the screens of the major competitors are all equivalent. Whatever. The point is, the screen does seem good enough to replace paper. (I think; I suppose the final test would be to read it for an extended period, and see how my eyes feel.)

But I wonder if Amazon really gets the other issues. I buy, and read, a lot of books. I read some for work, and a lot more for pleasure. The ecosystem may be nice, but I won't be buying a kindle, to say nothing of kindle books, until at least two things happen. One, they must remove the DRM from the books. I'm not about to buy a book where the company can turn around and remove my access to it at a later date. That's happened to far too many music stores, even ones run by tiny, fly-by-night outfits like WalMart and Microsoft.

The other thing that needs to happen is that they need to rethink book pricing. They talk about how great the price is, but I buy a lot of mass-market paperbacks, and kindle pricing is more expensive than those. Seriously, the overhead is close to zero, so the price should drop by at least half.

But, I guess, maybe enough people are buying them for Amazon to feel comfortable keeping prices there. I don't know, but it's definitely too much for me.

This, btw, was inspired by seeing an RSS link to an article saying that amazon was going to introduce another kindle in the next week with a bigger screen. I didn't read the article, but I've got to say that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Frankly, I think Amazon will look kind of silly if they do, putting out a "kindle 2.5" so soon after 2.0. I suppose stranger things have happened, though. I guess we'll see.