Wednesday News: New issues of copyright arise with 3D printing; B&N pulls Amazon titles off the shelves; Japan’s Louve Joule
Publishing NewsBarnes & Noble / cover-art / Intellectual Property Issues15 Comments
Barnes & Noble reportedly instructs local stores to pull Amazon titles – Some Barnes & Noble stores were carrying Amazon published books until it was reported by blogger MobyLives (who has several Amazon is killing publishing posts). Now B&N has sent a company wide email instructing those books to be removed from the shelves. The lack of in store presence is affecting sales of Penny Marshall’s autobiography My Mother Was Nuts which, in the first week, sold only 2,000 print copies according to Bookscan. paidContent.
It is 28 in the paid Kindle store, 36 on the USAToday list and 33 on the combined Print and ebook list for the NYTimes. The lack of a paper presence has to be hurting it somewhat but how much, I guess we’ll never know.
Love Joule, Japan’s First Bar Devoted To Female Masturbation, Opens In Tokyo – Love Joule is for women and men with partners (no single men allowed) and purportedly a place for women to gather and talk about sex, masturbation and men. I kind of love this because of how it is opening up public discussion of women’s sexuality.
Romance Book Cover Art: Featuring Elaine Gignilliat – This is a fun walk through of how cover art was created from where the artist, Elaine Gignilliat, got her inspiration to where the costumes were acquired. The end result is a Victoria Holt cover. It was a completely original painted piece. Romance Book Cover Art
Here it is fully developed with a suggestion of a cave they’re in. There is a mystery in this book, a suggestion that the hero might actually be dangerous, a killer! That’s why I chose to have his hand on her throat, so you don’t know whether he’s going to kiss her or kill her! The rest of the background is left white as in the entire series of nineteen I did for Victoria Holt books.
Craigslist vs. 3Taps: Ownership Of User Generated Web Content At Stake – Craigslist and 3Taps are engaged in an intellectual property battle fighting over who owns user generated content. 3Taps takes Craiglist postings and creates a searchable database. Craigslist sued for copyright and trademark infringement. The result may have far reaching effects on who owns content that you or I create on websites such as Goodreads, Twitter, and Facebook. TPM Idea Lab
3D printing: Difference Engine: The PC all over again? – I’ve addressed 3D printers briefly before but with the actual printers falling in price and technology advancing, the spector of copying actual items will shake up intellectual property in a significant way. Copyright generally applies to the exclusive distribution of intellectual property – not actual things itself. It is not the book that is copyrighted, but the text printed inside the book. CAD drawings are the basis for the 3D printers and DMCA might apply to remove postings of those drawings. However, enterprising individuals can create their own CAD drawings based on existing objects. There are a number of really interesting concepts being created by 3D printers and while I don’t agree that the DMCA needs to be extended as the Economist suggests, there are new issues that are going to arise and areas for abuse on both sides of the aisle.
“In that, the record industry was remarkably successful. Today, websites and ISPs have to block or remove infringing material whenever they receive a DMCA takedown notice from a copyright holder—something that happens more often than actually justified. Google reckons that more than a third of the DMCA notices it has received over the years have turned out to be bogus copyright claims. Over a half were from companies trying to restrict competing businesses rather than law-breakers.”The Economist
B&N pulling Amazon books holds all the logic of a schoolyard brawl. If a customer comes into B&N looking for a specific book – like Ms. Marshall’s autobiograhy – and doesn’t find it, she’s apt to leave after deciding to order it on Amazon. If the reader is looking for that book and fails to find it, she is likely to leave thwarted, unhappy and not in a buying or browsing mood.
If the reader finds the book at B&N it means that her expedition succeeded, she’s happy and more apt to browse and buy other books.
This tactic by B&N seems designed to backfire by reinforcing readers’ notions that it’s easier to order books online from Amazon!
Ooh, is that the cover for The Shivering Sands? I own all of the various covers given to Holt titles, so it’s tres cool to see how one version was created.
@Mary Anne Graham: We at the Underpants Gnome University School of Business scoff at your preposterous allegation that creating a positive consumer experience could ever be a factor in profit generation.
@Mary Anne Graham: And that is why Amazon is the dominant force that it is in the publishing world today – the rest of them just don’t get the fact that their business is dependent on their customers and if you con’t carry what we want to buy, we’re just not going to come into your store.
I thought B&N’s beef was only if the ebook version was exclusive to Amazon. The Marshall book isn’t exclusive. Also B&N has sold both pbook and ebook copies of The Hangman’s Daughter for some time now and that’s also an Amazon title.
Also–why does BN get treated by some like they are a victim of big, bad Amazon now? Barnes&Noble put how many small chains and Indies out of business? Does nobody remember that we all hated BN in the late ’90s? (Shout out to Fox Books in 1998’s “You’ve got Mail”.)
Phase 1: Refuse to carry books customers want.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: PROFIT
lol @ Nadia Lee.
Wired magazine is regularly covering what’s going on with 3D printing, and I find it fascinating. It’s the next big disruptive technology, and has the potential to shake things up even more than ebooks have – not in publishing of course, unless you want to mold plastic booklike objects. ;)
I struggle to see how 3-d printing is a game changer. Assuming you can get something to look right, but other than art — and how many of us want art that is plastic with, I presume, the same level of elegance as an old master printed on a ink-jet — most of what we need requires the right materials. I’d love to be able to print a spare part to my blender, but it has to have the material quality of the original — ie, hold up to the demands of the blender and survive regular dishwashing. If I printed a new lace for my shoe, the material qualities would be quite different.
I’m not entirely sure how 3D printing could be a game changer for books, but it’s making some waves in the medical field. Two big ones were printing an esophagus and giving a small child her “miracle arms” exoskeleton.
I don’t think many people would walk into B&N to buy Penny Marshall’s memoir for $20.80 when it is available in the Kindle lending library for free or $9.99 for those without Prime. The hardcover, of course, is less expensive at Amazon also.
However, it seems to be popular in my area public libraries. All copies checked out. It may be the type of book people borrow rather than purchase. The 2,000 sold were probably to public institutions.
@Mary Anne Graham:
Judging by my recent experiences, if a customer comes into B&N looking for ANY book (as opposed to a game, a calender, a mug, a box of chocolates…) she’s likely to feel thwarted and unhappy.
The coffee’s not bad, though.
@hapax: Thanks for the much-needed laugh! You really do have to wonder what that bunch of dingleberries running B&N are thinking.
Jane, I’ve always been fascinated by how covers are developed so I loved the link to Ms. Gignilliat’s site. I own every Victoria Holt book but, oddly, none with one of her covers. I did, however, recognize some by other authors.
@Jane Don’t the TOS at Goodreads say that the reviews we put up there belong to us (ie the person who wrote it?)
@Kaetrin: I think the problem may be due to the fact that even if the review copyright belongs to you, you gave the site perpetual royalty-free license to display your reviews online, etc.