I like ambiguity. See, the title of this post? Does that mean I’m telling you my thoughts this morning, or am I telling you what I think of my morning? Also, do you care? Why? Isn’t there a certain hubris involved in bothering you either way?

Hey. It’s my site.

So Roseburg, Oregon, is in the news lately. And I figured I’d weigh in…by wondering what Lawrence Block is thinking on the subject. First–though this is somewhat unrelated–I highly recommend everything he’s written. Second, though, and actually to the point? In one of his stories about an assassin named Keller, he sent the character to Roseburg. While in town Keller entertained thoughts of moving to the place permanently. Lots of other things happened, but after having written that story I’d be feeling a bit…something…fey, maybe? (I’d say “fortunately” I didn’t write it, but the truth is I’d love to be able to write as well as LB.)

That bit of woolgathering led me to think about short stories vs. longer lengths. See, I like reading short stories, and I love writing them. But LB’s Keller books aren’t actually anywhere near my favorites from his oeuvre. And why? Because the first couple of books at least (I could go check, but I ain’t gonna) are episodic in nature. Basically they’re story collections, and in fact some (most? all?) chapters were published separately. But when he finally wrote a full-length Keller novel? I loved it! And yeah, you could start with that one, but I think you’d miss some of the emotional resonance that comes from reading all the short stuff first. No conclusions to be drawn here. But it does make me think about writing a series.

Then there was this article I read about Amazon and empathy. Thing is, I still think Amazon’s business model is (although entirely rational) doomed to duplication and proliferation. The article’s author seemed to think Amazon’s focus on customers equated to empathy, and then confused the concept further by somehow equating this to employee characteristics that supposedly (according to the author, but I saw no foundation for it within the article) have value in the Age of Machines, but it reminded me: Amazon, at least in the ebook space, still doesn’t seem to have any competitors. And even if it did, their competitors would have the same long-term problems.

What, no competitors? Yeah–I’ve made the point before that instead they have cargo cult imitators. Sure, there are other online bookstores…but, oddly, they don’t seem to focus on book sales as much as relationships with publishers. Amazon shows you stuff based on what their algorithms “think” you may be interested in buying. Other sites show you stuff publishers have paid them to show you. So these sites are using an entirely different model. And yet folks wonder why Amazon does better. Hmm. It’s a mystery.

So my contention here is that Amazon’s algo-recommendations make all the difference. And yet a reader recently forwarded me an email from Amazon that suggested she might like to purchase Shiver on the Sky. A neat idea, of course, except that she already owns it–and even posted a review.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think Amazon’s recommendations are actually very good. They don’t work too well for me, anyway. Worse (for Amazon) is that it’s only user habits that tie recommendations and inventory together in the first place. How long will it be before some site (interesting here that Amazon purchased Goodreads) starts making better recommendations? Once that happens, given that ebook inventory is not exactly difficult to duplicate, how long before simply hosting ebook content starts to be valued appropriately? I mean, the ‘Zon gets 35-70% of the proceeds for ebook sales…it ain’t because of the hosting. It’s because people use their recommendation engine. What happens when lots of people start building sites that recommend books? Suddenly (bizarre, no?) it wouldn’t necessarily matter where content was hosted. Authors and publishers could host their own, and pay a much smaller percentage to the recommendation engines.

This has to happen. But when? Maybe next year. Probably not much later than that, sez my crystal ball. (Though it’s actually not made of crystal, and said “Reply Hazy. Try again.” Which is maybe not such a confirmation after all. Bloggers’ license, okay?)

Meanwhile, I want to post a negative review on some valve-cover gaskets I ordered for my Bug (excuse for the pic above!) from Amazon. Not because there’s an inherent problem with the gaskets, but because someone at an Amazon shipping-place-dingus screwed up the packaging (actually removing the protective cardboard backing, which was pretty dumb), resulting in damage. And a waste of my time. But Amazon won’t let me post the review. I’m supposed to give them feedback instead.

So I can post anything at all about the gaskets themselves. But nothing negative about the package as delivered. By Amazon.

Hmm. That’s sustainable. Right?

Have fun out there!

Hi! Here’s a spoiler: I think those are interdependent concepts, meaning it’s sometimes hard to do one without also doing the other. Which has interesting implications. Or at least they’re interesting to me.

A reader sent me a link to the video on the right (well, it’s supposed to be on the right, but if that doesn’t work for you it’s available on YouTube here) because of the “2R3v” notion I threw into this week’s story. Thanks, He/She/Other Who Wishes to Remain Nameless!

Anyway, this guy BSS has a lot of good thoughts to offer in the video. And yes, I briefly mentioned a “Second Revolution” in which normal folk used technology to mind their own business, and strongly implied that meant that the previous form of government in the US had essentially died out from disuse (but there were still people trying to get out in front and try to make it be about them as it happened…natch).

Which may seem a bit “out there”…but frankly I think it’s inevitable. Either access to the means of production (3D printers, home CNC machines, whatever) will become democratized/widespread just as access to information has been (and will continue to be, ’cause that process is far from finished), or that process will be stopped by some sort of catastrophe or apocalypse, which will also mess with what we currently think of as the normal state of affairs. (Just for the record, I’m kinda hoping that if it comes it’ll be zombies. Because they’re cool.)

Good, bad, or indifferent…fundamental change is just as inevitable today as it was for the feudal systems of yore. And yet…inevitably, change surprises nearly everybody when it arrives, regardless of how quickly they can say “disruptive technology” five times in the shower on Wednesdays. (Or is that just me? ‘Cause I’m getting much better at it, if you want to compare times.) Also, change tends to be a messy process. Oh, and it’s been coming much faster lately. Ready for the ride?

Few companies have historically survived paradigm shifts (aka “disruptive technologies” in this context) in their industries. When they have, they’ve generally (possibly even “always” but I’m not sure enough to say so) managed it by creating a new division to deal with the new tech, and at some point the dog/tail balance shifted, so…did the original company survive? Sort of, I guess. Some investors got their value preserved or enhanced, anyway, which is the point as far as they were concerned. Why should governments be different? Especially if most of what they currently do (in fact, as opposed to theory) is essentially irrelevant to the ways we’ll learn to spend our time as our individual empowerment inexorably moves forward?

Still, some readers will be rolling their eyes at this post, and some won’t have gotten this far. But think back, if you’re old enough. Remember when “the news” was what you saw on the four TV channels available in your town? Or read in a newspaper? This was before blogging. Before YouTube and Twitter. Before we started creating our own hometowns and carrying them with us via Facebook. Before people started building lots of open-source software and distributing whatever information they wanted on the Internet. Now…imagine when something similar happens to people’s ability to make stuff. As BSS puts it, there are entire 3-letter agencies that do nothing but ban physical objects. Good luck with that, guys! It simply can’t last. Somewhere in there, too, taxation gets a bit difficult to enforce. So do rules about currency. See, stuff like Bitcoin is just the tip of the iceberg.

In fact, Bitcoin’s a bit of a bad joke in the process of being played on us all. Because of the way it’s designed, there simply won’t be enough coins–ever–for it to remain a major player once significant numbers of people start to get involved. Coins will soar in value in the short term, but Bitcoin is destined to fade away at some near-future point (says me and only me but I’m still saying it damnit). Actually this “flaw” led me to dismiss Bitcoin as soon as I first heard of it a few years ago…but I didn’t realize just how strong the demand for truly digital money already is. In fact, many libertarian types have bemoaned the rise of digital dollars in the US for years, on the grounds that they’re easier for the government to track and manage than paper money. Boy were they wrong too! Which is the point: the actual change we observe over time is always more fundamental than we expect.

So, lately the Snowden/NSA thing has made it seem that technology is basically used to reduce people’s privacy (and thus their capacity for effective independent action). And in fact this is often true. But not always. There are things like Tor (which it turns out the NSA specifically targets, meaning they don’t like for us to use it, which makes me smile a little). But using Tor is complicated…I got into what I’ll call “a discussion” a few weeks ago, just prior to the Snowden leaks, on someone else’s blog when a guy wanted to offer a router for sale that moved all network traffic via Tor for those who connected to it via wifi. Neat idea, sort of, but the thing is? Tor protects the privacy of your data in transit. Technically speaking, the term for what  it does, by itself and used as this guy planned, to enhance your privacy once you start actually using websites is this: fuck-all. And by design. Tor itself doesn’t even try to play in that space.

Okay, caveats exist, and the Tor Browser Bundle (or perhaps Whonix?) does in fact help a lot with privacy if used correctly, but that doesn’t mean half-measures are useful just because someone wants them to be. Also the guy with the plan probably meant well, but he didn’t know what he was doing and proposed to make money from people by promising stuff he couldn’t deliver. Which I dislike. So: using Tor is likely to actually make your internet life less private unless you know exactly what you’re doing. Which is not the same as connecting to a wifi network. Want to do it right? Most people can’t.

For instance: Hey guys, guess what? The entire operating system I’m using to write this post is dedicated to browsing to websites to which I log in under my own name, or doing web searches for stuff to which I intend to refer in public. I don’t use it for anything else. I have lots of others for other purposes, though. And even this one denies lots of information to whoever’s snooping and recording. I figure I’m totally hackable still, but…my data is somewhat compartmentalized. Let me be more explicit: I’m using stuff like Tor, Ghostery, Bleachbit, NoScript, HTTPSEverywhere, Perspectives, and lots more right now. For this operating system. And I still assume everything I’m doing is essentially public. And I don’t even have a reason to play with this stuff, except that it’s a fun game for me.

If you, in your internet life, doubt you can be easily tracked? Try the Panopticlick! Chances are good your browser is going to have a unique signature. It “fingerprints” you wherever you go on the web. So…are you visiting websites? Do you think that’s your own business and nobody else’s? Last time I went to CNN.com I saw there were twelve (12) separate companies attempting to record my visit. These guys sell and trade information, too. Most people have no idea of just how thoroughly their activity is being monitored. And no, turning on “Do Not Track” in your browser won’t help. Because most people don’t, so it just makes you that much easier to identify. Neat, huh? Oh, and who says any cookie-blocking will really help, anyway? ‘Cause a lot of info, plus a browser footprint, can easily be logged on the web server itself. So I saw twelve companies, and they distribute information, but for all I know there were 40 others dealing directly with CNN.

All the sites you go to that show you little Facebook icons? Or Twitter, or Pinterest, or LinkedIn, or whatever? Often that stuff is coming from web servers owned by…Facebook, Twitter, or whoever. So lots and lots of people can get access to much of your browsing history. I think that’s technologically cool, and I think it’s awesome that it’s generally used only to show you better-targeted ads, but still. It’s just a tad bit of a privacy problem. Isn’t it?

Thing is…privacy tech really is getting better. Browsers can get MUCH better with little effort, and I expect those that are open-source to improve the fastest and most dramatically in the near future. ‘Cause the kind of people who work on them often care about this stuff. And the NSA’s more direct forms of snooping (meaning the stuff they don’t just get from the companies that themselves just wanted to show you ads but actually ALSO know all about you and the things you like to watch monkeys do on rooftops) generally–though not always–seem to rely more on operator error than on anything fundamental (such as the oft-speculated notion that they have backdoors into common encryption algorithms…IMHO they just don’t).

Concern over data privacy is becoming more widespread. Tools to achieve it are, perforce, going to become much more pervasive and user-friendly. It’s very cool that the computers we use have so much more capacity than most of us ever use for watching videos and web-surfing and typing blog posts or tweets. Because it means they can begin to devote more time to protecting us.

Here’s what I say: monitoring impedes free speech. It restricts the flow of information. And enough people already care about this to change everything for the rest of us. Within five years I expect truly anonymous digital currencies (which Bitcoin isn’t, quite, though that may change if Zerocoin works and is widely implemented) to become widespread. Combine that with distributed means of production and bigger info-hoses (yeah, I made that up just now) and none of us can predict just how huge the changes will be.

So here I am, writing my little stories. Science fiction, some of ’em, I guess. But I’m barely scratching the surface. I mean…I’ve been around since the 1960s and I started getting excited about the internet in the early 90s. But I didn’t predict Ebay or Wikipedia or even Google. Hell, I didn’t predict what Amazon did to publishing…well, okay, that one I sort of saw coming but I didn’t think it’d be so soon. I’ve been talking about how distributed systems are more robust than centralized systems for years, and I’m still predicting the death of Amazon (or at least of their importance in selling digital content) in the fairly near future, but I know damn well I’m barely scratching the surface.

It’s fun to watch this stuff happen. I can’t wait to see what’s next!

Have fun out there.

You may want to skip this one if you’re not into tech or copyright or strange rants from guys who ought to be working on something else.

For both of you who are still with me: I just had a long conversation with an old friend, in which we excavated the ideas from my Death of Amazon series (posts one, two, and three). The upshot of my previous rants was that Amazon (or iTunes, or whoever) has lived beyond its usefulness…in its current form, at least. It’s a relic that only exists today because its competitors are rooted even farther back in the mists of time.

I proposed that someone (anyone?) could build a distributed system, in which those who wished could volunteer drive space and internet bandwidth (sort of like the SETI@home project). In the midst of my prior delusions I imagined a system like this:

• Hosts would never know what content they hosted, thus shielding themselves from prosecution (probably)
• Hosts would be paid on a percentage basis when they served paid content
• Authors/Artists would be paid whenever their content was accessed, according to the model they’d set up (could include free stuff, or subscriptions, or outright purchases/licensing)

During today’s conversation I realized this system would allow content creators to bundle their work, which is pretty cool. Want to sell a bunch of books or songs as an album? Maybe a sort of ad-hoc anthology of several people’s work? A combo of books, music, and video organized around a particular theme? A really cool travel book/movie/discussion forum, maybe? Well, why not, if the various copyright holders agree to the scheme? Combine that with easy support for subscriptions, and suddenly the system helps people do innovative things they can’t with current distributors (aka silos in my inner vocabulary).

Today’s talk was mostly about a possible investor for the idea–it’s not likely to come to anything, but you never know. During the discussion, though, I realized something that may or may not be useful if the idea’s essential validity is challenged: this system is already being built, all around us. Except that authors/artists aren’t being paid for any of it.

Suppose I want to watch a movie, and either it’s not available for sale or streaming through legitimate channels or I’m a cheap bastard who doesn’t want to pay for it. I’d have a few options (that I know of offhand ’cause I’m kind of a geek but not really into this stuff):

1. I could use BitTorrent and probably find the movie…it’s a little bit dangerous, because I would likely be making the movie available to others as part of the process of downloading it, and I might be sued or prosecuted. But chances are good I’d get the movie.
2. I could install xbmc and navi-x on my computer, and browse or search various people’s lists of available content, and once I found what I wanted I could stream it to my computer or TV. Sort of like Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime only without paying anybody.
3. I could get a little bit fancy and set up a VPN that terminates in a foreign country, and then connect to a Usenet server in yet another foreign country, and use HTTPS to connect and download whatever I want that people have posted. Which is nearly everything. I don’t think I’d worry much about lawsuits or prosecution, especially if I used anonymous debit cards to pay for the VPN and Usenet account.

Now…morality aside, this is a set of distributed systems in which people create their own indexes (or recommendation engines), content is stored everywhere, and users access it from anywhere. Very similar to the system I proposed, only ad-hoc instead of deliberate. Substitute “book” or “TV show” or “song” above depending on your own preferences.

This particularly resonates with me because I used to write software for a living. And because I have many pieces of such a system lying around as detritus of old projects…and because I know a few people who’ve done the bits I’m not as familiar with. So there’s that.

Why build this? To “fight” online piracy with cost and convenience. To help content creators make a living by getting rid of middlemen who sometimes take nearly ninety percent of a sale. To aid anyone who wants to either create or curate entertainment for anyone who wants it.

Does Amazon really have to die for this to happen? Well, no…not all of it anyway. My proposal probably wouldn’t affect anything they do but digital content sales. But they aren’t set up to compete with it either. Their cut of the pie is too huge–the system I propose might take two percent off the top instead of thirty-plus. Amazon’s biggest advantage would suddenly be not distribution but data. They might very well find a way to monetize their recommendation engine. In fact I hope they do, if it comes to that.

I doubt all the words my friend and I exchanged today will lead to real action on our part. It doesn’t really matter, though. In the end, this will happen–it’s already started. It’s a natural consequence of the distributed structure of the internet and human cussedness. Either it gets built deliberately by someone looking to manage it, or it happens anyway, or–most likely–both.

So what prevents online piracy in my brave new world? Goodwill between entertainers and the entertained. Same answer in the future as today, really. Some (such as Joe Konrath) have suggested that future entertainment will be supported by advertising, but that would likely be no harder to circumvent in the future than it is now.

I hope to make a living at this writing gig. I hope lots of other people can do the same. I have no idea what form payment will eventually take…but I’m looking forward to finding out as we go. No matter what the answer, I think it comes down to goodwill in the end. So let’s work on that? {8′>

Okay. I’m done again, for now. And for what it’s worth I still plan to write fiction. It’s just that my crystal ball was itching a little, so I scratched it.

Have fun out there.

Hi.

It occurred to me that just saying something is possible is pretty far from demonstrating it. So I’m going to pretend this is a software blog for just a moment. If you haven’t been following my last couple of blog posts, this isn’t the place to start.

Somebody mentioned, out on the intertoobz, that my distributed-content idea is nice, but it’s easier to find content in a centralized system. To which I say: distributed content can have a centralized index. So, the drop-dead simple architecture is a server farm that does nothing but redirect data requests to individual machines, scattered wherever. Users wouldn’t see much difference between that and a standard website. In fact most users wouldn’t see any difference at all.

To make it more fun, the index can be widely distributed as well, with many “central” nodes. I stole an idea from Mike Nolet at AppNexus for another project, and essentially it does load-balancing via a hacked DNS server. It rotates IP addresses through. A version of which is sitting on my laptop right now–it just does a round-robin thing, but that logic could be improved upon to weight its IPs according to capacity/performance/uptime/whatever.

There are a couple of approaches to ensuring the distributed content servers are online & functional. One is regular polling (which my Scarecrow application already does in another context, so that’s easy) and the other is for a machine to request work when it’s free…which could be implemented via RabbitMQ or something similar. If it’s RabbitMQ, again my Scarecrow app already does it, because that’s how it distributes work to virtual servers in different physical locations.

I guess I’m saying I already have many pieces of a functional system architecture lying around as leftovers from something or other. Which doesn’t at all mean I could get (literal) buy-in from authors, and it sure doesn’t mean I’m the right guy for marketing this or anything else. Mostly, when I talk people look for reasons to disagree, so it’s better if I don’t talk.

Anyway. It’s a neat idea, and I think it’ll happen sooner or later whether I exert myself further or not. Lends itself well to access via mobile apps, too.

The thing is, the current ebook distribution system is horribly inefficient from an author’s point of view. If it had started in the software world, it probably wouldn’t at all resemble what people currently think of as normal. So there’s lots of room for improvement, and the limiting factor is probably nothing more (complex or simple, pick one) than an approach’s credibility with indie authors.

I think.

If two of you have gotten to this point, I’m going to throw myself a party. Maybe putting the idea out there like this will help to get it out of my brain?

Back to our irregular programming next time. If I gave you a headache, I apologize. Try lying down.

First, let me say this: Hey, I have books there too. In fact they’ll soon be on sale for $.99 each for a few days [UPDATE: done…there’s a delay in the process]. So I’m not anti-Amazon, exactly…it’s just that the time has come for them to be done by as they’s did. If you follow me. Let’s face it, they’ve done some social good. They’ve been very successful in dealing directly with authors and cutting out the old middleman…aka traditional or “legacy” publishers. But the story doesn’t end there….

Yesterday I ranted about the evils of DRM. Along the way I realized something: Amazon is no longer necessary. In fact none of the current ebook distributors, as currently constituted, can possibly last for much longer.

Here’s the thing: Authorship and readership are well distributed. Suppose you could run an application on your computer that served books/review/data, and you received a cut each time a sale occurred and the book was downloaded from your PC? I see three stakeholder groups in this plan to distribute…well, distribution:

1. From an author’s perspective, there could be a lot more money available. Some “legacy” distributors (couldn’t resist) would probably price-match, but there’s no reason the author couldn’t receive a much higher %royalty on each sale. Crucially, split royalties can in fact go away entirely in favor of (very low) download fees. I realize people think sites like Amazon are offering a good deal to authors, and compared to traditional publishers it’s even true. But in the internet world, Amazon is making out like a bandit. There’s no immediately obvious reason why royalties should be split with the distributor to begin with–why not a (very small) fee for each download? Hosting is cheap these days. In the long run, this shift is going to happen anyway. There may be a benefit to being the first to move in this direction.
2. Want to be a distributor? From your server, or even your PC? The pure-hosting side of things (as opposed to creating new works) is likely to appeal to more than enough people. For one thing, authors could host content themselves (possibly encrypted so they can’t actually read it?). In fact, if content creation is rewarded by giving the host a higher percentage of the royalty or fee…can’t be bad.
3. From the reader’s perspective? Well, I have to admit Amazon does a pretty good job of making books available. However, some people don’t like the company for one reason or another. It’d be interesting to play with various “list” algorithms (bestseller, category, new, etc.) too. Personally I’d want to be transparent about their generation, and see whether that appeals to people…of course that might make the lists vulnerable to gaming. On the other hand, maybe it wouldn’t, or maybe it would and it wouldn’t matter much.

This wouldn’t have to beat existing distributors across the board. I think it’d appeal to a niche of internet-savvy anti-corporate people right off the bat. If it got big enough…well, it could win a price war. The trick there is that authors who engage in lowballing efforts will be penalized by Amazon’s higher royalties & price matching–but I think that would generate considerable ill will towards Amazon. Press/blogger coverage should be pretty easy to obtain.

There are probably lots of other things to do in this space. There are lots of things I don’t know. The whole thing just occurred to me yesterday, sort of by accident.

There’s an obvious potential role for advertisers, too. Who gets that revenue? Is it distributed to the hosting providers? It may be possible to generate a lot of interest by making the hosting provider bits as attractive as possible.

Also, for those who are concerned about “piracy” & such…well, if price and convenience are the best means to combat piracy (if anybody should care to begin with), I’m not aware of another model that can compete on at least the “price” side of it. In fact I suspect that the same mindset that scans a lot of books (and/or removes DRM from ebooks) and then shares them via torrents might have an interest in being a hosting provider instead.

Is there a way to directly incorporate a “Kickstarter”-like funding model? Possibly authors could sell subscriptions? If they’re being charged a per-download fee rather than splitting royalties, it frees them to try various business/pricing models that are hard to implement at the moment.

So…that’s what I have. I really think something like this will happen anyway, sooner or later. Whether the current players in the game like it…or not.

And here’s another question: why would this stop with ebooks? Couldn’t this work for all forms of online content? If you have a following, would you rather publish your video to YouTube…or to a service that allows users to subscribe to your content, for a price you set?

Have fun out there.

Bear in mind that I’m a software developer. I write code in addition to fiction. So I have a slightly different take than most on the recent Amazon account-locking debacle. Mostly, what I see is an opportunity.

First: I don’t care who you are. You are buying ebooks (if you read this blog, I’ll make the assumption) and therefore you have to deal with them. Get over it.

• Your Kindle (or other device) belongs to you. Yes, it’s nice to be able to use wi-fi or 3g to buy books. But if you’re doing that with a device that also has…ah…”questionable” content, be aware that its existence may be used against you. Bear in mind that anything at all can become questionable. We’ve all seen how that works for BitTorrent aficionados. Or if we haven’t, we should have. So: if you have secrets, and you SHOULD, don’t share them with Amazon, iBooks, B&N, or anybody else. Transfer the material to your reader, if you can, using a USB cable. Turn off all networking capabilities unless you’re enough of a geek to use a router that will block your device’s access to the internet, and you’ll always remember to turn it off outside your home network. I don’t know what information Amazon, for instance, is gathering. Neither do you. So you probably shouldn’t give them the opportunity.
• UPDATE: Using an Android tablet? Try something like XPrivacy if you’ve rooted the thing. It can create a privacy “sandbox” for each app…and will also allow you to restrict an app’s access to the internet while leaving the rest of your tablet functional. Which might be very helpful in this context.
• The DRM stuff may or may not amount to some sort of legal restriction on what you can  do with the books you’ve purchased (incidentally, there is no DRM on my titles). So I can’t tell you that stripping the DRM is a necessity, or even a good idea. But for fuck’s sake, do you want to be able to read your books in the future? Because your current ereader will become obsolete. And here’s an article with useful links.
• And then there’s backing up of files. It’s probably sufficient for most people to have copies of their books on a couple of computers. However, if you want to go the “cloud” route, it may be an excellent idea to use a service like SpiderOak (no financial interest). Yes, they are slightly less convenient than DropBox. However, SpiderOak encrypts all your data with your password, and they never know your password. Unless you use their web app to access files, in which case may your gods be with you, because you should’ve gone with DropBox. Or trusted Amazon. You do not give your encryption keys to anybody. Except your spouse & other people who ought to be able to get at your stuff.

You know what? We need a better solution. I was talking to my wife an hour ago, and it occurred to me that it wouldn’t actually be very difficult (from a technical perspective) to set up a distribution network for indie publishers that cuts Amazon & all other middlemen right out. Any user could host books/reviews/data, and if the copy someone purchased came from your computer, you’d get paid. A much smaller percentage than Amazon’s 30-65%, but you’d get paid.

Book authorship is already well distributed. So is readership. So it stands to reason that the distribution of ebooks does not actually require these corporate behemoths.

But guess what would happen if I built something like this? Because I could build it, all by myself, and it would only take a few months.

1. I would have to find somebody (Mark Coker at Smashwords?) to be able to meaningfully offer the service to authors. Because they don’t know me from a hole in the ground. (Hi, Mom! I cleaned up that part!)
2. I would have to find somebody (I dunno…Bill Gates?) to pay for all the damned lawsuits.

So I’m not going to do this. Instead I’m going to write more books, because that’s what I want to do. But something like this is where we’re all going, and I think that’s a damn fine outcome.

YMMV. But it probably won’t. Till next time….