Nostalgia City Mysteries

Mark S. Bacon

Category Archives: Kindle

7:18 am - April 3, 2013 -

Will a fire sale for ebook buyers        become the authors’ pyre?

Ramifications, realizations spread in wake of used marketplace news

Second in a series

From the first, ebooks promised to transform the publishing business.  Ebooks joined music and movies as a popular item to be hijacked and distributed by torrent websites.  Now the possibility of a marketplace where “used” or previously owned ebooks can be resold  has authors, publishers and book lovers wondering what will happen as Amazon and Apple proceed with patents for such a system.  Authors’ biggest fear is that a used marketplace will cause new ebook prices to deflate faster than the Hindenburg.

Amazon’s patent was granted two months ago; Apple’s is pending.  The two giant online retailers have not said what they plan to do with the patents.  In contrast to websites such as Pirate Bay, run by thieves who ignore copyright, new ebook marketplaces outlined in the patents promise controls that will reduce unauthorized duplication of ebooks.  A relatively new online “used” music seller,  Redigi, has already set up a resale system the company says is similar to a conventional used book or record store.  The system for used ebook sales will get rolling, pending the outcome of a lawsuit.

According to news reports, the Redigi system will permit people who have purchased ebooks to offer them for sale online.   Like the Amazon and Apple proposals, an ebook will only be sold once and then it disappears from the previous owner’s files.  Redigi CEO John Ossenmacher told Time Magazine the company has validation tools that let them determine if digital material has been legitimately purchased, if it has been transferred between computers and other information.  Pirated digital merchandise will not be sold, according to Ossenmacher.

The company designed the tools to protect copyrights, Ossenmacher told Time.  He said Redigi will suspend the accounts of people who don’t follow the rules.

One side benefit of a used marketplace like Redigi’s or Apple’s is that it might reduce piracy. “By enforcing old-fashioned rules of physical ownership onto modern, non-physical objects, Apple’s patent might support the company’s goal of combating piracy,” Charles Pulliam-Moore wrote recently in Slate.  “In creating a used digital store, Apple would provide an easier, safer, quicker alternative to pirating media…,” he said.readers b&w 3578

Perhaps the biggest (encouraging) surprise in the Redigi plan is that, unlike in the sale of used paper books, publishers and authors can receive compensation.  Trade magazine Publishers Weekly recently reported that Ossenmacher appeared at a roundtable discussion with publishers and told them income from the resale of ebooks “represents billions of dollars on the table.”

Billions of dollars into publishers pockets likely will not assuage the doubts of authors as to any potential benefits from a used ebook marketplace.   But then, contrary to popular opinion, most writers get paid very little for their books.

“The vast majority of writers are not like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling or Suzanne Collins,” said best-selling sci fi author John Scalzi.  “The average author makes a four-figure salary a year from their writing,” Scalzi told Jenny Shank, writing in NPR/Mediashift.

“People don’t see creative people as they are in reality,” Scalzi told Shank.   “Ninety-nine percent of everybody in a creative field is barely eking by. Also, when it comes right down to it, people like getting bargains. They’re not following the product chain back to the initial starting point.”

Scalzi said part of the job today is to remind readers that books are created by human beings who have to pay rent and feed their children.

To be sure, writers do not get rich.  The most successful book I’ve written sold about 60,000 copies in all editions over several years.  That was enough for my publisher at the time to call me a “mid-list author.”  What I made from that at 10-15% royalty plus advance was certainly not enough for my family to live on, even at poverty level.  And many authors never even make mid-list, let alone best seller status.  Most authors have day jobs and working spouses–or should.  (Fortunately for me, my day jobs have always been in writing: commercials, direct mail, journalism.)

So, as a used ebook marketplace threatens to remake the book business and further erode authors’ income, questions remain.  Several conclusions–perhaps at odds with public perception–seem clear however.   We’ll look at those next time.

Notes/Hyperlinks

Redigi’s tools to protect copyright   

Apple’s system might reduce piracy

Authors have doubts

Publishers could profit from “used” sales

Categories: book publishers, craft of writing, e-readers, Kindle, paper books, royalties, used ebook marketplace Tags: , , , , , ,
10:43 am - March 27, 2013 -

Psst.  Wanna buy a used ebook?

New digital marketplace could upend publishing, threaten authors

First in a series

Amazon and Apple have applied for patents on systems that will permit them to create marketplaces for the sale of used, or perhaps more accurately previously owned, ebooks and music.  Amazon’s patent was approved in late January, Apple’s is pending.  This could snuff creativity and bring an end to the publishing industry.

Or not.

Authors and others have issued dismal predictions based on reasonable assumptions about how a “used” ebook market might work.

Best-selling author Scott Turow, president of the Author’s Guild, told the New York Times,  “The resale of ebooks would send the price of new books crashing.”

Author and essayist Ayelet Waldman told Jenny Shank, at PBS.org, that the idea of used ebook sales gave her “a chill of foreboding.”

Here’s the issue:  If a bargain-basement priced preowned ebook, identical in every respect to the new ebook, is on sale simultaneously with the original, who would buy the more expensive product?  (Hint: no one except the author’s mother.)  This may sound like a boon for buyers, but it could be the epitaph for writers of flash fiction books and all other forms of written expression as well.

Of course, as a writer friend of mine pointed out, someone would have to buy an original for there to be a  “used” ebook.  How that notion equates to numbers of “new” ebooks that would be sold remains to be seen, as does a long list of possibilities that depend on the way a used ebook marketplace is administered.

In addition to myriad possibilities for a future resale marketplace, are the larger, darker issues of contemporary ethics, the future of copyright laws plus the influence of evolving technology on the latter two subjects.  This article, however, will be limited to looking at some of the ways a used ebook marketplace might operate.ereaders 2 sml

When you buy an ebook today for your iPad, Kindle, Nook or whatever, you’re really just obtaining a license to read it yourself, period.  The book exists in your ereader or in the cloud, but it’s not really your property.  When someone buys an ebook from most legitimate online sellers, the publisher and ultimately the author receives compensation (such as it is).  The proposed ebook systems would permit buyers to resell an ebook, just as they might resell a paper book to a used book store or via eBay or Craigslist.   When a used paper book is sold, the transaction is strictly between buyer and seller.  If ebook resale transactions are conducted similarly, writers and publishers would be out of luck.   And obviously,  the sale of new ebooks would be seriously compromised.

Apple and Amazon are mum on the details of the proposed marketplace systems–or whether they will be implemented at all–but news reports about the patents in the New York Times and elsewhere provide a little information about how ebook sales might be handled.  Both systems, according to David Streitfeld, writing in the Times, would limit resellers to one transaction per book.  That is, someone could not duplicate a book or otherwise sell it more than once.  Once a book was sold, it would disappear from the seller’s ereader account.

This restriction would probably not allay Turow’s fear of crashing prices.  How low would the price of books sink if a used marketplace sprang up?  Hard to predict as this hasn’t happened in the book market before.  But consider one analogy: prescription drugs.  According to the U.S. Solicitor General, Donald Verrilli, quoted in an Associated Press report Mar.25, when a generic drug begins to compete with a brand-name drug, “the price drops 85 percent.”

One element in the Apple and Amazon patents could limit the damage.  Tech writer and author David Pogue reported in the New York Times that publishers and bookstores could,  according to the patents, impose minimum prices for used ebooks, although those prices could be reduced over time.

Jeremy Greenfield, writing in Forbes, offers a possible used ebook sale scenario which would see publishers and authors compensated, online bookstores getting a piece of the action and buyers getting cut-priced ebooks.  (One new online company, Redigi, says it will compensate publishers for “used” ebook sales.)  Greenfield’s glimpse  into the future assumes a used ebook would go for 50% of the retail price.  But if prices drop lower–much lower–what would be left to compensate the people who created the work?

One New York Times reader, commenting on a story about the sale of used ebooks, wrote that he has stopped creating language CDs due to piracy.  His lengthy comment makes fascinating reading.  It took him years to write a Chinese language course, he says, and pirate copies can now be obtained online for next to nothing.  What does this say about the effects of a future cut-rate ebook market?  Certainly Amazon and Apple are not Pirate Bay (a popular site offering hijacked digital property), but would writers stop writing if the price of ebooks (and royalties) drops to pennies?   Could publishers impose strict limitations on resales or simply refuse to deal with online bookstores that offer “used” ebooks?

The subject is, at present, mired in questions.

——–

Next time: The Redigi formula, authors and the brave new book world

 

Further questions

Will Amazon and Apple return a portion of the proceeds from the sale of used ebooks back to the publishers as Redigi says it will do?   Will the publishers then give authors a cut?

If Amazon, et. al. sell ebooks for lower prices overall, would profits decline or would a lively resale market actually be a boost for Amazon?

Would people be inclined to buy more ebooks if they knew they could resell them?

What conditions will publishers require in the new, used marketplace?

How do you set the price of a used ebook?  Is there a comparison with the cost of a used paper book in excellent condition?

Will people choose to keep ebook libraries like many people maintain for their paper books?  If so, will that reduce the number of used ebooks available for resale?

 

Reminder on my use of Hyperlinks:   Hyperlinks can be annoying.   A few months back I wrote about  how reading on the Internet is contributing to our shorter attention spans and generally making dunderheads out of us.  Hyperlinks are a convenient way to find out more information about a topic, discover a new resource, etc., and of course they are an element of SEO, important to bloggers.  But hyperlinks in the middle of articles invite the reader to abandon his train of thought–weak though it may be–to virtually dash off in another direction, possibly never to return.  Therefore in this blog, all hyperlinks appear at the end of articles.  You are invited to visit the sites and sources I cite.

Publishers can impose minimum prices for used ebooks

Authors express trepidation

Overview of proposed used ebook systems

One price scenario for used ebooks

Writer to stop writing

Categories: e-readers, Kindle, printed books, royalties, used ebook marketplace Tags: , , , , , , ,
7:24 am - February 27, 2013 -

Donna Leon paints a picture of murder

Beastly Things
by Donna Leon
Atlantic Monthly Press  288 pages
$10.20 paperback  $11.99 Kindle  $13.75 Nook

Police procedurals, sometimes plodding compared to their PI and amateur sleuth cousins, usually follow a cop’s methodical investigation.  In Donna Leon’s Beastly Things, Commissario Guido Brunetti moves one step at a time as he seeks the killer of a kindly veterinarian whose body is found floating in a Venice canal, but it’s Brunetti’s ruminations on official corruption, the human condition, treatment of animals, food and life in the Italian island city that make it a satisfying journey and, at times, a disturbing one.

Leon’s fans will enjoy this 21st installment that revisits familiar characters, although the book can be an easy introduction to the series (as it was for me). Beastly things sml All you need to know to enjoy the novel you’ll learn along the way.

The body pulled from the canal was not immediately identified by the medical examiner except to recognize the deceased’s deformity–extraordinarily thick shoulders and neck–caused by a rare disease.  Ultimately Brunetti identifies the victim as Andrea Nava and learns that he lives not in Venice but in Mestre, a nearby mainland city thus setting up a minor jurisdictional confrontation, almost  obligatory in cop novels.  In an interview with Nava’s wife, Brunetti learns that she was separated from her husband, that her husband was having sex with another woman and that in addition to his veterinary practice, he worked part time in a slaughter house.

The commisario follows up these leads, unconvinced that Nava’s wife had anything to do with his stabbing death.  On the trail of evidence, Brunetti invariably stops off in a café for coffee or wine and a snack with his assistant, Inspector Vianello and goes home for lunch with his wife.

As I read this I realized I was looking look for clues;  I read mysteries expecting the plot to proceed apace or reasonably so.  (Even Poirot keeps the little grey cells moving.)  I try to figure out who did it before the detective does.  To Brunetti, (or Leon) life itself is as important as the case.  We learn Brunetti is not the troubled loner of many detective stories but has a good home life and easy relationship with his wife.  His rich, influential in laws are another story, but they don’t figure heavily in this novel.

He’s also sensitive.  When he interviews Nava’s wife he delays telling her the bad news, hoping she will figure it out first.  His sensitivities–and vulnerabilities–show up clearly in a gruesome slaughter house scene, and after, when Brunetti discusses the values of vegetarianism with his family.

You could call him cynical.  He’s an Italian cop; he sees officialdom as a less than ethical system but he manages to go with the flow without compromising himself.  Or so it seemed in this installment of Leon’s series.  The system he’s a part of is explained in an internal dialog Brunetti has when he’s called into the office of his boss, Vice-Questor Giuseppe Patta.   His boss’s decade-long stay in his position was,

“in anomalous defiance of the rule that high police officials were transferred every few years. Patta’s tenacity in his post had puzzled Brunetti until he realized that the only policemen who were transferred away from cities where they combated crime were those who met with success, especially those who were successful in their opposition to the Mafia.”

Brunetti and Vianello visit Nava’s veterinary office then the slaughterhouse where they meet the boss and his attractive assistant.   The detective pair also interview the vet who worked at the slaughterhouse before Nava and they ultimately uncover a dirty secret.

Leon’s prose is effective and her occasional figurative language imaginative.   When Brunetti finally tells Nava’s wife that he’s dead, she faints in her chair.

“…her head fell against the back of the chair.  Then, like a sweater placed carelessly on a piece of furniture, she slithered to the floor at their feet.”

Humor here is of the nod-your-head-and-smile variety, often reflecting Brunetti’s foibles, such as when he visits a hospital.

            “A lifetime of good health had done nothing to counter the effects of imagination; thus Brunetti was often subject to the attacks of diseases to which he had not been exposed and of which he displayed no symptoms.”

 Brunetti is vaguely reminiscent of Inspector Jules Maigret, commenting on social conventions, popping into convenient cafes for a glass of wine and exploring the fascinating corners of his native city.  Rather than Paris, Venice is Brunetti’s beloved home and the city quickly becomes a character in the book.  Brunetti ponders Venice’s palazzos, churches, bars, and even the bothersome portable vendor stalls that block sidewalks.  In Beastly Things, Leon combines the city’s canals along with its natives, its tourists and its bureaucrats to paint a detailed, intriguing portrait.

For more mystery reviews see the “mystery books” tab

Categories: Kindle, New mystery book, printed books, Reviews of mystery/suspense books Tags: , , ,