Tag: economics

Here is a thing about eBooks

I want to read Let the Right One In, preferably on my iPhone.  Mandy and I watched and enjoyed the film together, then she checked the book out of the library, read it & loved it.  I didn’t get around to reading it when she had it out, so I re-requested it (it’s a very popular book & there are only two copies in circulation in the Phoenix library system, so it took a while) and it came in a couple weeks ago and … I still didn’t get around to it.  I’d like to try reading eBooks (I basically never have), on my iPhone, and I’d like to see if having the book always available, in my pocket, makes me any more likely to actually get through it than merely having the huge block of paper lurking around the house, taunting me about not reading it.

Also, Mandy loved it so much that she has stated that she would like to read it again.  So:

1) I could go to a book store and buy the book (the paperback is broadly available, on account of the movie), or just order the paperback from Amazon for … looks like $8.88 used or $10.85 new (or the hardback for $9.90 used / $14.69 new) … then we’d own it & I’d be able to read it and Mandy would be able to read it over and over, and we could even lend it out if we wanted to.

2) I could buy the kindle version from Amazon for $9.99 and read it on my iPhone.  And only my iPhone.  And Mandy can’t read it again without us buying or borrowing it again.

I can’t find the book as an eBook anywhere else (though admittedly I’m not experienced at trying – where do YOU look for eBooks?), so this may be the only e-option for this title.  Amazon’s DRM means that I can either pay twice for the two people in my household to be able to read the one book, or buy the paper book and then a totally unrestricted number of people can read it.  Let me rephrase: I can buy the electronic version for $9.99 and I’ll be the first and only person ever allowed to read that copy OR I can buy a paper copy for $8.88 that’s already been read by an unknown number of people and I can be one of many people who are allowed to read that copy in the future.

There is a reason publishers like DRM and dislike used books, and it has nowt to do with readers.

I believe that publishers should do everything they can to encourage reading as much as they can in every possible way that they can.  I believe that anything publishers do that discourages reading, or that fails to encourage reading, is working against their own best interests.  I believe that the amount of money society spends on reading material relates directly to how much people are reading – so that the best way to increase spending on books is to increase reading. Duh! Please, Macmillan, encourage me.

Thinking about money makes me nauseous

Ugh. So, whatever and ever, I was taking a break from typing up my new novel, poking around on the web, on Twitter, on Plurk, and I was reading a blog post by someone I know (actually know, in person; not just some internet friend, but someone I’ve actually spoken to, more than once, face to face), and I got nauseous and had to go lay down for a few minutes. First I tried just sitting down, away from the computer, but I felt really sick, and it wasn’t enough; I had to lay down in the cool of my bed and close my eyes and try to recover.

The blog post itself, its subject, wasn’t the problem. Tyson Crosbie, a local photographer, made this blog post about some trouble he’d had with a potential client. The client claimed to have business experience, but wasn’t familiar with professional photographers’ practices and rates (apparently), and tried to negotiate a significantly lower price in a somewhat dishonest way (read the post for all the details), and Tyson was letting his community know as a sort of warning about not just that particular client, but dishonest negotiating tactics to keep an eye out for, generally. To make the situation clear, Tyson provided both a link to his standard pricing schedule, and gave a detailed account of the specifics of what was being negotiated. (Again, follow the links for all the details.)

Now, I’m aware I’m not familiar with what professional photographers charge for their services, especially with regards to the purchasing of the rights to a particular image, so just looking at things like the first two items on his pricing page, setting the value of a single image at upwards of $300-$500, already made me a little queasy. This is not something I’ve ever looked into, partially because I knew it was more than I felt was reasonable, and I didn’t find it worthwhile to bother to investigate any more than my doing price-comparisons between various models of Ferrari would be. It’s out of my financial range, there’s no point to look. But, it was a friend’s blog post, a friend’s business, so I went ahead and looked, so I could follow along with the post. The numbers in the pricing schedule made me feel a little worse. But I read the rest of the post, anyway.

And that’s where I really started to get sick. Apparently Tyson earns, in a single day working for a “National” client, a multiple of my business’s year-to-date Gross Revenue. That includes all art sales (several times what I’ve earned in previous years), and book sales through all channels. Even at significantly discounted rates on time and on the price per product shot, the proposed amount Tyson would have earned for a week of work (I don’t know, maybe there’s more time involved than the number of days he’s listing, but even if it were two weeks’ worth of work, or a month’s, the comparison I’m about to make is still a very strong one) for that client would be enough money that (combined with my wife’s salary) all our expenses would be met for well over a year, without my having to earn another penny in that time. Now, I don’t know how much business Tyson is getting right now, how much work at these rates he’s able to draw in consistently, but if he worked just four weeks like that, it would replace my wife’s salary, too. Which is to say that theoretically his earning power individually is perhaps as much as twelve times that of my dual-income family. Practicably, he probably isn’t working 5 days a week, 50+ weeks a year, but it’s still an about order of magnitude more income, if he’s working half as hard as I know I am.

I had no idea. Well, I knew that this society allowed vast disparity in income (which equates directly to quality of life below a certain threshold) between the richest and the poorest of its members, but I know I’m not the poorest, and I know he’s not (quite) the richest. Ethically, though, I have trouble understanding how such disparities can be allowed to persist. How can one person be allowed to have enough income to comfortably support a dozen families, while there are families struggling to simply have their basic needs met? It isn’t just. Thinking about it literally made me feel so sick I had to lay down and shut my eyes to this world.
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