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A short little rant on eBooks and distribution…

I don’t know about other people but I find most eBooks to be incredibly overpriced for what they are. Many a time when I’m looking through the various retail outlets for non-fiction eBooks they turn out to be only marginally cheaper than the paperback and locked-down with DRM in a proprietary format. In such cases I’ll first look for a pirated digital copy online or read as much of the preview of the eBook on Google Books if one is available. On the odd occasion that I do buy eBooks I can’t help but come away with a feeling of emptiness, where’s my book? Especially the case on platforms where you don’t even own a copy of the eBook, rather you’re granted a user license to access the encrypted file “in the cloud”. Don’t worry though, the upsell of our platform is the ability to share annotations with other users. Dude, it’s a whole new experience, who knew books could be this social! Besides you don’t need to worry if you lose your book, it’s nice and safe “in the cloud”.^* Sharing would be nice though wouldn’t it? I’m afraid I can’t let you do that, Dave.

^*Terms and conditions may change without notice.

With that all said, I could willingly accept the limitations placed on eBooks if they were more reasonably priced. It seems to me that the eBook industry is where the music industry was when it first tried selling DRM MP3s. I know let’s sell MP3 albums for the same price as a CD. Ofcourse prices are still artificially high in a lot of stores despite the fact that distribution costs are negligible (i.e. hardware cost per unit). However looking further afield there are many once illegal sites that now sell legal non-DRM MP3s at a fraction of the price of “the usual places”. Wouldn’t it be nice if the same were true of eBooks? The nonsense with DRM licensed eBooks has to stop, just look at all the different formats out there, what a mess. Which walled garden would you rather be in? Sorry ACME Reader can’t open this file.

Information wants to be free, it is a natural bias. Yet there is still tremendous corporate pressure to use friction-based business models which maintain artificial scarcity, all stick and no carrot. It isn’t just MP3s and eBooks ofcourse, but any other information content that’s delivered through communications technology. Digital products are not scarce, a different set of rules applies. In an attention economy, the wealth of information means a dearth of what information ultimately consumes, our attention. You have paid me just now by reading this blog entry (sneaky I know). If only I could use that +1 view count to pay my rent, hey Klout you listening?

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