Why Is This Hill So Steep? Read online

  This idea also essentially condemned all the people whose sole profession was creating. Although much public debate continues as to the “talents” and “value” of many popular authors and their best-sellers, the fact is that there are multitudes of professional writers worldwide, people whose livelihood comes from nothing but their written creations. Removal of copyright effectively would rob those people of all income, forcing them to get other, paying jobs and leave the writing to others. Expecting so many non-professionals to step up and fill this literary hole, when those people had other jobs to do to put food on the table, was completely unrealistic. The blow to written works—not just pop novels, tell-all books and ghosted semi-autobiographies, but textbooks, reference books, travelogues, histories, instructional books, etc, etc—would be horrendous, and for many people and cultures, it would be like stepping back 500 years.

  This logic of discarding copyright altogether was as flawed as the “e-books have zero cost” argument, essentially throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and after a single “accident.” A more measured response would have been a demand to have the copyright system reviewed and reset to its original intent, to guarantee an exclusivity of profit for a set period, to encourage creation. And in fact, many e-book consumers debate this issue ad nauseam with each other; but alas, none of it is debated directly with the governments that will be involved in setting and enforcing the laws.

  ~

  Some consumers decided they had the right to force their desires on greedy capitalist creators, and they set out to essentially hijack their creations and give them away. Using technologies and techniques that had already proven successful in the digital music wars of a few years’ previous, consumers would buy an e-book, or obtain it from someone who had bought it, and place it on another website; or provide a link from their computer to a peer-to-peer website, allowing others to download the e-book, free of charge. One of the most famous of these sites named itself Pirate Bay, an homage to the term “piracy” that had already been introduced to the Web lexicon in relation to digital music, and to the almost mythological romantic ideal of the freebooting, carefree oceanic bandits of centuries past.

  It soon became known that any e-book author was subject to having their works posted on Pirate Bay, or some other less-well-known peer-to-peer or personal website, free for the taking. Many authors were directly singled out for such treatment, especially those who had publicly denounced e-books, charged too much for their e-books, made too much money in the eyes of some individual consumer, or just insulted the wrong pro-e-book group or individual. The Web had already seen this with Napster and MP3 music files, and those involved with literature did not want to see it happen again. However, the anarchists stuck to their arguments, however illogical, and used their unstoppable ability to hijack e-books as a means to force e-book creators to see things their way, accept the inevitability of free content, and like it.

  The aforementioned situation and illogical arguments had one severe drawback: They did not admit to the creator’s right to profit from their creation. They amounted to the consumers’ slapping their beloved creators with one hand, and demanding their work with another; in a way, proving to be an greedy and unthinking as the Big Pub organizations they had railed against for years. The irony was not lost on creators, who were feeling increasingly less than enthused to create anything for such a greedy lot. The rift between creators and consumers became wider, and was soon to become deeper as well.

  Many of the better creators were thus driven from the screaming anarchists, straight into the arms of… the waiting publishers, arms out, and muttering of protection in soothing voices. The publishers claimed to have a secret weapon against the anarchists, in the form of software that could be appended onto a book to prevent its being hijacked and given away for free. Generally called Digital Rights Management, or DRM, this software security method would theoretically force each consumer to pay for their copy of an e-book, and use an encryption system to open it, or they would not be able to read it. Many authors signed up for this protection, hoping it would give them the security that copyright did not seem to be able to provide.

  Unfortunately, there turned out to be no form of software-based DRM that could not be cracked by a dedicated anarchist hacker. Many of them delighted in finding ways to crack DRM methods, and they would not only post their hacked e-books online for others, but they even shared their cracking programs freely online. And even before those most dedicated hackers did get their hands on the e-books, networks of readers began purchasing printed books, scanning them and using Optic Character Recognition (OCR) software to create unauthorized e-books and give away, circumventing DRM altogether.

  It seemed there was no way to stop the Anarchists movements. Authors’ and publishers’ attempts to thwart them failed every time, and only escalated the conflict. And very few authors or publishers even wanted to attempt to placate or satisfy the smug, superior, totally unapologetic pirates. It seemed that the e-book movement would ultimately be doomed by the inability of both sides to come to any agreement; they could not even admit that they needed each other as much as they hated each other.

  10: The consumer—Tear down this wall!

  Throughout much of the hoopla over e-books, there was one faction that was feeling more and more left out of it all: The consumer. It was the consumer who wanted to read e-books. It was the consumer who owned the hardware and software that allowed them to read e-books. It was the consumer who asked the publishers for more digital material. It was the consumer who asked programmers for more features, to improve their reading experience. It was the consumer who offered suggestions as to how publishers could better serve them, and make them want to buy more e-books. Yet, at every turn, it seemed to be the consumer who was being ignored by hardware and software manufacturers, programmers and publishers. Suggestions fell upon deaf ears. What changes they saw seemed to actually be the opposite of what they wanted and had asked for. Increasingly they found themselves asking: What the heck kind of consumer-oriented business is this?

  Consumers had responded positively to the first e-book creation tools, often provided for free by the e-book application programmers. Many consumers saw this as a tacit encouragement for them to start creating their own literary works, to become authors themselves, and they wasted no time in doing so. Fanfic was among the first works created, but soon budding authors were writing original material as well, new ideas with new characters, in every genre. Many authors showed a willingness to convert their lit into any and every format they could get their hands on, while others chose a select few, usually the most popular (though that claim was often highly subjective), and created their works in those few formats. Overall, it proved to be a successful empowerment of those writers.

  But it didn’t take long for these budding authors to realize how little Big Pub thought of them for their efforts. They even saw evidence of Big Pub actively ignoring them, specifically because they had self-published in e-book formats. Big Pub had its finger pointed at them when it used words like “hack,” “amateur,” “fanboy” and “untalented,” and this was without even looking at their material. E-book authors were crushed, and this created a fomenting hatred of Big Pub, even as many of them knew the only way to expect Big Money from their books was to go through the Big Pub system. Soon, smaller publishers were picking and choosing from these budding authors, and proving to be much more honest and forthright than many of the Big Pubs in dealing with new talent.

  Consumers also wanted certain features from their e-book reading applications; quite often, a feature that was present in another app they used to use, so it was now desired in the app they were presently using. But the programmers didn’t seem too driven to provide those changes—most of them were already neck-deep in the demands of the company’s department heads, who were working from their own agendas for improving the programs (usually along the lines of priorities that would increase security, or create customer lock-in)
. Other programmers who had originally created the e-book programs were now working on other projects, many of them after having become disillusioned with the evolution of the e-book market and moving on.

  One of those desired features was the ability to read e-books from one format on another format’s application, or to be able to easily convert one format to another. After so many years of shuttling from one format to another, some consumers had entire libraries of old e-books that their new software could no longer read. They begged for ways to convert the old formats to newer formats, allowing them to continue to enjoy their purchases. This seemed to interest publishers not at all, as they saw an opportunity to force consumers to buy only the new e-books for which they would get their highest margins, and maybe even get some consumers to pay twice for the same book, albeit in a different format.

  Finally, consumers were aware of so many older printed books that they wanted to see in digital formats, but which were not yet available, many of them in the public domain. Again, they begged publishers to provide these older books for them, and again, publishers ignored the request: They saw no value in making such an effort to provide books which were now available only on used bookstore shelves, or public domain books for which they essentially profited only from the cost of printing, when their real profit came from selling their latest books.

  ~

  Feeling increasingly ignored, e-book consumers and writers felt obliged to take matters in their own hands. Groups organized to scan and transcribe their favorite works into e-book formats. One of the most famous, Project Gutenberg, began transcribing public domain works, which the publishers had all but written off as unproductive of their time (this, despite the fact that they could still sell them in bookstores, without having to pay copyright royalties to any party for them, making them pure-profit products).

  Other groups, such as those who frequented the Pirate Bay, were not squeamish when it came to rights or copyright. Without permission, they transcribed copywritten works anyway, and joyfully made them available to others against the direct or indirect wishes of the authors or publishers. These groups were the backbone of the Anarchist movement, and they felt they had the moral right to take the actions they chose, partially because of the supposedly immoral way Big Pub (and the Capitalist world at-large) had treated them. This middle finger raised to the Big Pub machine served to fan the flames of discontent on both sides. Subsequent actions by Big Pub to develop tighter e-book security in the form of Digital Rights Management, or DRM (more on that later) seemed to suggest to some consumers that the publishers apparently considered all e-book consumers to be guilty of copyright infringement, and were seeking to deal with them en masse. (You may have noticed by now that there’s been enough questionable logic strewn throughout e-books’ history to choke a Vulcan.)

  Other consumer groups began banding together in online discussion forums. These forums quickly moved beyond simple mutual support sites: Their members began circulating information, not only on how to create e-books, but how to find them, convert them to different formats, and crack e-book security measures; they organized members to support, or attack, whichever author or publisher raised their ire; they transcribed their own books, and those of public domain authors, into multiple formats; and they shared other sources of information or comments that supported their stance. Many of them centered on specific kinds of e-books or genres, while others operated based on a specific credo or point of view, whether it was the position of the writer, the consumer, the publisher, or the anarchist. And some forums were amalgamations of all of these groups.

  One of the better-known and neutrally-balanced of these forums is the MobileRead forum, a truly international website that supports and encourages all matters e-book, whose members kept close tabs on the publishing world as it tried to develop an e-book market, and spared no effort to skewer any entity that did a bad job of it. MobileRead was a global cross-section of e-book enthusiasts, with members of every nationality, creed and credo imaginable, consumers and creators alike. It represents one of the best sites to visit to get the most well-rounded picture of the e-book world, from all perspectives.

  Through websites like MobileRead and others, e-book consumers found e-book publishers, and through their discussion and patronage, encouraged them to succeed (some more than others, depending on whether or not their sales or security policies met with the website members’ approval). Individual authors (like myself) also visited these sites, and made an effort to promote their works through them.

  Consumers proved to be merciless with many of the authors and publishers, holding them up to an ironclad standard of behavior and online presence—to become a well-known and respected member of the online community, not just a post-and-run bookseller—before endorsing their books. Consumers were demanding, in essence, the friendly neighborhood baker or grocer, and shunning the fast-talking shill, much like the customers in any neighborhood tend to do with a business newcomer. E-book consumers were forming coherent communities, and making sure visitors knew the rules before being accepted to the fold.

  ~

  Being thus emboldened by a sense of community, e-book consumers began discussing their ideas surrounding e-books. One of the biggest subjects was e-books’ cost. With a large supply of free fanfic and public domain e-books available to anyone, consumers asked: “Why does any e-book need to have a cost?” And the corollary to this was: “Just what are we consumers buying, exactly?” Far from purely philosophical subjects, e-book consumers delved into them as if the very future depended on the outcome, and that the question needed to be settled now. As Chapter 4 described, consumers began applying their own logic to the subject, the most vocal of whom generally revolved around the very simple idea, when you boiled everything else away, that they should not have to pay for digital content. But despite not being able to effectively describe how the people who work to provide those e-books would be compensated for their effort, these groups remained steadfast to an impractical concept and an unlikely future.

  These same groups debated the pricing structures from e-book publishing houses. They compared them directly to the costs of printed books, and they held publishers up to derision when it was claimed that the cost of e-books were directly tied to the cost of printed books. E-book consumers insisted that these costs should be a fraction of the printed product costs, down to practically nil, since the costs of printing and distribution did not exist with e-books. In fact, very little real marketing research had been done by the publishers, either to compute the real costs of e-book production (essentially, all of the pre-production steps, but without any printing, storage and physical distribution costs), or to establish their position in the marketplace next to printed books. Publishers, perhaps hoping that these lower-cost products could instead be priced similar to higher-production printed books, and therefore make more of a profit, set their prices accordingly; and immediately gave the public impression that they were trying to gouge the consumer. Discussions pro and con, often accompanied by self-published authors on both sides of the argument, did not help to answer the vital unanswered questions, the real numbers involved in e-book production… so the debate rages on. This has become one of the most vicious of discussions regarding e-books, perhaps second only to the discussions related to DRM.

  Digital Rights Management was at least a more practical subject of discussion, but hardly less emotional. Some consumers railed at the very idea that some forms of DRM would prevent them from treating their e-books exactly as they had treated their printed books: You could not lend an e-book to a friend; you could not resell it at the used bookstore; you could not transfer an e-book from one device to another; and if the hardware device were damaged or destroyed, or the DRM code was lost, the book might never be available again, like it never existed; and et-cetera.

  Other consumers and producers pointed out that e-books were in fact not printed books, and that consumers shouldn’t expect to handle them exactly as they wo
uld a printed book… to which nay-sayers cried: “What’s the point, then?” Consumers seemed torn over the very subject of exactly what an e-book was, and what should be expected of it, and of the entire industry. And there was enough waffling and stubbornness on both sides to guarantee no consensus would be reached anytime soon.

  And other consumers stated that, until the question was answered to their satisfaction, they would simply act to circumvent DRM measures, making their e-books available to anyone. They did not specifically state that they would give their e-books away to anyone… but the implied potential (or threat, depending on your point of view) was there, and very often, it was pointedly not denied, either.

  ~

  The publishers watched all of this, and they fretted over it daily. It seemed consumers were intent on tearing the publishing castle down around their own ears in their anger and haste. How can we placate these people? Given past efforts, and failures, should we even try? Or will all of this blow over soon enough, and prove to be just a blip on our long-term estimates? Publishers, seemingly frozen into inaction by the online arguing, fighting, stealing and hacking consumers, increasingly decided to stay out of the melee and opt for the “we hope it blows over” position. A few publishers made token efforts to extend the olive branch, only to find it frequently ignored, or even slapped away if some aspect of their business plan displeased the consumers (and something usually did). The consumers were confident they were in the driver’s seat, and seemingly unaware that they were driving the publishing industry right at a brick wall. Or, if they were aware, the consumers clearly thought their vehicle would simply break through the wall with minor scratches, and carry them into the utopian world beyond. They were unconcerned about the likelihood that Big Pub would not survive the collision, and dismissive of the possibility that the death of Big Pub would throw e-books, and every other kind of book besides, into a literary Dark Age of unknown severity.