Publishers Screwing E-books Already
A Broken Kindle
I’m not a big fan of illegitimate cartels such as the MPAA and the RIAA. In fact, I despise anyone or anything that supports their actions usurping users’ rights. Lest I forget, I don’t want to leave out the next wave of idiots that are coming out of their shells: Publishers.
E-books are coming
Earlier, I posted about E-book readers being screwed. I have my own opinions on e-book readers and I strongly believe that they will co-exist with paper-based media. However, I think the adoption of e-book readers will not skyrocket like the personal digital media player (i.e., iPod). E-books will gain a strong foothold with voracious readers and commuters. I, myself, would enjoy the prospect of having my daily newspaper delivered to my e-book reader daily.
Like it or not, most people will begin carrying around another gadget to supplement their already growing array of electronic gadgets.
Amazon had a vision, now they killed it
Amazon came out with a great pricing scheme for e-books, $9.99. Most of the e-books that Amazon sold for its Kindle were flat-rate and easy to remember. Publishers such as Macmillan, have basically thwarted Amazon’s noble effort to maintain a strict one-tier price model.
Why? Macmillan wants to make more money and reduce ‘harmful’ effects on sales of overpriced hardcover editions.
Let’s sell for…
Apple and Macmillan have literally teamed up to deliver e-books at a tiered pricing model. In other words, most of the newer e-books will cost $14.99 and may see reduction in price as time goes on. The $14.99 price point allows publishers to sell these new versions at the same time as the hardcovers, but at a price point closer to the MSRP of the hardcover editions.
Let’s screw the customer AND the author
Paul Carr, a noted TechCrunch writer, is an established author and he writes a fairly constructive view of what this new pricing model by Macmillan really means for the author.
For the first time in the UK since 1997, and ever in the US, publishers are able to set – and enforce- their own prices on ebooks. And they will; not to make a fair return on ebooks but rather to cripple their sales in order to protect early hardback book sales. They’ve admitted as much themselves, saying that prices will start high on hardback release, before dropping steadily over time.
What is happening is that publishers like Macmillan are screwing e-books by making the price point artificially high and inadvertently promoting piracy. E-book piracy is not as big as music piracy, but I can assure you that if e-books do not have consumer-friendly pricing, more and more customers will engage in questionable tactics to get their e-books.
Imagine a “Napster” for e-books
Soon we’ll start seeing e-books without any DRM (digital rights management) popping up on popular torrent search engines. As e-book readers continue to increase in sales, we’ll start seeing hackers ‘jailbreak’ their e-book readers and improve functionality.
Ladies and gentlemen. What we are seeing is the birth of e-book piracy because publishers are on a crusade to crush consumers’ rights, all in the name of protecting their pathetic business models.
Long live e-book piracy.