From Pages to Pixels: The Ownership Debate in Digital Books

Matt: Welcome back to Write Out Loud, the podcast where stories matter, creativity reigns in terms of service, well might just betray us. I'm Matt here, as always, with the endlessly insightful irresistibly effervescent. Christina.

Christina: Yay.

Matt: Yes, and today we're gonna dive into something that hits every reader right in the bookshelf, the truth about eBooks and whether we actually own the stories we buy.

That's right. You drop 10 bucks on a digital book, you download it to your device, and you think it's yours forever. But what if it's not? What if your library could just disappear one day without, just without any thought because of a licensing clause that you never read, or because Amazon changed its mind?

Well, we're gonna get into that here and more, but Christina, why don't you tell us a about our guest that we have with us this week?

Christina: today we have Kelly Peterson, and she and I worked at Borders together and worked, you know, even after Borders. We were working on stuff together with company. She worked with my own business and things like that. She was the very last person at Borders and switched off the website before she moved on.

She is absolutely the I go to and especially with ebook stuff. But Kelly, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Kelly: Yeah, so I, I was the ebook manager at Borders, and at the end I was running the website. I wasn't the last person. There were lawyers that were there way past me, but they had to do a lot of money settlement that I was not involved with, but.

Christina: off the

Kelly: But yeah, but I did turn off the website for sure, and I went from there to a digital distribution company because it, it was eBooks and was that company, inscribed Digital was acquired by IPG Independent Publishers Group, and I worked there for 12 years, I think, altogether between those two. And I worked with about 600 publishers. And I've been on the board of, I was one of the founders and been on the board of Bay area of Women in publishing. Which reps for women and non-binary folk in publishing to try and help people get promoted since women are underrepresented in the, in the management and leadership in publishing. and I was on the board of the Independent book Publishers Pub Association. I served four years that you can do so.

Christina: Yes. And there again illustrates why I say you are my go-to person for that. . We have invited you here to talk specifically, about this issue of you know, it's connected to the, the, the way that Amazon is now calling it. What, licensing the book to you, Kelly. Explain

Kelly: Yeah.

Christina: about that.

Kelly: So let me start by why this happens. Okay. So there is a new statement that you see when you buy a Kindle book that says it's right underneath the Buy Now with one click. It'll say By placing an order, you're purchasing a content license and agreeing to Kindle's stores terms of use. those terms of use say that Kindle that, that Amazon can remove a book that's problematic. If they need to, that you're agreeing that this is a license and not ownership, some basic things were like that. Then it's got a lot of legalese around it about why that's the case.

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: but it basically is because they are making a claim that this is. Like software there is a really justifiable reason for that.

And that is because that is the same argument that they made that publishers made when they went agency in the first place. So when Penguin and McMillan and everyone went agency to, when Apple Books became a thing

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: they wanted to set a price that is the same across all retailers. It was, they did it because they were basically saying that when you buy a digital product, it is like software.

As the publisher, they own the content, they give a file to the retailers. But they're not the, the retailer isn't paying for that file. They just hold that file and then they're passing it along to the customer as an agent for that customer and they're holding the money and then paying the owner of the file, which is the publisher.

Right. So the copyright holder. And that's the same thing that Microsoft does when they sell you Microsoft 365. They're going, you can buy Microsoft 365 from them, or you can buy it from Best Buy. But the money always goes back to Microsoft 365. It goes back to Microsoft, right? So

Christina: Yeah.

Kelly: is, they, in that case, the retailers operating as an agent for the customer.

They're saying, we have the customer and we're gonna give you that customer and allow them to buy your book through us, not from us, but through us. And. Even though there was a lawsuit about agency, turning agency, it had nothing to do with whether or not that was valid, that was all acceptable. That was something the court found perfectly acceptable.

What the court didn't like with agency is that they thought that the publishers all colluded and they talked to each other before they switched to agency.

Christina: Right.

Kelly: Now it, I, I still. I still was not satisfied with that judgment. I'll just be honest with you. I think that there was, that was there was a lot of lobbying that was involved in that, that I thought was pretty unfair.

Matt: Hm.

Kelly: But I, I do think that there's a big case to be made that there is a lot in common between an ebook and software. they are all electronic. The retailers do not buy that file. It's not like they're paying hundreds of thousand dollars for that file and can sell it as many times as they want. They get that for free from the retailer or from the publishers, and then they get to just hold onto it and, and then pass it to as many customers as they want after a

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: And that has a lot of things in common with, with software. On the other hand, there are a lot of publishers that are wholesale and they wanna stay wholesale. And they say that they want retailers to be able to make choices about whether or not they discount their books and they want those they wanna consider it like a print book because inherently what's in the ebook is exactly the same as what's in the print book. And so they don't want to make it just because it's in a different format, any different, or they don't want it to be treated any differently than. Then the print book itself. And then, so they wanna have things like borrowing and they wanna have things like, know, even transferring, has been talked about by a lot of retailers, but never implemented so that I could read a book and then give my book to a friend. They haven't been able to overcome that though because of all of the stuff that goes around software.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: So, so these two forces are in opposition, like, is it like software or is it like a print book and you hear these things come up a lot? So Amazon decided on February 28th, they were going to stop people from downloading their content and they can no longer download their content.

They can read it in any of the Kindle apps. It will live there in the Kindle apps, but they can no longer move it to their computer or move it into another app to read.

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: And that caused a lot of concern for people and it caused a lot of concern for readers, but also for authors. and that's understandable because of Kindle Unlimited.

There are a lot of authors who are only at Amazon. So if Amazon takes a dislike to your book. Then there could be a potential big problem for you that could be your only market. And then all of a sudden, what could happen to you as an author they decide you are the one that they, your book is problematic. And I know that as somebody who reads a lot of L-G-B-T-Q-I-A fiction,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: That would affect a humongous part of my library. I have. Probably I have probably close to a thousand books in my

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: library. It's not my biggest 'cause. I have way more in Apple Books, I will say. And maybe more in Kobo as well.

Kobo is the most it's the easiest to download your titles from. So if

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: who worries about this Amazon issue, you can shop at Cobo and you have a lot more accessibility. your titles. But I would say that I do understand Amazon's point of view. I am concerned though, as a reader and listener of audio books, that I have spent a lot of money in my collection, and I am concerned that in if the government gets worried about L-G-B-T-Q content, that if they wiped away my library, I would have no recourse. And I do tend to buy from Amazon only if it's on sale, so that I'm not investing a large amount of money.

Matt: Hmm.

Christina: Yeah, so what it sounds like to me is that it's kind of two-pronged.

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Christina: got the, software side of it where we can see where they're going with that, but there's also this worry of some censorship,

Kelly: Yes.

Christina: becomes a censorship issue. And in turn with that, I also feel like. It's, yes. Even though Amazon has added that, which I had thought to myself when I did recently see that and like, I don't own these, I've spent all this and I've got thousands

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Christina: Do I not own these? know, so it is like, as a reader. It's kind of like, oh my gosh, I used to have this grand library before eBooks came along. And then, there are still books that I, purchase as an ebook and then also purchase the hard copies because I want them on my bookshelf all

Kelly: Yeah.

Christina: pretty.

Matt: Sure.

Christina: But it's still begs the question of. thousands of books, if I don't own these and then either have to rebuy them somewhere, if Amazon a goes under, which they probably won't. but if Kindle, something happens with Kindle and obviously if we're talking censorship, there is, Matt and I do tend to stay a little apolitical, but this isn't an issue. Either one of us. We care deeply about censorship. We already did

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Christina: book episode a while back.

I don't believe in censorship of any kind. Every reader has a choice to buy that book or not to allow their kids to read that book or not. That is, you other choice. But the minute you start censoring books or banning books, you open the world to, banning anything. Censoring what, what comes next, next after books, is it language and things like that. So it does worry me a little bit that Amazon has that control and I know that the authors that I work with, they always have to come selling as do I put my books with Kindle Unlimited. Or do I go wide? How do I make money?

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Christina: I do worry for know, the advice that I have always given, and I don't feel that this will ever change, is that you need to be everywhere, everywhere that readers are and give them the choice of, of doing that. But

Kelly: Hi.

Christina: like I said, it, it's scary. It's scary for authors.

Kelly: Yeah, I don't, I don't disagree with that. What I would say though is that there are a lot of authors who make more money in Kindle Unlimited than they would make wide, and I get that like, I, I, I think that it's hard when the audience has completely gone to Kindle Unlimited because then they are only reading Kindle

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: They, the data from Amazon that they shared with me when I was working at IPG was that there are some categories where once more than 80% of the readership has Kindle Unlimited and Paranormal Romance is one of those. And so was L-G-B-T-Q Romance. Once that happens, then there, the sales decrease dramatically.

So it's, it's that, it's not that they. It's, it, it is that they stop reading the authors that they enjoy. Even if those authors just move out of ku,

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: they want to read only KU books and, and it's very hard to get somebody who went from spending, I. Back in the day, romance readers used to spend between 50 and $60 a month on romance books, and with KU then they're only paying 1299 a month. It's hard to get them to go back up to

Matt: Yeah.

Kelly: to $60. They're like, Hey, my book budget is now 1299. I'm

Matt: Yep.

Kelly: You

Matt: Yep.

Kelly: I totally, I, I, I'm sympathetic to the readers, but I also wanna say to those readers that, authors can't afford to be full-time authors. If that's the way that you're going to buy books. If you're only going to give your money to Amazon, your authors are gonna have to have other jobs, and they're not gonna be able to release books in the method that you want to see them.

Matt: Yeah.

Kelly: to hurt them.

Christina: there's also a couple things with Amazon that worry me is that they have all the control. They can turn off Kindle Unlimited anytime they want. They

Kelly: Yeah.

Christina: a book out of Kindle Unlimited and off of their site anytime they want. I mean, there was a. A New York Times USA today bestselling author books were removed. And she was not given a reason why other than she violated their terms of

Kelly: Yeah.

Christina: And later

Kelly: Yeah, I saw that. I saw that in the paper. It

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: Dixon, who is one of the, oh, oh, they did this to Ruby Dixon too. Who was, who was,

Christina: that.

Kelly: who was huge. She was went off sale for five days and

Matt: Oh my gosh.

Kelly: plummeted.

Christina: Yes.

Kelly: and

Christina: Same with this other author. Her name is escaping me right now. If I remember it, I'll let you know.

Kelly: yeah.

Christina: but yeah.

And so, and it turned out that what happened was somebody was offended by something, one of the characters did, and so then said, these

Kelly: it.

Christina: offensive. Yes.

Kelly: Oh.

Christina: you know?

Matt: Pull them.

Christina: the author literally had to find somebody. Amazon to speak with, to say, Hey, this is n not what's going on. And I think if she had been any other author perhaps she wouldn't have had the leverage, to

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Christina: on there. So that's, that's number one. And number two, as you were saying, these authors that do their money from Amazon, what happens to them if .

Kelly: Yeah.

Christina: Amazon turns off the lights for, again, I'm not, not speculating that they're going to and nor would I think that they would, because they're making money too.

Matt: Yeah.

Kelly: Yeah.

Christina: if authors are making money from them, they're also making, money. But I think just because of, of the climate that we're living in, I think everyone feels so uncertain.

Matt: Yeah. I,

Kelly: it, it has been, censorship has been on the rise, but there has

Matt: mm-hmm.

Kelly: censorship. I don't wanna make it seem like it's not, that this is a new thing. However, last year in the United States, according to the a LA. 2,452 new titles were added to censorship bans. That's a, that's a huge increase.

And were 821. Major attempts to censor that libraries to 821 libraries that

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: that created new censorship programs. So that's big. Like the movement for censorship has been growing and that's one of the things that has made me more concerned as somebody who reads eBooks exclusively. I worry about losing access to my content that I own, but I also worry about libraries losing content

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: read library books as well. That are eBooks. and I worry about people thinking that it's okay to choose other people's reading material for them. Like to me, I feel like. I believe in the windows mirrors doors. Idea about reading. People should be able to see themselves that, with the mirror people should be able to look through the windows of others and see

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: lives are like, and people should be able to walk into new experiences through the books they read. And I don't think that you'll ever get that if you censor content that you don't agree with. Toni Morrison is one of the most banned authors, and yet her books have been monumentally, eye-opening for people who are not African-American, people who are white and read Toni Morrison's books Learn a ton about the American experience that they wouldn't. otherwise Alice Walker's the Color Purple, which was made into a movie twice. It has also been censored hundreds of times, so it really is important to understand that these books that are censored are usually the books that are the most thought provoking

Matt: Mm.

Kelly: the most important. The most band book in the last couple years has been gender queer, which is a graphic novel. By Maya. I can't, I don't, I don't have it up on the screen so I can't remember her last name. Kobi, I think it's something similar to that, but,

Matt: Hmm

Kelly: um, if you look up gender queer, you're gonna find it. It's all one word

Christina: Yeah.

Kelly: and it's this very frank book about gen, about trans identity,

Matt: mm.

Kelly: Primarily, but also about. fluid identities. And it is, the pictures can be a little graphic, which is part of the reason why it's getting so much challenge. But it's beautiful and it's open and it's honest. And I think it's one of the best books for teen going through, a gender crisis that I could possibly imagine.

Christina: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Kelly: the good news is that people have embraced that book and it sold way more copies being banned than I think it ever would've

Matt: Which is

Kelly: the ban.

Matt: always how it goes.

Kelly: which, well, I

Matt: Yeah,

Kelly: always how it goes, you know? Unfortunately, that works for like the top 10

Matt: yeah.

Kelly: the books below that, a lot of 'em get overlooked

Matt: It's like the Streisand effect a little bit, but there was, there was one piece, I think as we talk about censorship as a result of this license versus own ownership piece, right? There's, I think, another piece around. Even like cultural preservation, like being able to say, through history, like it was just on Spaceship Earth at Epcot.

And they go through the whole piece where they talk about the libraries and Alexandria as kind of the first backup system, right? This is the whole thing here where if, if you've got these digital files and they are licensed versus acquired, let's say,

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Matt: You run the risk of not being able to kind of keep that.

From a cultural perspective and, and pass that along and keep cultures that may be dwindling alive.

Kelly: Yeah. Yeah, that is scary. I mean, you can erase things very quickly, digitally in a way that you can't with print.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: you can have a book bonfire and you can burn hundreds of copies, but you can't burn all the print copies,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: can erase the digital copies in moments. And that can be, that can be very scary. I do recommend if you have eBooks, that you should consider downloading your eBooks to your computer or to a hard drive. And the same for your audiobooks. Audible, by the way, does allow you to download any of your purchase books onto your I've got all mine downloaded on my hard drive just in case. And I'm not wor, I'm hoping I never have to worry about this, but I'm just being, I'm being cautious and careful. But as somebody who invests heavily in my books, I feel I wanna support authors with the books that I read and I wanna purchase the ones that I love. I think that. It behooves me to make sure that I get a, I can get a copy that I can keep, and if you're an author, it's important for you to consider, like, okay, you might make most of your money from Amazon, but when do you start taking those books out of Kindle Unlimited and

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: wide, even if you do make a lot of money with Kindle Unlimited, or when do you start creating your own store? Because that can be really useful as well. Because if they do take your books down and, you've had 10,000 copies sold, you're gonna get 10,000 people coming to you saying, I lost my book. What are you going to do? And that's gonna be horrible. And so everybody should think about like, in my head, how am I going to handle that? How have am I gonna ask them for proof that they had it? How am I gonna figure this out? Because it could happen,

Christina: Yeah.

Kelly: especially if you have content that's racier or that is somebody could find problematic. And I am worried about things that are targeted right now,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: Trans books in particular is an area that I'm concerned about. I have a, a decent sized library of trans romance and I think, oh, well, are those the books that might get targeted? So I have a list of them so that I know if something goes missing. My, my library is so big I might not know otherwise. So I've

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: some time cataloging all my books, putting in the themes tags so that I know that if one goes away, I'll know it's gone.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: had it, and this is something I probably should have been doing all along, but man, it's taken me forever to do this spreadsheet.

Matt: Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine. Well, I think too, we should talk a little bit about some of the one like sources where you can get some of the eBooks that aren't licensed right. Where you can, you can literally buy them and own them

Kelly: absolutely.

Christina: which

Kelly: So.

Matt: Well.

Christina: have the, you've bought it, you

Kelly: So the first thing I'll say is if an author sells direct, the author will always make the most money if you buy direct from

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: and you will be downloading it directly from them. So that is, that is a copy that you will have and you can always side load those into any app you like to read.

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: if you, I, I'll give you an example.

Vaughn Cassidy. It's VAWN Cassidy, C-A-S-S-I-D-Y. Does mostly Kindle Unlimited, but she's done some side characters from her series that she's released only on her store. And I think this is a brilliant strategy She's done an ebook and an audiobook for these side characters, and they're extremely well done, and I downloaded them and I loved them.

And I, I check her store regularly to see if she's put anything new out. It is a smart way to do it. Now, Cobo also allows you to download any book that is DRM free. You can download those and that works really well. I have not started downloading my Apple books, so I haven't seen how that works yet.

'cause I, Amazon in February and I've been doing, working on my audible library since I had

Matt: Nice.

Kelly: audible books and those

Matt: Oh wow.

Kelly: while to download. So I've been doing that and now I'm working on my chirp.

Matt: One of my favorites is Humble Bundle. They will often do

Kelly: Great.

Matt: of those where they put together a bunch of different eBooks and then you can sort of name your price and they will oftentimes then donate to charity along with it. Or they do it every time actually. And then you can even go in and determine if I want more to go to charity versus humble one, humble bundle.

You can tweak it a little bit if you'd like, but you know, you get these, I've gotten so many different Dungeons and Dragons or books that I like to read, different genre bundles that they do. So Humble bundle.com, great place to go. Gum road, good place for creators to sell their stuff, including, again, DRM free eBooks.

So both of those are, are really good resources as well.

Kelly: Smash Words does they sell directly for authors and there are quite a few authors that have content up there. They also have a lot of. Content that will, would get targeted. I think they have a lot of raci, non-con and stuff like that. If that's what you read then you're gonna find it. It's gonna all be directed to Smashwords. there is publishers' websites also. They're delivering you the EPUBs. So if you're seeing like know drum spinner press. Sends EPUBs directly. But I can almost every publisher website that sells eBooks sends you the epub. You have a download link and book funnel. A lot of authors are using book funnel,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: For their fulfillment, but you can download that epub directly and you can either open it in the book funnel app or blue Fire Reader or. Any of, I, I usually send them to Kindle myself 'cause then I can search them by author.

Matt: Yeah. Well, and we'll link all of these in the show notes as well. So if you are trying to take notes and furiously trying to keep up with the different resources out there, we'll make sure that you've got those.

Kelly: Yeah.

Matt: That's awesome.

Kelly: But yeah, I, I, I like to look everywhere 'cause I'm a sale hunter.

Matt: Hmm,

Kelly: You know, I, I love to do, get a good sale

Matt: same.

Kelly: book.

Matt: BookBub is one of my favorites. Yep.

Kelly: I hit that BookBub newsletter, like no one's business.

Matt: Yes. And since I do a lot of my listening in the car like you said, chirp is a very good one. I've got an Audible membership as well, so Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly: Yeah.

Matt: Well, awesome. Any, I mean.

Kelly: Yeah. So the, the other thing I would say is I, so I mentioned Cobo, I mentioned, oh, Barnes and Noble. Actually you can download your Barnes and Noble books as well. The nice thing about Barnes and Noble is they do have a share feature. I mentioned that earlier, but I didn't really explain it. So, anything that's independently published is automatically set up for sharing. So if you come in through there. Through their nook program when they, the nook first, or whatever they call it, they, they let you you'll automatically be enrolled for sharing. If you go in through, if you're one of the big five and you are an author there, they're automatically turned off. But they can enable it if you ask them to. And it's a two weeks an automatic loan, so it's like doing a library loan, but from one of your friends. And it's, and you can't access it if. The, if they're reading it, but it's actually a very easy to implement. just go in and it's in the pull down under the dot, dot, dot.

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: and I've shared books with my mom and she loves it, so I highly recommend that.

Matt: Nice.

Christina: it's, that to me sounds like a really great feature and I'm, I'm actually a little surprised that they don't talk more about

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

Christina: you know, try to,

Matt: Hmm.

Christina: you know, bring people over for that feature alone,

Kelly: Yeah.

Christina: know.

Kelly: And with Apple Books, I have the family sharing Plan.

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: I buy all the books for my family, pretty much, and my, and my family goes in and they just look through my library to see what they wanna read. My hu I've got thrillers in there for my husband. I've got, in there for my sister, Katie.

I've got books in there for my sister, Colleen, and then stuff for me. So

Matt: Nice.

Kelly: looks like Hallmark just went crazy in there.

Matt: Yeah. That's awesome.

That's awesome.

Kelly: with some serial killers thrown in for fun.

Matt: Oh yeah, of course, of course. Kinda have some true crime in there too.

Kelly: Yeah.

Matt: Nice.

Kelly: But yeah, there's, I I would say there's also, I know that the reason I can't give you a consolidated list is 'cause each of the publisher sites that do it is that they're, you just choose what you like and. Visit the author and the authors would usually have linked where they go,

Matt: Hmm.

Kelly: try and find the one that is the most friendly to them.

And, and you wanna get the thing that's closest to the author. So the author's the best, then the publisher, then the retailers and Cobo gives, pays the most than Apple then Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Matt: Perfect.

Christina: that's interesting. I

Matt: Yeah,

Christina: for another

Matt: yeah,

Christina: Kelly,

Matt: for sure,

Kelly: Yeah.

Matt: for sure.

Christina: who pays the most?

Kelly: Yeah.

Matt: Well, very good. All right. Well, I think, we've really brought it home as far as that goes and, and our little venture down what licensing versus ownership really truly means. Huge thanks to Kelly from letting your voice and insight and this wild, weird and honestly worrying world of digital ownership.

I'm definitely side eyeing my Kindle right now. Maybe backing up a few files.

Kelly: be fine. I think people are just trying to cover their bases,

Matt: For sure.

Kelly: I get that, but I don't love that they're trying to cover their bases instead of defending our product.

Matt: Yeah.

Kelly: do feel like. Having worked with all of the retailers for so long, I feel, and, and seeing how people have responded, I do feel safest with my Apple books, which is why I'm leaving them for last before I try to do anything.

Apple has always had a, a long history of protecting, their customers, they don't disclose anybody's messages. They refuse to turn over anybody's info. I feel like they're going to never tell anybody what's in my library, and I don't think that they're gonna go through and take anything out of it.

Matt: For sure.

Kelly: but that is just my opinion and it is not anything that Apple has clearly stated, nor do I think they ever would, because then they would be legally bl bound to do it and that would place them in a. Very sticky spot with a very, it's tough for them to, they, I mean, they've gone up against the FBI several times though,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: subpoenas.

So I, I feel like I feel a lot of confidence with them that I do not feel with other companies.

Matt: Sure, sure.

Kelly: Cobos Canadian too, by the way. So

Matt: nice.

Kelly: be pressured by the US government, which is something to think about.

Christina: Yes.

Matt: Well, remember. No, you're good. Just remember, stories are meant to be shared, remembered, and kept. So whether you're reading on a screen or flipping real pages, just know what you're getting. And what you're giving up. And if today's episode made you think twice about your digital bookshelf, do us a favor, share it with a fellow book lover, subscribe and leave us a review.

So until next time, this is Write out loud.

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