[research] $89 for an e-book and I'm not even allowed to see my highlights?

[unjapanologist]

I recently bought the Kindle edition of this book. $89 for an e-book is beyond obscene, but I rather desperately needed it for research and there was still room in the budget. I considered getting it as a one-month rental for the equally obscene price of $40, but the rentals page explained that the number of highlights that can be made in a rental book is sometimes limited, and I have a tendency to highlight and annotate about half of everything.

This book, by the way, is the 'official' publication of a PhD thesis that used to be available online for free - I found references and broken links to it from 2008. It's a very interesting and relevant work, and it makes me weep to know that scholars have to lock up this kind of research in $89 vaults just because they need 'real' publications to keep their careers alive.

So, I get my $89 book, read it, love it, and highlight and annotate to my heart's content. Then I go to my online Kindle page, where I will be able to find my highlights and notes and easily copy them into my online notebook. This workflow is pure magic, I have no idea how I ever managed without e-books.

And then this shows up.



Pardon?

I'd heard of publishers sometimes limiting the number of highlights in Kindle books, but this is the first time I've actually encountered it in nearly a year of voracious e-book reading. I was starting to think that that highlight limit thing was a myth. But of course this publisher would elect to slap ridiculous limits on what I can do with a book that I just paid $89 for. They didn't even have the decency to mention on the purchasing page that a bought copy of the book would also come with a highlight limit, just like a rental copy. The only reason why I'm not cursing that publisher's name out loud here is that I just signed a contract with them to write a book chapter, and I'm not sure if I can afford to cancel it. It's complicated, you can find the name on the book's Amazon page. But I know who's never getting another cent out of me for any e-book ever again. I'm happy to pay for e-books, even if I think they're usually far too expensive. But I see no reason to further support a publisher who can't manage to deliver a vaguely functional product in return for $89. The links to the endnotes weren't even clickable.

Please note that there are far more serious accessibility issues with e-books than this. Highlight limits are a pretty minor inconvenience for researchers who have a working budget for buying stupidly expensive books. I'm just making a note of this experience because it's too ridiculous not to write about, and I want e-books to get better than this.

All right, time to stop venting and start liberating my highlights.

Comments

[unjapanologist]

It really is. It's not very long, but does a very good job of showing how complex the communities that create open source software are, and how different parts of the communities relate to each other - coders who are volunteers, coders who are paid by companies to work on the software, translators, artists, documentation writers, company liaisons, and so on. It also made me realize that hey, as soon as that AO3 translation thing is up and running, I'll actually be producing open source software myself. Which is awesome.

Also, lots of interesting analysis of how companies relate to and work together with communities while not alienating the volunteers. I'm wondering about that sort of thing a lot in relation to media companies and fans.