Amazon's Book Search Hits a Snag 299
The Importance of writes "Yesterday, Slashdot readers discussed Amazon's brand new, technically impressive and highly useful book search feature that lets users search the full text of over 120,000 books. Today, the Authors Guild is saying that the publishers don't have the right to let Amazon do this. Uh oh."
Ohhh what (Score:1, Insightful)
I can understand publishers not letting Amazon do this, but not having the right to let them do it? This is absurd...
odd way to read (Score:5, Insightful)
misunderstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
Not have the right? (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Ease of extraction is too high? (Score:3, Insightful)
Other books at especially high risk include those that sell to the student (particularly college student) market as secondary reading. A student could easily grab the relevant chapter or two out of a book without paying for it.
This whole thing just ain't right, as of yet. If you read the article, you can see that on the one hand, people have figured out how to get 108 pages out of a bestseller (that's unfair to the authors and publishers), and on the other hand, those same authors and publishers are expecting students to purchase entire books just to get the one or two chapters their teacher has directed them to read. Like the new music services, there should be a legal, reasonably priced (oh, boy) way to obtain those two chapters rather than having to purchase the entire book. As for the 108 pages, I am guessing they pulled that out of Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, yet another doorstop from this prolific author. As someone who has done a fair amount of writing and someone who has done a LOT of reading, I am sympathetic to both sides in this one. Looks to me like Amazon needs to try again.
College Students (Score:5, Insightful)
But near the end of the email Authors Guild rep says, " A student could easily grab the relevant chapter or two out of a book without paying for it. Students certainly have the time and most likely the inclination to do so, and, with the help of some willing colleagues, could print out the entire texts of books in the program."
As a college student, especially in light of the [slashdot.org]
recent NYT article on textbooks being found half-price or less overseas, it's not unreasonable to think a group of students might get together and pay $15 or $20 to print a couple hundred pages of textbook in the library.
And if someone wrote some nefarious program to log into Amazon as multiple fake accounts to access an entire textbook and download it, everyone would use it. I can easily see textbook-printing rings, with get-togethers at the library to print and distribute free books. Hell, I'd be the first one in line. Paying $500 for a semester of books is rediculous.
So, while I think the reaction of the Authors Guild is a little bit overboard, the email does rasie some valid points.
The email also mentions, in passing, that, "[m]ost fiction titles are not likely to be greatly threatened." It would seem then, that maybe the type of book shold control how many pages you can access. For textbooks or cookbooks or guidebooks or the other topics the Authors Guild fears will be threatened, maybe a compromise could be reached so that only one or two consecutive pages could be accessed. Then, for fiction or books where it is less likely a user would only want a very small portion of the book (and be willing to use Amazon to avoid buying it), more could be accessed.
This would seem to both help address the concerns raised in the email, and allow Amazon to offer this service.
-Trillian
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Content (Score:5, Insightful)
Just when we thought e-Books were dead... (Score:5, Insightful)
When we learned of the program, we thought that it would be impossible to read more than 5 consecutive pages from a book in the program. It turns out that it's quite simple (though a bit inconvenient) to look at 100 or more consecutive pages from a single lengthy book. We've even printed out 108 consecutive pages from a bestselling book. It's not something one would care to do frequently, but it can be done.
The time is really funny, because Slashdot (and many major news outlets) were reporting the demise of the e-book not a few weeks ago. Now, we have new e-books in the form of Amazon's text search.
I used to work for a start-up publishing company that morphed into an internet company. I happened to be the marketing director in charge of print book sales. One day, the CEO decided that it would be a great idea to offer the full text of all our books online for free! Since our target market was largely cash-starved students, this move worried me greatly. Obviously, our sales were goin to drop off tremendously (maybe to zero?).
I discussed my concerns with the CEO. He made a very interesting point: For someone to print out the entire 200 - 500 pages of one of our titles would cost more in toner, paper and time than the $35 the customer would otherwise pay. This seemed to make sense at the time, but in retrospect it is kinda BS because most printers have double-sided multi-page-on-one-sheet capabilities that collapse toner/paper costs.
In the end, we didn't see sales drop off that much. Customers still wanted to order old-fashioned books. Most didn't have the time/patience to print out the books from the internet, didn't have the technical knowledge to do so (hard to believe, but we're talking about MBAs here), or (most likely) it didn't even occur to them.
People who were likely to print out the whole books online were probably also the ones borrowing copies from friends, photocopying from the library, buying used copies, etc. etc.
All, that said, I have to side with the Authors Guild. In the case I described above, our web site was relatively unknown whereas Amazon is among the top end-destinations on the Internet. Book counterfeiters are one perl-script away from obtaining the full-text of the latest Harry Potter book and printing up their own illicit copies for street sale. Yeah, there are already fake copies of bestsellers floating around out there, but now making them will become that much easier.
Comparisons to Napster and pirated music are obvious - however, unlike musicians, authors can't really draw income from "concert tours" as recording artists do. Authors live almost exclusively off royalty checks (with the exception of those lucky enough to pen books that can be cross-merchandised, made into movies, etc.)
Still, I was skeptical that Amazon's text-search system delivered the advertised goods. Getting all those publishers to hand over their text - their lifeblood - is a monumental task in itself. But I guess the system does work after all - too well, in fact!
From the article... (Score:2, Insightful)
So let me get this straight. If recipes aren't protected by copyright...and the problem lies with recipes...there is no problem. Yes?
Re:Content (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, they could change the amount of text displayed based on the type of content. Less for a cookbook or reference book, and more for a novel. This is the first time anyone's done this, so hopefully a little finetuning will be forthcoming. Demonizing Amazon.com has historically had NO effect on their behaviour, so hopefully a more intelligent & reasoned approach will work.
Certainly, bitching about it on Slashdot won't do a damned thing.
Great time to announce that... (Score:3, Insightful)
Kind of like a... library? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think this full text search is a great feature, and will only help with sales.
I doubt most authors are so small minded. (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think most authors want people to be forced to buy their book in order to get at a couple of isolated pages. Most authors want people to buy the book because they like the book, and think it is worth owning a copy.
True reference books are doomed, appropriately, in the age of the internet. I no longer need a paper dictionary when I can use dictionary.com or get access to the OED through my university. But amazon's new feature is not responsible for the fact that definitions and other discrete pieces of factual information are more easily looked up online than on paper.
Everything from cookbooks to novels, whose gestalt quality is made up of more than simply the number of discrete facts they collect, are safe. You only want one page out of my published materials? Fine, take it. Heck, I'll make you a photocopy myself. You think what I have written, as a whole, has some value? Then by all means, buy it.
Re:odd way to read (Score:3, Insightful)
For example I have Harrison's textbook of Internal Medicine. I paid well over $100 for it and I use it maybe every few weeks to look up a differential diagnosis or some reference values. I rarely read more than 2 pages at a time.
If I could find it on-line and look the stuff up you bet I wouldn't have spent the cash for it.
Re:Attempt to avoid being busted for Plagiarism? (Score:3, Insightful)
Plagiarism is always a problem. Amazon, like the Web and Google before it, makes it easier to steal rather than harder.
Steven
Re:College Students (Score:5, Insightful)
It strikes me that the effort involved in scamming all the scanned pages out of Amazon would be as great or greater than making the initial copy from a hardcopy by hand. Trying to guess keywords for each set of 5 pages, frankly, sounds like a lot of work. Subsequent copies are both equally easy regardless of whether you're using a printer to spit out scans from Amazon or a sheet-feeder on your photocopier.
There are valid reasons for worrying about this technology (the point about cookbooks and reference books, where the relevant information really does only span a few pages, is especially well made), but this particular one is just the knee-jerk reflex to blame college students for yet more copyright-related legal measures.
Re:Ohhh what (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to, say, going into Barnes & Nobel and drinking coffee while reading the whole thing free?
Re:odd way to read (Score:5, Insightful)
Good thing people don't put thousands of books in a big building and let people read them for free. It's just begging to be misused.
Re:odd way to read (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't tell anybody, but I figured out an easier way...
Go to the library, borrow the book and read it...
WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT!
I heard that the library will do this for an unlimited number of people too. I wonder how much authors lose because of this "income stealer".
If people want to read stuff, they should pay. None of this "reading for free" nonsense that a lot of thieving kids think they have the right to.
I mean, really!
Re:Obvious exploit. (Score:3, Insightful)
I have friends.
A group of people can easily download the entire book, stitch it together, and release it to the wild. Not a good thing. I don't know how this works, but it may even be possible for a group of people to do this using a simple program that runs in the background.
There's no way Amazon is ever going to get away with this program - it will be abused. I can understand why Amazon is doing this (they want to be more like a physical book store), but this service is just asking to be abused.
Re:Kind of like a... library? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is somewhat distressing to me that public libraries, if they were invented today, would be sued out of existance by short-sighted publishers. Despite what the above poster suggests, I don't think there are many people who do not realize what boon to civilization the public library system is. For contrast, look back in history to the "pay library" concept where the books would be chained to the shelves and only the rich were allowed to read.
Re:misunderstanding (Score:3, Insightful)
Dead tree is not digital. (Score:3, Insightful)
Your analogy would only make sense if I could demand the librarian make me a digital DRM-free copy of the book.
The problem here is fairly obvious, Amazon is expecting thousands of authors to "trust us with security," and these authors politely say no and you fall back on a non-sequitar library argument?
Sorry, but bought dead-tree books on rental is not the same thing as a digital copy I can mass-send/share globally.
Frankly, considering what passes off as "computer security" nowadays I would be a bit nervous too.
Also, I think its something of an insult to just tell authors "Oh, btw, you can opt-out." They or their publishers should be OPTING-IN after being informed of Amazon's plans. This attitude of "We're going to drop your book in our OCR machine because we're Amazon" should be treated with contempt.
I'm not pissing on the concept but on the implementation. This could have been done in a much more civil manner, but Amazon chose the "big-corporate do-as-we-please" way out.
Re:Just when we thought e-Books were dead... (Score:3, Insightful)
So it doesn't matter much for piracy whether Amazon offers this new service (or in fact free complete electronic versions). If people want to get a free copy of a particular book, they already can do it. If you sell something to thousands, there are too many weak links already. The main factor determining piracy today is not how easy it is to get a first copy, it's how easy it is to distribute it then and how easy it is to get a legit version.
Re:Ohhh what (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, I think having my book online is OK (Score:4, Insightful)
Authors in the reference and cookbook business are SOL anyway, because the internet will inevitably shrivel that market down to the size of the completely internet illiterate. It's a funny thing, though. Even my 60-something year old mom can send email and surf the web now.
As far as permission in my contract goes
One thing that many
Many authors are fearful that the value in their books is in the information and not in its physical presentation. In my experience, that is not yet the case. I would never, for example, use a computerized version of Joy of Cooking (and besides, it would have the sucky "new" recipes in it, nevermind requiring me to have a splashproof computer near the stove). There are some horrible books that people do consider disposable - Java "references" that are out of date when they hit the shelves, for example - but other more carefully written programming texts are not much fun to read on a glowing computer screen. Nor do they look good on a bookshelf.
-joseph
Re:Ohhh what (Score:3, Insightful)