Comments on: Is a golden age of reading is gradually, suddenly, almost here? https://www.quakerranter.org/is-a-golden-age-of-reading-is-gradually-suddenly-almost-here/ A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley Mon, 14 May 2012 23:32:20 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: John Fitzgerald https://www.quakerranter.org/is-a-golden-age-of-reading-is-gradually-suddenly-almost-here/#comment-194608 Mon, 14 May 2012 19:20:00 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=16942#comment-194608 I think DRM is the last obstacle stopping trade paperbacks from being more or less replaced by ebooks. I’ve bought a few hundred ebooks over the past couple of years, and I’d feel much happier buying more if I knew they were in an ‘open’ format. We should get to a stage where the technology involved is invisible. Amazon are doing well at that in some regards: easy wireless purchasing, reading across multiple devices. So DRM should be history. The tricky part is finding a way to keep money going to publishers, editors and writers. Because good content isn’t free! One idea might be something like the Spotify subscription: pay a premium rate to have unlimited ad-free books. Pay less (or nothing) and skip some advertising now and then. This could also apply to ‘lending’ ebooks: someone who had paid their sub could get the book you lend for free, while someone without it might have to tolerate some advertising.

Another angle to it all is how to socialise e‑reading properly. By lacking dust jackets, ebooks have lost some conversation-starting capacity. But there are some good, if primitive highlight-sharing platforms out there. If these were fully open, and (heaven forfend) canonical in the way they referenced, we’d be using ebooks in a genuinely game-changing way.
PS I also blogged about this a wee while ago: http://johnfitzgerald.me.uk/2009/12/23/why-bad-drm-stands-in-the-way-of-a-good-future-for-ebooks/

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