Indie ebooks’ biggest obstacles are big publishers and big tech
Existing in my weird in-between status as a tech journalist and an author, I was intrigued by the announcement this week from Bookshop.org that it would now be selling ebooks.
I like Bookshop.org; while I haven’t worked with them directly, most of my books are available through them, and I’ve pointed customers to them in the past (as well as their partner Indiebound, who now uses Bookshop.org for sales). That’s because the heart of their mission is working with local independent bookstores; Bookshop.org essentially serves as a portal for online sales for those indie stores, many of whom don’t have the money or infrastructure to create their own online marketplaces. By banding together, the hope is, they can compete with the Goliaths like, well, Amazon.
Previously, Bookshop.org focused on physical books. If you wanted to buy the paperback of the latest Galactic Cold War novel1, for example, you could search for it on Bookshop.org, then choose your local bookstore, and the full 30% profit from the sale would go to the store. If you don’t choose a bookstore, Bookshop.org still contributes a (smaller) percentage to a pool divided amongst its indie bookshop partners.
Adding ebooks is a smart move in theory. After all, you can’t exactly walk into your local indie bookstore and ask for an ebook. So there are a lot of people who love reading and would no doubt love to support their local indie bookstore instead of a big chain, but just can’t or don’t buy physical books.
I’m rooting for Bookshop.org because of all this. Amazon continues to control the bulk of the book market—not a great position for authors, publishers, or readers—roughly in that order, though.
However, there are two major technological barriers that I think will hamper broad adoption of Bookshop.org’s ebook sales—and unfortunately, they’re both out of Bookshop’s control. One is due to the current status quo of the publishing industry when it comes to technology, and the other is…drumroll…Apple.
Putting “The Man” in “Digital Rights Management”
Ebooks are great: they take up no physical space, very little virtual space, and are extremely convenient. But, as with digital media since what seems like time immemorial, they are also saddled with a pesky limitation: Digital Rights Management.
DRM is borne out of, in short, fear. Fear from the companies that publish these works (and, to a lesser extent, the people who create them) that the nature of digital media being easily copyable and, thus, easily transferrable, will lead directly to widespread piracy.
Unfortunately, the use of DRM to remove copying and transferring also imposes a significant downside to ebooks compared to physical books. You can’t easily loan an ebook to a friend or family member.2 Heck, you often can’t even read a DRM-encumbered ebook you have legally purchased on anything other than devices or apps from the place where you bought it. Bought a book from Amazon but prefer reading on your Kobo? Oh well! It’s a bit like a bookstore saying that you can only read your book at home or in the store where you bought it. Want to read it on the plane? Or on vacation? Tough luck.
In regards to Bookshop.org, this means that your only option for reading ebooks purchased through the storefront is Bookshop’s own app, available on iOS and Android, or on the web. Some people will be fine with that, of course, but for a whole class of consumers who read largely or exclusively on e-readers—many of whom, I imagine, are among the most passionate buyers of ebooks—this setup is a non-starter. (Bookshop says it’s working with Kobo to enable support for its books “later this year,” and of course its Android app works on Android e-readers like those from Boox.)
There are two specific factors that make the insistence on DRM even more ridiculous. The first is that we already have a place where you can get books for free: they’re called public libraries. And you can even get ebooks from them these days that—though they do still have DRM—work with more than one company’s devices.3 Plus, you will not find an author of any repute who isn’t fully in favor of people having free access to their works via libraries.
The second and more ridiculous aspect is that DRM does not stop piracy. Never has. Not only can you likely find a cracked copy of pretty much any book you want somewhere on the Internet, but the tools to break that DRM are widely and easily available if you know where to look. A lot of people use these tools for totally reasonable purposes, like that aforementioned example of reading your Kindle books on your Kobo reader.
If all this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before. Two decades ago, the music industry was struggling with this exact same problem. There were loud and insistent calls for labels to drop DRM—ultimately from no less than then Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Jobs wasn’t totally acting out of altruism here: Apple had a decided interest in making it easier for people to get their music onto iPods, thus selling more iPods.
But he was also right. As I wrote at the time:
…unlocking all the DRM on music files doesn’t magically turn people into pirates any more than unlocking every house in a town turns the inhabitants into thieves. Simply because something is available via illicit means doesn’t mean that people will take advantage of it… Some people will steal music, yes, but those are mostly the same people already stealing music. As difficult as it is for businessmen to admit, you must account for some degree of morality, some sense of right and wrong. Money may be the be-all, end-all in the industry, but it’s not for consumers—we’re willing to exchange money for something that we want and value; that’s the whole point of being consumers.
This hasn’t changed, and I don’t think it ever will. By and large the people who buy books like books and, moreover, want to support the authors writing those books so that they can keep writing books for people to buy. It’s a virtuous circle.
And guess what! Some publishers already offer DRM-free ebooks. For example, Tor Books, an imprint of publishing giant Macmillan, has been selling DRM-free ebooks for more than a decade, and not only are they still in business, they’re one of the most respected and successful publishers in their part of the industry.
There are other approaches too: the publisher of my Galactic Cold War series, Angry Robot Books, while not one of the Big Five, does sell DRM-free ebooks and has, in the past, offered free ebooks to people who buy their physical book.4
I suggested not too long ago that Apple might actually be able to use this situation to its advantage, positioning itself as a counterweight to Amazon by putting itself forward as a DRM-free marketplace. But Cupertino seems to still feel burned from a decade-old antitrust action from the Department of Justice and doesn’t seem invested in meaningfully improving its ebook offerings, choosing instead to plod along the same old course.
And, ultimately, the decision rests with the publishers. A company the size of Apple might be able to exert significant leverage, but they can’t make the decision to drop DRM any more than Bookshop.org can. Still the point is, solutions exist, if these big companies were courageous enough to implement them. But in the words of Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
30 percent for 30 percent
The second impediment to Bookshop.org’s plan can be laid directly at the feet of Apple and Google. Read Bookshop’s FAQ on ebooks and you’ll find this wholly unsurprising tidbit:
Why can’t I buy ebooks in the app?
Both Apple and Google require app developers who use in-app purchasing to pay around 30% of their earnings from those purchases in fees. We want that money to be used to support local bookstores instead, so this extra step is required.
🎶Hello, 30% cut, our old “friend.”🎶
Yeah, it’s 2025 and though you can read an ebook on your iPhone or iPad you still can’t buy one without using the web and then jumping through some hoops.
Look, plenty has been written about Apple’s 30% cut, and you don’t need me to rehash it all. But it does feel particularly galling in this circumstance where Apple is not only taking profit that would go to independent bookstores, hardly businesses that are generally flush with cash, but also ones that—and I cannot stress this enough—are, by selling ebooks, competing directly with Apple.5
A company like Bookshop.org has only a few options: mark up all their prices even further in order to make sure that those profits still help benefit the small businesses they intend to; keep their prices competitive, and thus make significantly less profit, potentially risking their own business; or, as they’ve decided to do, not sell books via their apps. A move that, in the end, hurts users of Apple’s own platform by making this whole process harder than it needs to be.
I’ve long sided with developers upset about giving 30 percent—or even 15 percent—of their proceeds to Apple, but Apple has least attempted to justify that by saying that they provide the tools and the platform for those people to build their apps. The involvement Apple has with independent bookstores and authors of these books is tertiary at best.
Apple’s business is, of course, currently in the process of being upended, at least in Europe, and while those developments may or may not make their way to the U.S., I feel convinced that it’s time for the company to reconsider their model when it comes to the vast majority of sales via its platform. It’s one thing to hash it out with behemoths like Spotify, Netflix, or Amazon; it’s quite another to hold all these small developers, independent bookstores, and authors hostage by applying this usurious cut across the board.
Yeah, Apple is a business at the end of the day, and it wants to squeeze as much money as possible out of its work. But what Steve Jobs understood—and, up until recently, what I would have said Tim Cook understands—is that sometimes the bottom line isn’t about just how much money you can rake in; it’s that sometimes there is a tangible benefit to putting the customer before yourself. Getting to the top of the pile may be the end goal of capitalism, but sometimes you have to stop and see who you’re trampling on to get there.
I keep coming back to this line from the classic Christmas movie—and of my all-time favorites—Miracle on 34th Street. As Macy’s owner R.H. Macy (Harry Antrim) declares when he finds out about the store’s Santa Claus sending parents to other retail establishments to find the toys their kids want:
We’ll be known as the helpful store, the friendly store, the store with a heart, the store that places public service ahead of profits. And, consequently, we’ll make more profits than ever before.
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Mr. Macy.
- Your support is much appreciated. 😁 ↩
- There are exceptions, of course. Amazon and Apple both have some degree of purchase sharing with other people in your household, but it’s not as if you can put every single person you ever want to lend a book to in your household. ↩
- That said, the way in which the industry is set up to license ebooks to libraries is, frankly, kind of broken. But that’s another post for another time. ↩
- I’m not sure if that initiative is ongoing, alas, but it’s always worth reaching out to them if that’s the situation you find yourself in. ↩
- Hm. If only there were some kind of word for this kind of behavior. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the sci-fi spy thriller The Armageddon Protocol, is out now.]
If you appreciate articles like this one, support us by becoming a Six Colors subscriber. Subscribers get access to an exclusive podcast, members-only stories, and a special community.