Digital Rights Mangling
Jan. 15th, 2012 07:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI headed back to our neighbor's rehab facility today, a couple of live library e-book downloads on board my travelin' laptop, and blessedly succeeded in transferring 7-day loans of each to her Nook. Not that it was easy. First, Eleanor had to find her on-paper "wish list" of such things next door. Then, it took me close to 30 attempts to find just two books on that list which were (a) available as e-books at all, (b) weren't "checked out" (I previously ranted about this), and (c) were available in the .epub format accepted by the Nook and not the system's default Overdrive version which is only Kindle-able.
Finally, the transfer itself took close to the whole hour I was there. The library website and the Nook's online help provided completely contradictory instructions on how to transfer the download, and my first effort (based on the latter) resulted in "ineligible token" errors. (Didn't we get rid of this scam when the NYC subway went to Metrocards?) Yet, by opening three different programs on my laptop (Windows Explorer, Firefox, and Adobe Digital Editions), I finally pulled it off, and now two different books- coincidentally both featuring vampires- are at Sally's virtual beck and call for a whole week.
This-all sucks, and I am not here referring to tokens.
----
Amazon, on the other hand, seems closer to the concept of Getting It.
As I pimped the other day, the lovely and talented Kate Danley made a short-term Kindle loan of her first book, The Woodcutter, available for 48 hours for a free- FREE!- download. She posted earlier today that 15 people took her up on that offer.
Oops, sorry: fifteen. Freakin'. THOUSAND. Bringing her to (and I quote) (thus explaining the quotation marks;) "the #1 Fantasy book, the #10 Fiction book, and the #16 on the Top 100 list on Amazon."
So let's do some math. Let's assume, in the best of all possible worlds, that maybe 100 out of those 15,000 people are now Not Paying Customers, who would've bought that book anyway. That's 100 lost sales, if addition is still commutative, right?
But. If only ONE FREAKIN' PERCENT of those 15,000 people are impressed (they will be), intrigued (duh), indebted to Kate for her random act of kindness (heart), and each of them only tells ONE FREAKIN' FRIEND who then buys the book? That's 150 sales that did happen, overwhelming the 100 sales that didn't.
And so on, and so on, and so on, as those people who even didn't buy the book still remember Kate as a Damn Good Author (trust me) and eventually bring her up above the Pattersons and Evanovichi of this world (not hard).
This model works. Unlike our library's, which is rooted somewhere back in hot lead printing presses.
Finally, the transfer itself took close to the whole hour I was there. The library website and the Nook's online help provided completely contradictory instructions on how to transfer the download, and my first effort (based on the latter) resulted in "ineligible token" errors. (Didn't we get rid of this scam when the NYC subway went to Metrocards?) Yet, by opening three different programs on my laptop (Windows Explorer, Firefox, and Adobe Digital Editions), I finally pulled it off, and now two different books- coincidentally both featuring vampires- are at Sally's virtual beck and call for a whole week.
This-all sucks, and I am not here referring to tokens.
----
Amazon, on the other hand, seems closer to the concept of Getting It.
As I pimped the other day, the lovely and talented Kate Danley made a short-term Kindle loan of her first book, The Woodcutter, available for 48 hours for a free- FREE!- download. She posted earlier today that 15 people took her up on that offer.
Oops, sorry: fifteen. Freakin'. THOUSAND. Bringing her to (and I quote) (thus explaining the quotation marks;) "the #1 Fantasy book, the #10 Fiction book, and the #16 on the Top 100 list on Amazon."
So let's do some math. Let's assume, in the best of all possible worlds, that maybe 100 out of those 15,000 people are now Not Paying Customers, who would've bought that book anyway. That's 100 lost sales, if addition is still commutative, right?
But. If only ONE FREAKIN' PERCENT of those 15,000 people are impressed (they will be), intrigued (duh), indebted to Kate for her random act of kindness (heart), and each of them only tells ONE FREAKIN' FRIEND who then buys the book? That's 150 sales that did happen, overwhelming the 100 sales that didn't.
And so on, and so on, and so on, as those people who even didn't buy the book still remember Kate as a Damn Good Author (trust me) and eventually bring her up above the Pattersons and Evanovichi of this world (not hard).
This model works. Unlike our library's, which is rooted somewhere back in hot lead printing presses.
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Date: 2012-01-16 01:47 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-01-18 06:10 am (UTC)