A few days ago

Erin Cox at Publishing Perspectives notes with some amusement that, shortly after Nintendo announced a classic e-books cartridge, Random House has now announced it will be making video games. The Wall Street Journal article is fairly sparse on details, but notes that this is an effort to find a new revenue stream due to economic pressure from publishing cutbacks and the likelihood that the increasing popularity of e-books will cause lower revenues.

Also on Publishing Perspectives, Edward Nawotka posts an editorial wondering whether the e-book age means an end to the serendipity of finding a good book through browsing bookstores and junk shops.

A couple of stories from the UK:

TechDirt’s Mike Masnick notes that UK consumer rights group Consumer Focus has issued a report saying copyright law is “outdated” and so confusing that millions of people are breaking laws without even realizing it. (Meanwhile, in America, an appeals court just struck down an “innocent infringement” defense—that it was possible to fileshare music without realizing it was wrong—in a music filesharing case.)

Unfortunately, the Digital Economy Bill (which I mentioned earlier today) seems to be going in exactly the wrong direction.

Catherine Neilan at TheBookseller.com reports that UK libraries are especially vulnerable to local council budget cuts, with an estimated 25,000 jobs endangered by the recession.

CNet reports that Scribd has now done so: Scribd-hosted documents can be sent to any of a dozen different e-book devices (including Kindle, Nook, iPhone, Palm, EZReader, and others) with two mouse clicks.

The documents are sent as PDF files via e-mail or SMS message link. At present, only DRM-free titles are supported, but Scribd CEO Trip Adler has plans to expand to copy-protected versions in the future.

Another part of Scribd’s mobile strategy is creating device-specific Scribd reader applications, which will be released later this year. Much as Amazon does with its Kindle Reader app, these will allow readers to download Scribd documents into their device and keep track of where they stopped reading.

Smartwords is a lightweight, easy-to-use standard for retrieving and publishing real-time, contextually-aware information about words.

It took reading through the CNet article a couple of times to figure out that it might better be described as “an integrated dictionary on steroids.”

Existing e-book apps with dictionary support (such as eReader) are largely limited to clicking on a single word to get a definition. Wordnik wants to go further than that. With Smartwords, as CNet puts it:

Wordnik and its partners are aiming to bring deep levels of context to any kind of electronic text—be it in e-books on readers like the iPad, Kindle, or Nook, or on computers or mobile devices—by examining words and the words around them and linking readers to potentially vast amounts of information about them.

And that context is not just limited to the words around the one in question; Wordnik CEO Erin McKean suggests it might even go as far as checking out what other books you keep on your device so it knows to offer information only about words you probably haven’t seen before.

Smartwords will also incorporate elements of social networking, allowing readers to share snippets of text on Facebook, Twitter, and the like. (Though I wonder if I am being too cynical to foresee a bit of difficulty getting many e-book device and app makers to sign onto this, publishers being notoriously paranoid about copy-and-paste ability.)

It might also provide a useful source of demographic information for publishers—letting them know how long it takes readers to finish particular books, or where they stop reading. This might be of some concern to privacy advocates, but McKean says they have an advisory board—including the Internet Archive, well-known for being concerned about privacy itself—that will be keeping an eye on those aspects.

One thing’s for sure: this isn’t some “if I build it, maybe they might come” pipe dream. CNet’s listing of some of the backers of the Smartwords project reads like a veritable who’s-who of digital media: “The New York Times, Forbes, the Huffington Post, O’Reilly Media, Vook, Ibis, Scribd, and the Internet Archive.”

Smartwords has the potential to be quite useful. It will be interesting to see if anything comes of it.

(Incidentally, along the lines of Paul Biba’s capitalization pet peeve about the “nook”, the Smartwords website only capitalizes “smartwords” at the beginning of sentences. I wish companies would cut that out. CNet uses more traditional capitalization.)

… Under terms of the agreement, all new ASI titles published through the AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford Publishing, and Xlibris imprints will be made available for purchase. As well, a portion of ASI’s backlist of more than 120,000 titles will be sold through the site. …

Authors will receive 50 percent of the net sales of their titles through Scribd. A default price of $9.99 will be set for every title, but each author will have the opportunity to set his or her own price. Distribution to Scribd will be included as a free service for all new ASI titles. …

Robin Wauters at TechCrunch

Brad Stone at The New York Times’s “Bits” blog notes that multimedia e-book publisher Vook has raised $2.5 million in venture capital funding. Vook’s founder, Brad Inman, is planning to expand the company, take on more creative talent, and create tools that will allow the creation of hundreds of Vooks per week. (TeleRead has covered Vook a number of times.)

Yahoo has an Agence France Presse article about New York Times executives at the “paidContent 2010” conference discussing their plan to institute a metered paywall on their site. Key points include that they do not expect a significant loss of traffic, and that while they feel a paywall is right for their particular situation it may not be for everyone.

ProQuestUMI will charge $49 and sill receive 80% of the sales revenues. This is a big market as they have 2 million doctoral dissertations and master’s theses available from more than 700 active university partners and update their catalog with more than 70,000 new graduate works each year.

You can find out more at here.

It seems that Helprin’s book, Digital Barbarism, has been getting nearly universally panned by reviewers. But according to an op-ed by Helprin in the National Review, the reason for that is not that the book might be bad—it is because publishers assigned the very people Helprin slammed in the book to review it.

If nothing else, Helprin does not suffer from an inadequate ego. In the op-ed, he paints himself as some kind of lone holy warrior, defending the sacred trust of copyright against some vast Internet conspiracy theory:

Because corporate defenders of intellectual property think they need only protect established law, they sit inertially in their towers and forfeit the more general debate to their active and numerous opponents. Thus, unwittingly engaged and with neither allies nor organizational support of any kind, I thought the only way to respond to hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of critics mobilized by “public interest” groups richly funded by private interests such as Google, was to write a book.

Right, Mark. Just keep thinking that.

Strangely, Helprin insists he is actually not in favor of perpetual copyright. “And because it seems necessary to their physiology to think that I am for perpetual copyright — as an originalist, I can’t be, and anyway never have been — they continue to insist that I am.”

Well, whatever, Mark. I’ll confess that I haven’t read the book myself—I had a hard enough time wading through the florid prose in Helprin’s op-ed—but the excerpts other people quoted sure made it seem that way. I suppose that if you can’t defend your position any other way, you have to move the goalposts.

And as Masnick points out, Helprin does not actually address any of the criticism he received.

Again, he fails to respond to a single point raised by any of the reviews. Instead, he just whines that people thought he was clueless, but he insists he’s not. How could he be clueless? He quoted famous people!

For all that Helprin dislikes and distrusts the Internet, feeling that it sucks the intelligence and will out of anyone who uses it, he sure is doing a great impression of a forum troll.

The Scribd Lawsuit: Catch 22, Anyone?

Masnick also has an update on the Scribd lawsuit that I mentioned the other day. It seems that one of the claims the lawyers are making is that Scribd’s anti-infringement filter—the thing that prevents copyrighted material from being uploaded again after it has been noticed and taken down—itself violates copyright, because it has to store a copy of the copyrighted material so it can recognize the material if someone tries to upload it again.

One wonders if Joseph Heller is one of those people whose works have been uploaded illegally.

As Masnick puts it, “it’s quite a bizarre lawsuit that not only sues Scribd for failing to block an uploaded book, but at the very same time also sues the company—under the same law—for trying to block an uploaded book.” Fair use precedent seems to be on Scribd’s side in this matter.

It looks as if the lawyers have an issue with Scribd having the temerity to exist at all, and they would like to put an end to it.

Our pop culture tends to latch onto this and portray any lawyer who does not have a Perry Mason- or Matlock-like dedication to proving clients innocent as being some kind of slimy mercenary—but when you get right down to it,  it’s a very important part of our legal system that people be able to hire someone to advocate for them regardless of public or personal opinion.

I bring this up because otherwise, the natural inclination when people hear that the law form that represented Jammie Thomas against the RIAA is now suing Scribd for copyright violation is to consider them two-faced slimy mercenary bastards—and I have little doubt among the Slashdot crowd there will be a lot of that.

Lawyers Joe Sibley and Kiwi Camara are representing the author of a book who found her work being offered on Scribd, but they are seeking class-action status to represent “every author who owns a valid registered copyright in a work infringed by Scribd.”

Although Scribd does abide by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and take down copyrighted material when informed of it, and has even implemented a system to prevent such material from being reposted after its takedown, this does not go far enough for Sibley and Camara.

“Under the aegis of self-promoting misinterpretations of federal statutes,” the lawyers wrote in their complaint, “the West Coast technology industry has produced a number of start-up firms premised on the notion that commercial copyright infringement is not illegal, unless and until the injured party discovers and complains of the infringing activity, and (the) infringer fails to respond to such complaints.”

Camara & Sibley added to the complaint, “Apparently (the West Coast start-ups) believe any business may misappropriate and then publish intellectual property, as long as it ceases to use a stolen work when an author complains…Many millions of dollars have been invested in this business plan.”

However, this is more or less exactly what the DMCA “safe harbor” provision does mean, and has been interpreted to mean by the courts in the past: Internet service providers cannot be held responsible for copyright violations by their users as long as they act to remove the violating material as soon as they are informed of it.

This is one of the laws that lets the Internet work, that lets websites operate without fear of being sued for something their users post. I can’t see a court siding with Camara & Sibley’s interpretation. But then, that’s just my uninformed opinion, and I am hardly a lawyer myself at any rate.

I can’t speak for all buyers, but if you want to know why I buy or don’t buy from various sites—well, here’s the lowdown. No ESP needed. I hope this is useful to retailers and aspiring self-publishers of e-books, although most of the sites named here don’t accept titles from the latter group.

Self-publishers face a daunting learning curve these days. So many stores, so many formats, what to do? Many novices begin with Amazon—Amazon makes it easy, and enjoys a large market share. But the company’s Kindle side officially focuses just on the United States, leaving out me and many other voracious readers (I’m Canadian). Sorry, Amazon. Here’s where I am buying e-books.

Stop One: Fictionwise

Fictionwise (screenshot), which normally does not deal with the self-published, is my preferred e-book store, for several reasons. Firstly, the Fictionwise site is the most pleasant of the big storefronts to navigate. I have checked out its main competitor, Books on Board, and can never seem to find things there when I just browse; I need to have a certain title in mind.

I also have time/effort/resources already expended on the Fictionwise Buywise Club for frequent buyers. This makes Fictionwise often the cheapest source for me because I get a member discount. I also get rebates from them when I buy certain books and I can use these rebates to keep buying more. I have an incentive to shop there because I get money back to spend on other things.

Additionally, Fictionwise has the largest selection of DRM-free multiformat books. I have switched devices several times during my patronage and appreciate that each time I do, I can go back and re-download my past purchases in the format I need for my new device. It is very important to me that my purchases are readable in the future because it is, to me, the great benefit of e-books over print books. I have had to give up print books in the past due to lack of space to store them. With that not being an issue with e-books, I like the idea that I can keep them forever. I would not want to buy an e-book that was so infested with restrictive DRM that its future usability on a device of my choosing would ever be in question.

I also appreciate that Fictionwise offers e-magazine subscriptions as part of its inventory. Again, for me, this has been a space issue in the print world. I like that I can subscribe to a magazine, be able to download it in the format of my choosing, and keep it forever just like a book. I have been reading Asimovs this year and might change to Alfred Hitchcock next year. It’s been a treat for me to get a new issue added to my bookshelf every month.

Finally, I appreciate the one-stop shopping aspect. I like having a record of all my purchases in one spot, and I like being able to log in at any time and have all my past purchases right there for reference and re-download. It’s so much easier than having to back up individual files myself from any of a dozen different solo author websites!

Stop Two: eReader.com

I have not bought from eReader.com (owned by Fictionwise and also closed to self-publishers) yet, but its recent price-matching of Amazon’s $9.99 for new releases and best-sellers, has put eReader on my radar, and it offers different promotions from Fictionwise which might make one book or the other a better buy from eReader at any given moment.

Unfortunately the DRM-locked eReader format is not readable on my Sony. If it’s a real bargain price and an author I love, I may go for it since I can easily read it on my iPod Touch. But I prefer to do the bulk of my leisure reading on the Sony; and if a book cannot be easily and quickly used with that device, I hesitate to buy it. I can say without hesitation that the $1,000 and change I have spent on e-books so far would be at least double if DRM were not an issue and I did not have to worry about such things. Publishers and authors have absolutely lost real, legitimate sales from this!

Stop Three: Smashwords

This is another Web site which has recently entered my radar but from which I have not yet purchased. I love that in nearly every case, you can sample part of the book for free to make sure you’ll like it. Plus, Smashwords is friendly to independent writers and offers many self-published titles that other sites don’t carry.

I have already bought one e-book based on a sample; a prior Fictionwise read of mine had the first chapter of the author’s other book included as a bonus, and I liked it enough to buy the second book. Also, if I do read a book and I enjoy it enough to recommend it to friends, the sample allows them to check out my recommendation without a big commitment of time and money. They can read the free sample and make their own decision.

The only problem I have had with Smashwords so far is that I am unfamiliar with nearly all the authors. I have a lot of backlog in my To Read pile right now, so I have not had a lot of time to go exploring. But an author adept at self-marketing who gets on my radar could absolutely convert me into a Smashwords customer. That Web site is absolutely built on a model I could get behind!

Stop Four: Baen Books

As a reader, I love Baen Books’ business model (the company tends to give away the first book for free in hopes of hooking you into the series) and love that Baen offers a range of formats in a DRM-free approach similar to the Fictionwise multiformat offerings. The only reason I am not a more avid customer: I don’t read a ton of conventional sci-fi. If someone recommends something to me, I will absolutely check it out and see what it’s about. But as with Smashwords, I need someone to get me there first. Unfortunately Baen isn’t for self-published writers.

Now, where don’t I shop, and why not?

• Amazon, for the obvious reasons (no Sony support, and more importantly, no Canada support).
• Scribd (okay for browsing short documents, but every long document I have ever downloaded from Scribd has been an absolutely horrifically messy PDF with no proper line breaks and has looked terrible on my Sony, although I understand that Scribd is working to phase in ePub for many titles).
• Bookstores with restrictive DRM and onerous usage limits (for example, a previous device I had where all books could only be read on the device which bought them, and even if you changed devices to another device from them, that was that)

As for author web sites, I addressed that a little above—I tend to favor store sties. But I will say that an author who puts together a good package may yet convince me. One author who has caught my eye has all 30-odd books available in a bundle from his Web site at a substantial discount over buying them separately. Once my to-read pile is under control, that author may get a sale from me. But for the most part, I do prefer to one-stop-shop when I can.

Related: Techmeme roundup.

Also of interest: The AP on legal free e-books to promote authors’ titles (via MobileRead). While the AP call this “the latest craze,” this is really old news—especially for series-related titles in the SF community.

… the Harvard University Press created its own Scribd profile, and the press has already posted hundreds of works for download. “We can’t spend all of our time chasing down every single pirated copy of a book that’s put up, and it’s not a good use of our time,” said Daniel Lee, director of digital content for the Harvard University Press. “We’d rather participate voluntarily, I think, in a good-faith effort among our partners and with Scribd and sort of fight against it. We’re cognizant of the proliferation of piracy online.”

The university is not the first to begin offering content on the Web site — New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have about a dozen articles on their Scribd pages. What differentiates Harvard from the others, though, is that Harvard is charging for its content — and charging the same price as a hard-copy of the same material would cost.

“I’d be surprised if, with the same pricing model, people will be willing to pay for content that can only be viewed online,” Mr. Lee said. He said interest might increase in publishing the material online if Scribd were to develop a way for the books to become portable. Materials downloaded through Scribd can only be viewed through the site’s software, and cannot be printed or replicated. “If we allow the content to be downloaded with no restrictions, it could eat into our print sales.”

Scribd, the world’s largest social publishing company, today announced that it has signed a deal with Harvard University Press (HUP) to sell nearly 1,000 digital books through the Scribd Store, a recently launched e-commerce marketplace for written works. HUP joins other university presses such as New York University Press and MIT Press that are already offering free previews of books and reports to Scribd’s readership of millions. The Harvard announcement comes a month after the company announced a similar deal with publishing powerhouse Simon & Schuster.

“Scribd’s goal is to collect all the world’s written information — whether for free or for purchase — in one place and then make those works available to as many people as possible,” said Trip Adler, CEO and co-founder of Scribd and a Harvard alum. “Harvard University Press has brought to light some of the world’s most thought-provoking ideas in the form of printed books. We’re thrilled to bring this amazing content to a much larger potential community of information seekers.”

Thanks to Michael von Glahn for the heads up.

Scribd’s authors set their own prices and keep 80 percent of the revenue. What’s more, smart authors can choose to keep their books DRM-free. Also, Scribd’s move should help lower the entry cost for first time and niche authors.

But if my tastes are typical, there are still formidable market barriers for these smaller authors.

Spotting the winners

For example, it isnt’t enough to print books—how to spot the good ones? Publishers can help.  Anyone who has read through the slush piles of a major publisher will tell you that the dregs far outnumber the gems. Frankly, I don’t mind paying for someone else to pick out worthwhile books for me.

Closely related to this selection process is that of marketing. I find the online book search process at the Amazon’s of the world to be quite limiting. It works well if I want to find the latest book by a known author. It also works if I want to see similar works that are already hot. How do I find undiscovered works? Today, I turn to publishers I highly regard, such as Baen, and trust their recommendations.

Finally, there is the issue of editing. I know that it is popular for authors to complain about heavy-handed editors. However, there is something to be said about having a fresh pair of eyes at work before your book reaches consumers.

The independent publisher concept

It would be interesting to see the emergence of “independent publishers”’ just as Scribd is enabling independent writers. This could be accomplished through the introduction of a multi-tiered affiliate system. Book reviewers read and select top quality books for display on their web sites. Excellent reviewers who gain a following in a specific genre will be able to build a revenue stream as the books they recommend are sold. Authors who opt in to the system would pay an additional fee (20%?) for any affiliate (reviewer) sales.

In addition, authors could open their books for editing. An editor might provide basic copyediting services, or they may provide more significant editing and even re-writing. How this is enabled is up to the original author. I do worry about author control of their content. However, it would be interesting to see free information flow such that there might be a Jim Smith edition of Jane Doe’s "Easy Macramé Projects for Halloween" and a Shelia Spade edition of the same work. Some authors might choose to personally screen all edited books, while others may freely allow editing and distribution.

Marketplace effect

Although there will be some abuses of editing privileges, I can see a marketplace effect. Reliable, trusted editors will be able to command full editorial rights before they begin work on a book. Up and comming editors may need to prove their value and may need to concentrate on less known authors.

The affiliate system required to support this would need to be a bit more sophisticated than the practice today. The percentage payment to affiliates could vary based on the services provided. Furthermore, authors would be able to set custom rates for influential affiliates. Oprah Winfrey might be able to command 60% commissions on the books she recommends.

This system might lead to charges of abuse as reviewers cherry-pick high commission novels. However, I see it as a self-policing system that lets the market decide the best commission levels. Established authors may be able to set lower commissions, but newer authors will need to offer higher commission rates. A savvy reviewer would probably recommend a mix of book options: some lower commission books by proven authors and some higher commission books by new discoveries.

Of course, there is nothing to keep authors from becoming reviewers on their own. An author may only be able to produce one or two books a year. However, they can always link to similar books by others: “If you like my books you might try this one by Jane Smith.”

As I mentioned in the opening, I do think Scribd is headed in the right direction, but I also believe there is value provided by the publishing community. I believe the next step is to open the doors to independent publishers just as Scribd has opened the doors to independent authors.

Editor’s note: I love the possibilities here of the “Independent Publishers” concept, at least for appropriate nonfiction—just so the writer and original publisher allows this. Why do you think—especially if you’re a publisher or writer? Meanwhile, speaking of “enhancements” of writers’ works, check out Salinger’s lawyer looking into Rye sequel in The Bookseller.  – D.R.

What’s more, larger houses also may be hoping for bigger cuts.

But now Scribd, the social publishing site, is offering 80 percent revenue to writers or publishers through  new e-commerce arrangements allowing content providers to set prices.

VarnaInYourPocket

Shown is a guide to Varna, Bulgaria. The entire catalogues of O’Reilly Media, Lonely Planet and Berrett-Koehler are going on Scribd, and Random House has tried out the site.

Alas, however, because of piracy fears, Random House and other giant publishers have not committed all the way. I hope they will—if nothing else, to curtail Amazon’s growing power, which in the end could cost publishers a lot more than piracy ever could.

In fairness to Amazon, let me note the bigger potential exposure to readers that it offers. But in Scribd, I see lots of potential.

Related: Techmeme roundup and New York Times item.