TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Authors Guild’ Category

By Paul Biba

Given the importance of this matter I am reprinting their response in full.

The Guild argues that the it is avoiding the pitfalls that the RIAA fell into. They say the RIAA won every battle but lost the war and infringement didn’t truly abate until Apple moved in with an easy and cheap way to buy music. The Guild seems to be saying that they are putting Google in Apple’s place in the publishing context:

February 5, 2010. As you may be reading in today’s paper, the Justice Department in its filing regarding our settlement with Google continues to see legal problems with the settlement, focusing on class action law but also continuing to raise some antitrust concerns. We disagree with the Justice Department’s reading of the law. At the same time, it’s good to see the Department recognizes the settlement’s many benefits. In our view, it’s best for everyone that out-of-print library books be made available through reasonable, market-based means to readers, students and scholars. Without a settlement, that won’t happen. It’s also best that authors have direct control of the scans that Google has made, with the power to compel Google to hide, display or remove those scans. Without a settlement, authors have no such control. Google’s scanning and use of authors’ books would continue until the lawsuit was finally resolved.

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By Chris Meadows

David Pakman brings an economics perspective to the Amazon/Macmillan dispute, complete with a “price elasticity of demand” chart right out of a textbook.

He explains the idea of finding the profit-maximizing price—the price at which the amount of profit times number of units sold is highest—and emphasizes that Amazon has access to the economic data from its millions upon millions of transactions to let them do just that, while publishers do not.

So, why would publishers NOT want Amazon to find the optimal profit-maximizing price? Because, like many entrenched media companies, they have massive legacy cost structures that don’t support selling books at, say $6 wholesale. They offer many unreasonable arguments against this: books are “worth” more, authors won’t make enough money, it’s bad for the industry, etc. These are not economic arguments, but are meant to maintain the status quo economics as long as possible. And it’s ultimately bad for them.

Pakman adds that “low-cost digital distribution, where the marginal cost of each incremental item sold is zero, brings consumer expectation that price must fall. They don’t care if the rent on your offices at 50th and Broadway are $8M a year.”

Of course, Amazon may not necessarily be trying to maximize its profit per se, since as matters stand they are actually losing several dollars on each copy of many of the e-books they sell. But they certainly do know what consumers want to pay.

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By Paul Biba

The following is a statement issued today by the Authors Guild which completely rejects Random House’s opinion on ebook rights. This is important stuff so I reprint the statement in full:

December 15, 2009. On Friday, Random House CEO Markus Dohle sent a two-page letter to many literary agents regarding e-books. Much of the letter is devoted to Random House’s efforts and investments to market traditional and electronic books.

On the second page, Mr. Dohle gets to the point. After noting that most of Random House’s backlist titles grant the publisher electronic book rights (we agree, since most backlist titles are from the past ten years, a period in which authors have generally licensed electronic rights in tandem with their print rights), he writes that “there have been some misunderstandings concerning ebook rights in older backlist titles.” He then proceeds to argue that older contracts granting rights to publish “in book form” or “in all editions” grant electronic rights to Random House. (more…)

By Chris Meadows

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

A number of other sites are doing Thanksgiving lists (Ars Technica, Wired, another Wired, and Wired again on things not to be thankful for), and I thought I would assay one of my own. Of course, we all know that we have a lot more to be thankful for than just e-book-related things, but they are this site’s focus after all.

There are a lot of people and companies that have made a difference in the e-book industry this year, and I thank the ones important to me below. These are the folks who I think have made reading e-books easier for me, or provided the e-books that I want to read, or have just plain done something cool.

Some of these are big, industry-wide things. Others are little things that may only be important to me and a number of other fans. Some of them may surprise you.

But that’s all right. This is a list of things for which I personally give thanks. If you’re thankful for something I left out, please add it in the comments.

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By Paul Biba

There isn’t much to say here, the post speaks for itself. You can find it here.

September 2, 2009.

Amazon made it official today, filing a brief in the Google case claiming that someone else might gain a monopoly in bookselling. It seems we’re compelled to state the obvious:

Amazon’s hypocrisy is breathtaking. It dominates online bookselling and the fledgling e-book industry. At this moment it’s trying to cement its control of the e-book industry by routinely selling e-books at a loss. It won’t do that forever, of course. Eventually, when enough readers are locked in to its Kindle, everyone in the industry expects Amazon to squeeze publishers and authors. The results could be devastating for the economics of authorship.

Amazon apparently fears that Google could upend its plans. Amazon needn’t worry, really: this agreement is about out-of-print books. Its lock on the online distribution of in-print books, unfortunately, seems secure.

The settlement would make millions of out-of-print books available to readers again, and Google would get no exclusive rights under the agreement. The agreement opens new markets, and that’s a good thing for readers and authors. It offers to make millions upon millions of out-of-print books available for free online viewing at 16,500 public library buildings and more than 4,000 colleges and universities, and that’s a great thing for readers, students and scholars. The public has an overwhelming interest in having this settlement approved.