lilfluff

Reading through this post by Mari Ness on LJ about her hotel experience at the Town and Country hotel in San Diego has left me appalled. Even if I was to give the hotel the benefit of the doubt and assume Mari is incorrect on half the details it would still be past acceptability. When Chase Bank says, "What, no way should you have to pay that hotel bill," you know things were Not Right.

The best reading I can see of this shows utter incompetence on the part of the hotel. That's the best reading of the situation I can see. Any other reading only goes downhill from there.

No? You're sure? Well, what if I buy the hardcover how about th--*SMACK!*

"Lynch him! String him up! How dare he give us money! Hey publisher, show that dastardly reader who is boss and delay the next ebook until after even the paperback is out!"

Exaggeration? Perhaps. Not what the people at Writer Beware intend as a message? Probably.

Is that how the response looks to this reader? Pretty much.

The short version is that someone wrote into the New York Times Ethicist column saying that --
A: He bought an ebook device to read books on while traveling
B: he really wanted to read the new Steven King novel Under The Dome, but
C: the publisher has decided not to release the ebook yet (apparently as part of the recent "Oh noes! We must drive away customers in order to support hard cover sales! Darn them for wanting to pay us for books in ebook formats!" movement among publishers), so
D: Really wanting to read the book but not wanting to feel like a gosh darn dirty thief for downloading a pirated ebook copy without having paying the publisher or author... He went out and bought the hardcover like the publisher wanted,
E: Having then given the publisher and a book store money he went to the internet and downloaded an unauthorized copy in a format compatible with his ebook device and used that to read it.
F: The Ethicist columnist says, Hmm, Illegal, but you paid the publisher so I'd say it isn't unethical.
G: People start frothing at the mouth and saying, "How dare you, how dare you!" to the columnist and reader.

I think I agree with haikujaguar who on seeing this decided to do an impromptu addition of the Three Micahs (her new series on the intersection of business owner, independent marketer, and artist for artists of whatever stripe (author, painter, whatever)). She noted that the response on Writer Beware amounted to, "Bad reader! Bad!" With comparisons to outright stealing print copies without ever paying and nary a glance at the publisher that nearly drove away a sale.

I figure if I found this interesting enough to comment spam haikujaguar's post on the topic, then it is an interesting enough post to give a pointer too.

More and more I'm reminded of the late Jim Baen's comment on the Baen Bar that business practices that got between a customer and the customer wanting to pay for Baen published books, were obviously evil. (Although I recall that it was worded in a less wordy and much snappier fashion)

(Edited to actually include a link to the article)