It took a while, but Friday afternoon I finally got an invite to use Google’s App Inventor program. What is App Inventor? It’s Google’s attempt to simplify building apps for Android devices. Apps are built using a drag and drop interface, and reflected instantly on a connected Android device.

I was skeptical about the system’s ability to produce apps of any real functionality, but I was happy to be proven mostly wrong. Building a well-structured UI is admittedly almost impossible, with only basic layout and design tools available. But the app inventor does provide easy access to surprisingly complex elements of the Android functionality. The GPS, barcode scanner, camera, speech recognition, and accelerometer are among the tools easily usable via drag and drop. After placing buttons and labels to design the UI, a separate drag and drop interface is used to establish how those elements interact with each other. A series of blocks click into each other, with a bit of typing to provide some details.

It’s a nice system, and my skepticism about App Inventor’s potential beyond the toy level was quickly overcome. I ran through the first tutorial app (touch the picture of a cat and it meows! This didn’t help my skepticism…) in a few minutes. Less than an hour later I’d built an app to search the UNC catalog via an ISBN barcode scan. It relies heavily on our existing catalog webapp to do the actual search, but still! I mastered using the barcode scanner for apps in less than an hour. My previous attempt at Android programming (in Java, before App Inventor existed) took me four hours to build an app that simply displays an image. And that simple task drew on every single bit of programming know-how I could dredge up from my undergrad days.

The barrier to entry for using App Inventor is almost absurdly low. My slight background in programming did help, and I would have taken a bit longer if I wasn’t familiar with things like variables and function returns. But the point of App Inventor is that I wasn’t required to know those things in advance. I could have picked it up in a little extra time. This kind of setup seems perfect for intro-level computer science courses, teaching basic programming concepts while retaining the satisfaction of seeing a fully functional app at the end. Google definitely realizes this and is targeting educators as potential users.

App Inventor is clearly still a beta product, with some notable limitations. Apps built in App Inventor can’t be distributed in the Android Market. The install files need to be manually distributed to phones. There’s also no resulting Java source code to tweak for more advanced purposes. And disappointingly, using APIs beyond a prescribed few (Twitter, Amazon, etc) involves more complicated Python coding. There’s also some strange odds and ends, like not being able to change the app’s icon.

I’m not under any illusions that App Inventor apps will someday replace Java-coded apps. But it got me excited about programming in a way I haven’t been in years. That’s gotta count for something.

If you’d like to try the barcode scanner app I built and see what App Inventor is capable of, here’s the installable apk file: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/905114/UNC_Catalog.apk

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I recently finished reading Cory Doctorow’s latest novel, For The Win. I’m not crazy about the book itself (a topic for another time), but the reading experience was different, more fluid, and ultimately better than what I’m used to.

Thanks to publisher Tor’s generosity at ALA 2010 last month I have a copy of the book in hardcover. And thanks to Doctorow’s business model of giving away free ebook versions of his works I had the text in e format too. This is the first time I’ve read a book while having access to both e and print versions at the same time.

As much as I enjoy my Sony Reader, a print book is still my personal ideal for most of the novel reading I do. I use the Sony primarily for convenience, like when I don’t want to carry a large hardcover on the bus. But if I’m sitting on the couch I still prefer a standard print book experience. With access to both print and e versions I was able to jump back and forth between the two, using whichever provided a superior experience at the moment.

And actually I had 3 options – Hardcover, Sony Reader, and the Aldiko ebook reader app on my phone. (Doctorow provides his ebooks in a variety of DRM-free formats compatible with a large number of devices.) I read the hardcover on the couch, the Sony on the bus, and a few pages here and there on the phone whenever I had some waiting in line time. It was convenient, easy, and I got through the book much faster than I would have otherwise.

But now I’m spoiled! Doctorow’s ebook give-away model is pretty unique, not many other authors do it. I’m not going to buy a book in both print and e, and library ebook options are pretty anemic. The only way this would happen again is if I pull titles from Project Gutenberg. But I’m not much of a classics reader, and Gutenberg doesn’t have a lot from my to-read list.

While I don’t think it’ll ever happen, I’d love for a purchase of a print copy to come with a free ebook counterpart. I’d even pay a little extra for the option, and the bonus to researchers of having a searchable text to supplement the print could be a considerable advantage.

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I’ve had my Motorola Droid long enough now to feel like I’ve always owned one. Those dark pre-smartphone days of last October seem hazy as they retreat into the past. I listed my favorite Android apps in my early days of ownership, but that list has changed a bit over time. And while I have a lot of apps installed, not all of them get used every day. Here’s the dozen or so android apps I currently use most often:

Setting Profiles
This is magic. Based on criteria like my location, presence of a wifi access point or time of day, Setting Profiles changes settings on my phone. For example: When my phone sees the wifi signal at work it turns the ringer off automatically. When I plug it into the car dock Bluetooth turns on. It’s a bit complicated to set up, but works perfectly. $3.95

CardioTrainer
Tracks my exercise via GPS. I use it to chart my times when I ride my bike home from work. I even used it to track a bike tour we took in Paris, and had a great time examining the route on a map afterward. Google’s My Tracks app performs a similar function, but focuses on just collecting raw data. CardioTrainer is tweaked specifically toward fitness tasks and provides some low-level analysis. Free.

Drop7
I don’t play nearly as many games on the Droid as I did on my iPod Touch. Why that might be is a topic for another time. But when Drop7, my favorite iPod Touch game, launched an Android version I bought it sight unseen. $2.99

Foursquare & Gowalla
I like Gowalla better than Foursquare, but find myself checking in places with both for different reasons. Gowalla is more fun, but Foursquare has those tantalizing freebie specials. Gowalla’s Android app is also much prettier than the Foursquare counterpart. Free

Listen
Google’s excellent podcast client hasn’t changed much lately, but still works very well. Integration with Google Reader is handy. Free

Mototorch LED
This home screen widget turns the phone’s camera flash on for use as a flashlight. Comes in handy more often than you’d expect. Free

picplz
Foursquare + twitter + camera = picplz. This app takes a picture, then checks you in at a foursquare venue. I have an archive of pictures associated with the actual places I took them – both in GPS and foursquare venue form. The picture can also be posted to twitter. It’s like twitpic, but with better geodata. Free

PRO Paint Camera
The stock Android 2.1 camera app is awful. Focus and flash options are hidden away and hard to get to. Thankfully there’s Pro Paint Camera with a much better UI. I replaced the stock camera app and never looked back. Free

Quick Settings
Does what it says. Hold down the Droid’s search button and a menu of various options pops up. Volume, brightness, wifi, bluetooth, etc. Quick Settings puts all the toggles in one place. Free

RockPlayer
If you’ve ever wanted to play a video file that’s in a format the Droid doesn’t natively support, RockPlayer does the job. Still in Beta, not yet available in the Android Market. Free (beta)

Touchdown
Android 2.1′s built in Exchange support is pretty useless – I couldn’t get it to see any folders other than my Inbox, Sent, and Trash. 3rd party to the rescue! (sensing a theme yet?) Touchdown does a much better job, though at a fairly steep price. The UI could use some work, but functionality is rock solid. Now that we’re an Exchange shop at work this is completely indispensable for me. $30

Twidroyd / Twitter (official)
I go back and forth on which of these two Twitter clients I like better. Twitter’s official client has an amazing UI and integrates twitter messaging into the phone’s contacts list, but Twidroyd has some extra functionality like the LED alert for new replies that I’ve come to rely on. I keep both installed and use whichever matches my needs at the moment. Free

Google Voice
Verizon wants to charge me $3 per month for visual voicemail access. Google Voice gives it to me for free. That’s a no-brainer. I don’t use the SMS or calling features, but might switch to them someday. Free

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After we got married (!) last month Melissa and I spent 10 days in Europe on our honeymoon. London, Paris, and Rome! It was an amazing trip, especially since neither of us had been to Europe at all before. But this post isn’t going to be our amazing trip’s slideshow. On the more technical side of things, I was fascinated at the idea of using our smartphones (we both have a Motorola Droid on Verizon) in Europe.

A little background: not all US cell phones work in Europe. I’ll avoid the nitpicky details and just say that in general AT&T or T-Mobile phones will work in Europe, but Verizon and other carriers won’t. While we could still open and use apps on our phones, anything that required a cell network connection would be dead.

This distressed my inner techie – I’ve become hopelessly addicted to navigating with my phone’s google maps, and google maps pulls the maps over a cell connection. I really wanted to use it to find our way around. The one thing that still worked on the Droid in Europe is the GPS – it can get your position in latitude/longitude. But with no data connection It has no maps to plot that point on! All that Google Maps would show me is a blue dot on a grey background. Not exactly handy for finding my way.

But with a little foresight and pre-planning, I set up my Droid to cache the maps locally before we left for Europe. This process was a bit of a pain, because it’s not well documented anywhere that I could find. Here’s a tutorial: (more…)

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I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking (and writing) about eBooks, usually taking a pretty negative slant toward existing eBook publishers and vendors. DRM, distribution models, even publication timelines – much of it is a huge mess.

But I don’t want to seem too negative – I still think eBooks as a concept hold massive promise. It’s just many of the current implementations that’re flawed. So who’s doing it right? Here’s a handful of companies and products which I think are on the right track:

1. SpringerLink
Much of my thinking centers on the consumer publishing eBook panopoly – the Kindles, Nooks, and similar devices of the world. But there’s of course an academic side to things too. I have major beefs with a lot of the vendors and publishers who provide eBook packages to universities & colleges. Most of these are a topic for another post. But one thing I want to cover here: Many of them commit one of my pet peeve sins by making the books non-downloadable. They can’t be used on any kind of personal eReader device, or even viewed on a PC without an internet connection. But the SpringerLink collection that we subscribe to at UNC provides simple, clean, downloadable PDFs. There’s no password protection on the files, no DRM, no clunky web client we’re forced to use. They trust users to download a chapter and use it responsibly. As a result they’re the first eBook collection I search and show to students.

Sure, I wish SpringerLink had a more flexible format than PDF, but this is a step in the right direction. While other vendors like eBrary are rushing to finish off what will no doubt be limiting device-specific apps for their content, Springer lets readers choose how to consume their text.

2. Fictionwise
Fictionwise.com isn’t perfect, but they’re still my favorite eBook retailer. They sell a large portion of their titles DRM-free, which means they can be read on virtually any device or computer in perpetuity. There’s no license keys to maintain, no chance of a distributor retroactively taking back a sale. They also provide an archive of my purchases – I first bought a title from them in 2003, and I can re-download that book as much as I want today. I can even still get to the titles I purchased which they no longer sell. I wish their catalog of non-DRMed books would grow, especially among current bestsellers, but Fictionwise is still the only place I buy my eBooks from today.

(One caveat – Barnes & Noble bought Fictionwise last year. I hope B&N lets FW keep its independence.)

3. Calibre
eBook file formats are far from standardized. There’s .epub, .lrf, .html, .mobi, .pdf… the alphabet soup goes on forever. And of course no one device or program supports them all. The situation is a head-scratcher, and that confusion costs consumers & students time and money. Once upon a time it was a nightmare trying to convert from one format to another. Then along came Calibre.

Think of it like itunes for eBooks. It converts from almost any format to any other format, provides sophisticated yet user-friendly metadata management, and even syncs files with eReader devices. As a bonus, it’s open source & free to download!
Calibre single-handedly increased my ability to read eBooks by roughly 100% (my very scientific measurement, yes), and decreased my frustration even more. It doesn’t work with files locked down via DRM, but that’s a fault of vendors and not Calibre.

4. Comics by Comixology
Technically this is about comics, not simple text, but either way it’s still eBooks of a different sort. Comics by Comixology (henceforth referred to as simply ‘Comixology’) is an iPhone app which sells downloadable comic books. Many of them are adapted from print versions, but optimized very well for the iPhone & iPod Touch’s smaller screen. Panels zoom in and out and flow together. And in a first for digital comics, Comixology even sells issues from many major print publishers like Marvel and Image.

The comics only function on the iDevices, of course, which is something that would usually bug me. But the user experience is so good that I’m willing to overlook it for now. And then comes what I like best about Comixology – the price. Most issues are either $.99 or $1.99, which frankly is what a comic book should cost in any form. Many print comics now cost $3.99, and then after that ripoff I have to find somewhere to store them. As a result, my comic buying in the last couple years has dropped way off.

So $.99 for something I don’t have to find storage space for is a very attractive alternative to me. Example: I recently wanted to read the newest Atomic Robo collection. Amazon charges $12.89 for the print version, down from an $18.95 list price. I picked up the whole thing on Comixology for $4.95, and had a great digital reading experience without taking up space on my living room shelves. Cost effectiveness trumps a lot for me. Many times publishers charge resellers like Amazon the same wholesale price for both print copies and eBooks. This baffles me to no end. Comixology and their content providers recognize how much cheaper digital distribution is, and adjusted their prices accordingly.

I consume comics differently than I consume books. Comics by Comixology (despite their awkward name) is smart enough to realize that I’m not alone in this, and found a way to make the restrictions I usually foam at the mouth over become a palatable choice.

(note: Comixology has multiple apps for the iPhone, and I’m talking about the one specifically called ‘Comics by Comixology’ here.)

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I was googling around for something work-related this afternoon, and noticed some results it was finding on Flickr. After a quick double take, I realized it was finding a few photos from my Flickr contacts. Weird coincidence, right? That was my first thought. Then I looked closer, and noticed that Google is running a new beta feature called ‘social circle’: http://www.google.com/s2/search/social

(OK, maybe it’s not so new – the Google Blog mentioned the feature’s launch last October. But it’s new to me!)

Essentially, Google knows who my friends are and now searches each friend’s personal web of content. The idea, I guess, is that results from my friends will be more relevant.

But then I thought to myself “Hey self, Google doesn’t own Flickr, Yahoo does! How do they know who my Flickr contacts are?”

After poking around, as best I can figure out their data mining goes something like this:

1. I have a google profile page (http://www.google.com/profiles/Chad.Haefele)

2. On that page, I have a link to my twitter account.

3. Google pulls in my twitter contact list, presumably via the Twitter API.

4. Google checks to see if any if anybody else with a google profile page listed a twitter account that matches someone I follow on twitter.

5. If it finds a match, Google takes a closer look at the matched person’s Google Profile page. Other sources from that person’s profile are added to my social circle search results. If they happened to list a Flickr account, photos from it show up in my search results whether or not I’m actually connected with them on Flickr.

At first I found this vaguely creepy, complete with brief paranoid visions of Google’s slimy tentacles reaching out across the web. But the more I think about it, the more I like it. Every bit of this data comes from a source that the creator specifically allowed to be public. It might be an order of thought removed from what most people consider when posting a link, but I think it’s still kosher. A conscious decision to make this info public was necessary. And I love seeing what simple things like APIs and RSS feeds can mash together.

Most importantly being able to search my social stuff like that in one place is extremely handy. More and more I find myself searching my own twitter contacts’ streams or my flickr contacts’ photos for things I need and opinions I trust or that one link I know I saw somewhere weeks ago and now want to go back to. By adding these search results to my standard daily googling, I get the same high utility from those results even if I wouldn’t have thought to search my social stream directly.

Every so often it hits me all over again: We live in a pretty amazing world. In a lot of ways, the internet still seems like magic to me.

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Nominees:

• Lego Rock Band
• Beatles Rock Band
• Halo 3: ODST
• Uncharted 2

This award is usually my most difficult to assign. Recent years have been filled with game after game of increasing quality & depth. 2009 was no exception.

Lego Rock Band tweaked the now-familiar Rock Band formula into something with a slightly more kid-friendly twist. But, here’s my secret: I actually like it better than the adult-focused Rock Band 2. Lego Rock Band has a sense of humor that RB2 was mostly lacking, and also provides more variation in career mode challenges. Throw in a track list including some of my favorite cheesy rock songs of all time (Ghostbusters and The Final Countdown!) and I had no choice but to buy a copy.

Beatles Rock Band went a different route than previous RB games – it zeroed in one band in incredible detail. From the songs themselves to small details like menu styles and sound effects, everything about this title screams Beatles. It’s also the first RB game to feature 3 part vocal harmonies. I can’t sing well enough to truly appreciate this feature, but witnessing 3 of my friends belt out the harmonies in perfect sync is a great enhancement to the RB experience – I hope Harmonix builds this into all future RB games. I’ve never been a dedicated Beatles fan before, but thanks to this game I’ve discovered a number of their songs that I highly enjoy.

Halo 3: ODST doesn’t really stand on its own. The story is very much a side tale, fitting into a context you can only really grok by playing the other franchise titles. But viewed as a piece of that franchise, the game takes on a new light. By being freed from Master Chief’s main narrative, the story of ODST is free to take some risks – I particularly enjoyed how the ‘bonus’ audio files have a payoff in the central storyline if you gather every one. And the main campaign creates a great sense of loneliness, of being outmanned and outgunned, in a way few other games do. Multiplayers new Firefight mode is a welcome addition to the Halo pantheon, since playing against bots is an option I’ve wanted ever since the original Halo 1.

As excellent as all three of these games are (any one is worth your money), honestly they were never really contenders for the award. Uncharted 2 came along in October and I knew almost instantly it would be my game of the year. The best way I can describe Uncharted 2 is to say it’s like playing an amazing summer adventure blockbuster movie. Sure, the narrative is on rails, but with rails this amazing I don’t really mind so much! Developers Naughty Dog have achieved new heights with voice acting and character animations that I’ve never seen any other game come close to. I believed that Nathan Drake and his compatriots were real people with real motivations and hopes. I’ve never before seen a video game character’s face animated so well that a facial expression alone made me laugh or grow concerned, but UC2 did both repeatedly. Sequences that in any other game would be mere cinematics are fully interactive are instead completely playable here, lending a deeper sense of player involvement in what’s happening on screen.

Plus, they got rid of the annoying zombie enemies that dragged down so much of UC1 for me. UC1 was great, but UC2 is near perfect. I can’t wait to see what they iterate onto with the inevitable UC3.

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This’ll be a short one, since like usual I didn’t listen to a lot of brand new complete albums this year. More and more I find myself buying singles or a few tracks instead of the whole set, and in a lot of ways this category is becoming irrelevant. This is likely to be the last time I give an award. Here’s three albums I really liked in 2009 – I listened to so few that the choices are almost by default, though I did genuinely enjoy them all:

• The Swell Season – Strict Joy
• Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown
• The Protomen – Act II: The Father of Death

Melissa introduced me to the more extensive catalog of the Swell Season, since I only knew the music that band members had done for the Oscar-winning musical ‘Once’. We even went and saw them live in DC this year. Their sound is often mellow, with occasional more intense songs thrown into the mix. Strict Joy is an album I love to listen to in the background while I get things done.

Green Day’s latest is a solid rock album – I like it, but honestly have trouble finding much specifically to say. I like listening to this one while driving around.

The Protomen are a fairly unique band. Their music is more Rock Opera than anything else, structured around telling a story based on the old Mega Man NES games. Yes, you read that right. But the opera is told without a single bit of irony or winking at the audience – they take it very seriously. The result is surreal, but if you can get over the barrier to entry of the odd subject matter and let the story wash over you, Act II reveals deep rewards. The Protomen have cleaned up their sound in a major way since Act I, and the details of the meticulously crafted tracks are easier to detect as a result. Act II is also a real album in a way that a lot of other CDs aren’t. The tracks aren’t just a collection of singles – they foreshadow and repeat themes in their music as the story calls for it, linking everything together. It’s near impossible to listen to just one track. Musical styles on the album range from an almost classical guitar sound to synth-heavy tracks that’d fit right into the Blade Runner soundtrack. But each stylistic shift again plays into the changing story elements, and it all makes perfect sense.

Yes, I fully admit that my musical tastes have very often been called ‘odd’ (among other less generous terms!). But that said, I love Act II. I’ve listened to it more than almost any other CD I own (and please do buy the CD, the included booklet fleshes out the story in a way the MP3s alone can’t), and I hope to see The Protomen perform it live someday. Congratulations Protomen, you win album of the year!

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I read about 25 fiction novels in 2009, which is pretty average for me. I try to limit my nominations for ‘best of’ awards to books that were actually published for the first time in 2009, which narrows the pool somewhat. Out of what’s left, here’s the short list of my favorites:

• Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest
• Leviathan, by Scott Westerfield
• This is Not a Game, by Walter Jon Williams

Obviously, my tastes tend pretty heavily toward the Sci-Fi and technothriller end of the spectrum. Boneshaker is a very good Steampunk story set in an alternate 19th century Seattle. The action is thrilling, and characters are well-crafted and likeable. There’s zombies, destruction, mad science, and zeppelin chases. If you like those things, you’ll like this book. That’s about all I can say.

Leviathan is another alternate history tale, this time giving us a new version of World War I. Mechanized powers of central and eastern europe face off against the ‘Darwinist’ allies, who evolved their technology biologically. I wrote a lot more about it on Goodreads, so I’ll just link you there: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/75825802
Summary: I like it a lot.

This is Not a Game latched onto my ARG-playing experience, and twisted it into a thriller novel. Williams creates fascinating characters and extrapolates some ARG trends to slightly insane heights. The opening portion of the novel is self-contained and centered on a character’s escape from an economically collapsing Indonesia. This is the strongest section of the story, and in some ways I wish the book had ended there – it’d be my (short) book of the year if it did. The adventure uses near-future technology in mostly realistic ways, and doesn’t push suspension of disbelief. The later portions push more than a bit into ridiculousness territory, and the overall narrative suffers as a result.

Boneshaker was very very good, but in some ways I’m starting to feel over the whole zombie/steampunk/etc craze. There’s too much of it out there too fast. This is Not a Game started out excellent, then dropped off. But Leviathan stayed at excellent the entire way through. So it eeks out the competition as my favorite book of the year! It may be theoretically a young adult novel, but it doesn’t talk down to that age group at all – adults will enjoy it just as much as younger folk. Again, check out my Goodreads review for more detailed thoughts.

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This Wall Street Journal article touched many nerves for me: Publishers hold back e-books.

So hold on, I’m going to get a bit ranty and this’ll probably be a long post

Summary: Two major publishers have decided that they’re going to hold back e-book versions of their titles for months after the hardback release.

From the article, here’s their justification:

“The right place for the e-book is after the hardcover but before the paperback,” said Carolyn Reidy, CEO of Simon & Schuster, which is owned by CBS Corp. “We believe some people will be disappointed. But with new [electronic] readers coming and sales booming, we need to do this now, before the installed base of e-book reading devices gets to a size where doing it would be impossible.”

A much better (and more profitable) course of action would be to simply embrace the e-book world and figure out how to adapt to this new ecosystem. Change is coming, and burying their heads in the sand isn’t how publishers will survive.

Some publishers try to make the argument that people have had the choice to buy a hardback immediately or wait for the cheap paperback for decades. And surely placing an e-book release between those two options just extends this model, right? They have this nonsensical vision that people with e-book readers will run out and buy hardbacks instead when their e-books are taken away. This could not be more wrong. Here’s what’s going to happen instead:

Meet Consumer Bob. Consumer Bob invested a lot of money in a Kindle. He obviously bought the device because he wants to read books on it, right? So Bob hears about a new book on TV and thinks he’d like to read it. Bob can’t find that book for his Kindle. At this point, Bob will do one of two things:

A)If Bob’s tech-savvy he’ll pirate the e-book he wants. Publisher gets no money.
B)If Bob isn’t tech-savvy he’ll buy another e-book to read, and probably forget the first book ever existed. Possibly a different publisher gets money.

Bob spent $250+ on his Kindle, and you better believe he wants to get use out of it. After plunking down that chunk of change, buying a paper book can feel a bit like wasting money. As a Sony Reader owner, I feel this sometimes myself. But Bob is also used to instant gratification and instant delivery of e-books, and doesn’t want to wait for the print version to arrive by mail or a trip to the store. Bob likely isn’t going to change his habits.

But let’s go back and look at part of that article quote again:

“…we need to do this now, before the installed base of e-book reading devices gets to a size where doing it would be impossible.”

What? Consumers are finding something new they want, and your response is to deny it to them? How does that make any kind of business sense? With that attitude you deserve to hemorrhage money.

Another article quote:

“Even as the retail price of many new hardcover novels creeps above $27, Amazon and Barnes & Noble boast many new best sellers for only $9.99 in the e-book format.

Increasingly, publishers have come to fear that the bargain prices will lead consumers to conclude that books are worth only $10, or less, upsetting the pricing model that has survived for decades.”

You know what? They’re right. A DRM-locked e-book simply isn’t worth $27. It’s barely even worth $10. I’m not going to pay the same amount for an e-book that a paper copy would cost me, when I can actually do LESS with that e-copy than the print: I can’t loan it, resell it, or donate it. So I will never ever pay full price, or near full price, for a DRM-locked e-book. Ever. And anybody who does hasn’t thought things through. I’d only consider buying DRM books with a massive (something like 75% or more) discount over the print version, unless the e-version has some other equally massive advantage.

But publishers even shoot themselves in the foot when they stumble on an e-gold mine. Stephen King’s new book, Under The Dome, is over 1000 pages. I don’t want to lug that back-breaking monster around with me, especially on the bus. I want to have it on my phone or e-book reader. This is a case where an e-book has clear convenience advantages over a print version, maybe even enough to overlook DRM issues. I was planning on buying it.

But King’s publisher, Scribner, has decided to shoot the e-book in the head. And not once, but twice. First the e-version won’t be available until 12/24, a full six weeks after the print version was released. Second, they’re charging wholesale prices for the e-book to distributors (like Amazon and B&N) of $35.

My moral outrage from their pricing issues aside (there’s no way they’ll ever convince me that it costs the same to print and ship an e-book as a print book), I REALLY don’t want the massive print version. No matter how discounted it is. So I’m left with just one option to acquire the book legally: Buy Under The Dome as an e-book on 12/24. This is the exact same end result as if the book was released the same day as the print version, 11/10. All Scribner has done is provided me with 6 weeks to forget that I want the book. 6 weeks to find something else to read, or maybe run across negative reviews and decide I don’t want the book after all. A thousand things could make me change my mind about buying the book. Forcing me to wait gains them nothing, and only introduces unnecessary risks into the question of whether or not they’ll get money from me.

And meanwhile I hate to break it to them, but despite Scribner’s best efforts Under The Dome is available as an eBook right now. It’s been pirated, of course. A quick search of the web shows a pirated version, likely scanned in by a large cooperative group, freely available all over the web (and with no DRM!). So Scribner has created an ecosystem where piracy is literally the only option for potential customers who would otherwise line up to give them money, AND that piracy delivers what’s actually a superior product with no DRM. King is a high profile writer with die-hard fans who want his book immediately, not six weeks from now. What are they going to do?

The sad thing is that Scribner will likely use this piracy situation as supposed evidence of how the e-book system doesn’t work and is killing the publishing industry. And they’ll never even see through their own fear, uncertainty, and doubt to realize that the root causes live in their own backyard.

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