[Publishing]
[publishing] Books as licenses – print and ebooks both
One thread of the ongoing ebook discussion on the Internet has been the perception of a lot of readers (including, possibly, reporters at Wired) that ebooks have no incremental cost, and therefore should tend to be free. This assumption ignores sunk costs in book acquisition and production, as well as ongoing royalties to authors. It’s also based on misperceptions about the value of physical objects versus virtual objects.
I am still chewing on notion that ebooks are a service, and print books are a product, but I’m thinking I’ve still got it wrong. Yes, ebooks under DRM behave like like a service, but even DRM-free ebooks are presented under a EULA. (Please note, this is not a defense of DRM, just an acknowlegement it exists.) Print books behave like a product in the sense that you purchase a physical object that is yours to use or dispose of largely as you see fit, much as an automobile or a frying pan or an action figure may be used or disposed of largely as you see fit.
The true, underlying product is story. Every delivery mechanism — print books, ebooks, audio — are licenses to that story. Copyright and ultimate ownership still vest with the author (or in the case of work-for-hire, the license holder).
When you purchase a print book, you purchase a single-use, transferable license to that story in the form of the author’s copyright. With limited exceptions for Fair Use, you don’t have permission to copy or reproduce the print book. You can pass it along to other readers, resell it, or otherwise dispose of the print book, but all that is in terms of the license embedded in the print book itself. License and artefact are difficult to separate, though not impossible. For example, scanning, photocopying or rekeying beyond the bounds of Fair Use would serve to sever license from artefact, and all three are illegal.
When you purchase an ebook, depending on the DRM wrappers on the book, your rights of transferability may vary. Likewise back up copying, resale and so forth can be influenced by both DRM and the EULA associated with your ebook reader and the software compilation that represents the ebook publication itself. But you still don’t own the copyright, again, you have only purchased a license to that story in the from of an author’s copyright.
Because fundamentally, that’s what the author sells to the publisher. A license to reproduce the copyright.
What I’m getting at here is that the whole question of ebooks versus print books is a bit of a red herring. You don’t own the book, any more that you own the performance of a song you buy on CD or mp3. I think this differs from purchasing visual art, where you can own the painting, but even then, the artist can reserve reproduction rights.
It all comes down to concepts of intellectual property, which are frankly a bit abstruse for most people who don’t need to spend their time worrying about such things. Even if you buy a Braun coffee maker, you don’t buy the rights to recreate it in your workshop and sell copies of the coffee maker. Except the process of copying a coffee maker is so tedious, that unless you own a Third World knockoff factory, you’re not going to bother.
Copying or scanning a print book is a possible behavior. Copying an ebook is a trivial behavior, at least technically.
But you, the reader, never take full title to the story underneath. You have taken a license to that story, a contract ultimately between you and the author, embedded in the copyright statement in the front matter of the book. And that license has value, whether it’s delivered on cellulose and ink, or via an organized compilation of electrons.
If this were more widely understood, would it shift the terms of the ebook debate?
Posted: 3:58 pm Mon February 08 2010 |
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Ashavan Doyon
February 8th, 2010 at 7:31 pmJay -
No offense, but I don’t think that’s how readers view it, with some enlightened exceptions, and even those probably don’t agree completely (unless they are also in the publishing world, which seems ultimately confused on reader’s perceptions of their products).
The format is not the license, even if the license is attached to the format. I’m still paying a price based on my perception of the value of the format. We’ve been given to understand that the hardcover has an artificially inflated value (costing mere pennies per unit more to produce than the paperback), and that this artificial inflation is crucial to the success of the book. But when a person buys that book they are considering, in exchange for that price, not just the story, but also how that hardcover will look on their shelf. They are considering the format, not just the license.
Ebooks, similarly, suffer from the trouble of people purchasing the format. People are buying the story, but lacking something physical (which granted is also part of the attraction) causes a perceived lack of value. The ebook, in a sense, is the ultimate reduction of the format into the story… and so its value becomes degraded into a lowest denominator. With a worse license (usually no ability to share) the reader’s purchase becomes solely story, and the portion they were willing to attribute to format is no longer available, because the format is intangible.
Does this mean the market won’t bear higher prices that change dynamically over time? No, of course not… because there is merit, and understanding I think, that sometimes the timing of receipt of the story is worth a premium.
Jay
February 9th, 2010 at 5:31 amAshavan -
I know I’m being an idealist when I talk about licenses, but I think what I’m doing is trying to reason my way back towards first principles here, and come forward again with a possibly new philosophy on publishing. Ambitious? Yes. Likely to succeed? No. But the questions are worth asking. Your input continues to be very helpful.
Best,
Jay
Murphy Jacobs
February 8th, 2010 at 8:30 pmI think it’s pretty obvious from comments and blogs that most readers/consumers do NOT distinguish between the physical format of a book and the content thereof. I won’t repeat what I said in the comments two posts ago, but that was the realization that changed my thinking about eBook pricing. I’m not paying for electrons — I am paying for someone to entertain me with a written story, and I’m paying other people to refine, polish and format that story into a good reading experience. Sometimes I am also paying to get that entertainment in a particular format (or paying less, in certain cases, because I am getting a less durable or beautiful format.) There’s also the issue of paying a premium to get that entertainment as soon as it is available, or waiting a while to get it cheaper.
These are issues and ideas most people never consider, and they certainly have been absent from many of the discussions I’ve seen.
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Meran
February 8th, 2010 at 11:16 pmJust a note: I don’t buy a hardcover book for “how it looks on the shelf”, but instead partially because of durability/hardiness and how it feels in my hands as compared to a paperback.
I may agree with you Jay that if customers understood the product better, this discussion would be differently considered.
Meran
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February 9th, 2010 at 12:15 am[...] [publishing] Books as licenses â print and ebooks both | jlake.com8 hours ago by Jay One thread of the ongoing ebook discussion on the Internet has been the perception of a lot of readers (including, possibly, reporters at Wired) that ebooks.[ ] [...]
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CharlesP
February 9th, 2010 at 6:33 amWhile I think few customers think about it this way, I think there is a bit of inherent mental math going on in a purchase of a book. In my mind I’m considering the ultimate cost to be comprised of the “story” aspect of it + any benefits of a given format. So if I’m buying a hardback I’m considering some of that cost the “early adopter” cost, some of it for the durability of the medium, and some for the ability to pass it on to somebody else. I look at getting something in paperback as less durable, and not “the new book”, so generally worth less. Though for me, I often like the portability factor of a Mass Market Paperback and that is my preferred format for certain types of books. With eBooks (which I don’t really purchase) there is the benefit of portability, but the large intrinsic value loss of the trade-able durable medium. There is still the basic value cost to be weighed for writing and editing and such.
I think a movable price point is likely were things should/will end up. My guess is Amazon’s $9.99 price is about right for 90% of new books, and that it should gradually get down to the $1.99-2.99 range over a few years (see JA Konraths work on these prices)… of course that lower price point makes for an interesting problem. What works for JA there is that these are out of print back catalog books that the publisher has already gotten their cut on and no longer get a piece of the action. In the future, one can see that the publishers will want to tie up SOME income on these back catalog books so they get part of that long tail income.
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David S.
February 9th, 2010 at 6:03 pmThe problem with the ebook licenses is they try to impose additional restrictions on the reader (usually via DRM) that go way beyond those imposed by the normal copyright law that applies to print books.
Additional restrictions that prevent people doing things, like reselling the books and lending them to friends and family, that they are allowed to do with print books, and which readers put great value on. And then they try to charge as much, in some cases more, for such crippled ebooks as they do for print books! That’s why people are so upset and largely why ebooks are perceived as worth less than print books. If ebooks were sold with licenses that were no more (and no less) restrictive than print books (i.e. the exact same license terms copyright law imposes on print books) the whole issue would be considerably easier (there would still be the issue of no warehousing costs, no printing costs and virtually no distribution costs for ebooks vs print books of course).
If publishers want to impose such enhanced restrictions then they are free to do so (whether by technical means or simply a more restrictive license) but they have to understand that this makes the end product less valuable to the customers, it lowers it’s utility, and the only way that might work is if it’s sold at a lower price.
Trying to charge the same price (or nearly the same price) for a product with more restrictions than the alternative just gives people an incentive to violate the terms of the more restrictive license, which is the last thing you want because that in turn just triggers an arms race, and then everyone loses.
Jay
February 9th, 2010 at 6:16 pmDavid -
Thanks for the perspective on DRM and restrictions. My own opinions pretty much parallel your with respect to the value proposition of DRM, for whatever that’s worth.
Best,
Jay
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February 10th, 2010 at 12:19 am[...] [publishing] Books as licenses â print and ebooks both | jlake.com8 Feb 2010 by Jay One thread of the ongoing ebook discussion on the Internet has been the perception of a lot of readers (including, possibly, reporters at Wired) that ebooks. – [ ] [...]
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