Paying for E-Content

The New York Time’s announcement that they will be charging for content beginning 2011 is a long time coming. The decline in advertising revenue is just the catalyst the company needed to justify expanding their now defunct TimesSelect experiment which tried to make money from original commentary.

According to the Question and Answers posted on The Time’s website, many Canadian Globe & Mail readers will continue to be able to access the online articles by virtue of a Sunday only subscription.

To me, as to many others I’m sure, this is a great relief. I supplement my Canadian newspaper reading with daily visits to www.nytimes.com where, in typical web fashion, I switch articles without finishing them, leave interesting articles open on my computer for hours, and add my thoughts to the active comment board community.

I herald The Time’s decision as one that is brave, necessary, and indicative of a new era of digital publishing. Brave because they publicly failed to make a sustainable profit charging for the liberal views of their columnists a few years ago and necessary because journalists and the press serve a great purpose and should be fairly compensated for their work.

I believe The Time’s decision marks the turning of a new page for the Internet, which has so long been synonymous with passive accessibility, to a model that emphasizes the commercial necessity for readers to make a choice.

My unqualified support of The New York Time’s decision and my belief that Internet users need to employ the web less for casual scrolling and more for dedicated reading is marred only by my concern that a reader’s choice to purchase a subscription to The New York Time’s digital edition will come at the expense of another one; namely, our regional papers.

If personal economies dictate purchasing one subscription, are readers more likely to pick the heralded New York Times and scrap together their local news from a medley of subway freebees, public radio, blogs, and televised news? I am not sure.

The free market may order in a new era of digital competition which sees Canadian newspapers fighting bigger, International names for online subscriptions, or, as is my concern, we may see the existence of one less of the Internet’s currently uncapped choices

Does the Brain Like E-Books

This entry marks the first of several that will comment on the New York Time's Room For Debate. 

The first column we will look at is Alan Liu, a professor of English.

It seems to me that Liu has it right, reading online is nothing like a book. And the two mediums should not be compared. I like his idea that reading online is a social experience rather than a singular moment experienced by the reader alone. 

I am not convinced, however, that he fully understood the questions outlined by the Editors. While I am guessing Prof. Liu has fiddled with a kindle and other e-reading sources before, I think he is referring specifically to Internet reading, rather than a Sony Reader etc. These devices, while not emulating books, provide more of the singular reading experience people want to engage in with certain content; difficult theories and fiction jumping to mind. Social reading is ideal for people familiar with the content or simpler ideas, but to truly comprehend a novel topic, one must read alone and be allowed to cross reference and take notes rather than think of the other people (perhaps thousands of them) who are reading as well. 

The Kindle in Canada 2

Today's globe had a follow up article on what is holding up the Kindle; namely, Amazon wants to use whichever service (Rogers, Telus, or Bell) is the cheapest. Amazon has always made itself popular to consumers by offering its books substantially cheaper than traditional retailers and even provides free shipping most of the time. No doubt, Amazon is as outraged as Canadians are about the high costs of wireless services in this country. 

The article also explained that in some countries, the Kindle will not be a wireless device but rather a e-reader that owners can plug data into via a USB. The longevity of this plan seems brief; I doubt many readers once they get past the novelty of the item will bother. It will still be easier to purchase a paper book. 

I doubt this issue will go away soon; Amazon says it does not want to miss out on the holiday shopping season when the device will no doubt add to its impressive sales. Meanwhile, in the US, competition is heating up; in addition to Sony (who is actively trying to get into the market in Canada) yesterday Barnes & Noble announced it would be launching a competitor. 

Do you think Indigo is next?

No Kindle for Canadians

Today's Globe and Mail dedicated the entirety of page three to an article about Kindle's absence in Canada even as it is launched internationally in over 100 countries. Mostly, this short article explains that no one has really been able to explain why the Kindle will not be available here yet, even though Amazon has a strong presence here and Canadians have some of the highest fiction reading demographics in the world. 

The Globe's largest insight into the delay is the suggestion that competition between our major wireless carriers and out of date infrastructure may be the cause. 

For Canadians, this is obviously extremely frustrating; not only for consumers but fledgling e-books publishing houses that would love to take advantage of the broad appeal of the Kindle name. According to the New York Times "Kindle titles were now 48 percent of total book sales in instances where Amazon sold both a digital and physical copy of a book. That was up from 35 percent last May" leaving our market noticeably and predictably behind. 

Hopefully, soon more information will be available about why Canada does not have access to the Kindle, even if it is the more costly International version. Otherwise, companies like Sony with its less popular reader may have the upper hand in our growing marketplace. 

Piracy

In Sunday's New York Times, Randall Stross wrote an article in the Business Section about issues of piracy and e-books. In it, he claimed that RapidShare, an online file sharing service, is primed to become what Nabster was to the music industry. There is no doubt that, even with Apple Store, the profit margin in the music industry has declined substantially, but I'm curious as to whether the same market of consumers will be gravitating towards e-books. 

Even in digital form, books seem less ephemeral than music, something that people like to hold onto. In all of the debate surrounding online readers, protractors often claim that the gravitas associated with books will be lost. I think they are missing the point: the form will affect the function of the content, but it will not (the length and complexity of books will prohibit this) turn novels, histories, and bibliographies into pop tunes with hooks that become over exposed in a few weeks time. 

Further, unlike the often flashy lifestyles of music celebrities who flaunt their wealth in their lyrics and for the paparazzi, I doubt few are under the impression that writers are a very wealthy group. Most people who download music for free justify their action by proclaiming that the musician has money to spare. In contrast, even the most successful author (J.K. Rowling) lives a relatively quiet existence. 

Certainly, the academic publishing industry has some cause to worry: students and professors are a notoriously frugal bunch, but I think that most of us will willingly shell out under ten dollars (still less than one pays at Costco for a best seller) for a book that wasn't written, performed, produced, and marketed by individuals for a large conglomerate.