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Not pretty enough
Earlier this week, Don Linn posted “A Tragedy of the Commons”, an effective assessment that builds upon the thinking behind “The opportunity in abundance”, recently posted here.
In his post, Don tackles the role of industry associations at a time of significant change. His assessment: “They’ve largely looked after their individual interests to the detriment of the industry as a whole.” It’s a point of view I agree with, but I need to offer a bit of disclosure first.
Last spring (and summer), when the Book Industry Study Group was looking for an executive director to replace Scott Lubeck, I was a candidate. I interviewed with the search committee but did not make it to the next round, in which the BISG board’s executive committee met with a short list of candidates. The job eventually went to Len Vlahos, who came to BISG after working with the American Booksellers Association.
I’ve worked in publishing for 28 years, almost half of that time as a consultant (sobering, I know). I was interested in BISG because it is well-positioned to employ what has been called the convening power of associations.
Before I interviewed, I had already been writing the early drafts of what became “abundance”, and I tested my ideas with the search committee. I didn’t prevail, and that’s a good thing. Every organization wants a leader who can do what the governing body thinks is important. BISG has that, and I wish them well.
I tell you this because I’d rather say it publicly and avoid the suggestion, whispered or e-mailed, that I write about industry associations because I didn’t get the gig. That’s not the case.
As one of my interviewers told me, the BISG has its priorities: dealing with identifiers, rights and piracy. If you know me, and a lot of you do, I’d last about 15 minutes fighting piracy.
So ... Don Linn. He speaks plainly, and that isn’t always easy. I’d like to give him some support.
Not only have most associations fiddled while Rome burned; they have been vocal about it. Just last week, the AAR blog included a post calling publishers out for allegedly avoiding negotiations about digital royalty rates. It’s a land grab; why not?
“Abundance” explains why not: we are eroding our competitiveness from the inside out. We need an industry solution, not a cascade of power struggles.
The same thinking applies to BISG and the IDPF. It makes no sense to have two industry standards bodies, one physical, the other digital. But it’s also the case that few vertically sponsored associations vote themselves out of existence. The IDPF recently went the other direction, electing to significantly expand its board of directors. Magellan Media is a member, and we cast the only vote against expanding the board.
A narrow focus can hamper vision. Even though two-thirds or more of the digital books sold in the United States are read inside a proprietary system that has at best a passing relation to the IDPF standard, the public discussions treat Amazon as some sort of outlier.
Amazon, the company that made digital reading a reality, did so by creating an end-to-end solution that avoided the interoperability hassles of earlier e-readers. Publishers, ever eager to wrap DRM around content, bought in. After they helped Amazon make a captive market, publishers balked at things like low ebook prices.
In these debates, associations take sides that mirror their membership interests. Of course they do; that’s why they exist. In stable times, that may be okay.
These are not stable times. Acting as if they are will not help. We don’t need to defend the necessarily narrow work of associations; we need to move past it.
Posted by Thad McIlroy
“But it’s also the case that few vertically sponsored associations vote themselves out of existence.” I’ve always worked closely with industry associations, for better and for worse. In 40 years I’ve yet to see two associations join because it was the right thing to do. It has only happened when economic necessity forced the issue. In this situation, economic necessity is not likely to be a factor any time soon. That leaves door #2: following the tech lead of a single company.
It had never occurred to me before, and I’m not recommending it without more thought, but I’m intrigued at first glance: What would happen if en masse we abandoned EPUB and adopted KF8 instead (Kindle Format 8)?
This was the story of Adobe’s PDF. Commercial interests slowly turned PDF into a broad de facto standard, and then Adobe turned it over to the ISO. Not the other way around.
Posted by Brian O'Leary
It’s an interesting question. Like you. I’d want to think more about it (and avoid more unintended consequences), but it’s a good reframing. To some extent, the development of HTML5 and the refinement of EPUB have informed or even motivated work on KF8. That bears some consideration.
Posted by Bill McCoy
Brian,
I appreciate your putting thought into looking at the publishing trade associations angle on the big-picture problems publishing industry faces I agree with you and Don on the big picture issues: that we’re under-funded, and that we need to collectively coordinate much better on “superstructures” that address “super-threats”. Good for you for stirring the pot!
With all due respect, I think you guys were off base in several of your criticisms of the organization I lead, the IDPF. This is a time where, as you write, we all need to be hanging together. I’m all for constructive criticism, and reasonable people will reasonably differ on many points (optimal Board size being an art, not a science), but several of the criticisms were utterly unaccompanied by any supporting evidence. I offer up my POV here: http://billmccoybooks2.blogspot.com/2011/11/try-it-harder.html and here: http://billmccoybooks2.blogspot.com/2011/11/epub-3-preliminary-report-card.html and would be delighted to hear your and others’ further thoughts.
Posted by Bill McCoy
Thad,
re: your point about KF8 - what exactly would be the potential benefit to the industry of en masse adopting KF8? Ceding future evolution to Amazon sure doesn’t seem like a win.
And, we’ve finally got Amazon accepting EPUB from all the major publishers, and giving up on being a leader with a proprietary format, instead pretty much throwing in the towel and being a follower in adopting EPUB 3. Of course the are trying to do their own thing and put a wedge in the industry by having their own flavor of HTML5 but the big publishers are telling me that Amazon’s focus is really on EPUB ingestion, not promulgating KF8 as an alternative. We’d be giving up a big win in having gotten Amazon this far down the path of openness, and for what return?
Of course we still don’t even know what KF8 *is* yet - all we have is a “list of supported HTML tags and CSS elements… though it is not exhaustive”. Why in the world would we give up on a reliable specification for reliable HTML5 in favor of one vendor’s vagueness? That that vendor has the largest market share is a reason AGAINST not a reason FOR. That we got a complete EPUB 3 spec done, with many features already supported in the market, before Amazon released even a hand-waving vapor spec is not evidence that they can move faster.
OK, I’m biased. But I’ve been on both sides of this having helped to establish PostScript, PDF, and OpenType. Single-vendor (or, in the case of OpenType, smoke-filled-room of a couple vendors) standards just seem way last-century. Especially when we have a vendor who isn’t just seeking monopoly rents on authoring tools but is looking to control the whole value chain.
Flipping it around - would Amazon love if if KF8 confuses and divides the industry around HTML5-based formats for publishing instead of vendors closing ranks around EPUB 3 as the standard that they deliver to all channels including Amazon? You bet! So why in the world would we want to even think about going there?
Posted by Brian O'Leary
Bill, at one point in my post, I ask why we continue to have standards bodies that separately represent physical and digital. My observation about board size is made in the context of a merger. Whatever the optimal size of a board may be, expanding a board is not the step you take before merging. I don’t see how you evolve this into “several” criticisms, when it’s not even one. It’s an observation.
The tone of your approach to Thad’s open-ended question is troubling for me. As I wrote in my response to Thad, I’d want to think about it. But Amazon today represents two-thirds or more of the market here. Getting Amazon to accept EPUB as an input may be a win for publishers, but consumers are still buying books in a closed ecosystem. Unless you’re doing something to open that up, I’m not sure what the value of EPUB is for readers. That’s is the frame that I introduced in “abundance”.
Posted by Bill McCoy
Brian,
re: merger, I agree that if that were a near-term probability, an expanded Board would be illogical But, you didn’t respond to any of the points I made in my response ( http://t.co/XajqvU29 ) about why that wouldn’t be a good idea in general at this point and why the specific suggestion about IDPF&BISG;is not compelling. I’m all ears, and open-minded, but I don’t grok your logic at all.
re: how Amazon accepting EPUB from publishers helps readers avoid a closed ecosystem. I see it helping in several ways, some already happening:
1. Viable competition. If publishers were authoring in an Amazon-only or Amazon-controlled format it would handicap competitors who for example might not get access to certain content that worked only on Kindle. Publishers can’t afford to author more than one format so it’s important to make the one they do author open. It can be argued that it’s in part thanks to EPUB that competitors are catching up to Amazon’s content selection and taking market share. That gives readers open options.
2. Today it’s EPUB from publishers, but I predict that competition will incent Amazon to, within the coming year, allow end users to sideload their own non-DRM EPUB into Kindle bookshelves, as Apple, Barnes&Noble;, Kobo, Sony, et. al. already do.
3. Publishers have the option to ask Amazon not to use DRM. Once it’s a done deal that KF8++ is just EPUB 3++, i.e. there’s no “conversion” per se but just wrapping in TPZ DRM, then this content will be automatically fully open. Amazon may even start liking selling content that can work on other reading systems. It’s true that everyone adopting KF8 would be another way to get this result, but it’s quite challenging to fully clone a proprietary solution even if well documented and tends to leave competitors disadvantages (cf. PostScript, PDF & Flash). And at this point we have a head start as Amazon’s already accepting EPUB and KF8 is a pig in a poke.
4. IDPF could standardize a full DRM or lighter-weight “social DRM” encryption/watermarking for EPUB and competition could eventually force Amazon to accept it.
Posted by bowerbird
bill mccoy said:
> 4. IDPF could
> standardize a full DRM or
> lighter-weight “social DRM”
> encryption/watermarking for EPUB
> and competition could eventually
> force Amazon to accept it.
whoa! did bill mccoy really say that?
even if epub wasn’t already a disaster,
and i.d.p.f. not the dinosaur enclave,
that statement—all by itself—
would be more than enough reason to
toss i.d.p.f. out on its ear…
i thought we were finally getting past
all of that publisher d.r.m. nonsense.
-bowerbird
Posted by Thad McIlroy
Bill,
As you’ve seen from my writings, I fully support EPUB 3. I think the IDPF has done a marvelous job in producing a robust forward-looking standard.
I was very much hoping that Amazon would “get over it” and stop driving for a competitive advantage by not getting behind EPUB 3.
But it did not.
And so I posited what to me had been unthinkable. The disadvantages are relatively clear. What are the advantages?
If all of the publishers in the U.S. cannot sway Amazon to accept a format that is fully endorsed by the key international group that provides enabling technology for the blind (DAISY), what will it take?
As is always the case with standards, for the sake of all “users” the industry has to find a way to move forward. Adopting KF 8 is repugnant under the circumstances, but it is one way to move forward.
Posted by Bill McCoy
Thad,
Yes indeed I’ve appreciated your support of EPUB, hence my visceral reaction to your perhaps somewhat rhetorical question.
Perhaps my more optimistic POV stems from seeing Amazon as already acquiescing to EPUB both privately, in their deals for content ingestion from publishers, and publicly, in that KF8 represents a significant move towards de facto convergence.
And, as Amazon seeks to expand into other geographies where their North American dominance can’t be as easily extended, accepting open standards will become even more important. The “all of the publishers in the U.S.” that you mentioned now are already in hock to Amazon for both physical and digital sales. But that is not true in France, Germany, Japan, Korea, China, etc. And US/UK publishers have already made significant progress in nudging Amazon towards openness. The majority of the titles Amazon sold yesterday came to them as EPUB, not as Mobi.
And EPUB 3 is brand spanking new. So IMO we need to give it a little time, not think about giving it up.
Posted by Bill McCoy
Sorry - error in my last response - I mean to write that the majority of *units* Amazon sold yesterday came to them as EPUB. Of course Amazon doesn’t release detailed stats on this (or, on much else), so this is only an inference on my part based on the understanding that major publishers have been for some time submitting as EPUB.
Posted by bowerbird
ok, i understand why the dinosaurs
would like to dictate their terms
to the most successful mammal around,
i’m just not sure why anyone would
think that the mammal would allow it.
but hey, dream away, you dinosaurs.
the longer you ignore your reality,
the more quickly comes your demise.
-bowerbird
Posted by Bill McCoy
Dear bowerbird,
Respectfully, I think a better analogy of the current market situation in trade eBooks is with AOL and the early days of the Web. AOL had dominant market share of consumers connecting to the Internet, but W3C focused on development of Open Web Standards. That ultimately pulled AOL in, not to mention CompuServe, MSN and others seeking to develop proprietary alternatives. Now we Adobe finally going with HTML5 over Flash. Should the Web community have instead “capitulated” to AOL, or later to Flash? I think not!
It would be a mistake to lump Amazon and Jeff Bezos in with AOL and its leadership, qualitatively speaking. But, the basic analogy of the leading vendor pushing a proprietary solution while pretty much everyone else focuses on interoperable open standards holds. Even more directly, because EPUB 3 is simply “domesticated” HTML5 (structured, reliable, accessible). In fact we may look back on a closed Kindle “silo” as the dinosaur at the table.
And, this is not a beauty contest about the best technology. VHS won, not Betamax. JPEG won, not FlashPix. I happen to think Amazon is with KF8, technically, still a long way behind EPUB 3. But sooner or later, closed loses to open. The cathedral loses to the bazaar. That’s the opportunity, in abundance, I see in front of us. If we pull together.
Posted by Brian O'Leary
Whatever the parallel, the question bowerbird started with is unanswered: we’re doing this to wrap our own “open” DRM around content? How does that help readers? It sounds like we’re substituting one closed platform for another closed platform, with EPUB as an input.
Posted by Bill McCoy
Brian,
Blu-Ray and DVD are open (in the sense of being vendor neutral) content formats and both include anti-copying technology. It is arguably helpful for consumers that these formats won vs. having a plethora of proprietary alternatives that don’t work together (requiring buying a particular type of player to read a particular type of movie). If an interoperable DRM of some type was widely adopted for digital books, it might similarly be advantageous vs. a world of vendor-specific silos that lock-in readers. It could be an even stronger win for consumers if such a standard DRM was lighter-weight, and didn’t prevent copying. PDF for example has a basic level of encryption and password-protection that can be viewed as a type of rights management but isn’t intrusive, and doesn’t prevent sharing. It also helps verify content hasn’t been tampered with, which is a benefit to consumers who don’t want to be exposed to malware. EPUB has so far stopped short of even defining this basic level of “document security”.
Personally, I’m not a fan of DRM, certainly not of the strong form, and believe that browser-based consumption will ultimately make controlling access over downloaded content a non-issue. I also believe that at best DRM is a speed-bump to help keep honest people honest - trying to defeat determined hackers is a losing proposition. But, that doesn’t mean DRM isn’t a market requirement in the short-term. It’s not like DRM has even gone away in music, with services like Spotify using it. And for video, games, and software, DRM is prevalent. Of course Amazon’s proprietary eBook solution is DRM-centric.
Anyway my comment about DRM was a hypothetical. At this point IDPF is not working on it. But, our mission is to promote an interoperable distribution format for digital publications, so I think it is necessary for us to look at all our options for achieving this goal.
Posted by bowerbird
i don’t know why i even bother to
do comments on blogs where others
are being paid six-figure salaries
to disseminate disinformation…
nobody pays me to tell the truth!
doesn’t matter what i say anyway.
the marketplace will decide this.
if we consumers let the dinosaurs
dictate, we’ll deserve what we get.
mightaswell sic mike cane on you. :+)
just pretend i never said anything.
-bowerbird