Raiden's Realm: Ebooks and the loss of perspective in the digital world

Ebooks and the loss of perspective in the digital world (Page 1 of 1)

Written by Steve Lake
Posted on: Apr 07, 2010 at 01:41pm
Section: Tutorials
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Ebooks are an interesting trend in the publishing world. As a sci-fi writer myself (if you get some time, be sure to check out my books. ), I've been following their development very closely. However, despite how great and awesome they may seem, especially to those who are digitally connected, they are rapidly falling into the same icky morass that is currently plaguing the media world.

But it's not being perpetrated by everyone. However, those who are perpetrating it are also the biggest of the bunch. Sound familiar? Yep, it is. IE, those with money force the majority to play by rules that are draconian, anti-consumer, pro-greed, and self destructive, and yet they don't care. It's all about the profits. And I'll be frank. I don't despair anyone making a profit. My beef is with how they make it.

Now while my viewpoint on profit making and company operation may seem a bit idealistic, I learned these things under some very brilliant minds who knew what worked, and how to run a business successfully. They in turn learned it from others as well who also applied these same successful tools of the trade. And what is that? Well, it's what I would consider a simple, logical rule. And on this simple rule, everything else in your business should stand or fall. The rule is simple:

"Take care of your customers and your employees first, and everything else will take care of itself."

That's pretty simple to understand, isn't it? And yet so many companies out there live by the mantra of: "Profit first, everything else last." Even not for profit corporations and organizations can follow this simple rule and see success. Because if you take care of the customer (or end user, depending on what you do), and your employees (or volunteers), everything else will take care of itself.

To break that last part down in simpler terms, if your goals, rules, actions, and everything else are customer and employee focused, you won't have to work hard to get profits. They'll come running to your door. Yes, some people get them even under a profit focused ideology. But there's a difference. The profit focused companies have to struggle for every dime they get, some of them lying, cheating, and stealing their way to the top. Customer and employee focused companies merely need to ensure that what they do properly provides for both within the framework of their business (ie, if you provide computer consulting services, be the best, offer a fair price, etc), and customers will more or less kick their door down just to do business with them.

I've seen this from dozens, even hundred and thousands of companies who have focused on their customers and the money has come in quite easily, and the businesses have lasted a long time, maybe even several millennia, as was the case with one company.

But the big book publishers aren't taking that angle. They want profits, insane profits, and they don't care who they have to hurt to get them. And that's even true of some ebook producers. Take a look at the Amazon case for example. I'm simply using them because their plight has been the most visible of late, and thus provides the best reference.

First they started off with the Kindle. That's all fine and dandy, and the Kindle is a fine ebook reader. The kicker comes from the fact that they refuse to sell their ebooks in any format other than their own proprietary Kindle format. The idea there is to sell units as people buy ebooks by forcing them to only use the Kindle to read them.

Now in their defense, they did force publishers to only sell their ebooks (a publishing medium that is nearly all profit) at $9.99 per copy. Well, leave it to the publishers to find a way to screw you, the consumer, over nine ways to Monday. They did this by forcing Amazon to raise their price cap to levels equal with the paperbacks, and in some cases even hardcovers. Yes, ebooks are now selling on Amazon for the same price as their more expensive hard backed paper cousin. (and they're doing this with more than just Amazon, BTW. They're doing it to everyone.)

And the biggest kick in the pants? Unlike a paperback or hard back, you can't share the books. And to further kick you where it hurts, they're locking them into proprietary formats under crazy levels of DRM, and preventing you from sharing them, removing the DRM, format shifting them, or anything that might actually make your life easier. Oh yeah, and they're doing all this while ransacking your wallet.

But there is hope. While the big boys (both the big name ebook makers and the big publishing houses) are doing everything they can to screw you, there is still a glimmer of hope. Smaller ebook reader companies, and ebook merchants such as Astak and others, are all siding with the open standards Epub and PDF formats. Surprisingly enough, despite offering ebooks in their native, proprietary Nook format, even Barnes and Nobles is offering their books in Epub, and their Nook is capable of reading them.

Of course, Apple and their oh so wonderful iPad are taking the extreme other side of things and going the wholly proprietary, DRM encumbered route. Gee, how is that a surprise? But even so, despite the madness going on around the emerging Ebook world, there is some open source hope. And it would be my recommendation to support people who offer ebooks in open source, DRM free versions. Just using an open source format doesn't give them a get out of jail free card. They also have to sell their products without DRM.

But I know that some of you are gonna say "But they won't do it because of the piracy!" Well, actually, piracy isn't that big of a problem when you offer people what they want. Most people are good, honest, hard working people that will willingly pay for things, and don't go about stealing it. They only go that route because they're forced to by greedy corporate interests who treat them like cattle or bottomless ATM. In some cases they even treat their customers as though everyone's a thief.

So if you're a reader, and you're into ebooks, support the authors, support open formats, and help correct this madness by buying from companies who offer DRM free, open formatted ebooks, authors who support said formats (Like me! I hate DRM and proprietary formats!), and ereader companies who support said openness. The ebook world is changing. But it still needs you to do your part.

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