Unabashed

I had the glorious idea this year to buy myself and my wife Archos media players for Xmas. My wife specifically wanted something she could listen to music and look at photos with, as well as read ebooks. I researched a little and bought her the 404 and myself the 605 w/wifi.

Of course, now there’s a problem. Much of the content I own that is, that I have purchased and now own usage rights to is DRM locked, meaning it can’t be used on more than one media contraption or it’s in a format that’s not going to work on the new player. So all my CDs I’ve got to re-import just so I can use them. But it gets worse, and there’s one particular format of DRM that’s got me mad as a hornet.

Ebooks. There are a few ebook outlets on the web. But suppose I want to buy Halting State by Charlie Stross, which I do, or did. I found it in a couple of places, and it’s usually around $24. My first reaction to that figure was Huh? I’ve got a problem right off the bat, because this isn’t a hardback copy of a novel; this is something that costs basically nothing to produce. I feel like it’s a ripoff right out of the gate. So why would I want to pay hardback prices for something like that? Well, unfortunately for Mr. Stross, I won’t. I’ll probably now pick up his book at the library.

So, fine: New books cost too much in ebook format, but there are millions of books out there, so I figured I’d just do a little research and find something cheaper, and I did; the titles are inconsequential. I found two ebooks for less than ten dollars apiece, and I bought them in Adobe format, which I presumed was .pdf, a format my Archos will handle out of the box. Wrong. This is a new ebook format that Adobe has created which restricts printing, copying text and search functions. And what’s worse? It won’t install on my Archos. But even if it did, this Adobe format won’t allow an ebook to be read from two different readers, to which I again said, “Huh?” This tells me that the publisher not only doesn’t want me to let my friends read a book I’ve purchased, they don’t want my wife to read it, either, unless I loan her my reader, which is senseless and the exact reason we bought two of these things in the first place.

So, my bright, shiny new paperweight is sitting on my desk upstairs, waiting for me to give it some content to make it worth owning. The masterminds of DRM have done their best to ensure that I can’t put anything on it without making an additional, considerable investment each time. There are ways, around it, of course; I can purchase some ripping software (illegal in the US) so I can put my DVD’s that I’ve purchased on it; I can re-d-load my CD’s also that I’ve purchased, and I can read free ebooks on the web via David Wellington’s website and a few others. My wife can’t: she didn’t want wifi (finds it complicated) so one of the caveats to my purchasing this for her was that I would handle her content. So, other than a site like Project Gutenburg, where I can download free .pdf versions of Homer and Aesop, I’m finding content is hard to come by, even for someone who’s willing to pay (a reasonable price).

Another thing that makes this so difficult to swallow is that I could care less about printing the ebooks I might buy. I do want to put it on two different readers, and I’m not about to purchase two copies so my wife and I can both read it. And I’m not going to apologize for letting my wife read the books I buy. I’m not even going to apologize for letting my friends read my books, because you know what? When I loaned my neighbor my issue of Master and Commander, the first of the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O’brian, he read it and then went and bought all 23 books for himself. If not for my loan, he never would have read the first O’brian novel, never would have known how great the series was, and never would have contributed his wads of cash to their purchase. Sure, sometimes I loan someone a book and they don’t purchase it or any more, but those aren’t the buyers you want to cultivate anyway, are they? They are the one-time readers who buy one or two books in their lives and find that they prefer movies. If I try to get them interested in books by loaning them one, am I doing anything but helping the industry, even if it never takes? I understand that the real reason DRM exists is to stop mass piracy. To keep the bastards who take an electronic copy of something and print it off to sell cut-rate versions to the masses. But in the process of fighting them, your damaging your relationship with us. Your bread and butter.

I don’t own a pirated copy of anything; primarily because I can afford to buy things I want for myself. What’s amazing to me is that I am convinced that the bigwigs that control our content believe that we are all pirates. That we are all trying to stick it to them, that we would all stroll the streets for printed-off versions of Harry Potter instead of buying an official copy. Why else would you cripple your own hardware and inhibit your users from being able to attain it without jumping through hoops? The only real reason I can come up with is that they really believe we are all out to get them.

But basically the DRM folks have made a model of anti-piracy content that keeps willing non-pirate buyers away from their content. Of course, I envision a group of cigar-chomping big wigs sitting around a table greedily clutching wads of greenbacks, screaming at passersby: “Thieves! Pirates! Stop stealing my money!”

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: ebook, ebooks, format, pirate, pirating

There aren’t many success stories out there, that’s for sure. John Scalzi, Cherie Priest and David Wellington are the few that pop to mind who’ve put their work on a website and then sold the work(s) for print. I know there are others, but they are few and far between, and the numbers of writers getting published in the traditional manner is still the steady king as far as sheer numbers are concerned.

But it’s just so hard, and I’m just so lazy, and hey, I’m 38. If I have to wait six months to get my rejection from Tor and then another six to get my rejection from (publisher #2) and then a year to get one from (publisher C) then I’ll be 40 and still sitting on my book. Worse, unagented works rarely get a fair shake, so the really real route to ramble through would be to shoot for an agent and hope she’ll sell the book. I just don’t know if I have it in me. The patience, I mean. We all know rejections are a part of the writing life; I don’t fear rejections, I just don’t want to get bored in the waiting.

It might be different if I was doing this for a living, but this is my hobby. Sure, I want to be a published author–and I am, in short stories–but it’s not like I won’t be able to feed my kids if I don’t sell this book. Having sold a few short I at least have enough confidence to say “I do not suck” with some authority. At least three editors have liked my stories enough to publish them, and one of them did so three times. Some considerations:

• The positive: Publishers will and do buy books that have been posted online. They may ask you to remove it immediately, but if they like it, and if it has any kind of readership, they’ll buy it. It’s proven.
• The negative: I’ll be missing out on the valuable editing process. Sure, some writers churn out work that doesn’t need any editing, but I’m not those writers. For a publisher to take me on she’d almost certainly have to refine my writing. I’ve got style, oh yes, but I’ve got some bad habits too, that have been hard for me to kick. I know I wrote a story that I’m proud of, and it’s something I would read myself, but then I’m invested in it. It’s my baby. You, though, you are the ones who would–or wouldn’t–read it. An editor could ease me through that process, help me fashion it to suit the market. But. But.
• The other negative: People don’t respect web-published authors. I’ve seen sites myself and sneered at my screen for having the audacity to show me a web-published author.
• The what if: I found David Wellington’s books through a BoingBoing post. David is a good writer who sold his books, which are still posted on his website. Linkage from a site like BB would be huge. Huge. But very unlikely. Their safety net intelligently requires that they read any fiction before posting a link to it, and as you can imagine, Cory is swamped with requests and isn’t accepting any new ones for the foreseeable future.

So I’ve got a positive, two negatives, and a what if. In dealing with the first negative I can only say that I would have to really focus on editing it down myself, and that if it’s a good enough story it’ll sell itself. Right? And I can edit; of the five shorts I’ve sold every one was posted/printed in the shape I submitted them in. I’m just not particularly good at it and, again, I’m basically lazy.

For the second negative I can say that when I saw David Wellington’s site I didn’t sneer. Why is that? Why does he automatically garner special attention as a web-published writer? And this was before I’d read the first word of any of his stories. Was it because I’d found it through the BoingBoing link, and therefore it was automatically presumed to be a “qualified” read? Or maybe it was because it was presented very well, with a cool dedicated graphic header. I don’t know, but something about the site said “writer” all over it, and therefore I bookmarked the link and referred back to it later. After reading some of his stuff, I found it to be very good and I gladly recommend it. So.

To self-publish or not to self-publish. All I know is I’m building the website now, and I’m dreading the prospect of querying this thing till I’m on the shady side of 90. The Down in the Cellar story will appear March 1st, so that should draw a lurker or ten, and maybe one of them would have liked The Ghost of Tom Johns enough to give my book a go. Plus, this blog is beginning to get noticed a bit more. Most of the hits bounce almost immediately away, but some of them stick around and read a page or two.

Any thoughts? Comments? Would you read it, or at least give it a try? Note: The excerpt I posted the other day was very gory; I should note here that that was one of the few examples of graphic violence in the book. I just particularly liked that scene, so I shared it with you.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Cory Doctorow, David Wellington, ebook, Indie Writer, self-publish, self-publishing