Quite a nice followup to my earlier post about e-books changing the publishing/bookselling industry, and notes from Mark Coker.
Booksellers: Why Publishers Will Go Direct by Martin Taylor.
Quite simply, no one believes that Random House has any more influence over the digital supply chain than a brand new start-up with minimal staff or track record.
Yeah. That’s how it is, y’all. The internet is a great leveller.
When authors prise their electronic rights away from their brick-and-morter (paper, ink & glue?) rights, all bets are off. But, still, I wouldn’t write off the Random Houses of the world too quickly…
The Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine web-site http://www.asimovs.com/2010_09/index.shtml
allows you to download some eStories. All the stories are pretty good, and by well known authors (Nancy Kress – one of my favorites). I decided to look and see if they had placed any encryption into these documents – they did not — and so are open to plagiarism/manipulation into other people’s web-sites, documents, etc. But, perhaps the author’s don’t mind this.
I was recently playing around with the Adobe pdf format version of my short story “The Rise of the Zombie King.” It allows you to input two passwords. One password allows the reader to open the document. Another password allows the reader to edit and or print the document. These passwords essentially encrypt the text within. So I was thinking…
Here’s an idea. Would it work if a story was downloaded and then the encryption key emailed to the person after the download — and after he paid a dollar or so for the privilege?
Perhaps if the writer was popular enough, it just might work. In this case it would allow the author to bypass the publisher.
What do you think?
Here’s an idea. Would it work if a story was downloaded and then the encryption key emailed to the person after the download — and after he paid a dollar or so for the privilege?”
Sure. Up to a point. Pretty time-consuming. Maybe one of the online market would be better?
OR: Mark Coker’s view is that DRM just gets in the way of your HONEST customers … the pirates will find a way around it …
http://www.thepaepae.com/nice-to-be-clear-mark-coker-on-e-books/11852/
Try it. What have you got to lose?
– P