Pricing debates are nothing new to the ebook world. There are four deeply invested parties in book sales–digital or otherwise–and any decision has to take all four sets of interests into account.

1. Consumers/readers want ebooks to be cheaper than print books–and cheaper than Amazon’s $9.99 price point if possible. The cheaper the book is, the more books they can buy.
2. Booksellers–Amazon, B&N, Borders, Indies, reader-specific sellers like Sony, and now Apple’s iBooks–want ebooks to make them money. They may not have to pay for warehousing and shipping, but they need to pay for server space, e-commerce support, and maintenance. Super-cheap e-books won’t keep any of them afloat. It’s not free to sell an ebook.
3. Publishers want ebooks to make them money too, and they want to set the prices for each (print or digital) book separately. Sure there are not printing/shipping/warehousing costs, but some books are more expensive than others because of costly photo permissions or because extensive editing was needed or because an author needed a larger payment (see #4 below). And on top of that, publishers also need to pay for the tech infrastructure booksellers need. AND they need to make money after ensuring booksellers and authors get their respective cuts.  It’s not free to publish an ebook.
4. Of course authors want ebooks to make money: if people are buying ebooks instead of print books, authors still need and deserve compensation for their work. Imagine that it only takes a year to write a book (oh how wonderful that would be!), but then it takes a year to find a publisher, a year to edit it, and then another six months till it hits the shelves: and THAT’s not a bad timeline for a newer author. It’s no wonder it can take a decade to get a book published. So book sales–again, print AND digital–must pay for the author’s past four years of work. It’s not free to write an ebook.

So how can publishers give consumers what they want? Well some consumers–especially those in the Chris Anderson “information should be free” camp–won’t be happy to hear it but ebooks will never be given away without thought to profit. Not by booksellers, publishers, and authors that need/want to make money, anyway. But publishers can survive selling books at $9.99 or even lower. It’s truly possible, I promise!

My master’s thesis posited that publishers can streamline the production process, making it cheaper and faster to produce ebooks in house, by taking advantage of digital workflows like XML. I’ve since been introduced to CS4’s design-to-ePub capabilities that make a scaled-down digital workflow just as possible.

But without the right people to make these changes it’s impossible to create any added value. I can’t possibly imagine that most book editors are ready to think about chunking and disaggregating and re-purposing the same way Mike Shatzkin and his fellow StartWithXML-gurus suggest they should. India Amos makes a good point about the vast differences between digital design and traditional book design in a recent post. There is increasingly less and less room for close-minded publishing professionals crippled by their nostalgia print and their hatred for digital books.

The people driving the industry will soon be those who are prepared to think about two worlds at once, about several uses and markets for the same text, and about ever-more-efficient means of creating/editing/producing that text; these are the people who will make it possible for publishers of all sizes to make the necessary and revolutionary changes without facing financial failure.  These people do exist already, but we have to be ready to inspire more of them as they arrive straight out of school. We have to train savvy and enterprising digital revolutionaries and publishers need to take the right risks to hire them.

I believe an old-gen/new-gen collaboration would inspire a new golden age of publishing–one that rivals that long-lost era we all idealize. So publishers, take this pricing battle and turn it into something constructive, into a real game changer for the whole industry.

Techdirt: Publishers Getting The Wrong Message Over eBook Piracy http://post.ly/DLp7
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On Twitter: http://twitter.com/andrewsavikas/status/6021998849

I’m so very disappointed by this news, more because I feel like this is more smoke and mirrors over the same fear that put publishers in a tight spot. Don’t worry about people stealing content: worry about making your content worth buying!

“Introduction to ‘Surviving a Digital Disruption: Smart e-Book Publishing, Small Houses’”

“Reading in the Twenty-First Century: The Last Five Years“

Need to catch up on the case? I think the AP’s article covers it with the least bias I’ve seen. (Prefer tinted glasses in varying shades? Try The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, The Toronto Star, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Slate. Not to mention the whole publishing world will probably be on tenterhooks until the final appeal is finished.)

Having just finished some basic reading on copyright, I’m glad to hear that U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts is taking her time deciding. If I were her, I’d be dredging up cases and appeals left and right, too, not wanting to be the judge whom the Supreme Court points to as wrong in a summation. In my limited experience with copyright, I can see the following issues playing a central part in the case:

• Authorship and creativity: the prerequisites for originality. Obviously Colting wrote the book, but is “Mr. C” too closely related to Holden Caulfield to have been created (and thus copyrightable) by Colting? Did Colting successfully transform the original material?
• Parody and criticism. Colting maintains that if “Mr. C” is too closely related to Holden Caulfield, it is only because the character is being used as a means of critiquing Salinger.
• Sweat of the brow. I can definitely see the American perception of hard work and its rewards playing a huge role here, at least in public opinion. As U.S. Copyright Law specifies that originality is the foundation of American copyright, the actual process of writing a book doesn’t guarantee an author copyright. It’s why facts can’t be copyrighted and why so many factual compilations (think phone books). But most importantly, it’s why merely creating either character in question won’t guarantee either writer copyright over his work.
• Effects of alleged infringement. I’d certainly like to hear Salinger’s argument about how Colting’s book would harm Salinger’s “investment” in his CitR copyright. Does he think it’ll ruin booksales? When CitR could be the most widely assigned high school book? When it constantly ends up on the banned book lists? When people who once read library copies of CitR realize they need to buy another copy so they can figure out why Colting is so right or wrong in his opinions? Not to mention the fact that
• (Some) Effects of a(nother) Salinger win. Copyright is supposed to encourage authors to write by offering them a financial incentive. So Salinger, who hasn’t published anything since 1965, is taking advantage of the security afforded him by copyright laws. Rather than allowing copyright to police itself, he’s hoarded the rights to his work, thus limiting our cultural exposure to it. Not only would literature suffer the loss of a (purportedly) creative young critic’s work and the continued dearth of modern Salinger interpretations, but the boundaries of copyright precedent would constrict to shut out similar critics and to shut down other derivative (yet original) creative works.
• Effects of a Colting win. Parody will certainly gain momentum, if only in passing. Depending on the acutal measure of Colting’s literary greatness, a Colting win could mean a step down for the writing world or it could reenter an era of heightened wit and educated criticism. This ruling would certainly favor a relaxing of copyright law, though only slightly; it may have more effect on CitR than any other U.S. book for the next decade. If that’s the truth, I hope this book is worth it.

Having not read Colting’s book, I couldn’t really tell you I’d judge in favor of Colting, but I have to say that based on the elements I can judge from where I am now, Salinger either needs to bolster his case a bit or convince everyone that Colting’s work is less important than mud. As facts surface, as news reporters interview Judge Batts and publish court reports, I may return to reevaluate my assertions. For now, I’d like to hear what you think.

Further Reading:

IRFiction Wiki Topic: Copyright

So here’s the deal: I’ll be writing about digital rights management and contract law for electronic publishing as a final project for a directed study at Emerson. It may not be fiction, but it’s closely related to the heart of this site and the philosophy behind it’s creation.

So stay tuned. All non-fiction posts will be clearly labeled and cataloged w/ the appropriate category. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to check in!

She closed her eyes and exhaled heavily, as if something would get easier when she did. It didn’t, but she stood up anyway. “Okay.”

He gave her a reassuring look.

“Amy, you’ll do fine. You have been training for this for a long time. This is your big break. This is your chance to shine. Don’t let nerves blow it for you.”

“I won’t, Charlie; I’ll shake it off. How much time do I have?” she asked as she pinned up a loose strand of dark hair back away from her face.

“You only have five minutes. You better get ready. Those NASA guys hate to wait,” Charlie said with a smile.

She smiled back and moved to leave the room with her old friend. They’d been in this together since the beginning. It was only right that she would spend the last five minutes before the case walking the halls of the Senate building with Charlie instead of alone in a stall of the women’s bathroom.

“Well I won’t walk in a second early. They might think they control the universe, but I intend to prove otherwise. Do you know who’s presiding over this circus act?”

“Senator Petsick.”

“Damn.”

“I know. But at least he’s a horny old b—Joe! How’re you?”

She dropped her voice to a low whisper as they started passing people in the hallway. “Stop acting so happy; it makes me look nervous.”

“Does my smile give it away?” He was beaming hard enough to give her a mild headache.

“That and the fact that I’m trying to burn holes in your head without looking at you.”

“Nah. That just makes it look like you’ve got a thing for me.”

She elbowed him sharply in the ribs. He laughed and winced. She couldn’t help but crack a smile.

“That’s a little better.” He thought to squeeze her hand, but decided against it.

They’d arrived at the massive oak-paneled doors. She touched the dark grain, and her smile went weak.

“Don’t, Amy. Don’t unless you’re going to use it to get to them. And it’s a long shot, but…I think you can really kill them good.”

She pushed her thumb against the identification panel, her features resetting into the metallic angles of a driven woman. People called it her mask. He knew so much better.

“Trust me,” she said with a hint of fire in her whisper.

The door clicked open, and the sound of chairs turning to face the new arrivals leaked out. She looked at him one last time.

“I plan on it.”

***

In the year 2017, a year of no mathematical consequence or ironic coincidence, we heard the first radio signals of distant life beyond our solar system. In a hurried panic, the international space research programs demanded funding from their respective governments to help them win mankind’s second space race. The US–hoping to play more cards than just the financial aces up its sleeves–used its connections with the UN and NATO to begin renegotiating the political boundaries above ground level. To date, no one had measured the wealth of land by the stars its infinite vertical boundaries encompassed; no one—outside of science fiction novels and television shows—had seriously considered setting international property standards based on the three-dimensional quadrants formed by every metric unit beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. Statesmen and attorneys the world over battled out rights on the national, provincial, state, local, and individual levels. In the end, they all wanted the same thing: to own the stars.

Within ten years, the Interstellar Property Treaty and Standards had been defined with every nation on the map securing some corner of the vast infinity of space for itself. Everyone waited for the first space battle to take place, for space commanders to be more real to the common citizen than costumes and characters, for their eyes to open one morning to find that their sci-fi dreams were realized in glowing Technicolor around them.

The consequences of this glory were more significant and immediate to a few members of the general populace than others. While John Doe still tuned in to the nightly space-wave broadcast, hoping to decode the messages still pulsing away from beyond Alpha Centuri, a small group of scientists declared war on the US Government.

Dr. Gordon Even, Ph.D. in Conservation Biology at SUNY, discovered a loophole in one of the IPTS articles that allowed governments to break land covenants and environmental protection laws in the name of greater science. The oversight specifically allowed deforestation to gain a better view of the sky or to reclaim land for the use of any given aerospece project deemed “necessary.” Aghast at what he assumed could only be a mistake, he followed the procedures, notified his congresswoman, held town meetings, signed petitions, and waited patiently for the inherent inefficiency of American democracy to slowly churn out a satisfactory answer. Around every corner, however, he found a calmly smiling face assuring him that no one would take advantage of the loophole unless absolutely necessary. But Gordon Even wasn’t smiling, nor were his colleagues at the SUNY’s Department of Environmental and Forest Biology. The Global Warming Crisis of the first decade of the millennium had taught them how earnestly the government would respond to gentle coaxing and hard scientific data, how quickly the absolutely necessary moment would arrive when one more launch pad was needed or when another few million acres of sky needed to be clear. To these biologists and botanists, the trees of the world were their last hope at reclaiming what had been a normal, balanced progression of life before human greed overran the environment. To the government, the men and women who stood in their way of winning the race to edges of the solar system were nothing more than hippies with diplomas, born a few decades after their time.

When the dissident professors and their well-connected friends at the EPA and the US Forest Service brought their case to the US Supreme Court to debate the Constitutionality of the IPTS, jaws dropped. The scientists at NASA believed themselves entitled to the land since it mathematically guaranteed them a more successful program: more land, more sky, more possibilities for domination. The bureaucrats believed it laughable that anyone took the case seriously. After nine painstaking months of scientific evidence from both sides of the courtroom and no visible answer in sight, Gordon Even took the stand to close his arguments.

“I cannot ask you to look at this evidence and understand it all. Our knowledge of the Earth and its biology is as far beyond them as their expertise on space is beyond ours, and to you nine–who excel first in being fair, discerning, and judicious–I cannot imagine we’ve made this decision easy for you. But I do ask you to lay your hands on your desks, to feel the grain beneath the varnish. Now imagine telling a child of nine or ten that it was once alive and stood twenty feet tall, just a dwarf next to its cousins. Tell them that it was once green. That it made a rushing whoosh when the wind blew in summer, turned thousands of colors in the fall, and caught icicles and snow in winter. Tell them that the wood they see is the last of its kind because we wanted to know about something that lived so far away we didn’t even have the technology to answer it, much less get to it. Imagine explaining the injustice we’d caused that tree, the injustice we’d caused that child. You cannot possibly accept that after all this fight they have no plans for these trees and that land. You cannot possibly imagine that they will be fair-minded when they’ve fought us every step of the way. You cannot—”

Gordon Even’s words were stopped by a bullet fired from somewhere near the tall, oak doors that led into the hallway. Amy Even, age thirteen, who hung on every word her father had ever spoken to her, watched him fall to the ground as if felled like a tree.

A week after his death, Amy read her father’s speech as his eulogy, hoping it would make a difference, that she could somehow manage to finish her father’s work by rallying the people around her. But NASA’s lawyers took advantage of the prosecution’s deflated morale and won the case as if no one had ever fought them. Within a week of the decision, three quarters of Yellowstone National Park had been passively rezoned as an National Center for Space Technology Development. Their mission accomplished, the directors of NASA sent Amy their most sincere apologies and expected to see the last of her. And Amy let them have their dream.

Ten years, three degrees, and a constitutional law fellowship later, she stood outside the chamber doors, filled with ice and fire. The chill came from the metal that filled the chamber doors, seeping the last dignity of the thin wood panels that masked the face–wood that was so rare that these now antique panels could financially free a family for life; the heat was her father’s passion, welling inside her again. What should have been her father’s closing argument echoed in her mind: “You cannot trust life to those who are unwilling to preserve it simply because they lack the foresight to question their own actions. This is not a fight for trees alone, it’s a duel the people are fighting against those who would carelessly cast them aside for the sake of their own gain.” The glove had again been thrown down; this time she intended to draw first and last blood.

            The professor always did what he could to look his best.  In the cooler months, he was always in his best jacket; in the summer, he was never without at least a vest and tie. When he knew no one was looking, he’d comb his hair and beard, preening every chance he got.

            The professor was a quiet soul. He brushed off cell phone conversations and impertinent insults, and cared little for the fashion of the moment or the newest blockbuster movie.  He never looked stressed, never seemed to falter, and never broke down. He just watched the world with the wise eyes of someone who had seen it all, and sat with his coffee and paper or sandwich and book while the world insisted on changing around him.

            The professor was a wise old sage.  He quietly lectured the students about life, and surprised a few with his rare, but poignant exclamations of great importance. “Peace abroad will only mean as much to us as it does in our homes!”  “If Christ died for your soul, then John Lennon died for your culture.” “It is not what your country can do for you, but who you didn’t bother to vote for!” Mostly, the students didn’t bother to end their conversations when he spoke. The ones who heard were afraid to listen. He never punished them for not caring, not heeding him. Time, after all, would reveal the truly gifted student.

            One morning when the professor had accidentally fallen asleep sitting up, coffee and paper in hand, a police officer prodded him with his foot.

            “Hey you, you can’t sleep here. The shelter is two blocks down, and you have to be on this corner?”

            I watched while the professor set down the coffee, straightened the tie that hung around his bare neck, brushed off the vest that hung around his sun-aged, leathery dark skin, pretended to flatten the shirt he wasn’t wearing underneath both, folded up the garbage-stained paper he’d fished out that morning, gathered the few dollars in change from the container lying at his feet, slung a beat up knapsack over his shoulder, retrieved his now cold 25 cent coffee, and followed the policeman without a word.  His book was on the ground still, and I hurried to grab it and return it to him.

            “You forgot this!” I said, quickly catching up to the pair.

            The professor turned around and looked me in the eye for the first time. Maybe it was the first time one of his students had ever bothered to approach him. He looked at the book, then back at me. Without a word, he took the book and held it tightly to his chest.  The realization that he might have been parted with it forever left a trace of fear in his quiet eyes.

            “Come on,” the policeman huffed, shooting me a look that told me that it wasn’t in my best interest to converse with the homeless. They turned and crossed the street together, leaving me to be jostled by my fellow students on the streets of New York City.

            No one noticed that the professor had retired. They all continued on to their classes, most without ever having heard a word he said. And I wondered what I could have learned from the homeless man in the tie and vest if I hadn’t been afraid to listen.

Winner of the Wesley Ryals Award for Fiction 2006

The bedroom was dark and cool in the morning. The floor was cooler than the air, and I felt little particles of dirt stick to my feet as I crossed the room to silence the shrieking oval projecting red numbers into the room. When I turned on the bathroom light, the human still in bed grumbled, but did not attempt a direct attack. I tiptoed cautiously towards the sink and–making note of my Human-Life Instruction Manual –approached the items I identified as the “toothbrush” and “toothpaste” The top on the toothpaste tube was sticky from remnants of forgotten paste, so I turned on the water to rinse it clean. The liquid hissed into the sink and smelled slightly of sulfur; I can’t personally account for the odd smell, but the HLIM noted that this area of Earth had poor water quality. After cleaning the tube, I put the requisite amount of paste on the bristles of the brush, turned the water off, and began applying the mixture of water and paste to my teeth. The sweet, cool smell bit my nose just before the matching taste reached my tongue. As the bristles scrubbed with a muted scratching, I studied myself in the mirror, noting–almost like a human might– the elements of my person I would need to improve before emerging from the bedroom. Concentrating on correctly cleaning my teeth while simultaneously assessing the haphazard pile of makeup on the corner of the counter and mentally reviewing the day’s schedule was difficult, but I did remember to swish and spit at the appropriate time.

My next challenge nearly put me in mortal peril. Tiptoeing quietly out of the bathroom area, I made a valiant attempt to open the drawer I was informed held attire for human torsos. To my great distain, the wood seemed to be swollen with the humidity the HLIM warned me about, and as I pulled the container open, the wood squeaked! The human in bed turned over away from the light without a sound. I breathed a sigh of relief and grabbed the first thing my hand fell on. I returned to the bathroom area since it contained the closets as well. I identified the first closet as “Casey’s” and knew the human in bed–Casey–would not appreciate it if I attempted to pair the torso cover I’d chosen with her lower appendage attire. Instead, I rummaged through the other closet, testing each “pair of pants” as they are called (for what reason I’m not sure since each “pair” is really one item with an extended cover for each appendage). I searched for the appropriate combination of thickness, color, and fit in order to find the “pair of pant” that would be suitable for the weather projected for the day in the HLIM, for the color of torso cover, or “shirt” I chose, and for the proportion of my figure. Finally the correct pair appeared and as I yanked them hurriedly out of the closet, the plastic item they hung on flew out of the closet, knocked into the glass mirror behind me, and clattered noisily into the sink. Casey growled and turned this time, and I knew my third warning had been delivered. I quickly selected a “pair of shoes”–a true pair this time since they are nearly exact copies of each other with the exception of an allowance for human foot-shape variances and minor design flaws revealed through age–put on the apparel, slipped my feet into the flimsy shoes and began to hurry back into the bedroom to gather my supplies for the day. As my feet moved, a horrifically loud “FLIP-FLOP-FLIP-FLOP” sound followed me. The Casey in bed lobbed a small pillow in my direction as I realized my mistake: I’d chosen the flip-flops the HLIM noted as the cause of so many deaths and decapitations of previous expeditions. I froze in my tracks, hoping the Casey would make no further attempt at decapitating me; to my great distress, the bathroom light revealed her full human face, and I couldn’t help but scream in terror. She screamed at the sight of my face as I dashed back around the corner of the bathroom. Not a moment later, she’d stopped, obviously rethinking her reaction, and I heard her curl back up under the covers as if she’d had a bad dream and not an encounter with an alien life form. My first note for this revision of the HLIM: use cloaking devices when enacting morning preparations in the same room as a Casey.

A crash in the art studio upstairs ruins the effect. Hammers on frames drone out the silence that was once brushes on canvas. The class next door lets out, and every sorority gossip decides to sit outside the Writing Lab door. I glare at the big blue slab of metal and will it to literally growl at anyone who thinks they need writing help this afternoon. I should put up a sign reading “Out for Lunch” or maybe one that says, “Don’t bother. You won’t pass anyway.”I need the music, not the money. I crank up my iPod, turn the computer speakers up a little higher, and drown out the ruckus upstairs.

The crowd snaps appreciatively as Janis kicks butt on stage. My Coca-Cola tastes more like lukewarm Zephyr Hills. I go back to writing on my napkins that feel strangely like computer keys. Oh well. At least I’ve got the music.