Comments on: How much longer will books be sellable? http://www.hartnup.net/wordpress/archives/2008/05/27/how-much-longer-will-books-be-sellable/ John's all-purpose blog, with Debbie's name in the title too! Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:37:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 By: John http://www.hartnup.net/wordpress/archives/2008/05/27/how-much-longer-will-books-be-sellable/#comment-44993 John Tue, 27 May 2008 18:20:02 +0000 http://www.hartnup.net/wordpress/archives/2008/05/27/how-much-longer-will-books-be-sellable/#comment-44993 Good points both. I have a copy of Stewart Brand's 1987 book The Media Lab here, which I intended to quote in the blog, but forgot to. Brand coined the phrase "information wants to be free" elsewhere, and uses it in this book. It's followed up immediately by "information wants to be expensive". Free because distribution is too cheap to meter. Expensive because it can be of immeasurable value to the recipient. "That tension will not go away" he wrote. He was right. He brings up the example of Lotus 1-2-3. In 1986/7 Lotus and others were driven by market forces to remove copy protection from their products, because non-copy-protected competitors were grabbing the market. Borland sold a copy protected version of Sidekick for $55, and a non-protected version for $85. The $85 version outsold the cheaper version five to one, because DRM gets in the way. I can download Doctor Who legally and for free using BBC iPlayer. But Bittorrent is less hassle and comes in a format I can play on pretty much any device. Guess which one I use. Good points both. I have a copy of Stewart Brand’s 1987 book The Media Lab here, which I intended to quote in the blog, but forgot to. Brand coined the phrase “information wants to be free” elsewhere, and uses it in this book. It’s followed up immediately by “information wants to be expensive”. Free because distribution is too cheap to meter. Expensive because it can be of immeasurable value to the recipient. “That tension will not go away” he wrote. He was right.

He brings up the example of Lotus 1-2-3. In 1986/7 Lotus and others were driven by market forces to remove copy protection from their products, because non-copy-protected competitors were grabbing the market. Borland sold a copy protected version of Sidekick for $55, and a non-protected version for $85. The $85 version outsold the cheaper version five to one, because DRM gets in the way.

I can download Doctor Who legally and for free using BBC iPlayer. But Bittorrent is less hassle and comes in a format I can play on pretty much any device. Guess which one I use.

]]> By: David Hayes http://www.hartnup.net/wordpress/archives/2008/05/27/how-much-longer-will-books-be-sellable/#comment-44988 David Hayes Tue, 27 May 2008 17:06:24 +0000 http://www.hartnup.net/wordpress/archives/2008/05/27/how-much-longer-will-books-be-sellable/#comment-44988 I have 2 points I'd like to make The price of books on the second hand market has already reached 0 (well 0.01 if you're picky), any moderately popular novel can be purchased on Amazon for 0.01 Plus postage. This is interesting in that it's largely a factor of how the Amazon re-seller payment is structured, since Amazon pay the ~ 1GBP+ for postage and packing and the actual cost is around 70p (say) it's profitable to sell a book for a penny. Given the obvious competition to off load the book the 0.01 price is inevitable. Second hand book sellers with actual shops must hate it since you can buy any popular book for around 1-2GBP DRM really does increase piracy, I wanted to buy a single song recently from a rather obscure album. I found the song on Amazon.com but they wouldn't sell it to me because I'm in Canada. Ah, iTunes I thought, hmm the US and Canadian versions don't have it, oh well I still have my UK account and they do have it there, cool I thought then I realized my credit card had expired and I couldn't enter a new one because of the Canadian billing address. All this hassle and I was trying to legally buy a song, you can see why torrents and P2P seems a more attractive option to so many people I have 2 points I’d like to make
The price of books on the second hand market has already reached 0 (well 0.01 if you’re picky), any moderately popular novel can be purchased on Amazon for 0.01 Plus postage. This is interesting in that it’s largely a factor of how the Amazon re-seller payment is structured, since Amazon pay the ~ 1GBP+ for postage and packing and the actual cost is around 70p (say) it’s profitable to sell a book for a penny. Given the obvious competition to off load the book the 0.01 price is inevitable. Second hand book sellers with actual shops must hate it since you can buy any popular book for around 1-2GBP
DRM really does increase piracy, I wanted to buy a single song recently from a rather obscure album. I found the song on Amazon.com but they wouldn’t sell it to me because I’m in Canada. Ah, iTunes I thought, hmm the US and Canadian versions don’t have it, oh well I still have my UK account and they do have it there, cool I thought then I realized my credit card had expired and I couldn’t enter a new one because of the Canadian billing address. All this hassle and I was trying to legally buy a song, you can see why torrents and P2P seems a more attractive option to so many people

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