Because it’s his own hard work at stake, suddenly everything we know about digital piracy–that its effects on sales are complicated and not always negative, and that it doesn’t always cannibalize existing markets–is thrown out the window by Pogue as he obsesses over raising his family and making enough money to put his kid through school.

At one point, he writes that his current DRM–the printed page–is virtual unbreakable. This is obviously untrue, and in fact the printed page is among the easiest formats to repurpose, requiring little more than some off-the-shelf hardware and software (a scanner, an OCR program) and lots and lots of hours of laborious scanning, converting, and assembling. The fact that nobody has done it, or that I don’t care to do it at any rate, has more to do with how much I value the content than with the “difficulty” of the format. (By contrast, I am seriously considering scanning in some of my Cynthia Ozick and Isak Dinesen books so that I can enjoy them on my Kindle, since their publishers haven’t made them available.)

Publishers are at the rear of the various media facing a digital revolution. I keep hoping this means they’ll learn from the mistakes of others, but most of the noise out there so far–from publishers and authors–seems to indicate a fresh new wave of resistance and FUD.

I hope Pogue and his publisher were paying attention to what Viacom and News Corp execs were saying at a recent TV conference. They work in a medium that faces far greater threats from digital piracy, and yet sound braver, more knowledgable, and even more profit-minded than Pogue:

The answer to digital piracy isn’t simply fighting it — find new business models or prepare to die.

Such was the refrain of News Corp. prexy Peter Chernin in remarks made during the opening-panel discussion at National Cable and Telecommunications Assn.’s annual confab, which opened Sunday.

Viacom prexy-chief Philippe Dauman said branding was likely the best way to survive challenges posed by digital distribution.

…

“I’m not a skeptic,” Chernin said. “We look at this as an opportunity, hopefully profitable. The challenge is how do we protect our margins, especially our margins of existing distribution. We’ve got to look at new forms of distribution as an opportunity for content providers.”

…

“We all have a vested interest in protecting copyright,” Chernin said. “But we all need to find the best ways to deliver our content to customers where and when they want it and at an affordable price. If we do not find a legal way to do that, people will find illegal ways.”

Fighting piracy alone, Chernin elaborated, would not be enough.

“To the degree we’re only trying to protect existing business, we’re toast,” he said. “All we’re doing there is staving off the inevitable. We’ll be dinosaurs sentencing ourselves to extinction.”

Chernin emphasized that more time needs to be spent developing new business models than protecting old ones.

“A digital dodge for piracy; Industry toppers dig digital at confab”, William Triplett, Daily Variety, 18 May 2008

Instead of being on the defensive, reluctant publishers and authors like Pogue must embrace an offensive strategy. If they continue to avoid digital publishing, they’ll certainly still survive–I can’t imagine print going away any time in the next fifty years at the least–but they’ll be doing a disservice to themselves and their present and future readers.

One easy way to create a digital version of Pogue’s books–and this holds true for every sort of manual or guide (and it’s not like this is my brilliant idea–it’s been discussed elsewhere) is to release updates. If you know that buying an ebook copy of Pogue’s book includes the next three edition updates free or at a reduced cost, versus sniffing out and downloading illegal copies each time, the vast majority of normal consumers will opt for the paid version, both out of fairness and convenience*.

Another option is to build an ebook platform on an advertising-based model, such as Adobe’s ad-supported PDF program that uses Yahoo! ads.

But the last thing Pogue or any author should do is run screaming from ebooks. Ignoring it completely is probably still okay for the bulk of established writers, but they’ll be missing out from the opportunities that the ebook format offers. And annoying me to no end.

*There’s a huge caveat to this idea of “fair” customers who are willing to buy instead of pirate–if publishers don’t price digital versions fairly, they’ll lose the upper hand in this conversation. So what’s fair? Subtract printing, binding, shipping, warehousing, pulping, selling to retail booksellers. That’s fair.