[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img]I like to read, a lot. Having a baby has slowed me down some, but I’m still on a two- or three-book a week habit. So people keep asking me, with an, ahem, addiction like mine why I don’t have a Kindle or a Sony Reader or Nook or an iPad for goodness sake? Why don’t I spare my husband his aging back and take only one thin electronic gadget on vacation, rather than weighing down my luggage (plus appropriate surcharge) with the top ten picks from my To Be Read pile?
I don’t have an e-reading gadget because much of the technological revolution has left me behind. And it’s not for the reason you think — I’m no technological rube. It mainly has to do with money: my fervent desire to keep mine, and corporations’ fervent desire to get me to part with it.
It used to be that you could buy things. Want some music? You paid your thirteen dollars and bought your album. You could listen to it ad nauseum, and when you (and your parents) were done listening to it you could give it away. If you wanted to make tacky mix tapes to share with your friends, it was all yours for the taking. Then came the world of electronic media and the idea of paying for so much light and dust.
How Many Times Can You Buy Something?
First, it was Apple with its proprietary iPod and iTunes that sought to restrict your ownership of songs. Sure you could “buy” it. But you could only listen to it on one iThing at a time. You couldn’t share it or transfer it. If you accidentally deleted it from your computer, you were out of luck. Just “buy” it again — they offer on their “help” page. Sure, if I lost (or broke or scratched) my vinyl album, I was just as out of luck. But when I was done with Blondie or Cyndi Lauper or Poison (what was I thinking), I could just pass it onto a friend who might be grateful for the chance to rot her own brains with bad pop music. Compact discs were even better. I could make a copy for my car, a copy for my CD player and keep the unscratched original in the drawer. I understand with the advent of Napster and its clones, copies of protected music can zip around the globe faster than the speed of sound without the artists being compensated. But the one song for less than a dollar seems to have mollified that. And we got used to not really owning our music anymore, but licensing it.
Saving Trees, but What About Me?
Now book publishers want to push that digital music model of a kind of licensing onto consumers. Here’s an electronic book, they say. It’s lighter, easier, can be read anywhere, and will save millions of trees (or so the marketing goes). We’re going to sell you this “book” for ten to fifteen dollars. You don’t actually “own” the book, though. Ownership, in the “Ownership Society” is apparently an outdated concept.
Want to pass the “book” you bought onto your friend who just loves mysteries? Nope. That’s not in your bundle of “ownership rights.” Done with it and want to sell it on the used book market? Sorry. Just fed up with some misrepresentation by title, cover, or overly exuberant jacket copy and want to return it. No dice. Is there a discount for this reduction of rights? Absolutely not. The publisher and bookseller have little to no physical costs, no inventory costs, no shipping costs — you get less but you pay more. How does that seem fair?
Not to mention the myriad problems that go along with any digital endeavor. In many cases you don’t even get to judge the book by its cover because with the digital copy, often there is no cover. Furthermore, the formatting doesn’t always work on your particular e-reading device. Love the run-on sentence, the long paragraph. Good. You can pretend every book was written by Hugo or Faulkner or Dickens. Did the format for your old reader go out of style? Want to read the book you “bought” on your new, and currently non-obsolet,e reader? Too bad. Many publishers, a la Apple, suggest you just “buy” it again. Not that the mere suggestion doesn’t line their pocket.
And as a writer, let me assure you I’m not against someone making a buck. But with the rare exception, most writers I know are getting the same tiny royalty rate with digital books as they get with paper books. Until now (and probably even now), publishers justified this policy by stating that eBooks were a new, experimental — and unexplored business model — and they were bearing all the risk. The “risk” of converting an already electronic document and selling it at a high price?
Ah, the Final Sanctuary, the Library, Right?
With the recent advent of something publishers are calling “agency pricing” that high eBook price is now set in stone. No longer can retailers set the prices for eBooks they sell. The six major publishers only allow the dwindling bundle of digital rights to be sold at a price they set. No discounts, no way. No shopping around for a lower price. Publishers have determined it’s their way or no way.
Owning next to nothing more than ephemeral digital rights to my books, that I can’t lend, sell or give away, that are tied to (in many cases) one device destined for planned obsolescence, has me toting around pulp in my purse. But there was one circumstance, I thought, that may induce me to buy an e-reader — my book habit is mainly a library habit.
If there’s one area that I have always thought perfect for eBooks, it was the public library. For that I was more than willing to buy an e-reader. I love the library. Who can turn down access to an endless supply of free books? I can’t give them away or sell them, but that’s the pact I make with the city government when I pay my taxes.
The library has come on board with eBooks, slowly, but surely. But now, even that tentative future may be jeopardized. Publishers have long had a love/hate relationship with libraries. And the “hate” side is showing. Libraries buy a whole lot of books, but not as many as publishers want to sell. Some are popular and get worn out after extensive patron use, and libraries often restock them. Other books don’t get read all that much, and they molder away on dusty shelves. Now one publisher has come up with a way to continually squeeze money out of libraries — eBook rentals.
If publishers have their way, that eBook your library spent their hard earned cash for can no longer be lent in perpetuity, as only digital files could be. The library will only get to lend it twenty six times before they have to “buy” it again — a sort of built-in restocking fee. If one patron returns it early, can a library lend that eBook again right away before the termination of the lending period? No, that’s probably not in the bundle of rights limiting the number of times any one title is available. Publishers get paid, libraries and their patrons get screwed. The buzzword on the lips of publishers, of course, is “monetizing the library purchase.’”
As readers, we know that libraries buy a whole boatload of books. As readers, we’ll often buy books we’ve borrowed from the library and loved, or buy other books by that author because we want to have our own copy. But publishers view each book lent as one less book bought. If they can’t get us to buy them, then why not try to get libraries to pay each time we borrow it? Whether libraries go for this “rental” scheme, or ultimately lend less digital books, it hurts us avid readers. Given the minefield that publishers have created with eBooks, the chapter on my life as an eBook reader is closed for now. My husband’s back will just have to remain strong as he hauls my books. I’m not ready to be monetized just yet. Maybe eBooks should just be called mBooks.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender-biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. A reformed lawyer, she is a fulltime novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com
