The Man Booker Prize Decides Book Downloads May Not Affect Sales

The Times Online ran a story that the books on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize will be made available as free downloads. What struck me was the quote from Jonathan Taylor, chairman of The Booker Prize Foundation, “The downloads will not impact on sales, it is thought. If readers like a novel tasted on the internet, they may just be inspired to buy the actual book.”

Cory Doctorow has articulated this issue very well. There is an excellent article from him at Forbes about this exact issue. One of the arguments he brings up is this.

“Most people who download the book don’t end up buying it, but they wouldn’t have bought it in any event, so I haven’t lost any sales, I’ve just won an audience. A tiny minority of downloaders treat the free e-book as a substitute for the printed book–those are the lost sales. But a much larger minority treat the e-book as an enticement to buy the printed book. They’re gained sales. As long as gained sales outnumber lost sales, I’m ahead of the game. After all, distributing nearly a million copies of my book has cost me nothing.”

So what struck me about the quote was the narrow thinking about sales. And it’s not that I have this crunchy attitude that everything should be free and people shouldn’t make money off their creative work (or the publishers that invest in producing and mass distributing the product to a large audience). But one of the points made in the Doctorow piece is that this is actually good business. His books are published by Tor, which is one of the largest Science Fiction publishers around.

So it’s great that the Man Booker Prize committee has taken this step. I just wish their thinking about sales wasn’t so limited to loss prevention.

(link to Times Online) (link to Forbes article from Cory Dotorow)

Teenager pokes a hole in the sinking ship that is crippled iTouch

A 13-year old has claimed to have created iJailbreak, applescript software to install third-party software on Apple’s iPhone. What makes this particular software interesting is the fact that its intended audience is non-hackers. link

So not only did a 13-year old get around the new software update for the iTouch which broke many of the third-party application installers, but they did it in a interface that a larger audience could use. I do not understand why Apple insists on crippling this device that prevents it from being used the way users want to.

AT&T used to make the argument with their landlines that if third parties were allowed to make the phones they might bring down the network. And it worked for many years. “Phone leasing was commonplace until the break up of Ma Bell more than 20 years ago. Since the break up, consumers have had a staggering array of choices for local and long-distance phone service, which includes buying their own telephones. Some of the original phone renters continued leasing and many are still paying.” Fred Minnick

The same rhetoric was dusted off for the release of the iPhone, which amusingly was also a joint venture with AT&T. Of course that didn’t take long for hackers to unlock the phone in various ways, making it available to other networks (ex: T-Mobile) and also third party applications. The iTouch of course is different. Even if you believe the fact that a rogue hacker could bring down AT&T’s network (in which case read Bruce Sterling’s “The Hacker Crackdown”), the iTouch is not connected to a network.

There is the potential for a large industry of third-party applications around these types of devices. Apple’s iPhone/iTouch are the slickest right now, but this sort of mentality where the user is treated as a criminal before they even by the product is bad for business. I think of Sony and how innovative they were with the Betamax and successfully arguing that the VCR was not simply a device for crooks who wanted to steal revinue from large media companies. Sony in recent history relies on DRM models (digital rights management) to lock their products down to prevent them for being used in ways unanticipated by Sony. This is not good for content producers or for content consumers. And companies that produce products that embrace 13-year old programmers rather than treating them as criminals will have a bright future.

Radiohead album available for download at Midnight

Certainly not the first band to offer music as a download on their site. Also, not the first to make it available DRM-Free (no restrictions on copying it from different devices). This is huge simply because Radiohead is huge. On top of that, offering the downloaders the opportunity to name their price.

To me this is like the NPR model of listener supported music, which certainly has its downsides. Imagine an NPR like scenario where Radiohead encourages you to call with your support for a tote bag or coffee mug. I hope Radiohead releases some statistics on the site and some numbers on what people paid, etc… I am sure I am not the only one who would be interested in seeing if this was a success.

Wait Til Your Married For Sex… Unless Your Gay

A new ad campaign for the Bush Admin. through 4parents.gov, a government website run by the Department of Health and Human Services. This not so subtle ad aims at encouraging parents to persuade their children from having sex before marriage. That is assuming they will or even can get married.

With the Federal Government’s queer interest in defining marriage it is amusing to watch this ad. I am thinking to myself: If your a young person that is gay, since you cannot be married (in some states) is it okay to have sex now? Even if you drop the idea of gay marriage, the ad still assumes that marriage will happen in this child’s life. I can see more ads subtly hint at absolutes in life. For example ads about eventually getting divorced, being overwhelmed by credit card debt and saying goodbye to those pesky civil liberties.

Hypercolor T-Shirt 2.0

Hypercolor was a t-shirt brand that contained a thermochromic pigment that changed color in the heat. Very hip in my middle school days. The Wi-Fi Detector Shirt has a similar feel, except the added bonus of being practical. Walk within a w0-fi signal and the shirt reacts. I haven’t tried one out, but as we move into an age of ubiquitous computing this is a geek-tastic first step. This is a great way to help advertise free wireless signals around your community.