Well, so.
My intention was to get the rest of the. . .junk. . .off the floor of my office and into its proper place, be it another room, or the trash can.
Didn’t get there. Instead, I filled out some more forms, did some laundry, put all the 99 cent electronic books back up to $2.99 and the $2.99 book back up to $4.99, was cranky in silence about outstanding emails to Various that haven’t been answered yet and it would really be nice if any one of these three things would get resolved, argh, and will shortly go off and do the dishes before sitting on the sofa and starting to read Necessity’s Child.
Well, at least the taxes are done.
I guess I’ll move “clean up office” over to tomorrow’s to-do list.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about off and on is the responses to the issues of copyright and piracy. A couple commenters mentioned — sapiently — that publishers are shooting themselves in both feet by operating under the default assumption that their customers — or at least the greater number of their customers — would rather steal a copy of a book than buy a legitimate copy. And so we have DRM, and boneheaded proposals like SOPA.
One idea put forth was that publishers should ally themselves with their customers to fight piracy. This sounds like exactly what should happen, but — I’m having a hard time envisioning how that would work.
Does anybody have a Plan, a Vision, an Idea about what this collaboration would look like?
when will theo become delm(ae) korval?
1. The delmae is the lifemate of the delm; it is a gender-free word. Had Miri been “Miri yos’Phelium” and married “Val Con Tiazan,” Val Con would have been Delmae Korval.
2. How the devil would Theo wind up in the line of succession, I wonder, having not been seen by the delm?
You might be interested in this article:
http://www.teleread.com/drm/fighting-piracy-without-drm-is-not-always-successful/
For me the money quote is:
(Though oddly the same thing doesn’t seem to be true for DRM-free e-books; Baen’s DRM-free offerings are much less pirated than offerings from other publishers. …)
With regard to copyright and piracy, here are my slightly-organized thoughts:
I’m thinking more and more that the new model for publishing might be closer to self-publishing, but with editing houses rather than publishing houses. Authors retain all rights to their work, but can contract with editors (individual or “edit houses” like old-school publishing houses); who would be paid a flat fee, a percentage, or in some other way; and the book could be sold with the “imprint” of the editor (or edit house) to indicate a greater chance that the written language is comprehensible, at a minimum, or the content meets the standards of the editor/edit house. Kind of like current publisher’s imprints, but transportable to electronic, print-on-demand, photonic, positronic (gotta throw one in for Dr. A), or other future distribution methods, but with the author retaining rights and control, as seems more and more appropriate with now-current and future means of publication.
A new author may forgo professional editing — as may seem to be doing now — and self-publish via Amazon, etc. But as they become successful they would be more likely to understand the benefits of editing and choose to use the services of an editor or edit house. And editors may approach up-and-coming authors to promote their services, perhaps offering to edit a new work on a contingency or fee per copy sold basis.
Publishers might also actually publish books, in print or electronically, but that would be a separate function from editing, and subject to a separate financial arrangement.
From what I’ve read, it seems that most people would prefer to purchase their electronic copies of music/movies/books, but when the purchase price is ridiculously high or the legal versions prevent purchasers from reasonably accessing their purchased media on the devices of their choice, they are then more likely to engage is media piracy. So if electronic copies are sold at lower cost, free of DRM, they are more likely to actually sell and not be pirated.
And kind of related, regarding authors’s backlist titles: Publishers should not be able to prevent the electronic publication of an author’s work that the publisher has no intention of publishing in electronic form itself. At the very least they should be required to permit the author to electronic self-publish, with a single penny-per-copy payment from the author to the publisher. (Okay, perhaps more than a penny, but it should be extremely nominal.)
Does this make any sense to anyone else?