And more power to them.
From Publisher's Weekly:
"For its part, Random has put its stake in the ground about how it expects to be compensated for books that are viewed online. In outlining what is esstentially its terms of sale for digital viewing, Random said that for general fiction and nonfiction titles it expects to earn 4 cents per page for all page views that exceed more than 5% of the total book, a percentage that Random considers to be a fair "free sample." "
I find the 5% threshold interesting, since the 'fair-use' threshold for copying, etc. of books is, (IIRC) 10%.
"For more reference-type material, such as cookbooks, the price will likely be higher and the sampling threshold lower. The price vendors charge consumers for each page view will be determined by each company. Viewing will be limited to on-screen viewing, with no downloading, printing or copying permitted."
Yeah, that'll catch on quickly.
This is never going to work.
There is a nascent movement in terms of ebooks being downloaded and shared for free online, similar to the exchange of music online about, say, five years ago. Legitamate online music sales never caught on until iTunes, for two reasons: 1) the music was too expensive 2) there were too many restrictions on how consumers could use the product. Random House appears to be steering straight for the same shoals.
By the way, would someone tell me why they would pay money to look at a recipe on a computer screen when 1) they don't have a computer screen in their kitchen and 2) there are probably millions of free recipes online already?
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Reading the Classics
About Me
What's this about?
I'm reading the greatest works of literature in the history of the world. And a whole bunch of other crap. And writing about it here.
Here's the list, if you care to join me.
Yes, I am reading all of the books in all of those lists. At the current rate it will take me about 40 years.
If a review has 'Reading Journal Entry' in front of it, that means it is just something I am reading for fun, and it is not on the list.
2 comments:
Copyright law doesn't establish a particular percentage of copying which is fair use, or not fair use. The fraction of copying is just one factor to be weighed in the determination. See http://www.cetus.org/fair5.html.
I've heard that the first companies trying to sell computers for the home thought that the computer would go in the kitchen, because the kitchen was where Mother did her daily computations.
Maybe it is time to put a computer screen in the kitchen. But I agree that the "no printing" rule is a silly idea.
When you're right, you're right.
I thought it was 10% because in college, the copy stores wouldn't let us copy more than 10% of a book. Hardly an authoritative source.
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