Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

This is the second post about big, huge issues that no one is approaching from the right perspective.

DRM is the big, big deal right now. While it hasn’t, as was promised, killed the Kindle or any of the other eReaders, it does threaten to do terrible things to eReaders and eBooks.  

The actual defining characteristic of the DRM battle is the selfishness of the combatants -

1. Publishers want to prioritize DRM over user-friendly DRM and over user experience. 
2. DRM advocates want to prioritize their own comfort and beliefs over authors’ livelihoods.

Publishers being greedy

DRM is part of a trend that includes delaying eBook rights, never working on efficiencies, and trying to charge unrealistic ebook prices.

Publishers don’t seem to realize that -

1. Readers pay the money.  
2. Customer Service is not just a catch-phrase. 
3. User-friendly rights management will lead to more sales.  
4. All Customers aren’t thieves – only some of them. ‘Some’ might be 5% or it might be higher.
5. Not caring about customers makes them more inclined to pirate eBooks.  

Fundamentally, Publishers are not creating a win-win situation. In fact, they might not even be factoring in the fact that customers are entitled to the best possible experience.

Interestingly enough, the most vocal ‘we’re right and good and pious’ anti-DRM people are guilty of the exact same mistake i.e. not creating a win-win situation.

DRM advocates are focused solely on their own interests

Consider the rhetoric pouring in from the anti-DRM camp -

1. It’s terrible – our rights are being trampled upon.  
2. You introduced DRM so we’re entitled to steal whatever we want.  
3. You’ll sell more if you remove DRM. Take our word for it -Who cares if there’s no back-up plan.
4. Publishers are evil.
5. Authors could find other ways to make money. 

 It’s all so centered around ‘our’ – our rights, what we would like, our comfort, our sense of what would work.

Would we rather create a great future for books or win an argument?

The direction we’re headed in is the destruction of books as we know them.

It’s because the people who appreciate great books (readers) and the people who distill for great books (publishers) are way too focused on their viewpoint and what they would like.

They are forgetting that -

1. The creators of great books i.e. the authors need to eat and have at least a decent quality of life.
2. The books eco-system needs money flowing through it.
3. A solution has to work for everyone involved.

Consider the extreme beliefs -

1. Publishers want $20 eBooks - they pretend that no efficiencies are gained and none can be added. 
2. Readers want $2 eBooks – they pretend that suddenly there are no costs involved.

What are potential solutions that work for everyone?

Complete Domination by a Benevolent Company

Both anti-DRM people and Publishers will hate this equally. However, if one company takes over Publishing and treats customers well – that would work.

Adobe DRM

Adobe DRM is mostly about fighting the Kindle at this point.  However, it has a lot going for it -

1. eBooks work across all Adobe DRM enabled devices.
2. No issues about losing your eBooks when you move across devices.
3. There’s still rights management so stealing doesn’t take place.

With a few tweaks Adobe’s DRM could form the basis for a very reasonable compromise – one that would solve a lot of the issues with DRM.

Leaving the choice to Authors and Publishers

All the claims about rights and good and evil are just hiding what DRM is really about -

1. It’s about control.
2. It’s about marketing and reciprocation.
3. It’s about strategy.
4. It’s about guaranteed income.

Adding DRM (or removing it) can mean so many different things -

1. It’s authors shouting choose me because I treat you better.
2. It’s Publishers saying we want to decide how much you can share.
3. It’s about using sharing to help sales.
4. It’s telling readers they are trusted, or perhaps that they are trusted only a bit.

Leave the choice up to Authors and Publishers and let all the strategies compete.

At this point we really don’t know what strategy will work. Leave it open and we’ll reach some sort of equilibrium.

Create a completely new set of rules for eBooks

One of the big problems is that users are under the delusion that -

1. They can get much lower prices and changeable fonts and all the benefits of eBooks  
2. They can, at the same time, get all the benefits of paper books.

It’s a bit selfish to want eBooks that are 40% to 50% the price of physical books and still want all the ownership, resale, and sharing rights of physical books.

Various people, for various reasons, are trying to reinforce this selfish belief.

An easy solution is to completely change the rules. Perhaps it’s using a new word for eBooks, perhaps it’s drumming up the benefits of eBooks more.

Do an exchange i.e. eBooks get text to speech in exchange for readers accepting reasonable DRM

Perhaps we just decide what feature or add-on users would want to be OK with a reasonable form of DRM -

1. Throw in author interviews or bonus content.
2. Perhaps enable Text to Speech.
3. Perhaps enable some other feature or capability.

That way users feel they get a little extra value and that user-friendly DRM is acceptable.

Closing Thought – It’s people being rationally selfish

If you look at things from only your perspective it’s easy to get carried away -

1. eBooks come in and Publishers instantly think – Wow, we can make $5 more off of every book sold.
2. eBooks come in and Readers think – Wow, now soon they’ll be free like music.

Publishers and readers have to meet in the middle.

If not, then first authors are going to suffer, then the quality of books, and finally reading.

It’s easy to point your finger at someone else’s real or imaginary faults. The question worth asking is -

Would you rather believe you’re 100% right and entitled to whatever you want OR Would you rather do what’s best for the future of books?

Filed under: thoughts Tagged: | necessity of drm, unnecessity of drm