Books
2012 April 30
If you are even slightly interested in digital content distribution you should go read these two posts by Charles Stross which cover Amazon’s ebook strategy and why publishers should go DRM free. These pieces cover where Amazon is trying to take the market and how publishers can push back against it.
I’m not sure how big of an impact the de-siloing of ebook content will have on Amazon and whether or not they can leverage their cloud reader platform to keep users locked in in spite of DRM restrictions, but I am firmly in favor of anything that will increase competition and nudge Amazon towards improving their content discovery.
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Thanks for sharing this. It was quite interesting and got me thinking about the future of all this tech shit. I don’t know how you feel about it, but this cloud nonsense really annoys me and seems designed only for techies and companies. I can’t understand why they think the everyday consumer would want to turn there files into gossamer. You won’t always have access to the cloud; all clouds are different with different features to either entice you or repel you. It is frustrating and doesn’t really compare to having all that data stored on your computer or device. Which leads me to what I was thinking about as I read these two articles. Why can’t there be a device that is solely for storage? I was picturing something like a wristwatch or an armband. It is similar to the cloud in that you can access it from different platforms but it travels with you and doesn’t rely on “the series of tubes” to transmit information. It could pair with whatever device you are using and store, say, a terabyte of information, giving you access to all your books, movies, music and whatnot at any time. It would give you much greater control as well and would, like Charlie Stross pointed out, eliminate the need to buy the same things over and over for different devices. Anyway, just a thought. Thanks for sharing.