First, books are a special kind of products, they do not obey the same rules as commercial products, they are culture. To explain a little, I am french and we have a law for the unique price of books: the price you will pay for a book will be the same on amazon, at fnac, in your local bookshop or in a supermarket.
Second, the word e-reader is nowhere to be found, ePub is also not prominently featured, contrary to iPad and Kindle. For a no-DRM ebook offer, I would have thought that the standard format for ebooks would be more important than the name of the most DRM-filled devices.
Third, Pirate Cinema, Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners are CC licensed (some NC-ND, some only NC), I would be happy to know the license of the books that are here sold (included the other ones) and in the case of Magic for Beginners if it includes the non CC licensed short stories. For the first humble indie bundle, there was a promise that some games would be opensourced, a similar promise would be great here.
Wait a second, you consider price-fixing of (e)books in France a good thing?
Where I live it's cheaper to buy books online in the UK and have them shipped over than to buy them in the local bookstore. So that's what people do. And local bookstores are dying. No surprise, given that it's illegal for them to drop their prices to a competitive level.
Yes I do consider fixed prices for books a good thing.
If it were not for this "prix unique" law, there would be as many local bookstores as there are local disc stores out of Paris: 0, and apart from amazon and fnac, there would be no big bookstores. But we have quite a number of them (chapitre, le furet, cultura, decitre...). Don't forget that Amazon Europe is located in Luxembourg where the tax on books is one of the lowest in Europe (3%).
So I am happy to be able to buy my ebooks from independent french bookstores for the same price as it would be from amazon.
There is pretty much no way on earth that Humble Bundle, by allowing French citizens to pay what they think is fair, for an absurdly limited selection, is going to choke out local bookstores in Paris.
Upset may be too strong a word. It really disturbs me because it is for me unthinkable to sell books as if they had no value.
I have nothing against humble bundle, but it makes me unwell that they treat books this way. I don't care for games for no other good reason that it is only ingrained in my brain that books are not merely commercial products.
I don't know about the other authors, but I know the Cory Doctorow makes his books available as e-books for free. So, while you may feel that allowing people to pay what they want is disturbing, I know at least one of the authors feels that price fixing as equally disturbing. So if it comes down to your feelings and the feelings of the author, I'm going to side with the author.
Also, it's not that they have "no value." It's that they have a different value to different people. To me, this is inherit with the idea of "culture." I completely disagree with the idea that you can put a fixed price on a piece of culture. I'd say it's offensive to even talk about culture in relation to money - like you can put a price on it.
I don't see this as paying for the culture of the book, myself - I never have (when buying books). I see this as paying the author for the effort they put into their creation - but not paying for the creation itself (because paying for the creation assumes that it is now mine, and it isn't).
They are not treating books as though they have no value; quite the opposite. The way they sell things allows each individual to acknowledge the value the item has for them, and to pay as much for that value as they can afford.
It allows people from every economic status to have access to the piece of culture represented by these books, and to contribute what they can afford to the authors.
Humble Bundle recognizes that culture restricted to segments of the population capable of paying an arbitrarily set price is not shared culture. The value of something is not set by a pricetag.
(Also, I am even more confused now how you can simultaneously think they are treating books poorly by allowing consumers to pay what they can, and also be disappointed that the books do not have more permissive licensing...)
The publishers. If you look at the back of most books, you'll see a price printed in the bottom corner. In most countries that generally seen as a general guideline and an upper limit, in France it's legally binding.
> First, books are a special kind of products, they do not obey the same rules as commercial products, they are culture. To explain a little, I am french and we have a law for the unique price of books: the price you will pay for a book will be the same on amazon, at fnac, in your local bookshop or in a supermarket.
And that idea itself is a cultural thing. Most Americans (even liberals) would literally barf at the idea of having "a law for the unique price of books" as being European-style socialism.
> And that idea itself is a cultural thing. Most Americans (even liberals) would literally barf at the idea of having "a law for the unique price of books" as being European-style socialism.
And there's another meta-cultural observation: European-style liberals barf at that idea, too.
As an American, I find this distinction interesting. Can the two of you (Eru and arrrg), or some other Europeans, weigh in on this?
Personally, I don't understand why books shouldn't fall under the same regulations as other goods. Sure, a book has intrinsic value not found in a bottle of shampoo, but so do movies, video games, paintings, and all other art. Are those categories also regulated?
Apparently the general idea is that because publishers and retailers compete less on price, the price for bestsellers can stay high, the income of which is supposed to be used by publishers to fund the publishing of less profitable books.
So, the goal of the fixed price is to ensure a variety and diversity of published books which do not all necessarily have to be profitable.
Personally I think the system is completely insane, and that we shouldn't treat books different from other cultural works (music, video games, movies, etc..).
EDIT: The Netherlands also has a fixed-price for books system, and that is what I was talking about above. Presumably the goal in France is similar, but I am not familiar with their implementation of this idea.
It used to be sensible, when having a profusion of publishers was the only way to guarantee the plurality of opinions. Nowadays however, with internet, this necessity disapeared. And just like un music and movies, people who benefit from the statu quo refuse to acknowledge that...
Seems like a better system might involve placing large taxes on books (or ideally, all forms of media. Don't want to drive people away from books..), the proceeds of which would go towards a patronage system that would support French artists.
Trying to drive up profits of publishing corporations to enact the change you want to see seems oddly... American.
I’m not sure what I think about the regulation (I’m most certainly a liberal but I know too little about it to have a coherent opinion, I also think it’s not all that important to care much about it), I just wanted to make clear that many European liberals are in fact in favor of that regulation.
I don't really understand the distinction, either. But Europeans also (in the countries that I know about) pay less value added tax on books (and food) than on other goods.
"Compatible with computers and mobile devices. These books are available in multiple formats including PDF, MOBI, and ePub so they work great on your computer, eBook readers, and a wide array of mobile devices!"
Indeed "ebook readers" is written deep in the page. I thought e-reader was the most used term, apparently I was wrong. but the one that really surprised me was "ebook reading device". What sort of periphrase is this?
I think they're trying to convey that anything you use to read ebooks can read these books. If they said e-reader, I'd assume an e-ink device. (I guess some people might assume it's incompatible with their obscure, but pdf-supporting tablet.)
But it's a typical european intellectual view, especially in Germany and probably it's the same in France. Here we have the state support for the higher arts, like subventions for museums, to have them let a positive effect on the population. That is to counteract the evil influence of the pop-culture, especially of american movies and music. And all pc-games are garbage, responsible for kids killing people and the brutalization of the youth.
That view is deeply routed here and equally present in right-conservative circles as in left anti-imperialistic circles, who even in the 80s and 90s commonly didn't had a tv (or at least claimed to not watch it, if they had one, apart from watching the news and arte).
I hope that the following generations will change that, but just talk to a non-gamer about his view of pc-games. It will take years for a normal development here, though movies are much more accepted now (still censored, of course, and only the removal of the censorship will show me that this society here has accepted them fully)
Of course there are already intellectuals not fitting into that scheme, an example is Wolfram Knorr who wrote the book "Weil sie wissen, was sie tun" ("Because they know what they do") about the quality of the american influence on the german culture, showing the beginning of intellectual german anti-americanism in the 20s and more so in the 50s and the following development.
Anyway, that thought of a good german/european high-culture being in a fight with the american low-culture leads to a lot of state-intervention here, a process in which not only museums and theatres are given money so they can focus on not popular higher arts, but also books are bound to have the same high price so they aren't devalued as mere products.
Something like that bundle couldn't exist here, which is a shame (and which maybe explains the high average price).
You are technically correct, but it was heavily implied but having a problem with this Bundle in particular when HB's usual is games & music. It could have been a bad assumption, but one that would have been easily cleared and one that I was not attempting to argue with so I feel I was intellectually in the clear in making such an assumption, as well.
As for the rest of your post: thank you for the information. The "European intellectual view" is very much a different way of thinking than I am used to encountering. Follow-up question: your post seems to indicate that the primary villain being fought is American pop culture so what of American books? It seems from this thread that they are given the same protection as European books so are they just not considered "evil" or is it that it's worth overreaching to include them if it means saving "real" culture or is there some other mindset at work?
Well, with books it is something different. Authors like Philip Roth or Begley are just too good to be dismissed like that. And the view is always heavily dependent on the medium, so a book is always worth more, has to be really trashy to be counted to be a part of the evil american influence - all the resentments are mixed with the technic fear common in those circles. Which is heavily noticeable when those people talk about pc-games or the internet, the root of societies downfall.
"First, books are a special kind of products, they do not obey the same rules as commercial products, they are culture. To explain a little, I am french and we have a law for the unique price of books: the price you will pay for a book will be the same on amazon, at fnac, in your local bookshop or in a supermarket."
You can pay as much or as little as you wish. They are not gouging you, how could it possibly be objectionable that they are not forcing you to spend more money?
The "Lang Law" [0][1] (Lang is in reference to Jack Lang who proposed it, as opposed to language) isn't meant to stop price gouging. It's to stop larger book sellers from being able to make special deals with publishers for bulk purchase discounts.
It stipulates that the publisher's book price on the back may only be discounted up to a further 5% by the retail store.
There are also other fixed book price laws [2] around the world.
I see. I suppose I understand that, even if I don't agree it is good.
However I can't wrap my mind around why he would simultaneously want Humble Bundle to raise their price to "protect" local bookstores and want them to license the books with permissive licenses that permit free redistribution.
Would he presumably be okay with the Humble Bundle if they were non-commercially distributing the books for only free with permissive licenses? Wouldn't that cause even more harm than merely allowing people to pay what they want?
Or does he want the privileges granted by permissive licenses, but doesn't want Humble Bundle to have the same?
I am french too, and books are not special kind of things different from games or me writing a report at work. They are all intellectual creations and this idea that somehow they should have a different status is an aberration. The Law should not be made for securing the rights of the merchants (in your case the bookshops) but for benefiting the greater good, i.e. widespread access to books for everyone. Having a fixed price goes against that, just like blocking the price of apartment rents, blocking the price of anything: it results in killing free markets and make things more expensive for everyone in the end.
The idea that culture is a different kind of business is born from Ancient Regime roots and it's about time these ideas die for good.
Hey ernesth. I can understand where you're coming from with the concern about the culture of books, speaking as a novel writer.
Speaking from that side of the keyboard, though, and as a hobbyist game developer, I see the exact same cultural experience with games.
When I witness people building their own Mass Effect Shepherd armor (or, heck, my own cosplay) standing alongside Harry Potter costumes at DragonCon, the dividing line disappears for me.
I would love to see this new bundle follow the same product rules that provided crazy exposure and crazy sales* for game developers.
First, books are a special kind of products, they do not obey the same rules as commercial products, they are culture. To explain a little, I am french and we have a law for the unique price of books: the price you will pay for a book will be the same on amazon, at fnac, in your local bookshop or in a supermarket.
Second, the word e-reader is nowhere to be found, ePub is also not prominently featured, contrary to iPad and Kindle. For a no-DRM ebook offer, I would have thought that the standard format for ebooks would be more important than the name of the most DRM-filled devices.
Third, Pirate Cinema, Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners are CC licensed (some NC-ND, some only NC), I would be happy to know the license of the books that are here sold (included the other ones) and in the case of Magic for Beginners if it includes the non CC licensed short stories. For the first humble indie bundle, there was a promise that some games would be opensourced, a similar promise would be great here.