Are "Open Source" eBooks a Bad Idea?30 July, 2001 I just read something really interesting in Wired. According to Microsoft VP Craig Mundie: "In this sense, open-source software based on the GPL mirrors the dot-com business models that proved the least successful during the past year. They ask software developers to give away for free the very thing they create that is of greatest value in the hope that somehow they'll make money selling something else. In effect, it puts at risk the continued vitality of the independent software sector." The article was about Microsoft trying to convince the Linux community that they really don't think, to use Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's words, that Open Source is a "cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." On the Free-ePress Yahoo group, we've talked recently about the similarities between Free-ePress ebooks and Open Source software. In both cases, the creative work is given away for free up front, with the expectation that it will "pay off" some other way later. Free-ePress asks readers to pay for books they enjoy, but doesn't demand or enforce that. Based on the sales numbers we've seen so far at Free-ePress, maybe Mundie's right; maybe that model just doesn't work in a sustainable way for creators. If that's true, what is the answer for digital intellecutal property? I still stand by my statement that Digital Rights Management, especially as implemented by Microsoft and Adobe, is not the answer. It's not even close. Restrictive DRM is ultimately self-defeating and only encourages piracy in the long run. This may keep the FBI in business, but it helps neither content creators nor consumers. There has to be another way. I've talked before about Baen Books, an independent publisher of speculative fiction that seems to be doing rather well with ebooks. I think one of the reasons they do so well is that Baen trusts their customers. Baen runs a program they call "webscriptions", where members--there's no fee for joining--can purchase all the books Baen publishes for a particular month as ebooks for a flat $10. Better, this starts a few months before the books hit the stores, so you can read books in progressive installments as ebooks before your ebook-shunning bubby down the street can buy the paper version. (Then you can tell him the ending! Hahahahahahahahaha! ... ahem. sorry.) In addition to unprotected PDF and Microsoft Reader formats, Baen offers each book in MobiPocket, text, HTML and RTF formats, all completely free of encryption. Moreover, they don't charge you for additional formats. If you want HTML to read on your desktop and MobiPocket or Microsoft Reader format for your PDA, they have no problem with that. Once you buy a book (or more precisely, a bundle of books), you can pretty much do anthing you want with it, although they ask you not to redistribute it. Wow! An epublisher that respects Fair Use and the First Sale Doctrine! But that's the catch. Baen is not an epublisher. Not really. They're in the business of selling paper books, and I think that's the reason their ebooks do so well. They're not trying to sell ebooks. They're trying to use ebooks as an inexpensive marketing tool to help them sell more paper books. Proof of this is in Baen's Free Library. Baen encourages their authors to put the first book or two of a series in the library, where anyone, webscription member or not, can download them completely free of charge. There's a dozen or more books in the library now, but it started with just one, David Weber's On Basilisk Station, the first book in his popular Honor Harrington series. For the first six months or so that Baen was giving this book away for free, On Basilisk Station was also available in paperback and hardcover, and during that time--a time when anyone could get the text of the book at no cost--the re-release of On Basilisk Station was Baen's best-selling book. Baen's strategy is to use ebooks, cheap or free and unrestricted, as a kind of "gateway drug" to their print lines. This works for Baen, but will it work for you? The reason it works for Baen is that they have print books to sell. Could an "e-only" publisher make a living on this model? Probably not. But it does show a brilliant way that ebooks and print books can benefit from each other. So what's left for the "e-only"? While I'm looking for an agent to handle print sales, I'm still mostly an e-writer. How do I market and sell my books and actually make money doing it? So far, I've done all the marketing myself, but there's a reason why most writers don't self-publish. It's an awful lot of work. Does anyone have any better ideas? Join the Writing On Your Palm Yahoo group and sound off. |