In a much-anticipated press event, Apple today introduced a textbook app it calls iBooks2. The company described it as an educational tool and, given how quickly and completely kids take to the iPad, it may well crack open the e-textbook market in a way that all prior efforts failed to. (See Surprise: Students Prefer Print Textbooks.)

One significant feature of iBooks2 is that it enables students to create their own books, enhance them with pictures, music, movies, videos, and texts from other sources and publish them, thus “inspiring kids to want to discover and want to learn,” as the Apple executive put it.

All well and good.  But isn’t it likely that the pictures, music, movies, videos, and texts from other sources published in these books will belong to somebody else?

These books will be published, uploaded into the iBooks store and sold there.  Unless the authors clear the rights to that content, such sales may be infringements of someone’s copyrights and Apple will be faced with the same kind of spamming that Kindle is combating.

Apple has the obligation to review the content it posts on the iPad and make sure that it does not infringe on the copyrights of others.  Will Apple have the time and manpower to police countless books and vooks, texts and theses? Not likely.  But surely they will not risk incurring liability for selling stolen goods.

If kids want to discover and learn, then the most important educational tool Apple could offer, as an adjunct to its iBooks2, is a primer on copyright. If Apple doesn’t instruct users on that fundamental legal principle, it will need to create an app for defending itself and its authors against copyright infringement lawsuits.

Richard Curtis

E-Reads, a leading independent e-book publisher and a powerhouse in fantasy and science fiction, has acquired US e-book and print rights to fifteen titles by British science fiction Grandmaster Brian Aldiss, winner of two Hugo Awards, a Nebula Award and a John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Included in the trove are his Helliconia trilogy, the Squire quartet, and such other classics as Greybeard, Dark Light Years, and Galaxies like Grains of Sand. E-Reads will also publish a new work, Finches of Mars.

The reissue program will begin with fifteen titles, but E-Reads has an option to acquire the balance of Aldiss’s enormous output. The author is writing new introductions.

The deal was handled by John R. Douglas of E-Reads and Robin Straus of the Robin Straus Agency, Aldiss’s United States literary agent. Says Douglas, “I’ve been reading Aldiss for more than forty years and had the pleasure of working on the original publication of some of his works. It’s a privilege and delight to bring his books back as e-books. And to publish an original work of his – Finches of Mars – is a huge bonus.” Finches of Mars, Aldiss recently explained at a writers conference, is about a predominantly female colony on the red planet where some men are kept for reproductive purposes.

To read E-Reads’ press release in its entirety click here.

We’ve spilled a lot of E Ink projecting that 2012 will be the year that Amazon starts giving away the Kindle as they realize that there’s more money to be made from the content than from the gadget it’s read on. (See Kindle Wants to Be Free) We took our eye off Kindle’s rival, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, but it looks like the younger warrior has stolen a march on Goliath. The Nook is being given away, at least in one instance. But if there’s one instance, more are probably more on the way.

“When customers subscribe to The New York Times ($19.99 per month), they get a Nook Simple Touch for free,’ writes Dara Kerr on CNET.

Can B&N, Amazon, or any other e-reader manufacturer afford to give away its hardware?  Sure.  Because as time goes by, the value of the gadget declines and the value of the content bundled on it rises.  And in the case of the free Nook Simple Touch, it’s a way of giving away an e-reader that may be a bit of a drug on the market anyway.  Sales of black and white dedicated reading devices like the Simple Touch or the original Kindle are sagging as consumers opt for the color and hyperactivity of tablets.  This was confirmed early in January when E Ink holdings reported an 84% drop in sales. E Ink is the print technology that powers black and white reading devices.

Read Barnes & Noble offers free Nook with NYT or People subscription

Saint Petersburg, Home of Ali Baba, Floppy and the Rest of the Koobface Gang

St. Petersburg, Russia, is one of the world’s most exquisite cities, a spectacular treasure trove of palaces, parks, monuments and churches and, above all, the incomparable Hermitage museum.  If you’re visiting and have a bit of time drop by to say hello to the Koobface Gang, the quintet of computer criminals who live like pashas in plain sight, making St. Petersburg their haven under the gracious indifference of the nation that hosts them.

Riva Richmond, writing in the New York Times, reports that “Five men believed to be responsible for spreading a notorious computer worm on Facebook and other social networks — and pocketing several million dollars from online schemes — are hiding in plain sight in St. Petersburg, Russia, according to investigators at Facebook and several independent computer security researchers. The men live comfortable lives in St. Petersburg — and have frolicked on luxury vacations in places like Monte Carlo, Bali and, earlier this month, Turkey, according to photographs posted on social network sites — even though their identities have been known for years to Facebook, computer security investigators and law enforcement officials.” They post pictures of themselves on the Foursquare network and tweet to the world about it, simultaneously thumbing their noses and rubbing their knuckles in our eyes.

For years the conspirators have seduced suckers into clicking on tempting videos, initiating a malware transfer that eventuates in the purchase of phony antivirus software. It is estimated that their poison packages occupy as many as 800,000 computers and their racket pockets at least $2 million a year.

Yet, despite the fact that their names are publicly known, “None of the men have been charged with a crime and no law enforcement agencies have confirmed they are under investigation,” says Richmond, who lists them by their real names and their cutesy nicknames.

How do they get away with it, and can anything be done to put a halt to their predations?  Read Web Gang Operating in the Open

Richard Curtis

For a complete archive of articles about piracy, check out Pirate Central on the E-Reads website.

Seldom a week goes by without an announcement that a literary agency has launched an e-book venture. The schemes vary from agency to agency but in essence these firms have undertaken to publish or distribute e-book editions of their clients’ original works and reprints.

This development has created some tensions among their clients and unease in the author community in general.  How should authors regard it?

Seller vs. Buyer

The traditional role of literary agents is that of advocates for the authors they represent. Their clients are the sellers engaged in arms length – and sometimes adversarial – relationships with publishers – the buyers.  Agents have a legal, ethical, and fiduciary obligation to promote, protect and manage their clients’ interests, and authors rely on their agents’ unalloyed partisanship.

At least that is the theory. In actuality agents’ allegiance is rarely unalloyed, and they often find it strained or even conflicted. Friendships with editors, for instance, may compromise an agent’s impartiality. Or an agent may have to favor one client over another when awarding a coveted project.

These tensions are unavoidable, and though they may occasionally tax an agent’s relationship with an author they are rarely so flagrant as to violate the Association of Authors’ Representatives’ Canon of Ethics, whose first principle states: “The members pledge themselves to loyal service to their clients’ business and artistic needs, and will allow no conflicts of interest that would interfere with such service.”

It was owing to this injunction – which I helped to forge as a member and then president of the AAR – that I felt it best to leave the organization ten years ago when I founded E-Reads, the e-book publishing company that hosts this essay. I ask you to keep that fact in mind as you read these observations, and to discount them to whatever degree you may judge appropriate.

The AAR’s stern precept prevailed until the arrival of the digital age. As in so many other fields of endeavor, the digitization of books has had a profoundly destabilizing effect on relationships that had remained fixed for more than a century. The new technology has disintermediated all agencies – not just literary – that once stood staunchly between sellers and buyers. Now authors can – and increasingly do – sell to publishers without the intervention of an agent.

Squeezed out of their customary role, literary agents have been forced to reinvent themselves and seek new ways to be relevant to authors – and make a living at it. As I mentioned in a recent series of articles, many have developed management services such as creation of websites for clients, assistance with social networking, and marketing and public relations. (See Middlemen in Search of a Middle Part 1, Part 2)

These offices sit well within the ethical boundary defined by the AAR, the principal guild for literary agencies in the United States.

Assuming the role of publisher, however, pushes agents much closer to that boundary. And some authors believe the line has been crossed. For that reason the AAR recently reaffirmed, in no uncertain terms, its commitment to the fundamental principle that in all cases, member agents “may receive compensation only from the client for the member’s services; the member may not separately engage in any business from which the member receives separate profit/compensation with respect to the exploitation of the client’s work in any medium, including e-publication.”

Where’s the Conflict?

The obvious source of conflict is that an agent’s advocacy for the author may be tinged if not tainted by the agent’s self-interest as a buyer.  In determining the disposition of a client’s property, the agent must now promote his own publishing company as a valid candidate for publication. Is the agent’s e-book company better than Random House, HarperCollins or Simon & Schuster?  It may actually be, but the agent has disqualified himself from objectively advising his client one way or another. This puts the author in a quandary: whom can he or she now turn to for an unbiased evaluation?

Obviously the answer depends on the agent’s integrity. But it stands to reason that authors in that position should be offered the opportunity to engage a disinterested third party – a lawyer or another agent or the Authors Guild – to objectively evaluate his or her options.

As we said previously, as the publishing industry rebuilds itself from the ground up, every denizen of the ecosystem must not just adapt but reconstitute. Agents are no exception, and it is entirely possible that a decade from now their role will have only the faintest resemblance to that of hustling for commissions today.

Richard Curtis

In Nebula and Hugo Award winner Greg Bear’s Eon [now available in Kindle for the first time], the arrival of a 300-kilometer long stone was the answer to humanity’s desperate plea to end the threat of nuclear war. Inside the deep recesses of the stone lay the remnants of a human society versed in English, Russian and Chinese. The artifacts of this familiar people foretell a great Death caused by the ravages of war. Deeper still within the stone is the Way. For some the Way meant salvation from death, for others it was a parallel world where loved ones live again. Here is some of the outpouring of acclaim for Eon:

“Eon may be the best constructed hard SF epic yet.”
—The Washington Post

“Sharing aspects of Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, its uniqueness arises from Bear’s bold imagination. Bear is a writer of passionate vision. Eon is his grandest work yet.”
—Locus

“A powerful, imaginative novel.”
—Library Journal

“The only word for it really is blockbuster. It is big and breathtaking; the story and the concepts are ambitious to the point of mind boggling.”
—Isaac Asimov’s SF Magazine

Now, in Eternity, Bear returns to the Earth of Eon and it’s clear that the first novel was a prequel to an even grander story. The crew of the asteroid-starship Thistledown has thwarted an attempt to sever the link to the Way, an endless corridor that spans universes. The asteroid had settled into orbit around Earth and discovered that the tunnel snaked away, forming a contained universe of its own. Forty years later, war breaks out to reopen The Way. And humankind is about to discover just how completely it has underestimated its ancient adversaries.

Eternity completes a trilogy that includes the prequel Legacy, and all three titles are now available for download at E-Reads as well more than a dozen other unforgettable works by the author rightfully described as the heir to the late Arthur C. Clarke’s mantle.

RC

Since 1978, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has produced about two dozen novels and numerous short stories detailing the life of a character first introduced to the reading world as Le Comte de Saint-Germain.

We first meet him in Paris during the reign of Louis XV when he is, apparently, a wealthy, worldly, charismatic aristocrat, envied and desired by many but fully known to none. In fact, he is a vampire, born in the Carpathian Mountains in 2119 BC, turned in his late-thirties in 2080 BC and destined to roam the world forever, watching and participating in history and, through the author, giving us an amazing perspective on the time-tapestry of human civilization.

In Hotel Transylvania Saint-Germain makes his first appearance in a story that blends history and fiction as Saint-Germain is pitted against Satanists to preserve Madelaine de Montalia from ruin.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has been called “The Mother of Paranormal Romance.” Read her astute analysis of her archetypal protagonist in Saint-Germain and the Lives of Women.

Hello again, Comic Book Artist.

Remember last summer I warned you? “Before you take the job with that comic book company,” I said, “I want to make it absolutely clear that if you accept it you will NEVER, EVER own the rights to your work. Your employer will be free to create $100 million movies with ten sequels. Your precious creations will be works for hire and your only compensation will be the salary they pay you.”

My case in point was Jack Kirby, one of the co-creators of such immortal comic book characters as The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man and X-Men. “These characters have generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue over the last five decades from everything from comic books to movies to toys and collectibles,” the New York Times reported. But because Kirby produced them as a writer for hire, he had no copyright claim on them After he died his estate tried to recover the rights under a provision of the US copyright law entitling next of kin to terminate contracts signed by the deceased artist, But the claim was rejected by a court because – again – Kirby had given up his rights as an employee of Marvel on a for-hire basis.

In case that decision didn’t sink in, my Comic Book Writer friend (and your brother the novelist for hire), in December Gary Friedrich, claiming to be creator of another Marvel blockbuster, Ghost Writer, met the same fate beneath the gavel of a federal judge. It seems Friedrich didn’t read, or take seriously enough, the fine print on the Marvel paychecks he endorsed, according to an Associated Press story.

“US District Judge Katherine Forrest tossed out 4-year-old claims brought by Gary Friedrich, who said he created the motorcycle-driving Ghost Rider with the skeletal head that sometimes had fire blazing from it. A Ghost Rider of the 1950s and ’60s was a Western character who rode a horse. The judge said Friedrich gave up all ownership rights when he signed checks containing language relinquishing all rights to the predecessor companies of Marvel Entertainment LLC.” (See ‘Ghost Rider’ comics creator loses rights lawsuit)

So – has the lesson sunk in? As we said when we wrote up the Kirby case, Abandon All Hope, Ye Comic Book Artists.

Richard Curtis