In the last year publishers have debated the wisdom of holding back release of e-book reprints of hardcover books. The industry term for it is “windowing”, and when the public gets irritated by a publisher’s delay of the e-book, it can express itself in particularly nasty ways. (See I Want My E-Book and I Want It Now – Or Else)

That can be bad news for any author, but if he happens to be the President of the United States it can mean alienating the downloader populace when the next election rolls around. That’s a sizable, well heeled and extremely articulate lobby.  If you want to stay in office you don’t want to mess with e-book readers.

That’s why, when Random House Children’s Books announced publication of the President’s book Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters, industry observers wondered whether his publisher would sit on the e-book or release it simultaneously with the hardcover.

The Anti-window Party can put its nasty posters away.  The downloadable edition will be published at the same time as the hard copy.

Julie Bosman, New York Times’s book beat reporter, tells us that “The book, illustrated by Loren Long, is a tribute ‘to 13 groundbreaking Americans and the ideals that have shaped our nation,’ the publisher said, including Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackie Robinson and George Washington. The cover features an illustration of Mr. Obama’s daughters, Malia and Sasha, as they stroll across a grassy lawn with the family dog, Bo, leading the way.”

You can read details and see the adorable cover picture here.

If you’re wondering why the President is writing books instead of putting out the thousand conflagrations threatening the commonweal, the answer is that he wrote it before he took office.

Bosman reports that “proceeds from sales will go to a scholarship fund for children of soldiers who are killed or injured.”  It would be hard to find fault with that, but we suspect his critics will figure something out.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting conducted by the New York Times.

“What might at first seem an arcane matter — precisely when to put a movie for sale on cable systems and at what price — has been the subject of ferocious debate in a film industry that so far has stopped just short of embracing the digital revolution.”

Does that sound familiar to you? Denizens of the publishing industry will recognize the answer instantly: It’s about “windowing” movies.

While the book industry debates the timing of e-book releases of print books, movie companies are trying to figure out the best timing for cable release of theatrical motion pictures. A big difference between the two industries, however, is that the movie business now has US government “permission to activate technology to protect new releases from being copied if they were sold through video-on-demand systems before being issued on DVD.” This according to Michael Cieply of the New York Times.

Cieply writes that the Federal Communications Commission okayed technology called ‘selectable output control’ that “can reach into a customer’s home video player and turn off its video outputs while a pay-per-view program is being watched, to prevent the program from being copied.”

The technology reflects the ire of movie theater owners “who have been fiercely protective of the exclusive period during which they have customarily served up the major studio pictures,” the Times article explains.

You can easily replace the players in this story with “Publishers”, “Authors”, ” E-Books” and “E-book Retailers.  The difference is, the book industry doesn’t have “selectable output control” to regulate windowing – bookbiz-ese for withholding – release of e-books, either legitimate ones or the pirated version.

Read details in Filmmakers Tread Softly on Early Release to Cable

RC

About three weeks ago Randy Cohen, the Sunday New York Times columnist who guides the morally perplexed in a feature called “The Ethicist”, told a supplicant that there was nothing unethical about downloading a pirated e-book version of a Stephen King novel so that he would not have to lug the heavy hardcover around on a journey.

Cohen’s grounds for blessing the customer’s patronage of the pirate site were that the legitimate e-book version was not yet available, and besides, the customer had paid for the hardcover and was therefore entitled to help himself to whatever e-book was at hand, which in this case happened to be a stolen one.

Though we think of ourselves as judicious we reacted to Cohen’s advice with unwonted intemperance. We were almost unanimously supported by a host of indignant people, many of them authors who had no need of an ethics counselor to distinguish between right and wrong. However, one author, John Scalzi, took exception and defended The Ethicist. Scalzi’s rationale goes like this: “You bought the book once and I got paid once; after that if you get the book in some other format for your own personal use, and I don’t get paid a second time, eh, that’s life.”

We’ve had three weeks to review all the comments and reflect on the position put forth by the Cohenim and Scalzistas in the hope of finding some redeeming values that we overlooked in our initial hotheaded reaction. We’re sorry to report that we have found nothing to alter our sense that their views are pernicious and stupid. (Oops! There we go being intemperate again.  There must be something about apologists for piracy that brings out the mean spirit in us.)

Our feelings about all this were reinforced by an eloquent comment submitted by Tony Burton, a writer and publisher of Wolfmont Press. As we’re not content to let this issue disappear from our front page we’re printing it in full below with Mr. Burton’s permission.

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My first thought is, if this is an ethicist speaking, then the blind truly are leading the blind.

Situational ethics. It’s OK to do something wrong in certain situations. So, it’s OK to speed way over the posted limit if… what? If you are late for an appointment? If you are fleeing from a raving lunatic? If you have to catch a plane? Breaking the law, breaking the established rules, just because it makes life more convenient for you is unethical. As someone else noted, just because I have purchased a ticket to see a movie does not make it legal or ethical for me to secretly videotape the movie while I am in the theater.

As to the comment that “you’ve done no harm or so little as to meet my threshold of acceptability,” what malarkey. Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps the level of acceptability of “the Ethicist” is so low that just about anything meets it, as long as apparent and immediate harm are not seen. It’s not unethical, then, to throw a single candy wrapper out the window. And if everyone who eats a Snickers bar thinks that way, the landscape will be plastered with wrappers. It is an insidious way of thinking, that “it does no apparent harm, or so little harm, so if it is convenient for me it must be OK even if it is illegal.”

It’s OK to steal a little bit. It’s OK to tell just one racist or homophobic joke, every once in a while. It’s OK to view child pornography in the privacy of your own home because, hey, you didn’t pay for it… just managed to find it on a file-sharing network and after all, it’s not YOU who coerced that child into doing those things, and even if you hadn’t downloaded it, the child would already have been molested anyway, right?

Yes, I’m being extreme. I’m being extreme because it’s too easy to accept unethical behavior when you candy-coat it. Call it what it is: dishonest, immoral, illegal, and UNETHICAL. That anyone intelligent is able to rationalize it into something else is somewhat frightening, because it is so easy to move from this sort of “harmless” theft to something worse, and every time you succeed in convincing yourself that you are OK, that you are in the right, it just makes it that much easier to do something more heinous. And that someone in such a position, writing for the NYT where so many thousands of people can use his words to justify their own unethical behaviors… it is reprehensible.

Below are comments by Frances Grimble of Lavolta Press on the controversy triggered by NY Times Ethicist Randy Cohen’s support for a reader who downloaded a book from a pirate website (See our original blog on Cohen here). Ms. Grimble’s remarks were posted in the comments box but as we feel they shed particularly bright light on the issues we decided they deserve their own posting.

Ms. Grimble did not provide the accompanying image.

RC

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Part 1
It’s a lot easier to just sit down and read a paper book page by page, than to scan it page by page and then go through it page by page again on an e-reader. I just don’t believe that many people would want to read a book in e-form so very much that they will scan a paper book they paid for, without also transferring that scan to other people. Pirates often do so for praise by their social groups, by the way.

It is also a false assumption that every book will be released as an e-book, or should be released as an e-book. Therefore, it is false to comfortably soothe your morals and other people’s by _claiming_ you’ll buy the e-book “when it comes out” and that you are merely “time-shifting.” Books sell in different quantities in different formats–hardcover, trade paperback, mass-market paperback, e-book, audio book. The publisher needs to produce the format(s) and quantity(ies) suitable for that particular book’s contents, and that will make back the costs and overhead, and that will pay the author, and that will generate enough profit to keep the business going. There are many books that simply cannot work as mass-market paperbacks, and there are also many books that simply cannot work as e-books. Furthermore, the publisher often does not even decide/plan whether to issue a book in a given format until another format has been on the market for awhile.

Most cheap e-book advocates conveniently assert that writers work for fun, not money. Not true. Writing at a professional level is very hard, very time-consuming, often money-consuming work. Even if it’s enjoyable much of the time, so are most other professions for the people who pursue them. Writers need and deserve to make a living just like members of other professions.

Publishing is very expensive. Everything-ought-to-be-an-e-book advocates conveniently sweep away the costs of editing, proofreading, indexing, photography, illustration, graphic design, page layout, cover design, publicity, marketing, accounting, legal services, computer equipment, office overhead, travel, and other expenses. It’s not all the print run by a long shot.

E-book advocates also pass around this meme that publishers have “always opposed” the borrowing of books, or the sale of used books, or something. Actually, I’ve never seen any data to back this up. In any case, what we are talking about is now, not what somebody might have said when Andrew Carnegie was opening his first library. The issue is one of quantity/degree. Publishers do lose sales when books are lent and they do lose sales of new books when used ones are sold. And they do lose sales of books when readers photocopy library copies.

The fact that many publishers and authors have financially survived the reading of such books does not mean they can survive e-book piracy _in addition_. Amateur piracy does count. If everyone makes just one copy for one friend, that’s 50% of the book sales lost. It’s all an issue of quantity/unit sales; so it’s false to assert that everyone survived photocopy piracy so they can now survive e-book piracy.

Part 2
I do believe in effective DRM, but none is available yet for e-book readers. Yes, anyone can copy a book with a ream of paper and a pencil, but the easier it is to pirate, the more people do it–and the more acceptible they think it is, because the publisher did not try to prevent it. Even more, however, I believe in not publishing e-books at all in the current climate of piracy.

Pirates often assert that publishers “insult their customers,” by using DRM and by court prosecution of piracy. However, someone who steals or passes on stolen goods is not a customer. Furthermore, I can tell you from experience that it is not “fun” for a writer to have readers assert that books–even though they’re worth reading and copying page by page–are not worth paying for. Or to see them issue threats on Internet groups that if they don’t like the price or format they’ll just steal the book by one means or another. It’s not fun to hear them assert that publishing is just a “failed business model,” and that writers and publishers should just go do something else, who cares what.

It’s not fun to hear people who know nothing about the business assert that it unnecessary to print books and that that is the only cost. It’s not fun to hear them assert that “publishers can always sell ads.” Supporting publications with advertising is now a failed business model. Look how badly most newspapers and magazines are doing, because people are not buying enough ads to support publication–even on the publications’ websites.

To me, as a writer and publisher, readers who denigrate the very books they simultaneously demand as some kind of right, and who either assert the right to steal them or who make all kinds of thin, roundabout excuses for stealing, are not customers I want. They are not readers I want. People who really value books cherish them and pay for them. They do not insult them and steal them.

Part 3
When someone has the right to sue you, it’s the law that matters–not what you feel ethically is OK. When you pirate, you risk getting sued by the copyright holder. If you are sued and you lose, you take the consequences–you may well end up paying tens of thousands more in damages and legal fees than you’d have paid for a legitimately bought book.

Therefore endless gyrations and arguments regarding what you personally morally feel is OK are pointless.

Author John Scalzi has weighed in on the controversy triggered by NY Times Ethicist columnist Randy Cohen’s support for a person who secured a pirated edition of a Stephen King book because an authorized one was not readily available.  E-Reads was critical of Cohen’s position and said so in no uncertain terms.  (See NY Times Ethicist Condones Ripping Off E-Books)

We were somewhat surprised to read a posting by Scalzi on his “Whatever” blog agreeing with Cohen.  Says Scalzi:

“Personally I think Cohen is pretty much correct. Speaking for myself (and only for myself), when I put out a book and you buy it for yourself in whatever format you choose to buy it in, the transactional aspect of our relationship is, to my mind, fulfilled. You bought the book once and I got paid once; after that if you get the book in some other format for your own personal use, and I don’t get paid a second time, eh, that’s life.

“So, as examples: If you bought the paperback copy of one of my books and then liked it so much that you pick up a cheap remaindered hardcover edition for archival purposes, great. If you buy a hardcover copy, lose track of it, and then pick up a used paperback copy for re-reading, groovy. If you buy a trade paperback edition of one of my books and then happen to find a free electronic version of the same book, which you then download onto your cell phone for travel purposes, that seems reasonable to me.”

Though Scalzi’s argument hasn’t budged us one inch from our indignation we have to respect his viewpoint, which is supported by some commentators who’ve jumped into this fracas.  So we’ll keep our minds open.  But right now it feels like the world’s ethical north and south magnetic poles have reversed themselves. We’d be interested to know how Scalzi’s publishers feel about his posting.

There will be more – lots more – about this to come as commerce, technology and ethics scramble to find a comfort zone in this brave new paradigm.

Richard Curtis

Randy Cohen writes the “Ethicist” column for the Sunday edition of the New York Times, in which he offers solutions to moral dilemmas for people who have a hard time figuring out for themselves the difference between right and wrong.

In the issue of April 4 2010, a reader posed the following dilemma:

I bought an e-reader for travel and was eager to begin “Under the Dome,” the new Stephen King novel. Unfortunately, the electronic version was not yet available. The publisher apparently withheld it to encourage people to buy the more expensive hardcover. So I did, all 1,074 pages, more than three and a half pounds. Then I found a pirated version online, downloaded it to my e-reader and took it on my trip. I generally disapprove of illegal downloads, but wasn’t this O.K.? C.D., BRIGHTWATERS, N.Y.

The preeminent ethicist’s solution? “In this case,” he pronounces, “it is not unethical.”

His reasoning? “Author and publisher are entitled to be paid for their work, and by purchasing the hardcover, you did so. Your subsequent downloading is akin to buying a CD, then copying it to your iPod.”

We’re sure this advice will warm the hearts of authors and book publishers desperately fighting to protect their literary properties from pirates and the ethical pygmies stealing e-books under the information-wants-to-be-free banner. (See I Want My E-Book and I Want It Now – Or Else!)

These dirtbags now have a champion in Randy Cohen. Go on, help yourself. The author and publisher have been paid once and don’t need to be paid for another edition of the same book.  While you’re at it, rip off the book club and the mass market paperback editions.

Cohen’s exculpation of this morally challenged idiot buying an e-book from a pirate site is the equivalent of condoning the purchase of black market goods from a fence. Does anybody know what Talmudic tractate he consulted to justify stealing – to describe it as “illegal” but not “immoral?” If so, we invite you to submit chapter and verse.

Though Cohen’s column and photo are undoubtedly protected by copyright and we may be flouting copyright law by reprinting them in full here, his moral position has liberated us to do just that. If he and the Times‘s attorneys want to take issue with us, we will refer them to his disgusting perversion of morality spelled out in Exhibit A below.

Richard Curtis

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The Ethicist

E-Book Dodge by Randy Cohen

An illegal download is — to use an ugly word — illegal. But in this case, it is not unethical. Author and publisher are entitled to be paid for their work, and by purchasing the hardcover, you did so. Your subsequent downloading is akin to buying a CD, then copying it to your iPod.

Buying a book or a piece of music should be regarded as a license to enjoy it on any platform. Sadly, the anachronistic conventions of bookselling and copyright law lag the technology. Thus you’ve violated the publishing company’s legal right to control the distribution of its intellectual property, but you’ve done no harm or so little as to meet my threshold of acceptability.

Unsurprisingly, many in the book business take a harder line. My friend Jamie Raab, the publisher of Grand Central Publishing and an executive vice president of the Hachette Book Group, says: “Anyone who downloads a pirated e-book has, in effect, stolen the intellectual property of an author and publisher. To condone this is to condone theft.”

Yet it is a curious sort of theft that involves actually paying for a book. Publishers do delay the release of e-books to encourage hardcover sales — a process called “windowing” — so it is difficult to see you as piratical for actually buying the book ($35 list price, $20 from Amazon) rather than waiting for the $9.99 Kindle edition.

Your action is not pristine. Downloading a bootleg copy could be said to encourage piracy, although only in the abstract: no potential pirate will actually realize you’ve done it. It’s true that you might have thwarted the publisher’s intent — perhaps he or she has a violent antipathy to trees, maybe a wish to slaughter acres of them and grind them into Stephen King novels. Or to clog the highways with trucks crammed with Stephen King novels. Or perhaps King himself wishes to improve America’s physique by having readers lug massive volumes.

So be it. Your paying for the hardcover put you in the clear as a matter of ethics, forestry and fitness training.

If for no other reason, e-books are the perfect vehicle for immediately correcting errors in published books. And if the errors are serious enough to damage a person’s reputation or otherwise incur potential legal liability, a prompt correction and withdrawal of the offending text demonstrate the sincere determination of the those who messed up to set the record straight without delay.

Such might be the recourse of Charles Pellegrino and his publisher Henry Holt in expunging material in his otherwise highly acclaimed account of the atomic destruction of Hiroshima, The Last Train From Hiroshima.

According to William J. Broad in the New York Times, a section of the book cites recollections of someone who says he flew in an observation plane accompanying the bomber that released the a-bomb, the Enola Gay. But the man, Joseph Fuoco, “never flew on the bombing run, and he never substituted for James R. Corliss, the plane’s regular flight engineer,” says Corliss’s family. “They, along with angry ranks of scientists, historians and veterans, are denouncing the book and calling Mr. Fuoco an impostor,” writes Broad.

The author of the book “now concedes that he was probably duped” and plans to “rewrite sections of the book for paperback and foreign editions.”

If normal production timelines apply, that means that the paperback might not come out for a year after hardcover publication, or six or nine months if Holt accelerates release of the reprint. Foreign editions? Foreign publishers need to translate the book first, so don’t expect a correct edition to appear overseas for many months as well.

If there was ever a case for e-books, this is it. Pellegrino and his publisher could remove the controversial passages for an e-print and write an apology that might remove not just the insult of the offending passages but also the injury of making the Corliss’s family wait, brood – and, perhaps, call a lawyer. As of this writing, however, there is no e-book edition. It undoubtedly has been “windowed”, the term used by publishers to describe the holding back of an e-book edition until the hardcover has had its run. Though controversial (see Agent Nat Sobel Challenges Publishers to Hold Back E-Prints), windowing is sound strategy for many books and might have been fine for Last Train too had it not been for this alleged error, which if true is embarrassing at the very least but potentially damaging as well.

Holt should consider crash-releasing Last Train in e-book.

Here’s the Times article.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.