eBooks: With Courage and Patience, We Are Getting There

Just how do we make the "e" in e-books stand for "easier"? Well, how about this? Let's scrap the existing digital rights management. Instead everybody in charge of administering DRM would be re-trained overnight as digital priests. They would certify "trustworthiness" to those seeking to download e-books.

Before downloads, customers would be visited by digital priests of their respective religious persuasions. With great pomp and circumstance, they would "pledge" not to forward their books to everybody in the world without compensating the authors and publishers. Break the pledge, and you'd find yourself in purgatory, hand-copying old encyclopedias.

Or maybe a totalitarian law would work instead. First-offenders guilty of unlawful content reproduction would have to wear a scratchy wool eye patch for one year. For a second crime, the patch would be now a mask. We could set up toll-free hot-lines and reward people for spying on their neighbors.

The Real Point

See my real point here? No easy way exists to loosen the DRM grip--this complicated issue can't be addressed with good old-fashioned guilt and fear. But e-book standards for DRM and formats would help. I am counting on the laws of capitalism, which always prevail. A demand will eventually be met with supply, and I'm hoping that the right set of standard will break from the pack and simplify the digital content landscape. That will be a blessed day. Microsoft, Adobe and Palm and the others now have their own special technology fee tacked on to the price of e-books. And that complicates merchandising. We e-book merchants would rather not have multiple cost structures for the same e-book.

Nor do we like consumers to be limited to books published in their chosen format or suffer multiple technologies just to enjoy a story. Nothing is more frustrating than having three different libraries on your handheld and forgetting where your recent fiction resides. I don't just hear customers complaints--I myself own a handheld.

Villains not

Who's to blame? I'm thinking nobody. Many authors and publishers break out in a cold sweat at just the mention of the word "Napster" and can you blame them? Their livelihood is at stake. They should, however, strive to better satisfy consumers desire for more content in digital form.

If a publisher has faith in their work, it's now accepted that expanding to e-book will deliver extra profit and drive hardback sales. Not all understand this. I still hear some authors express misguided fear that e-books will cannibalize their hardback sales. Publishing is not a zero-sum game, however--and that actually can be good. E-books add incremental value to the equation. Granted, companies tasked with encrypting content for them are an easy target, for they create the hoops through which we must jump. But the DRM heavyweights like Microsoft, Adobe and eReader are simply business people satisfying a need with existing technology.

No glass chin

Let there be no mistake, the future is bright for e-books--sales are on a steady rise. The industry took a couple of jabs during the Internet correction, but you'll find no glass chin here. More students are beginning to see e-books as an alternative for those pricey hardback textbooks. The computer savvy are learning the ease in pasting code directly from their favorite Java e-book manual, and there's even speculation that men are reading more romance as they no longer fear being seen with a floral book cover. Moreover, the Tablet PC is maturing, and the publishers are slowly but surely putting even more content in digital form. It takes courage, but we're getting there. Though it is a word often used in excuses, "patience" is needed by digital downloaders, me included.

Article by L. Scott Redford - scott@diesel-ebooks.com Scott is the President of Diesel eBooks with over 35,000 popular and professional eBooks organized by 50 categories. Visit the free download section at http://www.diesel-ebooks.com

---

Better Links Directory

How To Create and Market Your own E-Book

The Internet presents an amazing opportunity foranyone who knows how... Read More

20 Ways To Profit With Free eBooks

My habit of collecting every free eBook I could lay... Read More

Convert Productive Articles to Profitable eBooks

How many articles, reports and discussion papers have you written... Read More

Choose the Right Format for Your Ebooks

Choosing the right file format for your ebook is an... Read More

Price your eBook to Sell Well

Q. The big question asked me in teleclasses or client... Read More

20 Ways To Increase Website Traffic and eBook Sales

Here's a fast, easy list for you. Use it as... Read More

Surefire Way To Find Hot Selling eBook Topics

To become an entrepreneur, you need product ideas.Even more important,YOU... Read More

How One eBook Author Writes eBooks

How does this eBook writing process actually work for an... Read More

E-book Sales ? Will Your Cover Close the Sale?

Well designed professional looking e-book covers do much, much more... Read More

Resell Rights Power

The Quickest Way To Have A Product To Sell On... Read More

Your e-Book - 7 Best Reasons to Create Your First e-Book

1) Speed to market - One of the biggest problems... Read More

Using Internet Marketing E-books Helps With Business Issues

Using an Internet marketing e-book when starting a new home-based... Read More

Top Ten eBook Mistakes and How to Correct Them (Part 1)

Did you know that you already have an eBook inside... Read More

Using Ebooks As A Highly Effective Marketing & Promotional Tool

Ebooks are part of the new frontier of cyberspace. They... Read More

Ebooks Are The BEST Form Of Advertising!

Ebooks are part of the new frontier of cyberspace. They... Read More

EBOOKS Are Books Too!

Electronic books ? that is books you read on the... Read More

Website Promotion: 10 Uncommon And Unusual Free Product Bonuses

Giving away free bonuses is one well tested website promotion... Read More

Youve Got To Be Joking!

I don't know about you, but I get a lot... Read More

Self-Publish Your Ebooks Through ClickBank

There was a time when ebook publishing was seen as... Read More

A Brief History of the Book

"The free communication of thought and opinion is one of... Read More

How To Find HOT, Non-Internet Marketing Topics For Your eBooks

It's so tempting to write ebooks yet again, on "How... Read More

10 Excuses for NOT Authoring an eBook!

Most people at one time or another have said to... Read More

eBook Publishers Dilemma: Should I Use PDF or Exe Format?

If you write and publish eBooks, sooner or later you... Read More

Ebook Farming- A Definitive Guide to Your Ebook Creation (Ebook Review)

Why would you want to buy a book on writing... Read More

Ebook Promotion: 10 Secrets Smart Ways To Increase The Downloading Of Your Ebook

If you promote an ebook, then you must learn these... Read More