[Publishing]
[publishing] The value of ebooks; or contents vs container
The perennial “ebooks should be free, charging for them is theft” argument is now playing out at io9.com. Still thinking through the licensing issue I raised recently, I said the following:
When you buy a print book, you aren’t buying the content, you’re buying the edition. Otherwise everybody who bought a hard cover would be entitled to a free paperback, a free audiobook and a free movie ticket if the book were filmed. It would unethical for you to steal the paperback, pirate the audiobook and sneak into the movie. Why is it ethical for you to pirate the ebook?
Posted: 12:18 pm Sat April 10 2010 |
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Jack Eason
April 10th, 2010 at 11:17 pmIf your short story or novel is put into ebook form, then it should be bought just the same as a printed version of the same. To have it given away for free is completely wrong. It is your intellectual property covered by copyright and published by a publishing house. The only time it should be available for free is if you offer it to a website like Scribd, where you have the option to allow it to be freely taken up by whoever wishes to read it.Scribd offer the option of ‘free’ or ‘price’.
[publishing] More on ebooks, pricing and licensing | jlake.com
April 13th, 2010 at 3:58 am[...] I observed recently [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ], The perennial “ebooks should be free, charging for them is theft” [...]