Blast from the past

[elf]

Got caught up reading Making Light recently, where they're talking about ebook scams and piracy (the real kind, where people sell authors' works w/o permission, not the unauthorized-free-copy kind that's harder to prove damage from), and I wound up looking for Rowling's reasons for not releasing ebooks.

Her two stated reasons were "piracy concerns" and something about wanting people to experience "real" books, which I couldn't find a decent quote about; I know it exists somewhere. What I did find instead, from USA Today in 2005:

J.K. Rowling has not permitted any of the six Potter books to be released in electronic form, not even during the peak of the e-book craze a few years ago.

Emphasis added. Oh, my sides hurt. The peak of the ebook craze: 2001-2003. Damn, the web is bringin' the funny today. I am tempted to send Konrath a link so he can share the giggle over the short-sightedness of mainstream publishing.

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

That's hilarious. I wonder what they were talking about?

[elf]

I'm trying to figure that out. In 2005, ereader was competing with mobipocket for industry dominance, Amazon started selling weirdly-DRM'd PDFs (could only print a limited number of pages, and the verification issues were nightmarish), Baen's free library had been active 5 years and Webscriptions was a decent buying system (now, Webscriptions seems clunky; we put up with it 'cos we love Baen's books). The EBookwise 1150 was the new shiny hardware, and too expensive for me but I wanted one.

I started buying ebooks in 2005. I knew I wasn't an early adopter, but I can't imagine anyone who'd looked at the industry thinking it was on the downside.

[yourlibrarian]

Speaking as someone who was in library science research at the time, I can tell you no one thought it was at any kind of rise or tipping point then. I still remember when Time magazine came out with the article about the Kindle. My class of reference students weren't impressed and still thought eReaders were a long way from becoming popular, and that was among a group of people who might be expected to be big readers and early technology adopters.

[shinsetsu]

Rowling may not have 'permitted' it, but I have always seen the Potter books in ebook form. :-p

[elf]

Ssshh! No you have not! Rowling hasn't released the, therefor they don't exist! She wanted to avoid the risk of piracy--AND IT'S WORKING!! It must be! Professional publishers cannot possibly be wrong about how to control their markets!

[cathepsut]

Damn, I hadn't realised that ebooks were going down, I shouldn't have bought that Kindle after all....

[supermouse]

I know. It's amazing how many idiots keep buying the various e-book readers, and how many idiot companies keep producing new, better e-book readers, and idiot sites keep setting up e-book shops, without *any* of them realising that e-books are a thing of the past.

[elf]

You left off how many people are reading free & cheap ebooks, and how many authors are releasing their books as ebooks, gaining thousands of new readers and making money hand over fist, not realizing they're all participating in a zombie economy. It's so sad when people don't notice that technology has moved on and left them behind.

[elf]

Ebooks are not "going down;" they're GONE. The craze finished its run years ago. There's nothing left but raking in the profits thousands of new books to read every month the ashes of a dead industry. Really. USA Today said so, 'cos AP told them; you wouldn't doubt such a respected source of news, would you?

[mscongeniality]

Wow. That's the special kind of special.

[elf]

It's what we need from technology reporting: bold statements about what is, and is not, the reality of the industry.

[ravan]

Ah, but you see the "craze" *IS* gone. Now e-books are just normal technology, instead of new, shiny, and very clunky.

It's all in what you consider a "craze". Mind you, I think my definition and his aren't the same either...