Let's say paper books were like e-books. Suppose the Proprietary Format Promoters' Forum and a character like the eBabel King set the tone for the p-book business. Psst! Here's the lowdown on why this infant technology never took off:

Each paper book had to go to a bunch of printers, or at least be printed on separate presses, one per printer. Otherwise publishers missed out on scads of readers.

Besides a special press, each printer used a different kind of ink and a proprietary variety of paper. Most of the ingredients in the ink and paper were the same all over, as part of a subset of the Extensible Paper-Ink standard or XPI. But not all were the same; hence, the incompatibilities that delighted the proprietary-minded printers worried about their business models.

Stone tablets favored over glitchy eyeglasses

Readers had to wear different glasses if they wanted to read different books from different printers in the special inks on the special papers. The glasses were hardly glitch-free. You often had to fiddle with them endlessly before they worked. And to think: you might have to waste hours on each pair, for each printer--not just once for all printers and all books. Besides, how many people would rather not mess with carrying around different brands of glasses?

Since the proprietary glasses were a hassle, and since deluxe pairs cost money, zillions of readers stuck to stone tablets and avoided paper books--just as many publishers refused to bother with the use of different printers and kept favoring mini stone tablets. Traditional publishers and librarians didn't panic; in fact, quite the contrary. Stone tablets were eternal, paper appealed to no more than a tiny fraction of readers, and incompatibilities were just one more proof of the inferiority of paper, ever ready to crumble.

The Open Ink Forum

Thrilled about the incompatibilities, however, was a printers' group operating under the name of the Open Ink Forum, with the three or four largest printers dominating.

The Forum deftly fooled publishers into thinking that nonprinters counted, and, in fact, this printer-oriented group would graciously let them comment on paper and ink development and XPI and supply the printers with free consulting help. Publishers could even be officers in the Forum, just so they didn't prevail over the generous printers.

Actually, however, the publishers were merely customers to be squeezed like little ink bottles. The irony is that the publishers had once thought that they were to be served--with Forum to encourage nonproprietary standards at the consumer level.

Hadn't the very biggest printer put out a news release to that effect in announcing the creation of the Forum?

But so what if the printers ignored the original ballyhoo? My goodness, these were objective tech geniuses. Didn't printers know best? Sheepishly most of the publishers trusted the Open Ink Forum even though some sharp people among them raised doubts about the clashing formats.

The King of Open Ink

"Leading" the Open Ink Forum, as president, was a man with a close relationship with the big printers--yes, the p-book equivalent of the Steve Potash, the eBabel King of the "Open" eBook Forum.

The Open Ink King owned OverInk, an OverDrive-style company that among other things converted p-books from one paper format to another. But OverInk still didn't solve the problem for the p-book world as a whole. What's more, libraries discovered that the Open Ink King's XPI-based translations and other services were hardly free. Still, out of fear or ignorance, many publishers and librarians started doing business with the Open Ink King, in part because of his Forum connections and bullying ways. The Open Ink King made certain that the Forum did not give a squat about book readers having to wear different glasses to read books from different printers. XPI could be a pure standard only at the production level, not the consumer one.

Printers before publishers!

The Open Ink King, after all, cared just about his business, not publishers, libraries or readers. His Forum was mute when Europeans politicians and bureaucrats taxed paper books but not stone tablets.

"We don't lobby," the Open Ink King's executive director said--despite the billons that consumers would be shelling out to tax collectors over the decades.

Each of the major printers, however, tolerated the Open Ink King's lack of concern for publishers and his blithe conflict of interest. Was this not a glorious system? Each printer knew that in the end its printing method and proprietary paper would triumph, that it would grow to dwarf all the competition.

At the same time, the printers "protected" paper books with proprietary anti-piracy measures. Although based on the XPI standard, the ink was mixed up with special chemicals that could unwittingly cause trouble in the future. "Protected" books might not be widely readable a few decades hence, even by people wearing the once-right glasses. After all, the proprietary ingredients would keep changing.

More carrot-eating needed

Complications would arise from the clashing ink-paper formats and the supposedly protective ink. Revenue from the whole p-book industry was a fraction of the money that just one tablet author, Tom Clancy, made in a typical year. But, no sir, this was not the fault of the printers' group, which trained the publishers to fixate on piracy even more than they were wont. Readers just needed to learn to eat enough carrots to read p-books without eyestrain.

The Open Ink Forum used hype-heavy news releases to con the media into thinking that all was well. As much as possible--and here the job was difficult--the focus was on the growth rate of the tiny industry rather than on its pathetic size.

In late 2003, the Forum cranked up a membership campaign to convince even more publishers to pay for the privilege of donating XPI consulting services and training in this and other areas. As usual, however, the Forum steadfastly refused to come up with the consumer standards that the publishers and readers needed. Meanwhile even smaller printers outside the Forum didn't object to the inanities here, since they themselves envisioned becoming giants.

The font of power: Printers as format bosses

Actually competition suffered. Just one printer, after all, was behind each proprietary format. Granted, some made pious noises about letting other firms make eyeglasses for the formats, but the glasses would be worthless in many cases because of the proprietary copy protection that the printers so aggressively promoted without sharing all the nuances with the manufacturers of clones. What's more, on a moment's notice, the printers could single-handedly change the formats regardless of all the pious rhetoric about XPI.

By contrast, let's say the printers had hewed strictly to the XPI at both the production and consumer levels, and also had come up with a good nonproproprietary protection system with backward and forward compatibility. Then the printers could have competed to offer the world the best reading glasses. And as the XPI and protection systems evolved, readers could easily have kept up, since they only had to worry about industry standards--not a surfeit of egos and clashing formats. Librarians and archivists would have been especially grateful.

Never happened, though. All along the way, printers of every size laughed at the naiveté and ignorance of the rest of the world. What an awesome con, and deservedly so! Mere readers, writers, publishers and libraries should not count--only printers and format converters.

Update, Dec. 24: Also see Post-OeBF: Two replacement groups to drive up e-book sales--and help the world along the way.
posted by David Rothman at 10:19 PM | permanent link

"They'll just start with the A's in the phonebook and send out letters that start: 'If you own a computer, please send a check or money order to: The RIAA, c/o Idiots Who Don't Understand Their Customers, NY, NY 90021--or else!'" - Comment in the Techdirt blog, following a judge's decision that the RIAA cannot subpoena ISPs to suck up the names of file sharers.
posted by David Rothman at 5:15 PM | permanent link

Know one reason why China is so keen on e-books in the schools and elsewhere? The Chinese would like to cut back on reycled paper imports from the States.

That's one of the neat little tidbits and more important observations that emerged during the eBookworm show yesterday on a variety of e-book topics, especially the future. You can hear the audio from the show sponsored by the Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center.

Host Tom Peters' guests were e-book experts William Harroff from McKendree College's Holman Library and Charlotte Johnson from Southern Illinois University. Check out her thoughts on the pros of the medium.

Among other things yesterday, Brother Bill and Sister Char warned against business models "based on a print source"--and advocated e-books in forms that didn't just replicate paper books, especially in the area of children's books.

They also said writers would lead the way with nifty innovations. May that happen! Here's to more attention paid to content and less fixation on the needs of software-makers.

At the same time I hope that plenty of traditional books will be available in e-format and many new ones will be written--unabashedly linear and with a strong emphasis on character and plot.

My fascination with George Gissing's Victorian-age works continues. The issue isn't just the glitz of the medium per se, but also how many new books you can discover more quickly than through paper libraries. Catalogues alone won't cut it. I want to look at generous samples of the text before committing myself to reading entire books, and free collections like Project Gutenberg vastly simplify this. Amazon's "inside the book" feature will help, though not as much as PG does today, and as TeleRead could in the future.

Meanwhile, besides China, here are some e-book hotspots listed by Brother Bill and Sister Char: Ireland, Japan, Korea and Australia, a geographically huge country with heavy interest in distance learning. Brother Bill noted that the States dominates p-books. "The rest of the world," he said, "would like to be able to tell their own stories from their points of views."

For detals about the next eBookWorm show, contact Lori Bell.
posted by David Rothman at 12:41 PM | permanent link

Lee Fyock at Palm Digital Media is one of the more gung-ho defenders of the besieged Tower of eBabel. In an e-mail today Lee says he is not admitting that a Universal Consumer Format for e-books would threaten the business model of his employer. He disputes our interpretation of earlier remarks. But wait! Elsewhere he says: "There most likely will never be a universal consumer format, because there is no compelling business model for it. There's no money to be made, and a ton to be spent in such a scheme." Huh? Guess our interpretation of his original comments is operative after all if he means Palm Digital Media's money. Along the way, in apparent contradiction of experts like Bruce Schneier, Lee questions the value of nonproprietary DRM. Oh well. I like Lee and admire his loyalty to his employer even if it's at odds with some promises from Microsoft.

The TeleRead take: We're not out to hurt Palm Digital Media. In fact, Lee and colleagues could do quite well if they thought outside the box, hopped aboard the open-standards bandwagon and created some awesome reader software for a UCF. Plus, the PDM e-bookstore could sell more books without consumers having to worry about the Tower of eBabel. The question is whether PDM will show the necessary flexibility here since software seems to count more to these people than mere books. Speaking of which, aren't p-books already in a kind of a UCF? We don't need one pair of glasses to read Random House books and another to enjoy those from Simon & Schuster.

Furthermore, how about a pesky little question? Just where will the money be made. Sure ain't happenin' among real publishers to the extent it should these days. E-book sales are just $10-$12 million a year, and, even with rapid growth, are a long way from doing as well as they should have been by now. Shouldn't the welfare of actual publishers, editors, writers, librarians and other book industry people be the main concern of the Open eBook Forum, as opposed to the prosperity of Microsoft, Adobe, Palm Digital Media and OeBF President Steve Potash's company, OverDrive? That means worrying about a little detail--book-loving humans and their all-to-common hatred of the Tower of eBabel. If the real book people can't gain wrest control from the software types so a UCF can come about--well, that's all the more reason for the OeBF to make way for a more helpful group.

Lee Fyock types could still participate in advisory roles. But enough of this "Wag the Dog" stuff from the software business. Dogs over tails!
posted by David Rothman at 1:40 PM | permanent link

Adobe's new e-book store, written up by ZDnet, is in a way a step backwards, considering what a miserable excuse this is for a format.

Too many people will try the Adobe store and give up on e-books without exploring better alternatives such as Mobipocket (proprietary format), µBook (nonproprietary) and Tiny Reader (nonproprietary).
posted by David Rothman at 9:51 AM | permanent link

"Google has started letting people search text within books, following similar strides from retail behemoth Amazon.com. The service, called Google Print Beta, lets Web surfers call up brief excerpts from books, critic reviews, bibliographic and author's notes and, in some cases, a picture of the book jacket." - CNET News.

The TeleRead take: Just as with the Amazon service, authors are already fretting over the possible downside. It would be interesting to see, however, what the actual sales figures end up being. I tested the service with print.google.com copyright to see what existed at this point on topic C. I got StriKing It Rich.com and A Short History of Byzantium. Oh, well, net.copyright and the word "Byzantine" at least go togther well.

Update, 1:23 p.m.: Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, made some clueful comments about the Google service, as quoted by Publishers Lunch: "...electronic rights licensing income...would have to be shared with the author in almost trade book contracts... It looks like it should be a very positive thing for authors of all sorts of books. Authors will need to have the right to opt out if appropriate, but for most works of narrative nonfiction and fiction they probably shouldn't."


posted by David Rothman at 9:35 AM | permanent link

OverDrive, now doing its share of bragging in the library world, isn't just any old e-book distributor.

It's run by Steve Potash, also president of the "Open" eBook Forum. The OeBF has broken the original promises to come up with a universal consumer format that could be read by a number of machines. And Potash is King of this Tower of eBabel. Clashing electronic formats are a major reason why e-book sales amount to no more than $10 or $12 million a year--a fraction of what they should be.

And guess what? Now Potash is selling his library services based to a great extent on their multiformat capability--a Rube Goldbergish solution that wouldn't be necessary if his OeBF had been doing its job to come up with a standard format. Before librarians throw a fortune in tax money at Potash, they would do well to ask such questions as:

--Why has Potash been so resistant--regardless of any protests he may make--to the idea of open and universal standards at the consumer level? Forget about the excuse that such technology is impossible. Jon Noring, an invited expert for the OeBF, has laid out the specifics. Once the OeBF was a tiger in the area of format standardization at the production-level, but even that isn't moving ahead the way it used to. Look, we're not talking rocket science here. Under the hood, the Microsoft .lit format for consumers is a close relative of the OeBF production format, and it's been around now for years.

--Isn't there a, er, conflict of interest? Just why is it that Potash can preside over a supposedly neutral standards organization and at the same time profit from the group's outrageous delay in coming up with consumer standards building on those at the production level?

--Will the Open eBook Forum ever give the world a universal consumer format? Just when? Why can't Potash set at least a loose deadline? And will OverDrive then take up the UCF? Or will it continue selling itself to libraries based in large part on its multiformat capabilities?

--Just how much would libraries be paying for Potash's services compared to a situation in which a librarian-run infrastructure--in fact, maybe even a cooperative arrangement with publishers--could handle distribution? Remember, the technology has done away with the cost of warehousing.

--What are the breakdowns for Potash's costs, including those associated with proprietary digital rights management schemes? His company refused to supply DRM-related cost information when I asked earlier this year.

--How loyal will Potash be to libraries and publishers compared to his "technology partners" such as Adobe and Microsoft?

--Because of Steve Potash's close ties with Adobe and Microsoft, is it possible that rival distributors such as the OCLC-owned netLibrary are at a disadvantage?

--Will certain publishers skew their price structures--either out of choice or out of fear--to favor distribution by the eBabel King?

Librarians pride themselves on their research abilities, and it would be highly appropriate to use them here to make certain that readers and taxpayers will be protected in this era when library budgets are under attack in many cities.

Similarly, book publishers of all sizes need to ask themselves whether they want to entrust their distribution to the eBabel King whose supposedly publisher-friendly group has failed so miserably to solve the format problem.

Yes, despite Potash's pathetic attempts at trying to rewrite history, the format challenge indeed was to be solved. I was just a few feet away from Microsoft's Dick Bass at a press conference where he ballyhooed the creation of the OeBF and promised again and again that e-bookdom would never suffer a Beta-vs.-VHS mess. Now we have the problem tenfold, and Steve Potash, through the OeBF's determined inaction, is the main villain--as King of the Tower of eBabel. Microsoft, Adobe and Palm Digital Media crowned him. At least, as previously noted, a PDM man named Lee Fyock has had the decency to admit that a universal consumer format would threaten his business model. When will Potash himself fess up?

I'd suggest that Potash resign as the president of the OeBF, but the real solution ought to be more drastic--the replacement of this now-tainted group with an organization more friendly to libraries, publishers and others outside the e-book software niche in which Potash is a major player. So focused is the OeBF on its mission to enrich the eBabel King and friends that it won't even speak out against the billons that e-book publishers will be paying over the years in European VATs that hit electronic books but not the paper variety. That is how much Potash truly cares about publishers. Similarly, given the need of librarians for open standards to keep costs down and create the most seamless infrastructure, it would appear that they could do better than to trust the eBabel King.

Perhaps the most damning indictment of the present mess comes from someone in the software trade--in the form of a businessman's advice to e-publishers--words that would also be of interest to librarians: "Be ready to sell every title you commit to ePublishing in multiple formats--without significant additional conversion costs and reinvestment. If you are investing in converting your front, mid, or backlist--develop and keep a reusable format that permits your titles to take advantage of new channels. Tomorrow a new wireless device might take the eBook market by storm." Exactly why we need open standards to help manage this zoo! Librariians and publishers, then, should be vary wary of relying too heavily on one single solutions provider, especially the source of the above advice--none other than Steve Potash, the eBabel King.
posted by David Rothman at 4:15 AM | permanent link

Let's not tolerate those flaky European VATs that hit e-books but not the paper variety.

Books are books. Neither format should be taxed at all--and especially not at the 17.5 percent rate (the UK VAT's). The man at the left would be most grouchy. Yes, that's Andrew Carnegie, who, if alive today, just might feel that the Eurocrats were odds with his advocacy of low-cost knowledge. Even people in the States should be concerned. Remember, U.S. politicians and tax authorities can look abroad for precedents.

So I'd urge all readers, in Europe and the States alike, to think about sending polite e-mails to key members of the European Parliament. Over in France, Margot Milner and her husband, Nick Bentley, are researching the members' names.

Also helpful will be Edward McCoyd at the Association of American Publishers, who meanwhile passes on some useful anti-tax arguments from the Publishers Association in the U.K. Among other concerns, the PA rightly worries about the effects on tech investment and education.

This is a cause to unite all who love e- and p-books--readers, writers, publishers, bookstore owners, librarians, teachers, students, everyone.

Detail: Just to address one matter, I don't even think localities and states should tax books--paper or electronic. As much as I love libraries, I see Real World bookstores and e-bookstores as having their own important roles to play in the transmission of culture and knowledge.

Update, Dec. 22: The document from the British publishers certainly suggests there is discrimination against e-books. But before cranking up any campagin, I want to check out information just received from a Spanish reader.

According to him: "In Europe, paper books have exactly the same tax as e-books and that is also the same tax as almost any other good or service. The only difference between e-books and paper books is that the taxes of the former have to be paid by the seller, while for physical goods the tax is paid by the buyer when the good passes customs. As electronic goods do not pass customs the taxes must be paid in advance by the seller."

But is this really the case all over Europe? Is Spain different from, say, the United Kingdom? I'm checking into this situation via the AAP and meanwhile will be grateful for VAT-related info from readers in Europe who buy American books. Questions well worth investigating!
posted by David Rothman at 3:38 PM | permanent link

It's the 100th "would have been" birthday of Erskine Caldwell, the late author of Tobacco Road. But thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, you still can't read the book via Project Gutenberg even though this masterpiece dates back to 1932. Caldwell, portrayed in the New York Times as a Southern Dreiser supportive of civil rights, would surely be online now for the enlightenment of blacks and whites alike if the act hadn't stolen Road and many other works from today's public domain.

Bono stats: "One might conservatively estimate that 20 extra years of copyright protection will mean the transfer of several billion extra royalty dollars to holders of existing copyrights--copyrights that, together, already will have earned many billions of dollars in royalty 'reward.'" - Justice Stephen Breyer.
posted by David Rothman at 9:36 AM | permanent link

Just what does the "Open" eBook Forum do these days, other than provide PR services for Adobe, Microsoft, Palm Digital Media and OverDrive, the group's main angels?

In the past the OeBF created invaluable format standards at the production level; but it's shamefully wimped out and refused to come up with them at the consumer level. That's not the fault of OeBF's hard-working techie volunteers, of course. Blame Steve Potash, the OeBF president, pictured to the left, who'll do whatever the big boys want as long as it helps his own company, OverDrive. As for OeBF's services for librarians, students of e-book production and so on, we need to consider the same conflicts of interest that afflict the OeBF's standard-setting--when Microsoft, Adobe and friends call the shots. How about Palm Digital Media, another major player and perhaps the most outspoken on behalf of proprietary standards? At least PDM's Lee Fyock has been honest enough to admit that the nonproprietary variety would threaten his business model. Given this mess, we're really talking about the Proprietary Format Promoters' Forum. E-book standards urgently need to be farmed out to an independent group more capable of true integrity in the standards area.

The latest example of the OeBF's increasingly evident uselessness, meanwhile, is its refusal to fight the anti-e-book VATs in Europe.

Who'd really miss such a do-nothing group? While the OeBF provides some helpful services in gathering statics, this could probably be done better at the Book Industry Study Group. Join the OeBF if you feel you must, but tell those people you want your dues' worth. I was once an OeFB booster, but the laziness, miserliness or cowardice on the VAT issue is the last straw. What a pathetic excuse for a group that depicts itself to Wired News as the trade association for e-books.

Five years of OeBF and e-book sales are just $10 million or so? While many factors have been at work, especially the dotcom bust, the OeBF is among the villains--given its smugness about proprietary standards and copy-protection schemes that create hell for consumers. Nothing against the OeBF people personally. In fact, I like Executive Director Nick Bogaty and feel sorry for him, given the limits that Potash and friends have imposed on him. I'd just prefer to see people's talents used more productively than as PR agents for Microsoft and the rest. Even the big boys would come out ahead without frittering away money on the OeBF. Let them allow the truly innovative techies to develop good, durable consumer standards--and then Microsoft and Adobe can get more serious about e-book-reading software, as opposed simply to dreck to promote DRM schemes and document-exchange systems. Palm Digital already cares, but, regardless of Lee's fears, could still do much better in an open standards enviroment without the Tower of eBabel to scare off consumers.

Candidates to help set the tone for a better trade association: If the big publishers are clueful, they'll work with the librarians and the disabled and genuine e-book advocates like Glenn Sanders at eBookWeb and Kelly Ford of KnowBetter.com to set up a replacement trade association that will be far more responsive to the needs of publishers and readers alike. Jon Noring, who bravely called for a Universal Consumer Format, could help shape the standards process, of course. Another interesting possibility would be F. Hill Slowinski, author of a white paper--on DRM--that was jointly sponsored by the American Association of Publishers and the American Library Association. Setting the tone within the replacement e-book association for the AAP itself might be someone like Allan Adler, VP for legal and government affairs. I don't always agree with his statements, but he's shown an open-mindness missing from many in the book industry. (Let me update this to say that AAP digital policy director Edward McCoyd, now on the OeBF board, should also do, if his prompt response on the tariff issue is characteristic.)

Microsoft, Adobe and Palm Digital Media could still provide input in advisory roles, but their customers, the book business, including the library component, would instead be in charge. This different, more balanced and representative approach would lead to a far more prosperous industry than the shriveled one that we've seen with the big software boys at the OeBF fixated on their short-term corporate interests. Simply put, the present OeBF approach needs to be remaindered fast.

Irony of the day: American content owners have been obsessed with changing the copyright laws abroad to protect intellectual property more strictly, in particular their own. And now the irony: The do-nothings at the OeBPF won't even fight EU countries' taxes of 15 percent, whatever, on e-books--a medium that could bring in many millions of revenue from overseas. A little inconsistency here?
posted by David Rothman at 3:35 AM | permanent link

Jessica's Live Journal blog nicely spells out the Catch 22 afflicting e-book pricing. To sum up, with a few liberties taken:

1. Many readers want books by popular authors rather than those on discount from obscure ones.

2. But e-books by the VIPs often cost as much as p-books--in fact, sometimes much more.

3. Therefore why should such readers buy e-books?

Some obscure, self-published writers can write better books than famous ones, but those are the realities of the marketplace.

Until prices drop still more--and, yes, there has been much progress--the industry just can't live up to its full potential.

Thoughts: If the VIP writers and major publishers do keep prices high, perhaps the "off-brand" books will increasingly have a chance--as more kids grow up accustomed to reading on screen. Needless to say, since price matters so much, a library-type model could help obscure and famous writers alike.

What Jessica does enjoy about Fictionwise-style stores, even now: "...they sell short stories from popular authors, often for under a dollar. This is neat. It's a service that I don't think is really provided elsewhere. You can buy genre magazines or anthologies, but you can't pick and choose which stories you want. I don't feel ripped off paying for this."
posted by David Rothman at 1:09 PM | permanent link

Larry Lessig says he loves Sen. Edwards' campaign book, "an easy and moving read" about the Senator's past career as a trial lawyer. In fact Lessig is suggesting that it and other books from U.S. Presidential candidates go online for free access like Cory Doctorow's novel. That would promote the paper versions.

The TeleRead take: Great idea about the candidates' books. Few people know how to set up e-book devices for the most enjoyable reading, so, at least for now, the preview approach should help rather than harm paper sales. The idea of campaign books, after all, is publicize the candidates, and what better way of doing this?

Speaking of Edwards: He has many good qualities and from a distance I like him far better than Howard Dean, but I remain uneasy about the $900K that Edwards' New American Optimists PAC received from producer-writer Steve Bing. As a matter of "policy," Bing's people have yet to explain the circumstances. Remember, Edwards sits on a committee overseeing copyright law. Lessig, however, praises Edwards as, among other things, "a Senator who refuses PAC contributions..." I hope his instincts are right.

Amazon at work: Sure enough, the Edwards book comes up at Amazon with a "Better Together" suggestion to buy Howard Dean's campaign book at the same time. Who knows? Maybe someday we can pay Amazon to configure Prez-VP tickets and maybe even pick future candidates in the cradle. Think of all the campaign donations that the copyright interests could save and perhaps even divert to writers and other grubby creative types.
posted by David Rothman at 10:05 AM | permanent link

Perhaps we missed something, but if Goggle News and the online public archives of San Francisco's main dailies tell the story, neither of the two newspapers mentioned his recent fund-raising appearance there for Project Gutenberg. A disgraceful showing--for the papers, not Gutenberg! Anyone know of other publicity in SF? Amusingly enough, an online news list has carried a thread slugged "Where are the visionaries?" Not in journalism, that's for sure. These days I actually find the smarter librarians to be far ahead of the newspaper business as a whole.

Update, 5:27 p.m.: Turns out that Leo Laporte interviewed Michael Hart and Greg Newby last week and the segment will air at 7 p.m. EST/PST tonight on TechTV's Screen Savers show. Not the same as a newspaper story, but, hey, maybe we can do a link to the video if it ends up on the Net. Meanwhile here's a nice little write-up that TechTV did earlier. Hint, hint, SF papers.
posted by David Rothman at 2:12 PM | permanent link

Is turnabout fair play? China not only is resisting standards-related gouges in areas such as Wi-Fi, it's also forcing U.S. companies into undesired partnerships as part of the retaliation against greed-driven proprietary approaches. Meanwhile a Chinese CPU called the "Dragon chip" is running Linux. At least that's open source.

The TeleRead take: A lesson for the Proprietary Format Promoters' Forum? China and even Europe may be willing to fritter away only so much money on proprietaryware and related products. Better to have an open-standards approach for format and DRM systems alike. Significantly China has already mandated its own encryption standard for wireless comm.

Given the growing importance of the Chinese--some think China may even replace the State as the leading world power in the 21st century, though I'll not pass judgment here--it's absolutely folly to use the proprietary approach to rook 'em. They'll just do the same, right back. Same with the copyright laws that go hand in hand with proprietary encryption. Think the Chinese are blind to the ramifications of laws such as the DMCA?

(Chinese standards info via Dan Gillmor.)
posted by David Rothman at 12:18 PM | permanent link

Mobipocket is said to be the fastest-growing of the formats for e-books, and I can see why.

The Mobipocket reader beats those for Microsoft's .lit and Adobe's .pdf by far. You can even read your books in your favorite fonts from your desktop PC or change your screen orientation from portrait to landscape. Furthermore, Mobipocket comes in flavors for a variety of operating systems. I'm delighted to see eBookAd, OverDrive and others joining the Mobipocket party. The best solution would be a Universal Consumer Format--with competition among software vendors to come up with the best reader for the UCF--but I'll also think of the here and now.

At the same time Mobipocket is a frustrating illustration, in part, of why e-books are bringing in just $10 million a year in revenue. While Scott Pendergrast at Fictionwise assures me that Mobipocket is more reliable than other software with DRM, the program went south on me, and I've run across complaints from others.

My Mobipocket is running again now. But many users would have given up; just ask e-store owners in general what happens when customers encounter difficulties on the way to clicking the "buy" button. For every complaint that merchants here, think of the ones they don't! Simply put, I suspect there are many many more Mobipocketers or lost Mobipocketers with problems than Scott at Fictionwise might know about.

Originally the Mobipocket software broke down for no explicable reason when I was simply using it to import an HTML book and things jammed. It wouldn't boot up fully after I tried to resume. Support took two days or so to reply by e-mail; alas, the phone wasn't an option. After I had a clue--Mobipocket led me to look for multiple copies running, even though I'd done a reinstall after supposedly wiping out the original--I genuinely obliterated almost traces of the program from my Dell Axim. Then I did a clean install. Success. But isn't it time for an 800 number for American users even if Mobipocket is out of France, just as U.S. companies should show similar thoughtfulness toward overseas customers? A consumer product and no phone support? Surrealistic. Even my $9 TV remote came with an 800 number. Could have saved me time. In fact, I would even have paid for support (but no gouges, please).

I'd take Scott's word about Mobipocket's reliability compared to rivals'--see his comments below, from a post to the eBook Community list--but I suspect we're still talking about a giant among pygmies. E-book software, at least the DRMed kind, just isn't as reliable as, say, word-processing programs, even Microsoft Word. This techish nightmare is one reason why commercial e-books haven't caught on, beyond the related issues of the format wars and the Tower of eBabel. One problem is that DRMed e-books rely on good Net connections and working servers for registration, verification and all that. Dream on, no?

Meanwhile, if you use Mobipocket and are into public domain literature and don't want to mess with .html or .txt imports, you can drop by the Blackmask site for thousands of free Mobipocket titles as well as those in other popular formats. Blackmask also sells a $29.95 Mobipocket-oriented CD with more than 12,000 classics.

Another source of Mobipocket books would be KnowBetter.com's $19.95-a-year library, which offers 2,000 titles ranging from alternate history to works on spiritual topics (I loved Da Vinci Rising--where Leonardo beat the Wright Brothers by centuries). That's a great way to catch up with DRMed titles but not have to bear the risk of owning them. Problem: You can only borrow three books at a time from the KnowBetter library, and can't return 'em before they're due. Oh, the joys of DRM! Ideally Libwise, the Fictionwise branch that powers the KnowBetter library, can improve matters.

As promised--Scott Pendergrast on Mobipocket: "Mobipocket is in France, so that may be the cause of the delay in support.

"Of the four encrypted formats at Fictionwise (Adobe Reader 6.0, Mobipocket, Palm Reader, and MS Reader), Mobipocket has, by far, the least amount of support problems. This is very important to us because handling supports is a big expense (we're still just a 6 person company). Mobipocket has been rock solid for us, which is really amazing considering all the different devices they support.

"For our unencrypted formats, it seems most people at Fictionwise use Mobipocket and iSilo because they get the advanced formatting (e.g., italics) that you can't get when reading straight Palm Doc. I would say the vast majority of our users now have two or even three ebook reading software programs on their PDAs now. Luckily the newer devices can handle that."

My further thoughts on Scott's comments: Three readers just could mean three times the number of potential problems! One more argument for a UCF, with DRM Lite for publishers insisting on protection! Then software companies could compete to come up with the easiest and most reliable readers with the most features. Now, that would great for bookstores like Scott's--and human readers, too!

Related: I was especially pleased to see eBookAd, a TeleRead linking partner, add the Rocket eBook format as well. And speaking of eBookAd, here's what the company says of DRM--or lack thereof: "All eBooks currently sold through eBookAd.com do not use any technology to enforce copy-protection or piracy. All eBooks distributed by eBookAd.com are protected by legal copyright laws and may not be distributed by those who purchase them." Exactly! Blackmask is another great place for DRM-haters. Imagine all the tech support calls and e-mails that these e-stores eliminate by shunning this costly complexity. Not surprisingly, Fictionwise, too, although selling DRMed books, has encouraged publishers to drop protection.
posted by David Rothman at 9:30 AM | permanent link

Cash isn't the only reason why Republicans and Democrats love to bias copyright law against the public and for big conglomerates. The Washington Post yesterday ran What will happen when a national political machine can fit on a laptop?--suggesting that large parties could lose influence if the cost of information came down. Copyright laws wasn't part of the article. But it could well have been.

Remember, Draconian copyright law requires an infrastructure of lawyers, permissions specialists, you name it. Not to mention the capital to buy up rights for derivative works. Hence the love of the megaconglomerates for it. And perhaps the love of major political parties, too, for it too. Never mind the DMCA's threat to free speech. Parties first! Gotta buy staff and expand the bureaucracy.

Either Howard Dean, the supposed outsider, is an idiot about copyright law or he's eager to be just one of the big boys. Why else would he keep wimping out about the DMCA and Bonno? I just won't buy the line that copyright law isn't important enough to be worthy of Gov. Blogger's consideration.
posted by David Rothman at 9:20 AM | permanent link

Among the Saddam's many crimes: copyright violations. But then again, the U.S. itself may have committed copyright atrocities in Iraq--with recording biz lobbyist Hilary Rosen having been signed up to help redraft the country's copyright laws.

A year or two after the U.S. lets Iraqis govern themselves again, it'll be interesting to see if American laws or the more lenient Iraqi ones from the Hussein days end up in place.

The other question is whether, if American continues its successes, this confidence will spill over into trade negotiations and affect copyright law for the worse--given Hollywood's purchases of the White House and U.S. Congress.

Up with the battle against terrorism--and down with tyranny of any ilk and any magnitude, whether it be Saddam's or the DMCAism promoted by the copyright zealots.
posted by David Rothman at 8:45 AM | permanent link

If you doubt the need for a DMUA to rid America of scourges like the DMCA, read this discouraging news from DC (the whole story, please--not just the lead). Looks as if Rick Boucher is far too optimistic and needs some help badly. He can make all the right sounds he wants about repairing the DMCA, but it means diddly if the political muscle isn't there. (Boucher info found via J.D. Lasica.)
posted by David Rothman at 2:58 PM | permanent link

The Open eBook Forum is offering a 20 percent discount on first-year membership for publishers and other companies joining before Dec. 31.

If you do join, demand your money's worth. Tell Steve Potash, Nick Bogaty and friends that it's time for the OeBF to get out of the standards business, change the group's name, and truly focus on acting like a grown-up trade association. Just how much lobbying is the OeBF doing against stupidities like the one Margo Milner has documented below? Even now e-books are yielding no more than a miserable $10 million a year or so in revenue. Imagine the mayhem that Luddite 'crats and pols could inflict on the medium if OeBF members do an ostrich act. More and more, here in the States, not just Europe, the tax-the-Net movement is growing. I myself can see some room for taxes--but not the silliness like the EU VATs that hit e-books but not the p variety.

OeBF could also devote some serious energy to working with retail chains and hardware vendors to promote e-books better. Some folks on the eBook Community list are thinking similar thoughts about the need for greater coordination with the hardware side.

Right now the OeBF is actually damaging the industry in some ways, given the inherent and rather outrageous conflict of interest between (1) the ambitions of Microsoft, Adobe and the other format warriors, some of which value e-books far less than they do the promotion of operating systems or DRM schemes, and (2) the needs of the group's publisher members, which badly need a universal consumer format. Nothing wrong with competition. But software people instead should be competing to come up with the best reader to display e-books in the common format. OeBF did promote format exchange on the production side, but it's discouragingly clear now that the group will no longer honor the original promises to come up with a UCF.

Rx? Ditch the standards-related goals listed on the group's "about" page. And replace 'em with a true focus on other aspects of the "development and promotion of electronic publishing." Shouldn't the bottom line, the prosperity of e-publishers and the welfare of related companies and institutions such as e-bookstores and Net-smart libraries, be Job Number One? I can see a role for OeBF in such areas as training, encouragement of various demo projects, and so on; but, please, lay off standards--given the serious conflicts of interest here.
posted by David Rothman at 11:55 AM | permanent link