Subscription ebooks: Amazon's new foray into chainsaw juggling

[elf]

Amazon's talking to publishers about a "digital library" or subscription ebook service, like Netflix. I like the idea; I can't see it working, at least, not soon.

Movie contracts have had, for many years, a provision for royalties for broadcast; adapting that to paid-subscription broadcast instead of open-public broadcast is a lot simpler than creating a provision for broadcast from scratch. Book publishing contracts generally don't have a clause about rental royalties--because when books are sold, the new owner can rent them any way they want. Selling digital access is a licensing fee that doesn't fit the standard contract structure, and authors are likely to be suspicious of whatever they're offered.

Especially given the bad accounting and rights grabs and bizarre royalty change demands that publishers are often prone to; authors have little incentive to just agree to whatever terms publishers suggest for subscriptions.

( Not impossible; just unlikely in the current quagmire of legal, social & technological issues )