Licensed online libraries: myth or reality? About the war of authors with readers and shops with libraries, the value of books as a work and as a subject, as well as the official electronic library MyBook …
About books and libraries
They say that history develops in a spiral, and everything new is well forgotten old. Maybe so, but as for me, it all looks more like the movement of a pendulum. Every event or phenomenon that happens around us, every decision and every action makes him swing in one direction or another. And if some people in their entire lives can only barely move the pendulum from its place, then others can very seriously deflect it in the right direction.
But no one can hold the pendulum for a long time. Sooner or later, he will slip out of his weakened hands and swing back. The stronger the initial push was, the stronger it will be carried in the opposite direction and the longer it will take to regain a state of calm.
If we talk about books and the book business, then this pendulum has been trying for many years to be used for their own purposes by all and sundry. Moreover, the most frequent use is to push towards the opponent with all the foolishness, trying to hit him on the forehead properly. Some even manage to laugh a lot while the weight suspended on a rope flies back, returning the blow to the hapless brawler.
A few decades ago, even a very modest family library was of great value. If now you can buy anything and anywhere, then it was different before. Not just buying, but even just borrowing the desired book from someone was a very big problem. On the one hand, reading was encouraged in every possible way, even at the state level. On the other hand, due to a host of various reasons (from the ubiquitous censorship to the banal shortage of paper), there was a very large shortage of books in the country. At some point, books even became a statutory subject – a bookcase with a solid collected works emphasized the status of its owner much better than any luxury item.
With all this, books were often exchanged and constantly given to each other to read. The same copy of the book could be read by a huge number of very different people from several generations, it was completely normal and natural. That’s why she’s a book to be read. And the value of the book purchased from this not only did not decrease, but rather even increased.
Then the pendulum swung in the opposite direction. Books ceased to be a scarcity and luxury, shops were inundated with literature of the most varied quality. Both domestic and foreign. Book publishing became a serious business with a lot of money. Libraries and reading rooms gradually faded into the background – they were practically not replenished with new books, the range of bookstores was often much wider. A bunch of cheap paperbacks have sprung up, shifting the emphasis from classic and time-tested literature to the latest. Books are increasingly being bought 'one-time', just to while away the night on the train or the daily commute from work to home. Rereading, and even more so for centuries to preserve and inherit a primitive love detective story or another story about vampires, no one would have thought of it. And the stories about how, relatively recently, people handed over tens of kilograms of waste paper and stood in long queues for just a chance to get the long-awaited book by Alexander Dumas or Somerset Maugham began to be perceived as a real fantasy.
But all this was only the beginning – the pendulum had already managed to accelerate properly, and was clearly not going to stop. The Internet turned out to be a serious blow that mixed the cards for all players at once. While offline libraries practically didn’t compete with bookstores, their electronic counterparts inflicted considerable damage on the printing business. After all, now one and the same copy of the book could be simultaneously 'taken from the shelf' by hundreds of thousands of people at any time, and completely free of charge. The number of people willing to buy printed materials dropped sharply, especially since most of the books by young but extremely prolific authors were already 'disposable' anyway. And reading as a form of leisure has a lot of serious competitors, from films and computer games to blogs and social networks. Both publishers and authors sounded the alarm – no matter how beautiful the ideas of communism looked, and no one is ready to work for free. Those for whom writing was just one of many hobbies were not particularly affected by this. But professional writers, who spend many hours every day working on a new book, were hit very hard.
The motto is 'Happiness for everyone, for nothing, and let no one leave offended!' always seemed very naive to me. In our world, nothing comes out of nowhere, and speaking about the cost of an electronic copy, one should take into account not only the time spent on pressing Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V, but also the efforts to create the original. There will be no original – there will be no copies, the idea seems to be simple, but for many it is not obvious.
Offtopic: licensed content
And it seems that even the initially correct ideas very quickly led to the other extreme – electronic libraries were declared the root cause of all existing problems at once and the number one enemy of the people. Although, until recently, the very idea that a public library (albeit not electronic at that time) could be closed in the interests of a bookstore seemed simply absurd. And to introduce a 'Mikhalkovsky' tax on any paper sheets and ballpoint pens, or to consider reading books as an infringement of the author's rights = all the more so. Authors who are seriously at war with their readers – this is a plot at the level of 'bees against honey', but every year it became more and more real.
Fortunately, somewhere in this place, the pendulum finally braked and then began to move in the opposite direction. It is still quite unhurried, but gaining speed is a matter of time only.
I don’t know, maybe some authors nevertheless thought that the illiterate and completely unaccustomed to reading the population of their books in any case will not be needed. And what do they write not for themselves, but for the readers. With whom, despite all the existing disagreements, you still have to somehow negotiate and look for a compromise. Or maybe the publishers finally realized that there will be no 'as before' anyway, and the business in any case will have to be adapted to the realities of today. One way or another, gradually official electronic libraries really began to appear.
Of course, this pleasure is not entirely free; by analogy with services like Google Music, you will have to pay something for a monthly subscription. But on the other hand, it gives access to a huge number of books, without forcing them to buy each work for one reading. And whether such an opportunity is worth a couple of packs of cigarettes or a glass of beer – everyone decides for himself.
MyBook
An example of this approach is the MyBook application. It is available for several platforms at once, in addition, this service also has a web interface.
Library
The main advantage of pirated online libraries is not only free access to a heap of books, but also a solid user community. Which automatically means a bunch of reviews, reviews and comments on books, a convenient breakdown by genre, thematic collections, and sometimes even personal recommendations. Books there are not only more convenient to download or read, it is more convenient to search and select them.
MyBook honestly tries to follow this tradition. First, all books are broken down into genres and subgenres. True, sometimes this division is rather arbitrary, but there's nothing you can do about it. Secondly, most of the books (especially modern ones) are provided with a list of subject tags. Going from an open book by Murakami to a section of Japanese literature, a special collection 'Murakam-mania' or a genre of philosophical prose is a matter of one click.
In addition, under each book there is always a list 'This book is also read …'. True, there is usually not much sense from him. Apparently, most users start by finding and adding all their favorite books in a row to their bookshelf. And for an outside observer, there will be no system at all in such a sample.
If you do not know what to read, it is better to turn to the book collections, which are devoted to an entire section of the main menu. Some of them are generated automatically and, in my opinion, are of little interest. Still, in 'New' I want to see exactly new books, and not 'Notes on Sherlock Holmes'. Yes, and the list of 'Best of the Best' is too motley, a bunch of various books got here, from collections of Lukyanenko's stories and classical English prose to Finance for Dummies and the works of Sigmund Freud.
But hand-made selections are much more interesting. There are a lot of them here and for every taste, from weekly headings like 'Fantastic Wednesday' and tips 'What to read in transport' to a list of topical news of the current month, popular book awards and selections dedicated to some specific events.
Any book always has an official review, but besides it, there are reviews and comments from the readers themselves. Although at the moment there are not as many reviews as we would like, moreover, most are monosyllabic. 'Liked', 'disliked', 'everything is super' and so on. But there's nothing you can do about it – the database of comments from popular online libraries has been collected for years, and MyBook had to start from scratch.
In addition to reviews, there is also a quotation section. In theory, this should be a very interesting thing, in practice, most users have not yet figured out how to work with these same quotes. Very often some completely meaningless fragments of sentences or incomprehensible sets of words get there. So, either moderation will work in this section, or soon it will finally turn into a dump.
Each library user has their own bookshelf, where all open or already read books are displayed. A separate section is the 'I want to read' list, where in just a couple of clicks you can add any book you are interested in. Detailed statistics are collected for each open book: reading time and speed, number of sessions, approximate time until the end of reading, and so on. In addition, you can always see how many pages you read in general on a particular day and find out the total reading time.
In general, the library is arranged conveniently, but it will obviously take time for developers to collect a solid amount of reviews, add the necessary tags to books and deal with incorrectly quoted pieces of text. But the main thing is that even despite a number of controversial points, the library can be used without any problems right now. Everything you need, from searching and breaking down by genre to reviews and book covers, has long been there.
Small technical flaws are present, but they hardly affect the impressions of the application. Perhaps the most annoying bug has to do with search. By typing in the title of the book or the name of the author, you get a list of books suitable for the request. If, after switching to one of them, you want to go back, then the bottom of the list will be closed by an unclear where the keyboard appeared. It cannot be minimized, and in this case the entered search query will be erased and the search will have to be performed again.
Reader
But directly with the reading of books, the situation is much less rosy. Although all the essential functions of the built-in reader are also present, comparing it with my beloved Moon + Reader simply won't turn your tongue. To say that they are in different weight classes is to say nothing.
You can choose one of three background colors (white, black, beige) and one of a couple of system fonts, set one of the three suggested line spacing values and choose the font size. This is where all the settings end. And it seems that not long ago, when everyone read only paper books, readers did not have any opportunity to choose a background color or font size. And the animation of turning pages was always the same and did not give in to any additional customization. But you get used to good things quickly, and for many users it is the modest possibilities of the reader that will become the main disadvantage of this service.
Types of subscriptions
We should also dwell on the types of subscription. Everything is a little confusing here. A couple of months ago, when I first installed this application on my smartphone, it had three types of subscriptions. The first option was a free subscription, which gave access to 10,000 books. The second option is a standard subscription, which included the entire main range. And the third option was a business subscription, which (according to the description of the application on Google Play) cost almost three times more, but differed from the standard only in access to specific business literature. It would seem a simple and completely transparent scheme, no tricks and pitfalls.
In fact, everything turned out to be not at all so simple. Already a cursory glance at the catalog has shown that the library staff includes all novelties of any genre as 'business publications'. For example, this is how the 'urban fantasy' section looked. From the golden icons, the 'subscription business' simply dazzled in the eyes, although it is clear that all these stories about vampires, necromancers and Koshchei Immortals have nothing to do with business literature, even in theory.
Attempts to somehow clarify this point and figure out what still applies to the standard subscription, and what to its business version, technical support responded very evasively. The answer in the spirit of 'business subscription includes all books from the library' did not explain much. Although, after a number of additional leading questions, it was still possible to find out that new items do not become available to readers with a standard subscription immediately, but with some delay.
This whole story left behind a rather unpleasant aftertaste – such information should be initially indicated in the application description in the Google Play store. And the situation when the user learns about the restrictions of the selected subscription retroactively, after payment, is completely unacceptable. And no trial period, during which it is theoretically possible to sort out these issues by the method of “scientific poke”, does not change the matter. Moreover, there is no information about him in the application description either.
Interestingly, on the official MyBook website, since mid-November, news has been floating around that the subscription system has been completely redesigned. Business subscription fell from 499 to 299 rubles and was named 'Premium'. And all the differences between the standard and premium subscriptions are now painted without any omissions. Everyone can choose the option that they prefer, and even get a few days to test anyone interested in the subscription options. But in the description of the application on Google Play there is still nothing like this, the tariffs there are now described as follows:
“Buying books one at a time is not always convenient. Therefore, MyBook offers you a huge library and two simple subscription plans. You don't need to worry about downloading fb2, epub and other formats, just find an interesting book in our library and click read.
A standard subscription is issued for a month for 169 rubles. Popular fiction and business literature, detective stories and science fiction are at your disposal for the duration of your subscription. All non-copyrighted books are free to read: over 10,000 books are free to read.
For your convenience, the standard subscription renews automatically every month. You can enable or disable auto-renewal in the settings after subscribing.
Business subscription gives you the opportunity to read business books from such top business publishing houses in Russia as Mann, Ivanov and Ferber or Peter, as well as absolutely all books from the standard subscription. '
Honestly, I do not understand what is the point of creating problems out of the blue for myself and for my users. It seems that they really fixed all the problems and significantly reduced the cost of the premium subscription. And this is great news, which will only delight all readers and make the service even more popular. But no, the description of the application again features some incomprehensible 'business subscription' and there is not even a normal description of tariffs. Well, at least in the application itself, the information was corrected.
Outcome
For some reason, it is generally accepted that the word 'licensed' in itself puts an end to any such project. Like any folk art, this myth has been passed from mouth to mouth for many years and is extremely tenacious. And yet, this is really nothing more than a myth. A lot of people will always gladly use high-quality and convenient service with adequate cost. And there are already a whole bunch of successful examples, ranging from games on Steam, where Russian-speaking clients are confidently staying in the TOP-3, to music services like Google or Apple Music, which also do not complain about the number of subscriptions.
Another thing is that for a very long time, pirated services were of high quality and convenient, while the official services offered to personally create a bunch of problems for themselves for their own money. And now it really smacked of masochism.
One way or another, and the old model of content distribution is gradually becoming obsolete, in the future there will only be more services with subscriptions at a reasonable price. Some of the publishers and copyright holders will resist longer, some less, but the rules of the game will have to be changed. Of course, all this does not hurt at all to buy the book you like in printed or electronic form. Another option will simply appear, resembling a noticeably improved analogue of the old libraries.
If we talk specifically about MyBook, then I really want to believe that the developers of the service will not follow the curve, but the path long beaten by their colleagues. Now MyBook really has every chance of becoming a convenient, open and newbie-friendly service. A place where books can not only be conveniently read, but also chosen, advised and discussed. A library that will be a pleasure to use. And now the main danger for MyBook is not “evil pirates” at all, but the creators themselves.
Friday column number 17. Liters against readers on Android
The idea of snatching a jackpot here and now, and then hanging all the dogs on ungrateful users and unscrupulous 'pirates' may seem very tempting to someone … and in this case, the fate of the library will be sealed. It is still possible to lure a certain number of people with the help of loud advertising. But to keep it by deception is no longer there. If the user feels deceived, he will not understand the legal accuracy of the wording, he will simply turn around and leave.
