Canadian Ebook Store Offers 'Free' Public Domain Ebooks -- Claims Copyright Says You Can Only Make 1 Copy

from the not-this-again dept

Brendan writes "Chapters/Indigo, the dominant book retailer in Canada, just recently launched their eBook store, thinly disguised as an independent 3rd party called ShortCovers. Both companies are children of the parent company Indigo Books & Music Inc.

The fact that they have launched an eBook program is not a problem. It's great, in fact. I'd like to see more action in this space, and anything to help people read more is a step in the right direction. The problem I have is with how they've done it.

When announcing the service on Monday, the company trumpeted loudly the offer of "FREE eBook downloads!" in a mass email and on the main Chapters page. Can you guess what all the eBooks offered for free have in common? That's right, they're almost all public domain works. They do list the publisher as "Gutenberg" for all the PD books, but do they explain what that means? Do they inform the user that these are public domain works? Do they include a link to Gutenberg.org, where any user can download these books in plain texts to use however they want? No, of course not.

Instead, they wrap the books up in their tight little DRM package. Each page (according to their idea of a page) loads painfully in a flash frame and within the text of the book is non-selectable. And most are not available as downloads (as they are on Gutenberg).

The worst offense? That dangerous little line at the bottom of each page of each book: "(C) All Rights Reserved All copyright ownership rights relating to this content are specifically and expressly reserved by the owner thereof and are marked © by the owner of this content, 2009." An interesting claim, to be sure. What am I to do with this book, ShortCovers?

"All Rights Reserved. You are free to make one (1) copy of this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you abide by the following:
* For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.
* Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
* Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights."

I can make one (1) copy? Wow! I better use it carefully."

This isn't the first time we've seen bookstores DRM up and claim copyright over public domain works. The DRM stuff is dumb, but understandable, since they just want to have one system and often seem to choose an anti-consumer one. But telling people that they are only allowed to make one copy of a public domain work and putting a © sign on it is pretty ridiculous.

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Romance Publishing Giant Offering Ebooks Without DRM; Reporter Upset By This

from the how-dare-you-give-customers-what-they-want dept

Kevin Cummings writes in with the news that romance novel publishing giant Harlequin is setting up a new ebook division to offer digital books directly from the company's own websites, as well as via various online retailers. That, by itself, isn't a huge surprise these days, but the article does note that the publisher decided to go without DRM on the books. Now, that seems like a smart, consumer-friendly move that should be applauded. However, the reporter who covered the announcement claims this move is "troubling," which seems like an odd statement. How could treating customers with respect be "troubling"?

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eBook Market Gets More Crowded... But... Still Many Limitations

from the it's-a-start dept

As lots of tech sites are reporting (and as was leaked not too long ago), Barnes & Noble has released its own ebook reader, clearly designed to compete with the Kindle. The good news is that it takes aim at some of Kindle's weaknesses, such as by supporting more open offerings, like ePub, and also by allowing you to "lend" books to others. But the lending is pretty limited. You can only lend a book once, and then only for two weeks, after which the lent book disappears. It's nice that you'll be able to buy books from other retailers and use them on the Nook, but the limitations still seem pretty serious. Still, more competition is good, and even a slight step towards a more open solution is a step in the right direction. Next up: we just need someone else (perhaps not tied to a bookstore) to offer an even more open device.

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Do Libraries Need Permission To Lend Out Ebooks?

from the they-shouldn't dept

Reader OG points us to this NY Times article about how libraries are increasingly offering ebooks for download. This, of course, seems like a good idea, and fits in with the purpose of a library, but where the article gets either laughable or head-bangingly annoying is where it starts discussing how publishers have serious problems with this whole concept. Some publishers are refusing to allow libraries to lend out their ebooks...which makes me wonder why the publishers have any say in the matter. Thanks to the right of first sale, a library should be able to lend out an ebook if it's legally purchased it without having to get the publisher's permission.

Furthermore, the rest of the discussion is just silly. There are arguments about how many ebooks can be "checked out" at once or how the DRM works (which blocks the most popular ebook readers from being supported). There's also an issue of publishers charging libraries much higher prices for ebooks, and scoffing at a librarian who suggests that libraries should be allowed to offer as many copies as needed of an ebook to lend at the same time, and just pay the publishers a nominal fee.

It's hard to describe how insane this whole discussion sounds. Here you have a fantastic tool to support a library's main purpose in the world, and we're arguing over what sorts of artificial restrictions to set up to limit that tool from actually being useful? It's as if we discovered a way to make all the food the world ever needed, and we sit around talking about how to make sure that most people don't get fed. It would make me laugh if it weren't so disturbing that people seem to think this is a good thing.

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Beginning Ruby Author: Publisher Wouldn't Let Me Give eBook For Free... So Pirate My Book (Sorta)

from the obscurity,-piracy dept

pistol alerts us to an interesting post from Peter Cooper, the author of Beginning Ruby, where he breaks down how he gets paid for the book, including the advance and royalties, giving a nice clean explanation of how authors get paid for their books. It's pretty typical, but nice to see a clean breakdown.

But what's a lot more interesting, is towards the end, he describes the negotiations over the second edition of the book, where he begged his publisher, Apress, to offer the ebook version for free, believing (strongly) that it would promote sales of the paper book. He even notes that the original version's ebook barely had noteworthy sales, so it seemed reasonable to offer up the ebook for free to drive more attention. No dice. Even though Apress has done that with other similar titles, it wouldn't agree. So, his response is to tell people that he doesn't mind if you download unauthorized copies of the book... even if he's not sure what Apress would do:

My reaction to seeing other Apress books getting the free, electronic version treatment is: I'm good with you pirating my book! Now, of course, I can't actively participate in pirating my book but, heck, it's around on plenty of "free e-book" sites and on RapidShare. There are even links on Twitter to torrents like this. I am happy for you to pirate my book, but I'm NOT A LAWYER, and I can't guarantee what Apress would do about it - so you'd be doing it off your own back! So, uhm, don't pirate it? ;-)

He also goes on to point out that, technically, he owns the copyright on most of the content in the book, so there may even be a loophole there:

Now, according to my contract, I own the copyright to the entire book except for the cover, table of contents, and the indexes. My contract also states that I have exclusively allowed Apress to publish and reproduce my content. So.. I suspect that if you took my book, removed the cover, contents and indexes, and turned it into a PDF with a cover of your own creation, Apress couldn't do anything about it because everything would be my copyright. Now, I cannot allow you to do this, but I would not pursue you or enforce my copyrights if you did ;-) So, er, don't do it!

Of course, something is seriously wrong with the way things are set up when an author has to go behind his own publisher's back to tell people to "pirate" his own book. Eventually publishers will begin to recognize how to embrace new business models, but until then, it seems like it may be quite a struggle for many publishers (there are, of course, a few exceptions -- and, for you supporters of Baen books, yes, we know about them, no need to keep pointing them out).

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Still Debating The Cost Of Ebooks

from the marginal-cost-people... dept

A few weeks ago, we wrote about why it didn't make sense that ebooks were often so expensive given that the marginal cost of an ebook is much, much, much lower than a physical book. ChurchHatesTucker points us to a recent argument against that claim by Andrew Wheeler:

Creating an individual ebook format -- one of the current suite of them -- costs roughly as much as creating a print-on-paper edition; the costs of the actual paper and ink are vanishingly small in this equation. Some ebook formats, such as the currently fashionable one, have a baroque process of creation that involves multiple transformations and iterations of quality control, which drives up costs further. And the cost per unit is massively higher for ebooks than for printed books -- infinitely so in some cases, since there are plenty of ebook editions that have never sold a single copy.

Now, the issue here, of course, is a fundamental misunderstanding the difference between total cost (or average cost) and marginal cost. This happens a lot -- especially among non-economists. But it misses the point. Total cost is important in figuring out an overall business model, because obviously you want to be able to make more than it cost overall, but it's a terrible way of picking a price. That's because the driving force in pricing is the marginal cost. Meanwhile, CHT also points us to a good rebuttal to Wheeler from Paul Raven, where Raven basically says that Wheeler is doing things wrong:

I'm not going to refute the claim that ebooks currently cost a lot of money to make. I am, however, going to say that they shouldn't cost a lot of money to make, that they don't have to, and that the longer they do, the smaller the chances of them ever becoming a viable industry in their own right...

He goes on to note that part of the problem is with the publishers themselves, and their inability to come to terms on a standard (and open) format.

But there are other problems in the ebook publishing world as well -- where it appears that some publishers are less focused on figuring out how to use the technology to improve the experience for readers, and more about how to screw them over. Charlotte Payan-Salcedo discusses her her recent attempt to buy some ebooks, where she discovers that the ebooks she bought require special software to read, including DRM that limits where the books can be read... and then discovers that the books "expire" after 180 days. She doesn't say it, but I'm guessing these are actually textbooks (both from the price -- $180 for two ebooks) and from the claim that they expire. When textbook companies first started offering ebooks, many of them were designed to "expire" after the course was over. I hadn't looked at the etextbook market in a while, and had sorta expected (hoped?) this silly concept was gone -- but apparently not. It looks like in this case, the publishers have figured out how to provide none of the benefits of ebooks, but added all sorts of additional negatives.

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Another Author Notes That Giving Away His Book Increased Sales

from the piracy? dept

Dave points us to a recent interview with Lester Brown, who's been pushing for alternative energy for years. I'd actually heard about his book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization a few months ago when someone pointed out that he was giving away his book for free, but I hadn't heard much more about it. Yet, in the interview, he mentions that the book can be downloaded, which appears to surprise the interviewer, who seems to assume that this means the guy is willing to give up revenue to get his ideas out there by noting "you do feel strongly about this." But then Brown points out that it's not hurting sales at all, but quite the opposite:

Dr. BROWN: No problem. Incidentally, "Plan B 4.0" is online at earthpolicy.org. It can be downloaded free of charge.

FLATOW: No kidding.

Dr. BROWN: Yeah.

FLATOW: Wow. You do feel strongly about this.

Dr. BROWN: Yeah. And it's interesting, people think this must reduce sales. In fact, it increases sales.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Dr. BROWN: Just between the two of us

Of course, this is hardly the first author to recognize this, but add another one to the pile. It's about recognizing that obscurity is a bigger risk that piracy, and then figuring out how to get more attention and then giving people a real reason to buy on top of that attention.

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Oh No! Book Piracy Is Coming! Run And Hide!

from the blah-blah-blah dept

I have to admit that I started to read Randall Stross' latest article at the NY Times over the weekend -- Will Piracy Become a Problem for E-Books? -- but originally stopped a couple paragraphs in. It struck me as the laziest of lazy reporting tricks by Stross. It's a trend piece without a trend, basically pure filler. However, we keep getting submissions with pleas to debunk some of the more ridiculous claims in the article... so, we'll take a quick crack. The main problem is that it uses the recording industry as an example -- with bogus and/or misleading recording industry data, citing both the RIAA and the IFPI in stating that "piracy" has been a problem for the music industry. Tragically, there is no actual evidence to support those claims. Piracy has coincided with the decline in sales of recorded music, but the causal link has not been shown. In fact, we've pointed to numerous studies that showed those who file share tend to buy more music than in the past. But, more importantly, recent studies have shown that while recorded music sales have gone down, the overall music industry has grown.

All that's really happened is that technology has resulted in a shift in how the dollars are spent: more goes towards live shows and merchandise than in the past and less on recorded music. The end result, though? More money being spent on music overall and more money for musicians. The only ones who have less money? The middlemen an the record labels who were too slow to update their business models once it became obvious which way this trend was going. Claiming that the numbers from the recording industry show the "harm" done by piracy is like claiming that the numbers from the Horse Carriage Association of America show how automobiles killed transportation. Recorded music does not represent "the music industry" just as horse carriages did not represent the transportation industry.

And, of course, it's worth looking at how such "piracy" impacts other parts of the industry. In one recent study done at Harvard, if you add in the sales of digital music players, such as the iPod, the music ecosystem has grown tremendously. In fact, that's part of the reason we've argued in the past that the ebook industry, if anything, really could use more piracy, not less, because it would help drive the overall market forward, and more quickly open up new business models. Fearing piracy is a fool's game. Getting more information out to more people more quickly only opens up opportunity.

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Maybe Failing Faster Is Really The Way To Go

from the books-now-limited-to-140-pages dept

We're always on the lookout for new experiments in media publishing, so keep on submitting relevant links, folks. So here's another one. Trying to target a "gap" between magazines and books, the Daily Beast and Perseus Books Group are teaming up to publish books in just 2-4 months, giving authors 1-3 months to write and then publishing the work a month later as an e-book (and then in paperback). These books are aiming to be 40,000 words long, or around 150 pages -- which sounds like a Twitter-like limit, designed to encourage authors to produce stories that are more topical and timely. And on the logistical side, these publishers are going to use the sales of the e-book titles to help anticipate how many paperback editions to print.

It's an interesting experiment because it begins to grasp that digital goods can be used both to promote content and also to assess the market for the related tangible/scarce goods. On top of that, the shorter publishing cycle will likely be more engaging to readers who won't have to wait very long for new books to come out. However, there are some possible pitfalls, too. If the e-books are too expensive (or poor quality because they're written in a rush), then obviously the promotional aspect of the digital content won't be there. They could also soon discover that their target audience is too tuned into digital goods, and the audience that buys printed books doesn't overlap much with Daily Beast readers (so they'd need to promote on a different channel). But at least the publishers won't be stuck with a ton of printed books in inventory, so the downside risk seems lower than traditional publishing. And, actually, that reduced risk might be the key part of this publishing plan. When digital distribution costs are minimal, the strategy of "throwing everything at the wall to see if it sticks" becomes more viable. The Daily Beast's website already leverages free content with news and opinion articles, so if it can also offer unique content with a quicker turnaround time, the reason to buy its books could surface as more and more "good" authors are discovered and recommended -- and commissioned to produce new content.

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Doing More With eBooks

from the hey,-look-at-what-the-technology-allows dept

While I can understand some of the interest in ebooks, one of the things I haven't quite understood was the effort to focus on making ebooks more like regular books. In the history of "killer apps," the one thing that tends to stand out is that they show up when the new technology allows something new that couldn't be done before. Simply mimicking the old on a new platform isn't a recipe for widespread success. And, sure, ebooks can let you store a lot of books on a single device, or take notes, but they haven't really taken advantage of what the technology could enable.

David Thomson points us to an interesting ebook experiment involving singer and novelist Nick Cave, who has created an ebook for the iPhone, that involves a whole lot more. Beyond just the text, there are both the audio and video versions of Cave reading along -- and that includes some music that goes with the book as well. Plus, it includes a "news feed" though it's not clear what's in it. The pricing still seems a bit expensive ($25), but it's great to at least see some experimenting with what the technology should allow.

One other interesting tidbit: it wasn't Cave who came up with the idea, but his publisher who really pushed to make the ebook into something more, and roped Cave into agreeing to add the extra stuff. It's nice to see that at least some of the middlemen providers are looking to step up and take charge, rather than just leaving it all to the content creators.

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Amazon Offers $30 To Those Who Had Orwell's Books Deleted

from the those-books-were-never-deleted dept

In its continuing effort to make up for deleting unauthorized George Orwell ebooks from the Kindle, Amazon is apparently now offering $30 to those who lost their books. Well, actually it's a $30 check, gift certificate or they'll redeliver the book they deleted. Of course, assuming the ebooks cost less than $30 (Kindle's version of 1984 costs $9.99), it's difficult to see why people wouldn't just take the cash and rebuy the book themselves, if they wanted it.

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Is The Kindle's Antisocial Nature Holding It Back?

from the interesting-quotes dept

We've discussed in the past how idea sharing and content sharing is "the new normal" for many people, thanks to the internet these days. The "old" view of things -- the broadcast view -- was that big professional creators of content or journalism put a stamp of approval on some content and shipped it along to a waiting audience. But, the rise of the internet has muddied this picture greatly, showing that people actually prefer to be a part of the process. They want to share content. They want to comment on it. They want to modify it. They want to link to it. They want to promote it. They want to respond to it.

Content, itself, has become part of the social process.

Now, we spend lots of time discussing how that's mucking around with business models based on the old view, but it may be causing some troubles for technology as well. In a brief message on Twitter, Mediashift author Mark Glaser, highlighted a fantastic point by Dan Pacheco about why he preferred an iPhone to a Kindle for reading content:

Most content I share starts from the iPhone. Kindle's antisocial nature is what bugs me most.

This point made me realize why I have so little interest in a Kindle. You can't do much with the content on it. It's delivered to you in that old "we're the content creators, you're the content recipient" method. You can annotate it for yourself, but it's not social at all. And these days, so many of us have learned to interact with content socially. For something like eBooks to really take off, my guess is that it will take a much more social approach, where people can do more to interact over the content that they're reading.

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Publishers Lashing Out At eBooks

from the welcome-to-the-marketplace dept

You would think that, with the music and movie industries to guide them, book publishers would be smarter than to complain about the rise of digital ebooks. But... apparently not everyone got the memo. Arnaud Nourry, the CEO of publisher Hachette is apparently quite upset about Amazon's pricing of ebooks and is warning that hardcover books may die. But the thing that strikes me? All he does is complain, and nowhere does he suggest what the industry is going to do about it... other than complain. This is the same mistake the music industry and the movie industry have been making. They don't propose any reasonable solutions, they just get angry at what the technology allows. He complains about public domain books, and then he complains about the prices Amazon charges:

"On the one hand, you have millions of books for free where there is no longer an author to pay and, on the other hand, there are very recent books, bestsellers at $9.99, which means that all the rest will have to be sold at between zero and $9.99."

Yes, if that defines the market you're dealing with. But why not adapt? Why not focus on giving people reasons to actually buy books at a profitable rate? And, of course, a bit part of the problem is that these same publishers didn't do anything to lead the way on ebooks. Instead, they sat around doing nothing while Amazon built the Kindle and Google went and scanned a bunch of books. The publishers could have put together a plan, but they ceded the advantage to the tech industry, and now they're complaining about their own lack of foresight? That's not very compelling.

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Why Do Ebooks Cost So Much?

from the greed? dept

Jeff Malfant points us to a nice little rant over at News.com wondering why ebooks are so damned expensive. He points out that many seem to be priced at about the same going price as the physical books, despite no physical product to produce and ship. My guess is that companies and publishers think they can get away with it for now, since people are "used to" paying the price of books, but it won't last. It just becomes an opportunity for smarter folks to start offering cheaper books (or even free ebooks). And, at some point, a lot of people will just stop paying for the higher priced ebooks.

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Sony Recognizes That Openness Is A Competitive Advantage

from the finally dept

It may have taken the (very) long way to get there, but it looks like at least some folks over at Sony have figured out that openness can be a competitive advantage, and have decided to support the open ePub ebook format for its ebook reader. Now, there are lots of caveats here. Amazon has effectively been able to capture the leadership position in this market, while Sony has languished, so partly this is a hail mary pass -- which we've seen happen elsewhere as well. And, of course, despite it being an open format and the fact that Sony is ditching its own DRM, the new format will still have Adobe DRM -- so this isn't a truly opened up solution, but it is a step. It may be difficult for Sony to recapture the lead in this market by this point, but it seems like that the open ebook platforms will only gain steam (and eventually Amazon will end up supporting it as well). It's the natural progression that we see over and over again: a closed platform may help define the market, and then weaker competitors often circle around an open platform, realizing it's their only chance to fight back against the lock-in of the market leader. While it often takes some time, the open platforms do tend to get better and better, even to the point that the original leader is eventually forced to adopt it as well.

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SitePoint: Rather Than Freaking Out Over Piracy, We Decided To Adapt

from the good-for-them dept

AnonJr alerts us to the news that publisher/media firm SitePoint, has decided to do away with the passwords on the PDF versions of its books, noting that it seemed to only serve to piss off customers:

In the 18 months I have worked at SitePoint, barely a week has gone by where I have not received at least a couple of emails from customers questioning the logic behind our password protection policy. My response, based on the SitePoint philosophy, was always that we were taking an ethical (if largely symbolic) stance on the piracy issue. But how long could we maintain that line while simultaneously placing primacy on the customer experience, as all the while more and more requests to remove password protection poured in.

As a web development resource and learning centre, we know that we must embrace the state of flux -- not as a lofty ideal, but as a normative imperative. You can't claim to be all about the cutting edge when you're stubbornly clinging to old, outmoded processes -- especially when your own beloved customers are urging you to move on. And if we're not keeping pace with the constantly evolving face of web design and development, then we're neither a resource nor a learning centre -- we're a museum.

Kudos to another company recognizing that pissing off your best customers is hardly a way to run a business.

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Publishers Succeeding With Free eBooks Driving Sales For Other Books

from the there-we-go-again dept

While I'm no fan of the Kindle for a variety of reasons (DRM, lack of real ownership of the books, etc.), it has to be admitted that the device has made ebooks a lot more mainstream than before. And, along with ebooks comes the realization to some publishers that it's now possible to give away some ebooks for free, and use them to promote other books (thanks to William C Bonner for sending this in). What the publishers are discovering is that they can offer up older books that have lost much of their commercial value for free, and it helps drive sales of newer books by the same author. In some cases, they give away the first in a series of books, which has proven to be quite effective. What the publishers are really realizing is that thanks to digital distribution, they can suddenly use the "free" cost of the book to hook people and get them to purchase later books in a series. This is hardly a new idea, of course, but it's great to see more book publishers figuring it out.

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High School Student Sues Amazon For Deleting His Summer Homework?

from the pr-nightmare dept

Well, you just knew that there were going to be class action lawsuits filed over Amazon's decision to delete unauthorized George Orwell ebooks that had been sold for the Kindle, but it appears that the class action lawyers have found the most headline-worthy story to get the word out. As we mentioned in the original post on this story, at least one kid lost the notes he had been taking on one of the books. So, we get a story about how a high school student is suing Amazon for deleting his summer homework, and the lawyers are hoping to turn it into a class action.

As bad as Amazon's actions were, I can't see this lawsuit getting very far. For most Kindle users, they're going to have a hard time showing any sort of real "harm." The kid with the lost homework might be able to show some (small) amount of harm, but I have to imagine that Amazon is mostly protected from liability in such cases. Still, with Amazon being quick to apologize and swear it would never ever ever delete an ebook again, you have to wonder if Amazon will step up and just try to appease the kid (and get the lawyers to go away).

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B&N Claims It Must DRM Public Domain Books To Protect The Copyright On Them

from the say-what-now? dept

Now, it's no surprise that plenty of people don't quite "get" the public domain or why it's important (though, if you are interested, you should read James Boyle's excellent book on the subject, which you can also order -- signed -- as a part of the Techdirt Book Club). And we've seen more than a few instances where people falsely claim copyright on public domain material. However, none of that really explains Barnes & Noble's bizarre and contradictory response to someone's question about why public domain ebooks were locked up with DRM (thanks Mark for sending this in). B&N is apparently offering a promotion for "free" ebooks, but it turns out that all of them are in the public domain (meaning most are already available for free online). But, oddly, these books were locked up by DRM, and someone decided to ask why. The original question goes a bit too far in claiming that the DRM "infringes" on the "right to print the works" (there's no such right, and B&N has no requirement to allow you to print), but that's no excuse for the way B&N "explains" why the public domain books its giving away "free" are protected by DRM:

We selected public domain titles as our free eBooks because these books are traditionally among our customers' favorite works of literature.... Also, for copyright protection purposes, these files are encrypted and cannot be converted or printed.

So, they recognize that the works are in the public domain... but they encrypt them with DRM to protect the copyright that doesn't exist on those works. That's convincing.

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Doubleplusungood: That Copy Of 1984 On Your Kindle Is Now Gone

from the you-never-had-that-book... dept

For quite some time we've been pointing out the simple fact that, unlike with a physical book, you don't really own the ebooks that you buy on your Amazon Kindle. Even worse, Amazon can simply delete them at will. In fact, that's exactly what's happened to (of all books!) George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. Talk about irony. People who legitimately purchased those books discovered that they're now gone, as the publisher has decided that ebook versions were doubleplusungood and should never have existed in the first place. So, like the war with Eurasia, the book is now just a figment of your imagination. You never had it. At least Amazon refunded the money, but what kind of book do you buy that gets automatically disappeared? eBooks are an interesting concept, but how can anyone buy into something where their books might suddenly disappear? Update: The NY Times is now reporting that Amazon says it will change its system so that, in the future, books won't be deleted. However, that's not making many customers happy. They seem pretty pissed off -- with some noting that Amazon's own terms of service claim that you have a permanent right to the content once you've bought it. On top of that, the Times quotes a student who had taken a bunch of notes, which Amazon destroyed as well.

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