As curmudgeonly as I might seem to be when it comes to books and reading, I might as well let you in on a little secret: I actually love books. Even hardcovers, although I find their floppier counterparts more convenient to carry around and read. Hardcovers never accompany me on public transit or lengthy travels, because of this.
I received a copy of Neal Stephenson’s Anathem for Christmas this year, and so far it’s pretty good. Of course, being a rather large hardcover, I can only read it under ideal conditions; that is, at my house, in my chair. But I do have an old Palmpilot that I rescued from the trash that runs MobiPocket, so I decided to check out the digital edition of the book. Which runs for about $19.99. And that’s fine, because the hardcover was nearly thirty bucks, so if you were getting the e-book as an alternative. but, what if you’ve already paid for the hardcover? What if you want both?
It would be nice (though perhaps not practical) if buying a hardcover allowed one to download the e-edition for free. Of course, I know there are lots of reasons not to offer such a thing – concerns about piracy, technical feasibility, and the desperate hope that a business model will be developed that reliably results in customers who end up buying the same thing twice – but I couldn’t help day-dreaming about it, a little bit.
My main focus was imaging how such a system would work from a technical standpoint. You’d only want people who’ve already purchased the physical copy of a book to be able to download the e-version for no additional fee, after all. So how would you pull that off?
Well, a lot of technical books come with CD’s that contain an e-book version. You could do the same with books from other markets, too. But this is not ideal: the disc packaging tends to destroy the aesthetic appeal of the book; anyone with a pocket-knife and unmitigated gall could remove the disc without buying the book first.
Another option would be to include a unique code or password of some sort in the book that the customer could use to download the e-edition from a website. This would make it even easier to steal, just open the book and whip out a pen and paper (or camera-phone). But there is a model that might work pretty well for bundling e-books and physical books: I suggest looking toward pre-paid wireless.
When you buy a cellphone top-up (or recharge, or what have you) card, the transaction activates the card for use. If someone simply stole the card, they wouldn’t be able to get it to work. The code on the card would never be activated. It’s possible for someone to take the code off of a card without removing it from the store, but most cards use that silver stuff you find on scratch-off tickets to obscure the number. If you pick up a card at a store, and the silver stuff’s been rubbed off, you wouldn’t buy that card – because it means that someone’s probably got that code, already, and are just waiting for some one to activate it by paying for the card.
Theoretically, then, it should be possible to do the same thing with books. Publishers could affix a little silver scratch-off tag to the inside back cover (or wherever); when a customer purchases the book, the unique code for that book would be activated; then the customer could go online, input the code, and download the ebook version. If you pick up a book that’s scratched off already, you know not to buy it (or, maybe you do buy it, if you don’t care about the ebook version).
It’s fun to dream, of course, but I know this kind of thing may not happen for a while. The expense of setting up such system would be prohibitive, and the only real benefit would be for the very small group of users who read both ebooks and physical editions; would the promise of a free ebook-with-purchase entice the average reader to buy a book they might not have otherwise bought? Lot’s of good ideas (not that this is one) have to be set aside for the fact that they just won’t pay off. The publishing industry is in enough trouble as it is, I’m sure they don’t want to start some highly experimental, low-payoff project right now.
Still. it’s kind of an obvious idea, isn’t it? I’m certain that somebody’s come up with a plan like this before, and maybe they’ve actually implemented it somewhere. I’ll keep looking, just in case. It would be pretty neat.
