Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:14:28 -0500
From: "Mike B." <yahoo at omniphile.com>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>,
 wsFA Official List <wsfa-forum at yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: [wsfa-forum] Booksellers and Macmillan and amazon
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

> 1.  Right now Amazon is taking an average loss of $5.00 per book.  If they take this
> loss long enough -- I've heard that they're planning on five years which is more
> than enough -- Kindle will become the industry standard.  And both the format and
> the machine are propitiatory to Amazon.

"Proprietary" maybe?

> You want to publish an ebook?  You buy Kindle.  (If you're a smaller publisher or
> author with one well, the book is only available in hard copy.)  You want to buy an
> ebook? You buy Kindle.  You want to read an ebook?  You buy a Kindle.   You want to
> make money?  You own Kindle.  It makes very, very good business sense.

I'm not so sure.  What is a Kindle?  It's a limited capability computing
device with features optimized for e-book reading.  It has a CPU,
memory, a display screen, input means, battery, etc.  Sounds a lot like
a desktop, laptop, netbook, tablet, or any other general purpose
computer.  Lots of companies can, and do, and will, make similar
devices, most likely with more capability than a Kindle (especially
future devices).  Stick some e-Book reader software on such a device,
and you can read e-Books.  Whether you can do it legally is another
question...Congress has passed some very restrictive copyright laws, but
with the right pressure, Congress can un-pass it too, and there's some
pressure to do so outside of the e-Book realm.

What is an e-Book?  It's a bunch of bits in a particular arrangement.
By reading them, and interpreting the arrangements properly, you can
cause text (and in some cases pictures) to appear to a user.  Reading,
interpreting and displaying data is what computers do.  All that's
needed for a general purpose computer to display e-Books is the right
software.  Something like an iPad with the right program becomes an
e-Book reader.  There will be more small tablets in the future.  Such
things are just too useful in too many ways...especially the kind that
will be able to fold or roll up, and then there are the wearable
computers that will be here eventually.

Amazon can copyright their software, but others can write equivalent
software that isn't the same.  That got settled back in the IBM BIOS
wars of the early 80s.  The "clean room" method of reverse-engineering
has held up in court already.

It may be possible that there's something patentable about the way a
Kindle works...the e-Book format, or the way it is decoded (I dunno
about that).  First, patents expire, and second, there are other ways to
do e-Books.  If authors, customers, or both, decide they don't like
being locked into Amazon, they won't be.  Other e-Book formats are
possible (a dozen or more exist already...one of the problems of
acceptance since no e-reader reads them all), so if books are published
in another one, they can be readable on other devices.  Amazon can't
lock up the idea of e-Books, or prevent alternate versions except by
attracting enough of the market to their way...and some parts of their
way are so abhorrent to many that this may not be possible.

If Amazon wants to lock people into their hardware, their software, they
can try...but it won't work.  It's also foolish.  If IBM hadn't lost the
BIOS wars that allowed PClones to proliferate and drop the price of
personal computers, they'd have disappeared from that market...there
were MUCH better personal computers available at the time.  The Clones
saved the PC, and if IBM had been able to keep things proprietary, as
they wanted to do, and as Apple did, they'd have as small a market share
as Apple still does.  IBM tried to re-capture a captive market with the
PS-2...using patents on the MicroBus architecture to prevent cloning.
That machine died rapidly in the marketplace, despite being a technical
improvement over the PC.  As it was, the Clones grew the market, so that
IBM had a larger market to get a piece of, and it became the
standard...despite its VERY serious technical failings that held back
personal computer development for decades.

> 2. Printing and shipping a physical book are small parts of the actual costs of what
> you, the reader are holding in your hands or seeing on your screens.

Then why did the publishing industry claim that it was the increasing
cost of paper that required that books (and magazines) rise steeply in
price a couple of decades ago?  I don't buy this.

> See point 1: that $9.99 Amazon is charging right now is less than what a book, e or
> otherwise, costs.    (Paperbacks cost less than $9.99 -- usually -- but come out a
> later. Think the cost of prescription medication and what it costs years later when
> you don't need a prescription.)

Yeah, they overcharge up front in an attempt to earn back the cost of
creation in a hurry, and to see how much they can make from the
impatient, and once they've sucked up as much as they can of that
market, they produce cheaper versions to sop up the rest.  Other than
the cost of paper and shipping, there's no real cost difference between
producing a paperback and a trade paperback, but there's a substantial
price difference.  Either they are gouging on the hardcover and trade
paperback versions, or the paper and shipping are big parts of the cost
involved.  Possibly both of course.

The Internet has changes many things about what works and what doesn't.
  It isn't finished yet.

-- Mike B.