So if the rumors are true and HarperCollins will be ceasing selling content on Amazon, until more favorable terms are offered, they will continue to make money. Readers will still have many options to read the publishers e-books and the world will go on. Michael Kozlowski Editor in Chief Michael Kozlowski has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past twelve years.
Michael Kozlowski Editor in Chief. Michael Kozlowski has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past twelve years. Share X Close. Next Trespassers will be shot. Pran — a hero of a villain: Unofficial Google doodle. Rock On the Review. Inside the original Bombay Talkies photograph from Neville theme by Acosmin.
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If you liked this post, you may also be interested in Bas Grasmayer profile , 28 Feb am. The Infamous Joe profile , 28 Feb am. Anonymous Coward , 28 Feb am. About that have you download your Calibre already?
The e-books include the full versions of the articles, not just the summaries. This will make some people explode.
DS , 28 Feb am. I know! When I'm in the library about to launch into a jaunty sea chantey I always get shushed. Libraries do this to an extent. When books start to physically fail i. This is what HarperCollins appears to be doing. I can respect that. But why 26? Seems like an arbitrary number to me. Not an electronic Rodent , 28 Feb am. Seems like an arbitrary number to me If you believe Amazon Kindle "lending" policy , 2 weeks is enough time to read a book. It looks great on the balance sheets when your bonus is based on yearly performance targets and if it's a small book you get more fees.
Big win. Another end-run around the concept that if you sell someone something they bought it and another pointless iteration of DRM to turn customers into criminals.
What's to respect about that? What HarperCollins wants is to pretend this didn't happen and create arbitrary rules to force artificial scarcity into a system.
We should not accept this. It slows progress and now more than ever do we need a fast pace of innovation, with all these economic, political, ecological and other crises. Joe Publius , 28 Feb am. Not to mention, what library in their right mind would buy a book knowing it would self-destruct after a year? I though all of this reading and writing was for enlightenment and entertainment.
Any more artificial restrictions and we'll get neither from this once great medium. Marcus Carab profile , 28 Feb am. Do you even hear what you are saying? Let's not use it. Should we abandon the printing press altogether since it really was unfair to the monks? Perhaps high-efficiency cars with better gas mileage should be artificially handicapped to avoid reducing demand for oil. And if we ever discover an infinite power source, we need to figure out how to limit it immediately so as not to upset the energy industry.
Odd reply Technology allows us to never need replacement copies. Why is it ok to artificially cripple what technology gives you? That argument doesn't make sense to explain why this would be a good idea, but certainly helps to explain why they're doing it - they are greedy and want more money for doing nothing. AnonJr profile , 28 Feb am. Kevin profile , 28 Feb am. Traditional publishers are nothing more than gate keepers who have the facilities to have books printed and distributed rather easily.
They have built their business empire upon the labor or writers both small and large, and amassed a fortune in the process. They have not kept up with technology just as so many other industries have, but its even worse for publishers I would think. Unlike movies or music anyone can be a "published writer" for free and from their own home, car, office, or your local library.
All you need is an internet connection and a keyboard really. Now just because you write something doesn't mean that anyone will buy it or even read it , but that's not the point. The alternatives to traditional publishing are already here and only becoming more popular. One of the major advantages of e-books is that they don't wear out. Whatever happened to products that become "new and improved" with innovation rather than "same because crippled"?
Oh, that's right -- copyrights create a legal monopoly that allow for monopolistic behavior of the sort we regularly see from utility companies and the DMV. Now I remember. Even so, HarperCollins' move here seems incredibly short-sighted. They may well be killing off a lucrative new market e-books for libraries before it has a chance to develop fully. After all, most people still don't have e-book readers and find it inconvenient to read books from a computer screen. As for libraries, further license restrictions seem to come at a particularly bad time, given strained budgets nationwide.
It may also disproportionately affect libraries that set shorter loan periods for ebook circulation. Between the growing number of contemporary authors who distribute their books with a Creative Commons license and the growing repository of easily accessible public domain works in electronic text "book" and spoken "audiobook" form, there may be a great swath of written culture from the 20th century that becomes effectively inaccessible.
Jeff Scott , 28 Feb am. Boycott them all going to places where there is only free as in freedom good books available. This story is just priceless since I was just now browsing Gutenberg. I remembered Nina when I saw this one.
So, not only can your library only loan 1 "copy" of an e-book at a time which makes no sense in the digital world but is at least in keeping with how libraries have worked heretofore , but they are "allowed" loan it 26 times before having to buy another at a price greater than an actual physical dead tree would cost? Yes that seems perfectly reasonable. After all 26 times, if you believe Amazon, is a whole year of use out of a book.
Anonymous American , 28 Feb am. Yes, seriously. They think they need to protect authors from libraries. That's -- to put it frankly -- insane. Never attribute to insanity that which is more than adequately explained by stupidity. Actually, I really think we need a new razor for content companies in the digital age: Never attribute to malice, stupidity or insanity that which can be adequately explained by monopoly.
Chargone profile , 28 Feb am. It could be that I've missed the point of the joke. Marcus Carab profile , 28 Feb pm. I do get both of your points, but I think greed is different from malice. Greed is purely selfish desire, and while it may be implicit in selfishness that other people will have to suffer for your prosperity, the greed is not itself motivated by a desire to harm people but rather by a desire to prosper at any cost.
Malice, to me, describes acts that are actually directly motivated by the desire to cause harm.
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