Homework Assignment

Ok, the purpose of this blog is to discuss copyright issues. I am working up piece concerning how current copyright law is in conflict with the workings of the internet at a technical level, completely aside from issues such as DRM (Digital Rights Management). While I am gathering my thoughts, I can point you to a little light reading. The problem is that for everything I bring up, I have to explain two more things. (This is like a hydra!)

Well, we have to start somewhere, so here we go...

Eric Flint is an author and an editor at Baen Books. He has written many times on the issue of publishing ebooks, covering such things as pricing, piracy, DRM, marketing, and treating your customers as criminals. Some of these writings are available at the Baen Free Library site under the "Prime Palaver" link. Since then he has been writing a regular column on the subject in the online magazine "Jim Baen's Universe". A lot of what he has to say may come as a surprise to many people.

Now, to justify why Mr. Flint's writings are worthy of consideration, a bit about Baen Books.

They have been publishing and selling ebooks for many years now. Not only that, they Do It Right.

What do I mean by that?

• they do not treat their customers as criminals


• they do not treat their customers as idiots

What do I mean by "they do not treat their customers as criminals"? Basically this: Baen's ebooks are sold completely unencumbered by DRM. You can also download them in a variety of formats. And if you decide later you want a different format, you can go back and download that later without having to go back and pay for it again.  You can copy them from your computer to your PDA to your ebook reader.  Basically you can do all the things you think you should be able to do with them.  Is this so unusual?  Yes!

Now, what do I mean by "they do not treat their customers as idiots"?  Basically we all recognize the fact that it does not cost as much to produce an ebook as it does to produce a paperback book ... much less a hardback book.  And yet, many publishers of ebooks will try to charge hardback book prices for them.  Baen does not.  They are quite reasonable in their pricing.  Individual books are $6 or less.  Monthly bundles (called "webscriptions") go for $15.  There are usually 5 or 6 books in a webscription package.  The promise is that at least 4 have not been previously made available in ebook form.

But ... they go beyond mere reasonability.  The monthly packages are called a "webscription" for a reason.   A webscription month represents the books that Baen will be releasing in dead tree form during that month.  In (or after) the month of the bundle, you can download the entire book.  The month before the bundle's release date, you have access to 3/4 of each book in the bundle.  The month before that, you have access to 1/2 of each book in the bundle.  

That's right.  You get to start reading the books two months before they are scheduled to be distributed to the book stores.  How's that for a deal?

But wait (as they say on TV), there's more!  In addition to the reasonable priceing of their ebooks, they also have made available dozens of ebooks in their entirety, free for the downloading.  This is called the "Baen Free Library" which was started by Eric Flint and Jim Baen many years ago as an expirement.  This is not just sample chapters (which are, btw, available for all of their books), but complete ebooks.  For free.  

Are these people insane?

Apparently not.  Despite all the fear-mongering about piracy by other publishers (and other industries), Baen has found that by treating their customers well, they do well.  Eric Flint discusses in Prime Palaver #6 the completely counter-intuitive result of making one of his older books available for free when they started the Free Library expirement. Here are his own words: 

The first title to go up into the Library was my own novel, Mother of Demons. That was my first published novel, which came out in print in September of 1997. At the time it went into the Free Library, in the fall of 2000, that novel had sold 9,694 copies, with a sell-through of 54%.

As of today, according to Baen Books-a year and a half after being available for free online to anyone who wants it, no restrictions and no questions asked-Mother of Demons has sold about 18,500 copies and now has a sell-through of 65%.

Did you get that?  By making his book available for free he found that sales of the dead tree edition actually increased.

Now, there is a pretty active underground traffic in ebooks.  For instance, most of the Harry Potter books were avaiable in electronic form mere hours after their release.  This, despite (or IMO, because) of Ms. Rowlings' insistance that they not be published as ebooks.  Now you will also find pirated editions of some of Baen's books ... but not so much as you might think.  Perhaps this is because it is too easy since they aren't protected by DRM.  Personally, I think this is because Baen Does It Right.  They respect their customers, so their customers tend to respect them.

Check out the Baen online book store at http://www.webscription.net/.

Check out the Baen Free Library at http://www.baen.com/library/.  

And while you're there, check out the Prime Palaver essays.  Especially #4, where he includes the text of Thomas Babington Macaulay's speech regarding copyright before the House of Commons in 1841.

Now go and do your homework!