Given my long-standing and more-than-just-professional-though-still-fairly-tangential ties to the publishing industry, I’ve read with interest a number of articles that attempt to deconstruct the challenges and opportunities facing the sector in the post-Kindle paper book market.
Of note is that very few of these articles strive for a measure of journalistic objectivity, though I suppose in fairness some are clearly labeled as editorial. None-the-less, the iPad seems to have established a reputation as quite the divisive consumer device in terms of the responses it elicits – you love it or you hate it, but at least in the tech or publishing communities, you probably have an opinion, and if you’re voicing it in words (in web or print), it’s probably not a mild one. Skipping over just why that is (for now), I’d like to take a look at a few of the issues touched on by two articles in particular, one of which appeared in Publisher’s Weekly several weeks ago and brought to my attention by a literary agent, and another that appeared in Wired a few days ago.
Both articles echo similar sentiments – hardly unique ones at that. Setting aside waxing about bygone eras, it quickly becomes a matter of a publisher wanting a standard platform to distribute their work on, and further one that isn’t propriety or locked-in to the whims of any specific distributor or 3rd party (ie, a scenario demonstrated by Amazon with the Kindle or Apple with the iPad). Publishers are (of course), concerned with loosing “control” of their content as it starts to seep out into the world on these devices. They’re observing an extremely immature and accordingly fragmented market and are concerned both that the fragmentation will either persist or worsen (which it will in the short term), or, alternatively, that it will consolidate onto a single device which doesn’t suit the interests of the customers publishers. Just exactly what is an eBook? If your goal as a publisher is to bring a work to market, are you required then to conceive of distribution channels in a dozen formats and encodings? Setting aside the fact that this is exactly what they’ve done with printed books, it’s still a good question. I consider myself fairly well informed, but if someone walked up to me on the street and said, “What format should I publish my e-book in?”, I’d be hard pressed to give a simple answer.
These are legitimate concerns, and publishers have good reason to keep a careful eye on the developments afoot . These are times of momentous change for media companies, and there is little doubt that some if not many of the established players – centuries old behemoths, mind you – won’t be around when the dust has settled. On the other hand, scads of brooding basement writers of both literature and the software code will not only be around, they’ll be basking in fire-hydrant flows of revenue of that have been left gushing behind the fallen behemoths. While I appreciate solid editorially culled and curated content (and it’s not going anywhere, by the way) as much as the next humanoid, these are companies that have consolidated, merged, and compounded their power for years and years. At very least, I’d like to see (and not just in the publishing world) an opportunity for those whose work has merit but hasn’t met with fancy of the ad-and-marketing-department at Publisher XYZ to sell some books and stick it to them. That’s the promise of free markets and meritocracy, and yet I see a very real disconnect between that promise and the publishing industry as it exists today. Write a great book and you may get it published if the ad team can position it properly – that’s the MO, and there are a few industry heavy-hitters who I won’t name but who have literally just reasserted this, in the face of the coming storm. In music, iTunes has given smaller record labels, if not equal footing as the the majors, a viable platform for international distribution that is unprecedented. Perfect? No. Better than what we’ve had? Yes.
The PW article reads more-or-less as a line item indictment of the closed nature of Apple’s platform (there is perhaps even less sympathy for Amazon). I’m not going to focus on Amazon, because, quite literally, at the moment I don’t see them as relevant to the discussion beyond comparisons to what others are doing. As it stands, the Kindle is a piece of history, not the future (I anticipate that to change, but not today or tomorrow). I appreciate the Kindle for what it is and the practicalities it affords in terms of making books portable and accessible. I criticize it for adding to the complexity of file formats and needlessly complicating delivery/distribution methods, but ultimately I don’t think it really adds anything to books other than a higher degree of portability. The iPad adds these things and a whole lot more.
Before the article even begins, Doctorow characterizes Apple’s entrance into the book business as an attempt to “shackle your readers to its hardware” in a sub-headline. It’s the stuff that high-click-count headlines are made of, and to an extent it’s true – Apple would be doing a disservice to its shareholders and anyone who’s pondered the idea of good business decisions if it didn’t. Of course it is in Apple’s interest that someone who buys the product sticks with the product – or at least the brand, so this is something of a foregone conclusion, but with zing appeal.
You, dear reader, are not so quickly convinced however, that the success of this product needs to be quite as shackley-or-medivealiy as some might have you believe, and that if indeed any cast-iron or stainless steel clasps and locks are going to be engaged here, its not necessarily Apple holding the keys.
On a side note, for those of you frustrated by my hollow promises of not using geeky acronyms, DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and it’s basically a method of watermarking digitally distributed products such that one purchased copy cannot be spread far-and-wide across as many systems as it can be downloaded to.
On the topic of DRM – let’s be clear on the differences between locked content and a locked platform. Doctorow accuses Apple of attempting to lock in purchasers content/books by virtue of DRM – essentially, a book that is purchased on an iPad could not be viewed on a Kindle, or even on someone else’s iPad, for that matter (it could always be viewed on the owner’s iPad, be it their current or future version). Now, the reality is is that nobody amongst us common-folk really knows the inside deal here. What we do know is that Apple has negotiated with major publishers to distribute their books in the iBookstore, and that the books sold through this bookstore do carry DRM that prevents multiple devices and users from utilizing the content without paying. Doctorow asserts that this is a shameless attempt by Apple to shackle readers. Again, its in Apple’s interest, and it’s an easy assumption. But we also know a few other things about how Apple operates, as they’ve been in the digital media distribution business for almost a decade now.
For example, we know that Steve Jobs, as a matter of principle, doesn’t advocate or support the idea of DRM as it pertains to music. Apple has sold music for many years, and it is now quite clear that they were able to begin selling music without DRM only after record companies conceded the opportunity. We know that DRM was a point of contention when Apple went into negotiations with movie and television studios, and that Apple took-up a similar position to what it had with music – anti-DRM, that is. I think it’s fair to say that DRM would have been a topic of conversation between Apple and the book publishers it negotiated with, and while we can’t know for certain, if I were to make a guess (again, based on past performance and behaviors) that if anyone in the room was jockeying for DRM encased books, it was more likely to have been the publishers (if you don’t believe me, just look at how brisk a business they are doing in their relationships with all the vendors and distributors who have rejected DRM – oh wait, they’re aren’t any) than Apple. So that’s point number one. If consumers, authors, and agents don’t want their books constrained with DRM, take it up with the publishers, not with Apple.
Both the PW article and the various quotes in the Wired article assert a “fact” early on – the idea that you can only consume books sold by Apple on your iPad, books sold by Amazon on the Kindle. That there is no open standard what-so-ever. If you think this is misleading or simply a flat-out falsehood, you’re right. There is indeed a widely used format for exchanging books – on most devices in fact, and the format is independent of any single distributor or retailer. Read these words carefully, because might not hear them often: You can read books that you’ve obtained from anywhere that distributes in the ePub format on most devices. You can read these in Apple’s Books app, just as you can listen to MP3s that you didn’t buy from Apple in your iTunes app. Yep, it’s true, and I do it. This isn’t even to mention the fact that Kindle and others have an App on the iPad that further undercuts this argument – because you actually can read Amazon’s kindle books on your iPhone or iPad, as long as you’re using the Kindle app.
The fact of the matter is, I could setup up shop tonight selling ePub versions of widely known public domain texts. I could charge people to download them and offer brief instructions as to how to load them on (tip: drag the file into iTunes) onto your iPad. I probably should, actually.
There is likely more-than-a-good-chance that Apple will grow and become one of the larger distributors of books, as it has with digital music. If this comes to pass, it follows that Apple will gain the ability to wield influence over the industry, and that they may push for things that the industry doesn’t like, as has been the case with record labels.
But let’s put things in perspective: Given that Apple is new on the scene, that they aren’t currently forcing any publishers to do anything, if Apple succeeds it will be on the merits of their product and their market. For all the moaning about how Apple has treated record labels, let’s remember that the record labels had every opportunity to bring their products to digital market before Apple (in 2001, Apple was a blip on almost no-one’s radar), and they failed. Apple delivered iTunes and the iTunes store, pioneering a successful pay-for-content model. So successful that it eventually became the biggest. That’s how markets work, and the idea that Apple bullies these record companies, forcing their hand to do things they otherwise wouldn’t, well, it’s a convenient crutch for the record industry, but it’s also petty and hollow. If you can’t sell your own products in a changing market and someone else figures out how to do it, how is that party responsible for your failures? I’m not arguing that Apple should be deciding the future of these companies, but the idea that Apple is somehow to blame for the success of their store is sophomoric.
The reality is that the record companies still do have the opportunity to break away from Apple, and eventually, eventually they will. Apple has seen an incredible rise in the past decade and it may very well see a swift fall, though I’m not predicting it anytime soon. But one thing is for sure, they won’t be calling the shots forever – and when they’re not, it will because someone else has figured out – get ready for this – a better way to do things than what they’re doing. That’s innovation, thats markets, that’s how things work. If you are in the record business and you don’t like the way Apple sells records, think of a better way. The opportunity may not seem real, but it is.It didn’t “seem” like Apple would be the biggest digital distributor of music ten years ago, and yet here we are.
Both articles attempt to counter this reasoning on the basis of “content locking” – the notion that, once you’ve bought all your media on the iPlatform, and you can’t take it with you, you’ll never leave the iPlatform. This certainly has threads of truth – having all your music in iTunes is a powerful disincentive to switching to a competing product. But again, the argument overlooks a few “facts”: First, the overwhelming (and I do mean overwhelming), majority of music and videos that people have on their Apple mobile devices is not from the iTunes store. There are readily available statistics on the numbers of songs purchased versus songs from other sources on the average iPod, but, for the moment, suffice to say that I know many people with tens of thousands of songs on their iPods, and (please don’t consider this an insult or judgement, friends) – I just can’t see any of them having spent tends of thousands of dollars on music in the past 7 years in the iTunes store. A few hundred, yes. Maybe a few thousand if they’re a real music junkie.
Point number two: Apple has lobbied for and achieved the opportunity to sell music that isn’t locked by DRM to device. Meaning that, should you switch devices, you can not only take the music you didn’t buy on iTunes with you, you can take the music you did buy with you as well (unfortunately this applies only to music purchased in the past few years).
This leads me to my next point, which is the argument of content locked-ness as a detriment to closed platforms. I don’t like DRMs because of the practical frustrations they entail. I hate them for it. But living in a city surrounded by people who make music, who make books, who make art and computer code – I think it’s reasonable not just to ask for donations, but to take tangible measures to be paid for the work one does. DRM, for better or worse (specific implementations or systems not-withstanding) is really the only way to make this happen, in lieu of a world-wide-honor-system. Yeah. So DRMs are a pain, but they exist for a reason, just like subway turnstiles. It would be convenient if you could just hop on that train that you could have caught if only you hadn’t forgotten to refill your Metrocard first- it’s a real pain to even have to swipe at all when you’re running late – but that’s how the system works, at least in this country.
There is also a certain trend emerging, over the past few decades really, that speaks to this exact issue, and I’d describe this as the increasingly transitory nature of media for consumption. There was a time when you purchased an object – a book, a record, with the expectation that you’d have it for life. Perhaps it’s shear coincidence, but as the information age has risen, both exposure to the shear quantity and the ability to search and index whatever specific information we’re looking for rapidly has made us less reliant on the notion of “fixed” media objects. We’re not quite as concerned with holding a bit of information in our hand and knowing that it will never go away – that it will never go away is a foregone conclusion with the knowledge that we live in a time when any bit of information that is created will exist forever, and can be brought back to our fingers (or really our conscience) at the stroke of a few keys.
Certain things we will always want to hold, to own, to possess. Bookshelves and hard-bound books, vinyl records. These objects are more than just the media they contain. But as far as that media is concerned, we’ve shown ourselves to be increasingly willing to trade-in the medium over time, as the medium improves. Favorite albums, for example – the ones I truly love, I’ve bought on tape, then cd, then MP3, and then vinyl. I’ve paid each time, and I’ve never resented it. I needn’t mention the fact that, from a business standpoint, I’ve generated a lot more revenue for the artists of these items than if I had just bought one copy – this trend drives revenues and progresses development.
I acknowledge the notion that buying content that is locked to a specific vendor is unsavory, but let’s not act like this hasn’t already been the case: VHS, Beta, LaserDisc – we’ve trundled through media manifest in many forms, but it’s the content we love, and ultimately we love the platform for how it unleashes and enriches the underlying content at any given time. That’s the promise of new media, of iPads and slate computers. You might very well buy an app, and five years now buy another brand device that won’t run what you’ve already paid for. If you love it, you’ll buy it again (assuming it’s reasonable priced), and that’s ok – it’s what keeps things moving forward – at least that’s what I think.
I’ve probably said enough already, but to wrap this up, I’ll leave you with a final gem from the PW article:
“Code-signing has completely failed for iPhones, by the way, on which anyone who wants to run an unauthorized app can pretty easily “jailbreak” the phone and load one up.”
Yikes. I guess it’s a matter of how you define failure, but I for one simply don’t see how an individual who “jailbreaks” and essentially opts out of the closed-Apple-ecosystem results in a failure for those who remain inside it. It’s never been a question of whether-or-not DRMs are breakable or platforms are hackable (we all know they are). In terms of real world implications, I’d argue that by the exact same measure, the closed platform has succeeded here. There are now a few viruses and bits of malware circulating for iPhone – but only, I repeat, only, amongst phones that have been “freed” or “jailbroken”. What’s the lesson here? “Open” your iPhone and you really only the risk of screwing yourself (and of course poor owners and other users of whatever cellphone network you happen to be on)? An argument can be made that people should be allowed to screw themselves, but for more on this topic please review my thoughts on closed platforms. Briefly: It’s not a matter of them screwing just themselves, it’s a matter of them screwing all of us.
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