the digital era nips at publishers’ heels

Jeff Bezos has been hyping the Kindle all over the place, and I make it a point not to buy any hype at all. None. Whatsoever. This guy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation isn’t buying Bezos’s hype, either. But it doesn’t prevent him from speculating about the imminent digital revolution in books suggested by a successful wireless device that stores lots and lots and lots of text.

And he’s got a good list of questions for the folks in the book industry to ponder:

• Will e-book readers be open to content from any source?
  So far, it looks like Amazon’s Kindle is limited in the type of file it can read. PDF files, for example, have to be converted before the Kindle can read them (whereas Sony’s reader can handle any type of file). Worse, books downloaded from Amazon appear in a proprietary .azw file format, which can’t be read on other devices. (The Kindle also bizarrely charges users $1 for each blog or RSS feed they subscribe to.) And if you’re trying to read digitally from Canada, you’re out of luck. Users should be able to seamlessly move content from their e-book reader to their computer to their cell phone. The winner of the format wars to come will be the one that can provides the greatest interoperability.
• Will digital books carry DRM?
  After insisting on dysfunctional copy protection for years, the music industry has finally realized that DRM doesn’t work. By making legitimately paid content harder to use than content downloaded for free, DRM punishes paying customers by locking up their content. And, since DRM is always circumvented eventually, it does nothing to prevent piracy (the Kindle’s DRM has already been cracked). Sellers of digital books and the makers of reading devices can save themselves — and their customers — ongoing headaches by avoiding these attempts to restrict customer rights to their content now.
• Will the first sale doctrine still apply when books are digital?
  Book readers are accustomed to passing their dog-eared copies of books without thinking about it. In the world of physical books, the first sale doctrine says that a book buyer can transfer the book by loaning, re-selling it, or even renting it out if they like, without infringing on the publisher’s rights. What happens when sharing a book with a friend means making an additional, perfect copy? Readers should not be asked to give up their first sale rights, whether their books are digital or made out of paper.
• Will libraries carry digital books?
  Libraries loan out a limited number of copies of new books for free, and publishers don’t complain. But what happens when the number of books on loan is unlimited, and the “loan” makes a perfect copy? Libraries should maintain the right to distribute books, even when books are digital.
• Will bookstores survive the shift in technology?
  Bookstores have always played an important role as community meeting places and as curators of our literary culture. But even great bookstores, such as Berkeley’s Cody’s Books, have been closing or are struggling as more people get their content instantly over the web. Bookstores must find a way to interact with digital content and monetize a broader range of goods and services that come attached to “book culture,” or they may end up suffering the same fate as the music stores that are rapidly going out of business.
• Will publishers be open to new business models?
  The music industry tried putting their heads in the sand and hoping digital music would go away, and it didn’t work. Now, the major labels are (belatedly) experimenting with a number of delivery options for music, from online radio to subscription services to pay-what-you-like downloads. Book publishers should learn from their friends in the music industry and move aggressively to try out new models.

Good questions all, but I doubt that anyone in the industry has the time to ponder them.

And while publishers are getting pummeled by the digital revolutionaries into thinking about what format to deliver their “content” in, Sarah Lacy, writing in BusinessWeek, has ideas for them about how to market their “product” in a Web 2.0 world.

Some of them make sense. But this one is just revolting:

Create stars—don’t just exploit existing ones.
When an author is established, publishers have to do less to make a book sell. So bidding wars start. As a result, even some best-sellers aren’t very profitable.

Instead, publishers should take a page from the handbook of Gawker founder Nick Denton and create stars. Find micro-celebs with a voice, talent, a niche base of readers, and most important—enthusiasm. Then leverage the publisher’s brand (and the techniques I advocate, of course) to blow them out.

Require as part of the contract that the author blog, speak on panels, attend events. Give them incentives for delivering—say, though Web traffic of the number of followers they amass on Twitter.

At the risk of sounding like a lit snob … are you fucking kidding me?