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Clueless Ebook Quotes
Gathered from around the web, some from recent discussions, some not so recent. A collection of comments by people who obviously are not in favor of ebooks.
1) The book industry should "get over the misconception" that digital publishing is more environmentally friendly than printing -- Karen Christensen, CE of Berkshire Publishing
Plz to ignore the timber industry and toxic chemicals produced by ink production. We will hint at the horrible factory conditions of the manufacture of electronics; we will not be discussing the paper mills, much less the amount of smog created by the many stages of shipping involved in books, starting with hauling the trees to timber mills and ending with the reader's driving to the bookstore. (I do understand that electronics are not usually green. But I'm not buying that ebooks should bear the entire environmental blame for all computer waste, and anything less than that makes it pretty obvious that digital publishing uses less environmental resources than print.)
2) There are many reasons why eBooks can sometimes cost more than print, such as the cost of converting text files into eBook formats, or the simple fact that some sites are able to offer a deeper discount on certain titles. -- Harlequin Romance editor.
Note: this is about a currently-in-print book, where the print book—a paperback—costs a bit less than the ebook. Because, um. The cost of converting the file to a couple of different formats is greater than the cost of printing, shipping, storing and inventorying the physical copies. Riiiiight.
3) the costs of hosting, maintaining, and supporting electronic products ran higher than printing, binding, and shipping costs. -- Barnes, re: Gale e-books for academic libraries.
Repeat: Digital file management is so much more expensive than physical archive management. We all know how it costs less to ship books than it does to email them.
4) I kind of go out of my way to make certain no potential readers have to commit any sort of illegal act in order to read one of my stories, if they’re badly wanting to.
And this happened. It’s very disappointing. I might as well rescind that limited permission, if people aren’t going to take advantage of it. -- Author G.L. Drummond, reacting to finding her books behind a paywall (adwall) pirate site.
Because the best way to punish the people who are breaking the law is to take away things from the ones who were playing by the rules. That'll teach 'em.
5) I would happily suggest smothering the new trend of ebook and never speaking of it again -- Corrisande
Spoken like someone who thinks the Kindle was the first dedicated ebook reader. *Stares at 1994 Project Gutenberg on CD.* Hmm... is that anything like the new trend of HTML? Can we smother that one too?
6) If the illegal downloading of books continues, there may soon be a world in which you will never be able to read books again. -- S. Jae-Jones, author
Because nobody releases their books for free online right now. Andif the current batch of pro authors stops writing, there will be nothing for any of us to read, because there's certainly not enough reading material already in existence to keep us in books for the rest of our lives. Oh, wait. There is.
7) When copyrighted material is traded, provided for free, or sold by someone other than the copyright holder (author) or the copyright holder's contracted publisher as listed on the book, it is by law theft of intellectual property. It is hurting the author's career and depriving the author of his/her livelihood. It is also the same as literally stealing money from the author's pocket in that the author is being deprived of the income from sales. -- Samantha Gentry, author
"Literally," she says. When did "literally" start to mean "figuratively?" Also, used book sales are IP theft. That's stealing from the author; you must never buy used copyrighted material.
8) there should be the same level of property rights whether it's a house or a movie -- James Murdoch, News Corporation executive.
Because you can sell a house to ten thousand people in the same week, of course. And you have the right to demand royalties if anyone makes a movie using it, even after you've sold it. (OK, this one's not exactly about ebooks. Close enough? Probably?)
9) People who can afford to buy an eReader can afford the proposed eBook prices. Whenever the owner of a $300 product says they “can’t afford” to pay $3.00 to $5.00 more for something, what they really mean is “I really prefer not to pay more.” -- Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers
This was only a couple of years ago. But even today, publishers believe that the only people buying ebook readers will be buying full-price new books at ebook stores, and are not people who want to read Gutenberg books and fanfic and their own documents on them. And none of the Big 6 publishers acknowledge the existence of Baen or Smashwords, nor the idea that someone on a tight budget could squeeze out the cost of an ebook reader in order to buy $1-6 ebooks instead of $7-20 pbooks.
1) The book industry should "get over the misconception" that digital publishing is more environmentally friendly than printing -- Karen Christensen, CE of Berkshire Publishing
Plz to ignore the timber industry and toxic chemicals produced by ink production. We will hint at the horrible factory conditions of the manufacture of electronics; we will not be discussing the paper mills, much less the amount of smog created by the many stages of shipping involved in books, starting with hauling the trees to timber mills and ending with the reader's driving to the bookstore. (I do understand that electronics are not usually green. But I'm not buying that ebooks should bear the entire environmental blame for all computer waste, and anything less than that makes it pretty obvious that digital publishing uses less environmental resources than print.)
2) There are many reasons why eBooks can sometimes cost more than print, such as the cost of converting text files into eBook formats, or the simple fact that some sites are able to offer a deeper discount on certain titles. -- Harlequin Romance editor.
Note: this is about a currently-in-print book, where the print book—a paperback—costs a bit less than the ebook. Because, um. The cost of converting the file to a couple of different formats is greater than the cost of printing, shipping, storing and inventorying the physical copies. Riiiiight.
3) the costs of hosting, maintaining, and supporting electronic products ran higher than printing, binding, and shipping costs. -- Barnes, re: Gale e-books for academic libraries.
Repeat: Digital file management is so much more expensive than physical archive management. We all know how it costs less to ship books than it does to email them.
4) I kind of go out of my way to make certain no potential readers have to commit any sort of illegal act in order to read one of my stories, if they’re badly wanting to.
And this happened. It’s very disappointing. I might as well rescind that limited permission, if people aren’t going to take advantage of it. -- Author G.L. Drummond, reacting to finding her books behind a paywall (adwall) pirate site.
Because the best way to punish the people who are breaking the law is to take away things from the ones who were playing by the rules. That'll teach 'em.
5) I would happily suggest smothering the new trend of ebook and never speaking of it again -- Corrisande
Spoken like someone who thinks the Kindle was the first dedicated ebook reader. *Stares at 1994 Project Gutenberg on CD.* Hmm... is that anything like the new trend of HTML? Can we smother that one too?
6) If the illegal downloading of books continues, there may soon be a world in which you will never be able to read books again. -- S. Jae-Jones, author
Because nobody releases their books for free online right now. Andif the current batch of pro authors stops writing, there will be nothing for any of us to read, because there's certainly not enough reading material already in existence to keep us in books for the rest of our lives. Oh, wait. There is.
7) When copyrighted material is traded, provided for free, or sold by someone other than the copyright holder (author) or the copyright holder's contracted publisher as listed on the book, it is by law theft of intellectual property. It is hurting the author's career and depriving the author of his/her livelihood. It is also the same as literally stealing money from the author's pocket in that the author is being deprived of the income from sales. -- Samantha Gentry, author
"Literally," she says. When did "literally" start to mean "figuratively?" Also, used book sales are IP theft. That's stealing from the author; you must never buy used copyrighted material.
8) there should be the same level of property rights whether it's a house or a movie -- James Murdoch, News Corporation executive.
Because you can sell a house to ten thousand people in the same week, of course. And you have the right to demand royalties if anyone makes a movie using it, even after you've sold it. (OK, this one's not exactly about ebooks. Close enough? Probably?)
9) People who can afford to buy an eReader can afford the proposed eBook prices. Whenever the owner of a $300 product says they “can’t afford” to pay $3.00 to $5.00 more for something, what they really mean is “I really prefer not to pay more.” -- Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers
This was only a couple of years ago. But even today, publishers believe that the only people buying ebook readers will be buying full-price new books at ebook stores, and are not people who want to read Gutenberg books and fanfic and their own documents on them. And none of the Big 6 publishers acknowledge the existence of Baen or Smashwords, nor the idea that someone on a tight budget could squeeze out the cost of an ebook reader in order to buy $1-6 ebooks instead of $7-20 pbooks.
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Except, um, they never did want to acknowledge how many of those "moochers" were never going to pay new book costs for anything.
It's my biggest issue with ebooks right now--while there's more and more ways to access them, and more ways to get ereaders to more people, and we'd *love* for kids to not have to carry 50 lbs of textbooks... ebooks can't become the dominant form of reading if they can't be shared. None of us learned to love books by only reading things we'd bought new at full price.
What we're moving towards is a weird class rift where the "elite" and wealthy readers get access to new, big-name ebooks, including textbooks, and the poor, non-US, and otherwise disadvantaged readers get freebies and indie published books--and a large group of the poor breaks various laws to get access to the "elite" books because you need them to keep up on some aspects of society.
(And the idea that "if you don't pay for your ebooks, THERE WILL BE NO MORE BOOKS" is a fascinating display of cluelessness and class privilege.)
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I am waiting for a new book of one of my favrourite series and currently the ebook is listed at around 14 dollars for US residents and 23 dollars for others. I probably could have warmed up to the 14 dollars, if the paper book was only slightly cheaper. But over 20? No bloody way! It's almost as if they want to discourage peple from getting the ebook and push them onto paper.
In an ideal world I have bluetooth on my reader, you have bluetooth on yours and voila! I bought one DRMd book so far. I guess books bought in the Kindle store have DRM as well? I would prefer to boykott them completely, but that would limit my choices a lot. I love that Calibre started collecting DRM-free books, I actually sent the guy a donation...
>and the poor, non-US, and otherwise disadvantaged readers get freebies and indie published book
Non-US here, I don't see many freebies coming my way. Usually all those freebies that Amazon gives away, cost me money or aren't available at all.
Going away to downlaod my free Romance of the day... ;-)
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They do. Publishers aren't in the business of providing books to readers (that's what libraries are for); they're in the business of selling paper. And they are trying to figure out how to allow digital books (as if they could stop them) without losing the tiniest bit of their paper market. Their model is falling apart, because books are not produce and don't spoil after three months.
I guess books bought in the Kindle store have DRM as well?
Some do; some don't. The way to check is in the book listing; if it says "Device limit: Unlimited," that means no DRM. If there's a number, that's enforced with DRM. (Or you try to open the ebook with Calibre or Mobipocket or some other .prc/.mobi reader; if it won't open, it's DRM'd. But the device limit is how you check before buying.)
There are tools that will strip the DRM; if you want to be certain of keeping access to your books in a few years when Amazon changes their software setup, you should use one of those programs.
Non-US here, I don't see many freebies coming my way.
Smashwords.com has lots of free ebooks; so does feedbooks & gutenberg. But those are either public domain releases, some creative commons professional books like Cory Doctorow's, and a huge swarm of self-published things, with quality ranging from "wow, someone get this person a publishing contract so she can push Stephanie Meyer off the damn charts" to "OMG, so *this* is what an novel written in txt-speak looks like."
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I know and I use them. But surely those are free for everybody, US or Non-US... It sounded as if you were saying that Non-US citizen would get more freebies as US readers...?
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I meant that those who don't have access to the paid books, which the US has a lot more of than anywhere else, are stuck with "lower class" freebies.
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Some ebooks are only available in some regions. The recent ebook flamewar about piracy was kicked off by an Australian reader telling an author she'd downloaded the ebook because it wasn't available for sale in AU at all.
It's a matter of international contracts about publishing rights.
The author sells the rights to a US publisher for US publication, so he can sell British and Australian (etc) publishing rights to other publishers, because the US company may not have an interest in selling books in those places. But if there's no publisher in your country that is interested in the book, you can't buy it--except by buying the US version & having it shipped. Stores can sell to people overseas; the contracts just say that publishers can't distribute there.
The problem: Physical book sales are presumed to take place at the location of the store, or warehouse. They can convert international currency, throw a shipping price on top of the sale price, and sell you the book.
Digital sales are presumed to take place at the location of the buyer. (Or, more accurately, the location of the main office of the bank providing the buyer's credit card. If you visit the US, you walk into a bookstore & buy things that nobody will ship to you; you can't go online to Amazon & buy US-only Kindlebooks while you're here.)
The key issue isn't that "this is the law" (I gather it maybe is in the UK? Less sure about other places; it may be established by contracts instead of law), but that publishers have no interest in fixing the problem... they don't want to sell US ebooks to people in other countries, because they're under the impression that those people will buy hardcovers instead if no ebook is available.
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>you can't go online to Amazon & buy US-only Kindlebooks while you're here
I can't? I don't plan to go to the US this year, I will have to test that another time. I will go to China, but they block so much that I am not sure I will be able to use WiFi at all, I will find out next month.