eBooks and Book Buying Habits

[wildlx]

DRM suffers from the problem that many digital protections do: for those who want to break it, it's easy to circumvent, while it can be a downright annoyance to legitimate users.

That sums the situation quite well !

[Proofrdr]

I would never makes mass copies or make the files openly available on the WWW, but sharing books is part of the way I've always treated print books and I think it's an imposition on my ownership not to be able to do that with e-books.

[wildlx]

Ann Patchett on new chapter for independent bookstores:

video

[Proofrdr]

There was an interesting report on NPR last weekend about how libraries are adapting to e-books. I assumed that the libraries bought e-books the way they buy books. Not so. Evidently, most major publishers dictate heavy restrictions, some even refuse to lend their titles because the possibility of having their own digital sales undercut is too great. An example one librarian gave was with the biography Eisenhower in War and Peace. The e-book can be bought on Amazon for $20, but libraries are charged more than $100 a copy.

Enter OverDrive, a self-described "state-of-the-art digital distribution system for libraries, retailers, and publishers." It's massive and obviously has filled the digital gap that Ingram evidently chose not to move in to. It works somewhat the way the now-defunct Napster or Rhapsody work with music. The libraries don't actually buy the e-books, they license them through OverDrive. They pay an annual fee to continue the license service or they lose the content they already paid for. The American Library Association is working to develop a different model amenable to publishers that allows libraries to retain content. After all, that's part of a library's function--no matter how obscure the content, it has to be there on the off chance that someone, sometime will want to read it.

I think of my university days when I worked in Special Collections at the John Hay Library. One of my tasks was "reading the shelves" to make sure everything was in proper order. At times, I extended the "reading" part beyond the LCC number and read the material itself. There were copies of then-banned books [yes, I read all of those], rare books--some even monk-copied, broadsheets from the the 1700's, journals of all kinds, handbills, and notebooks. Some of the things I read, I doubt had been touched once a year, if that. But it was there, waiting in that climate-controlled, locked-cage area of the library for some student, or historian, or curious browser to read. That's what a collection is...it's something that remains and endures. Libraries have to figure out how to continue that archival duty to amass and preserve their collections in this new digital form.

[wildlx]

Somebody making sense. Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice president, responsible for Europe's Digital Agenda: Ebooks shouldn't be restricted by European borders

[Baker]

I had no idea what a mess it was in Europe. Outsiders tend to think of the Eurozone as having few internal borders.

The problem is not copyright restrictions. Most authors do not divide up digital publishing rights by territory. So you should be able to buy an ebook from a website based in another EU country. It is ridiculous that today people end up lying about where they live to cheat the system, or are forced to buy from the US. Piracy is fostered by this impossibility to buy legally.

So these issues must be addressed by the industry. For its part, government can fix the ebook tax fiasco. In the UK, why should the government charge no VAT on printed book sales and charge the highest VAT rate (20%) on ebook sales? Principles of logic and fairness cannot explain this. Whatever the tax rate applied in a given country, a book is a book. All books should be taxed equally.

Totally agree.

[Nurse Jo]

In the UK, why should the government charge no VAT on printed book sales and charge the highest VAT rate (20%) on ebook sales? Principles of logic and fairness cannot explain this. Whatever the tax rate applied in a given country, a book is a book. All books should be taxed equally.

The UK is not in the Eurozone, we have our own currency. To be totally honest this is not something I am that sad about ,(in answer to your opening comment about Eurozone countries).

Secondly, the answer to the above question is that the logic of greed explains most things in this world. Disgraceful, I had no idea. I shall write to my MP about this so thank you for bringing it to our attention.

[Baker]

It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them." And on Barnes & Noble's Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first "Hunger Games" book is to download the next one.

So starts an article in the WSJ about how publishers are using eReaders to gather data on what and how people read.

Amazon, in particular, has an advantage in this field—it's both a retailer and a publisher, which puts the company in a unique position to use the data it gathers on its customers' reading habits. It's no secret that Amazon and other digital book retailers track and store consumer information detailing what books are purchased and read. Kindle users sign an agreement granting the company permission to store information from the device—including the last page you've read, plus your bookmarks, highlights, notes and annotations—in its data servers.

No surprises there. It's not just Amazon, of course. Even app makers can keep tabs on how people read.

There are lots of issues to consider, but the one that grabbed me in the article was:

Barnes & Noble has determined, through analyzing Nook data, that nonfiction books tend to be read in fits and starts, while novels are generally read straight through, and that nonfiction books, particularly long ones, tend to get dropped earlier. Science-fiction, romance and crime-fiction fans often read more books more quickly than readers of literary fiction do, and finish most of the books they start. Readers of literary fiction quit books more often and tend skip around between books.

Their ideas about that?

Those insights are already shaping the types of books that Barnes & Noble sells on its Nook. Mr. Hilt says that when the data showed that Nook readers routinely quit long works of nonfiction, the company began looking for ways to engage readers in nonfiction and long-form journalism. They decided to launch "Nook Snaps," short works on topics ranging from weight loss and religion to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Pinpointing the moment when readers get bored could also help publishers create splashier digital editions by adding a video, a Web link or other multimedia features, Mr. Hilt says.

Oh, please no... I really DO NOT want an effing song and dance number on page 228 of a biography of Otto von Bismarck!

[Proofrdr]

Now that's something to look forward to!

Remember when Amazon removed, without notification, thousands of illegal copies of Huckleberry Finn it had sold? I felt sorry for the poor kid who had all his notes for his research paper whisked away in the night. I decided then that I my e-reader would not have Wi-Fi. I download the books to my computer and upload them from there to the reader. They don't track my reading, but each place I buy from can track my purchases.

I have bought only one thing from B&N...the Hunger series. I still haven't read it, but for less than $3.50 for the 3 books, I couldn't pass it by. Since then, Kobo has sent me almost daily e-mails announcing books they are sure I would like. I have not liked any. Yesterday, the message became a little more personal than "Books we think you'd like." It said, "Check out more eBooks we think you'll like. We're trying to figure you out, one eBook at a time."

Oops. Mistake. I take that as a challenge not to let them know another thing about me!

[Baker]

Kobo is one of my pet peeves. When I first bought the tablet, I tried out a bunch of ebook reading apps. One was Kobo. Their inane and intrusive Reading Milestones and Book reccommendations irritated me no end. (The reading app, incidentally, is one I think sucks.) I'd get these little messages about "Ooh! Congratulations, you've started reading a new book!" as if, by some chance, I had failed to notice that myself. The reason I've kept the app, despite not using it to read with, is extremely childish. I like screwing with the algorithm that suggests books to me. In idle moments, I'll fire up the Kobo app and randomly pick a book to sample (since the app allows you to read a few pages for free). That clearly registers as reading data for me. The suggestions I get are pretty out there, as you'd expect. One of my faves was when Kobo suggested a book on something about the Xtian bible's new testament.