eBooks are not worth the paper they aren't printed on

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Date: May 1, 2010 9:43:58 AM EDT
To: <nnsquad () nnsquad org>, <dave () farber net>
Cc: <danb () bricklin com>
Subject: eBooks are not worth the paper they aren't printed on

The iPad once again has brought the issue of eBooks to the fore.
 
I’ve been following the pricing battle. The idea of eBooks is wonderful but DRM, Digital Rights Management, makes it 
difficult to pretend that the DRMed eBooks are just like their printed cousins. The attempt to price those eBooks at 
the same price as printed books is fundamentally wrong. These eBooks are typically worth substantially less than the 
printed books because DRM is far more onerous than the limitations imposed by paper as a token of ownership.
 
I can only view the eBooks on a limited number of devices. I can try to game the system by treating my family as a 
group but that has its own problems. No sharing, trading, and with most readers I can’t even copy the text to a 
clipboard.
 
If we had rational pricing then DRM should knock most of the value off the book. Of course things are more complicated 
because some books work as transient “reads” and should be priced as a read. Others are more archival and lose value if 
they can’t be shared. And some indeed work as personal active documents whose value on a device is more than it would 
be in a printed form.
 
Rather than trying to carry an old business model forward we need to recognize that an eBook is a new creature and that 
DRM should one of the factors in determining, limiting, the price.
 
Once we get past the attempt to bring the old model forward we can create a variety of new “books”. Some would be 
subscriptions with updates. Others would be more like apps and some would become family heirlooms.




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