Amazon Goes Unlimited

Today, the market is talking about the Amazon offer, Kindle Unlimited, which certainly is a smart name as it aims to do exactly what it says on the tin. It should come as no surprise and it was only a matter of time until Amazon entered the ‘all you can read’ ebook subscription arena that services such as Oyster and Scribd have started to open up.

We have long argued that the subscription model is coming and that it starts to change how we relate to books that now can be effectively ‘borrowed on demand’, without having to worry about collecting them on virtual shelves, kidding yourself that you own them when all you own is a limited licence, and also trying to work out how to pass them on to others, share them, or divide the family collection when a relationship splits up.

The greatest challenge to the subscription market is matching the economic model to the reading habits of the members. The book clubs of old used to force feed ‘book of the month’ and expect a regular purchase, but they were dealing with relatively more expensive books and accepted that many people didn’t read on a regular rate. Importantly publishers often had Book Club royalties written into their author contracts. We now have ‘all you can read ‘models which are based on a flat monthly rate with an open to read offer against a digital library. Book s only earn when they are read and ensuing the definition of ‘read’ is a relatively minor but interesting issue.

Unlike other media subscription offers in music and film and even audio the demand and usage patterns of ebooks are very different. An ‘all you can read’ model may appeal to high volume readers who actually don’t need an incentive to read, or buy books and probably read a high volume of what they buy. It doesn’t necessarily appeal to readers who have a more erratic habit, or who collect ebooks today and don’t get round to reading them. So churn rates will be very important both in the early days and within the subscription cycles and will be probably very high compared to other subscription services.

Amazon launched Free Time in the US some 18 months ago. The service was aligned to their Prime subscription model and offered access to several media forms and importantly was aimed at parents for their children. It is not clear how successful this offer is today, but it did have all the right ingredients and if it were extended to align with Unlimited would make commercial sense. Amazon will have learned a lot from this exercise and obviously have a huge volume of customer information and reading habit data to mine and exploit. Unlimited would potentially give ‘family’ offers which cross media, align with Amazon’s core Prime service and effectively lock in customers. Importantly they will be very difficult to compete with as others would appear one dimensional and limited in their potential. However the economics of such an unlimited cross sector offer would be complex and maybe a bridge too far with suppliers today, but Amazon will have learnt much from Free Time that others have yet to discover.

Amazon has aligned Unlimited to their Lending Library and those publishers and authors who opted for this service channel now are automatically lifted into Unlimited. A smart move by Amazon and one that gives them instant traction with both content and users.

So is there room for Amazon, Scribd, Oyster and will Kobo, Apple and the ailing Nook follow? What will Wattpad do now? Can Amazon extend the Unlimited offer to make it even more compelling with premium offers on audio, film, music and even cloud services?

We just can’t see sufficient market for all players as they are position today and it will be interesting to watch the strategy adopted by others. Amazon’s Achilles heel has often been their loner approach and there are many huge subscription services that could be seen as complimentary for others to align with and thereby protecting themselves from being seen a ‘trick pony’.

What’s in it for publishers? What’s in it for Authors? How do digital distributors such as Ingram respond? How does this impact the public library debate and services such as Overdrive? There are many unanswered questions and we are only at the start of a journey which will have many barriers to negotiate, but we now are starting to see a divide between physical and digital which may prove to be healthy. The books may unfortunately remain the same but the divide between ownership and licence, between buying to maybe read or as a gift and subscribing to consume, an incentive to read more as opposed to decorating physical and digital shelves is now potentially up for change.  

This is a good thing for consumers who read. It could be a good thing for digital media users. It may get more people reading. But there are others within the value chain for which this move has many uncertainties.

Related articles:

Amazon Free Time: Give me a child….    Dec 2012

Subscription Is Coming                                  June 2013

eBook Subscriptions Part 3: The future should be significant        March 2014        

Understanding the Subscription eBook Offer      Oct 2013

Another Day at The Races

This weekend my wife read a friend’s self-published book on Kindle. Yes, there were a couple of typos and a couple of other mistakes one would expect a proof-reader to have picked up, but she enjoyed it and found it well constructed. Coming from a lady who selects, buys firm and then reviews and sells hundreds of titles and thousands of units every month, this is a compliment. And she suitably gave the work a review on Amazon.

When we read about the debate about self-published versus traditional published works we often hear the continued posturing over who makes the most money and also who is just destined to remain in the ‘long tail’ of books and who can make something happen just by their adoption, process and marketing clout that can go automatically into the bestseller ‘short head’ of books. It starts to beg the question, so what and are we looking at the situation and opportunity the right way? 

Today the blogs and industry continues to debate the new breed of self-publishing alternatives. The establishment viewpoint often remains the same as it ever was. It’s undeniable that money can buy a hit and that the trade also can select their winners. Some say it’s like a day at the racers and placing bets in a crowded field. Like all gambles the bets don’t always come home or deliver the odds expected of them. But there again, you wouldn’t expect to see a donkey in the Grand National, or a thoroughbred steeplechaser on the beach at Blackpool. It’s about picking the right horses for the right courses.

Too many times today we hear consultants and industry watchers who have grown up in the old world, supporting it, even when it would appear to contradict what they say about the new world. Maybe it’s more a case of saying what the client wants to hear and like many pundits on the course they keep their hands in their pockets.

Perhaps we should stop thinking and talking corporate and start thinking and talking author. The author profile is already being raised with literary festivals, writer’s conferences and even though some of the higher profile events are being corporatized, many are not. Self-publishing is just getting more authors to question whether corporate suits them best, or whether it’s the right way every time.

Much of traditional publishing is outsourced with often only the money and control remaining in-house. 

Amazon, Wattpad, Sourcebooks and many more are now starting to offer both the author services and the channel to market and publishing has to take note. 

Some publishing houses have started ‘collection boxes’ for the great unpublished. Some have bought up smaller operations who already do it. But have these forays into the unknown been token gestures, or are they genuine initiatives to harness the growing masses? Can the traditional publishers truly accommodate more, or is it inevitable that they cut to the chase and limit themselves to only backing their favourites.

Perhaps we should not be focusing on the end delivery, the published book, but on the total author relationship, development, communication and reward system. Is it good enough to pay royalties after months when others pay after weeks? Is it good enough to give someone one liners on a royalty statement and expect it not to be questioned? Is it good enough to have only one development process and approach and not offer multiple options? Is it good enough to buy and retain a wide berth of rights and only use the minimal? Are non-compete and first nation contract clauses the way to go? 

There are many more questions and some are applicable to some and not to others, but the questions are increasingly more about the needs of the author and consumer and less about the maintenance of the corporate machine.    

Upload and Wait = Digital Piracy?

Today’s trade press is littered once more with assumptions about the state of book piracy and its impact on revenues and the market. This is an emotive subject which has many issues, much sensitivity and is often divorced of real facts.

Attributor, who monitor the access to illegally posted content through their FairShare Guardian service, have released a report based on their tracking of 913 books in 14 subjects in the final quarter of 2009. It estimates from this that over 9 million copies of books were illegally downloaded from the 25 sites it tracked. So they extrapolate, estimate and come up with figures which make many bestsellers and are somewhat questionable!

Four sites that made digital download data available--4shared.com, scribd.com, wattpad.com, and docstoc.com and Attributor found 3 million illegal downloads in the final quarter of 2009 of the 913 books followed. They then claim that based on 53,000 book takedown notices sent out to various Web sites in the second half of 2009, that these sites represent about 30% of all book piracy.

We found ourselves questioning what an ‘illegal download’ was and if Attributor can identify one, why can’t Scribd, Wattpad, 4shared and docstoc? They claim to have found illegal copies of “Freakonomics,” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, that were downloaded 1,082 times and “Angels & Demons,” by Dan Brown, 7,951 times. This would hardly adds up to 3 million.

Irrespective of the numbers, these sites continue to hide behind the skirt of the US ‘safe harbor’ protection and are merely continuing to react on take down notices?

We have written extensively about the Scribd service and its ‘post first and wait’ approach to copyright, claiming they nothing but offer a service and the onus is on the owner to prove ownership and issue a takedown notice. Some would suggest this sounds similar to some sharing services of the past. Attributor claim 53,000 in 6 months last year! So something is clearly no working and all is defiantly not well in the state of sharedbookworld.com.

Tammy Nam, Scribd’s VP of Content and Marketing says that “People used to call us the ‘YouTube of books’ given all of our user-generated-content,” and then says. “But now, given the amount of professional content we have, we’ve become more like the ‘Hulu of books.’ Some may ask why not a reference to being the ‘PirateBay of books.’

Scribd, is less than 3 years old, hosts over 10 million digital documents which it defines as ‘books’ if they run to more than 100 pages. So we even have some issues in defining a book! It now claims some 2 million visitors a day and what it sees as the number one position. Obviously it has been seen by many as an attractive channel and some 150 publishers have joined Scribd and now Scribd has also moved into newsprint and is become the home for journalists to post their documents.

Scribd is trying to be proactive with publishers on copyright. Instead of merely working on a reactive take down basis they now offer publishers the opportunity to provide Scribd with e-book files for sale on their e-commerce site. In doing so the publisher can also allow them to use those files to filter all user uploaded content and if it matches they can automatically suppress the upload. Some would say this is a very clever tactic of getting content and license to sell it based on the premise of blocking illegal files. If you don’t give them the file, the alternative is that they do nothing and hide behind their ‘safe harbor’.

We think someone is kidding someone here and what is still required is proactive protection, accountability and responsibility.

Finally, we would also suggest that it isn’t the publisher we should be concerned about but the author and their lost royalties that they have entrusted with the publishers.

Wattpad Goes Android

Love them or hate them the self publishing online services are here. Some may say that the likes of Scribd and Wattpad often hide behind their DMCA (digital Millennium Copyright Act)safe harbour sanctuaries and act irresponsibly towards vetting content, others that the service they offer is long overdue and its up to copyright owners to police infringement not the service provider. Its an argument that isn’t going away and is at the heart of much infringement debate – do take down notices work or are they trying to bolt the stable doors after the horse has bolted?

Today Wattpad announced the availability of its popular mobile application on Google’s Android Market. This will now comptiment its iphone and Blackberry and Nokia Ovi applications and means that they have the major mobile smartphones covered. Wattpad claim to generate more than 2.5M visits, 20M pageviews per month from its website and mobile site and over 3 million downloads.

Scribd and Wattpad could clearly be very positive forces into the future and offer both writers and publishers new opportunities. The question is whether the content can be controlled proactively and they can become a trusted player, or whether they stay on the fringe offering so much but never quite trusted by all.

Book Piracy: A Case of Whack-A-Mole

Last month we wrote about the issue of digital book piracy and along with others such as Peter Cox at Litopia, raised the bar on the public awareness of the issue. Today the New York Times wrote an article ‘Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web’, which again raises the agenda further.

One quote from the article which can best describe the problem was made by Russell Davis, an author and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, a trade association that helps authors pursue digital pirates who said “It’s a game of Whac-a-Mole, you knock one down and five more spring up.”

When Litopia raised the issue of Scribd, some said it was unfair and the site shouldn’t be targeted, as it tried and was responsive when take down notices were sent. Others said the same about Wattpad. Our defence would be to browse Scribd and see the volume of taken downs that have been actioned and where they state the file has been removed. There isn’t a takedown without an infringement!

Some say that piracy is small and only the same as shrinkage and theft in physical stores, but is that a real excuse, or merely a case of apathy?

Plead all they can, the sites simply allow any material to be posted and only if it is a know infringement, or they get a take down notice, do they respond. They may claim that taking proactive action could land them with the liability so to take no proactive action is safer. The problem is that the mechanism of the DMCA (digital millennium copyright act) is inherently flawed, as it is retrospective action and is like trying to put the cat back in the bag – its too late its out its out and having kittens!

The efforts being expended by publishers in tracking infringements is growing, with many large house having to have dedicated staff continuingly trawling, tracking and issuing take down notices. This may work for the large corporate, but is it realistic across the thousands of medium or small publishers? Some may say that it’s like giving each a shovel and asking them to all to ‘wack-a-mole’?

Today we are only talking about whole works and not even attempting to cover part works or content of sufficient size to warrant permissions. Rather than build infringement databases that just generate take down notices, why not address the problem. We are trying to manage a rights business with no rights management.

This has been raised over and over and the proposed BRR registry isn’t the answer but only part of the answer. We have bibliographic agencies who catalogue all titles. We know that you can’t resell a digital file and each rendition and manifestation is unique. We have identifiers which identify genuine booksellers, publishers, libraries. Yet we can’t join the dots up and create a proactive environment. Some may say that we let businesses hide behind ineffective DCMA.

If leadership is not taken, then we may all find that ‘Whack-a-Mole’ becomes an increasing part of the publishing business.

Wattpad Pulled From Blackberry App Store

How are sites such as Wattpad and Scribd to be controlled? Today they continue to work within DMCA and some would say hide behind the act. Anybody can literally upload anything and only when an objection from the copyright owner is received does it get taken down. By then its been read several hundred times and copied by many. Tomorrow it turns up under another name and the process starts all over again.

Today we hear from several sources that the Wattpad application has been withdrawn from the RIM service. According to Wireless and Mobile news, ‘the app was pulled by RIM while they are investigating the usage of the app. We are working with the App World team and hope to restore availability soon.’

Whatever the reasoning behind the decision we believe that Apple, RIM and others should look at the document and book sharing apps they are approving and could demand procative action. Publishers should remove all support for sites such as Scribd and Wattpad. That would be a start and would certainly wake the owners of the services up. Afterall they would want to loose those potential marketplaces.

If we cast our memory back to Napster and Kazza there was a recognition it was infringing copyrighted music but it was hard to control and even the introduction of legal downloads didn’t really work. Do we want books to go the same route? Unlike musicians authors can’t go back to merchandising and live performancesdeter. The time to act is now, not tomorrow or maybe wait in hope for legislation.

We respect that there are many legitimate uses of these sites and new writers may wish to promote or give away their content in hope of being seen or read but if we can find files in a matter of a few clicks what is the extent of the problem and what chance has anyone of policing it?

No one is Immune to the Pirates

As we look increasingly at the world of peer sharing, we find more and more dubious postings. One would expect them to be hidden away on unknown sites and only know by word of mouth, but they aren’t and the problem appears to be far greater than we envisaged. This last week we have highlighted the clear infrigements that are happening in eBay, others have identified them on Scribd and on following up on news about Wattpad.com we believe we have found yet more piracy of books.

Wattpad was founded back in 2006, and claims to be ‘The world's most popular ebook sharing community’ its trademarked strap line says ‘read what you like, share what you write’. It has iPhone and Blackberry apps and is obviously creating attention with them claiming to be the number 4 iPhone app in Canada and also to have ‘delivered over 150 million pages to mobile devices with millions more every month.’ ‘Using any mobile phone or the latest smartphone, you have instant access to hundreds of thousands of novels, short stories, fan fiction, essays, jokes and more. Anyone in the community can upload whatever they wish to read from.’

They clearly state in their terms:

Restricted Material
Do not submit any material that is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libelous, threatening, pornographic, harassing, hateful, racially offensive, or is otherwise inappropriate. We will promptly remove any such material submitted to the service.

Copyrighted Material
Do not upload copyrighted material for which you do not own the rights to or have permission from the owner. If you are a copyright holder and believe any user submitted content infringes on your copyright, you may notify us here or by email at report@wattpad.com. Include a reference to the copyrighted work and contact information of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner. We will act promptly to investigate such claims.

Repeat offenders will have their accounts terminated and access revoked

It all sounds great and a novel way to share and encourage writing. When we searched we had no problem finding what clearly appeared to be in copyright material from authors such as; John Grisham, Tolkien, Margret Atwood, even ‘The Audacity of Hope’ by Barak Obama! There are also many excerpts and part works from books some with curious hyperlinks on words to sell products.

As a creative writing and sharing site we would fully support the aims of Wattpad, but it is clearly open to abuse operating within the DMCA and is yet another one to be watched by copyright owners. How can we move from reactive to proactive copyright protection?