Monday Midday Links: IPDF proposes ‘Light Weight DRM’; Self Pub author meltdown
Giveaways (not taking place here)
The editor, Harrison Demchick, of The Sinful Life of Lucy Burns (a recommended read by Robin aka Janet) and The Understory written by Elizabeth Leiknes, wrote us to let us know about a giveaway the publishing house is running to celebrate the release of The Understory.
Basically, it’s like this. As long as we get 100 entries, we’ll be giving away to a lucky winner:
1.) The Understory
2.) The Sinful Life of Lucy Burns. . . and two more eBooks of the winner’s choosing.
And the more people who enter after that, the more winners we’ll choose!
All the rules, and the entry form, are at www.facebook.com/bancroftpress.
Harrison Demchick writes the best review queries I’ve ever read. I would never be able to say no to him. In any event, Robin really thinks the world of Elizabeth Leiknes’ writing and if you want to support a small press, this is the way to do it.
News
Speaking of small presses, get a load of this authorial meltdown:
The Man Who Thought He Was King | Fantasy Faction – “Basically, M. R. Mathia, a self-published author from America, took great offence when we moved a forum thread of his, that was advertising his own book, from the main book discussion forum into the Self Published & Small Press section of the forums. Now, this is something we do regularly. Fantasy-Faction welcomes ALL small press and self-published authors to come and tell us/our readers about their books, but we have a special place to do it. The reason for this is that our site is a place to discuss fantasy novels, primarily those in the mainstream, and we leave it up to our members to choose which books they would like to discuss. Once we moved his thread, we got this response: Fantasy Faction
I am not a small press. I am an author with 18 titles for sale. That is more titles that some big publishing houses. I have advertising currently running in Locus, Publishers Weekly, Fantasy and Sci Fi, and Revolver magazines. I have blog advertising across the entire blog-o-sphere. I am not a small press or even self published. M. R. Mathias’ books are PUBLISHED by Michael Robb Mathias Jr. and should be treated no differently that any big named publishers title. WHY? Because I do my job as a publisher too. Please quit sending my posts into the self published/small press thread. My titles are neither. I have 92k twitter followers @DahgMahn and 10 titles in their genre bestselling list. There is nothing self pubbed, or small, about books written by M. R. Mathias. Thank you, M.R.Mathias’ publisher, Michael Robb Mathias Jr.“
Personal Note: go read the entire post. It is thoroughly entertaining.
Waterstones Talks Big Then Surrenders To Amazon | Mike Cane’s xBlog – “In a statement, James Daunt, managing director of Waterstones, said: “The best digital readers, the Kindle family, will be married to the singular pleasures of browsing a curated bookshop.”” Mike Cane’s Blog
EPUB Lightweight Content Protection: Use Cases & Requirements | International Digital Publishing Forum – “User Experience: lightweight DRMs are simpler to use and cause less end-user confusion. The FairPlay DRM for Apple iTunes is often cited as a good example of a DRM with a decent user experience. Elements of good user experience include: Does not get in the way of users’ expected interactions with the content. Works seamlessly in the absence of a network connection…. While courts have refused to set a bar for “effectiveness” such that any technology below the bar is not entitled to protection under the law, there is some evidence to suggest that a technology that is particularly ineffective could face such a challenge.[…Therefore, a lightweight DRM should be a technology that clearly enjoys protection under anticircumvention law. “ IPDF
Personal Note: Let me give some context here. IPDF is an organization that contains members from various publishing houses, retailers, and other interested parties. IPDF hopes to create industry standards and one of those proposed standards would be a lightweight PDF. Watermarking is out because IPDF asserts an end user reading a watermarked book can’t be sued for using anti-encryption tools (or DRM stripping tools). Whatever DRM IPDF chooses, it wants to make sure that its members can sue readers for circumventing the DRM. One step forward, two steps back.
Hachette is offering new e-books to some libraries — paidContent – “Hachette, which has not made new e-books available to libraries since 2010, is reconsidering the idea. In a pilot program starting this spring (which is…now?), the publisher is working with two e-book distributors to bring a “selection of HBG’s recent bestselling e-books to 7 million library patrons.”” Paid Content
Amazon to Sell Ads on Kindle Fire Welcome Screen | Digital – Advertising Age – “Amazon is pitching ads on the device’s welcome screen, according to an executive at an agency that Amazon has pitched. The company has been telling ad agency execs that they must spend about $600,000 for any package that includes such an ad. The ad campaigns would run for two months and also include inventory from Amazon’s “Special Offers” product. For $1 million, advertisers would get more ad inventory and be included in Amazon’s public-relations push, according to this executive and an exec at another ad agency.” “ AdAge
Deals
Just one today (because I’m super busy. I promise more later this week)
Watermarking is the type of DRM in the HP books downloaded from Pottermore?
Why oh why won’t they understand that DRM does nothing to deter piracy and only hinders readers who want to pay for books?
The great literary genius that is M. R. Mathias is thoroughly entertaining is his typos, his poor grammar, and his constant harping on the fact that readers don’t really care about sentence structure.
oh, really…?
But… hey… HE IS PUBLISHED, DAMN IT.
DRM light… but I still will not fully own the ebook that I buy… they truly still don’t “get it”…
I got a huge laugh out of the fact that M.R. Mathias couldn’t decide if he was the author or the “publisher” in his response. And I’m still turning the “big” publishing houses with less than 18 books to their name over in my mind in amazement…
@Mireya: I hear you. It’s like “nicotine free cigarettes”.
I’m curious about this first part of the URL:
monday-midday-links-the-story-siren-posts-un-ironically-about-plagiarism
Was that an accident or are we missing some wacky news?
@De: I’ll post about it tomorrow but you can read about it over at the Smart Bitches blog today. I put in a piece about the Story Siren’s plagiarism but then I decided I did not want to give her more traffic because I am totally disgusted with her behavior.
Oh! I wish I had a bag of popcorn reading that author’s meltdown. Just his responses alone are enough to lead me to believe that he is not, as self proclaimed, the next Tolkien.
If the dude objects to being called a small press or self-published, why don’t we just agree to call him vanity published? I mean, with the way he keeps repeating his name in his endeavors (author name/publisher name), it certainly fits.
This is the same author who got upset a few weeks ago with Diana Gabaldon. She turned down his Twitter request to write a blurb for one of his books and badgering ensued. She finally had to tell him to back off. It seems like this attitude is pretty common for him.
@Shiloh Walker:
I’ve read much worse in books I paid for.
After reading the ‘faction’, I think what we have here is a failure to communicate.
There are *two* people surnamed ‘Mathias’: one who is forenamed ‘Michael Robb’ (and who is, further more, a ‘Jr’, evidencing the existence of yet *another* Michael Robb Mathias, proving this is an incredibly common name), and another who is forenamed ‘M. R.’. What those initials stand for, we can’t possibly know and should refrain from guessing to prevent an infringement of Mr Mathias’s privacy.
What is certain is that Michael Robb Mathias *Jr* is “an author with 18 titles for sale”, and though he is not a small press (which is understandable, as Corporations are People but not Small Presses), he is the *publisher* of M. R. Mathias.
Now M. R. Mathias is also an author of 18 books (and a publisher), but he is obviously not to be confused with Michael Robb Mathias because M. R. Mathias is not a ‘Jr’, and does not publish his own books. Michael Robb Mathias *Jr* publishes M.R. Mathias’s books.
These poor souls, united by an unfortunate coincidence of nomenclature, have been cruelly and *viciously* slandered (or even libelled) and Everyone owes them an apology. Now.
Or else Michael Robb Mathias’s lawyer, M.Robb Mathias, will come after you and make you removed this heinous story from the Google.
So, what is “heavyweight” DRM? Because “Does not get in the way of users’ expected interactions with the content. Works seamlessly in the absence of a network connection” strike me as basics for any DRM with a goal other than convincing readers to abandon their Kindles or explore the wonders of Bit Torrents.
@SAO:
“So, what is “heavyweight” DRM?”
If you try to break it, a bosomy, hirsute woman wearing boxing gloves jumps through the computer screen and rips yer bloody arms off :)
@Ann Somerville: *grin* This.