When you buy a Kindle from Amazon, it comes with a long list of restrictions.  Amazon can remove files from your Kindle.  They can prevent libraries from loaning them to patrons.

When you buy nearly anything from Apple, it comes with a long list of restrictions.  You can only install certain programs on an iPhone or iPad.  Violate the rules, and Apple may turn your device into a sleek and stylish paperweight.

When you buy a Droid X from Motorola, it comes with a long list of restrictions, despite running a supposedly open operating system from Google.  If you try to do something with the phone that isn’t authorized, your phone may become a slightly less sleek and stylish paperweight.

How can you call this a purchase?  If I purchase something, it is mine.  I can do what I want.  I am free from restrictions imposed by the seller.  Now, I understand many of the business decisions behind the restrictions.  Most often they are designed to protect the user experience, either from excessive data usage by unauthorized third-party applications, or from poorly designed applications that may do all kinds of nasty things to the device.

But a valid business reason doesn’t justify misleading consumers.  And I’d like to see the FTC live up to its mandate and do something about it.

If you are in the business of selling things, and you sell something for less than you paid for it, this is a failure on your part.  Now, it’s a little different if selling that thing at a loss enables you to sell more of other things (see loss leader).  But that’s not what’s happening here.  The publishing industry is essentially selling the profitable thing to pay for the loss leaders.  This is not how selling things works.  This, incidentally, is why the publishing industry has such a problem with Amazon – Amazon is very good at using loss leaders, and it undercuts the way publishing has always worked.

There are numerous solutions to the problem, but all involve a big change in the way publishers do business.

First, they can make the “losses” less costly.  Move compensation towards the back – advances are gambles by publishers that often don’t pay off, and guess who gets to make up the difference?  That’s right, the reader.  Won’t this hurt authors, you ask?  Probably.  This is not what anyone wants, so we’re going to have to figure out ways to fix it.

Perhaps a better idea is for the publishers to learn how to use loss leaders correctly.  When someone buys the latest Dan Brown hardcover, give them the debut novel from a relative unknown who writes fast-paced conspiracy thrillers.  Note that this works even better with ebooks, where the marginal cost to produce another copy is infinitesimal.  You’ve now increased the value of Brown’s book, and maybe you’ve gained a fan for the new author.  I rarely buy books from authors I don’t know (not without strong and trusted recommendation), but I often by the second and third and fourth books from authors I first read for free.

As an aside, this works even better if you’re an indie bookshop run by someone who would know right away which unknown author would perfectly complement a Dan Brown or other famous author.

Publishers, recognize that the way (most of) you do business now is broken.  It is fixable.  Go figure out how.

At that, it succeeded.  Now, when I talk to them about what I’m doing, they no longer look at me like I have two heads.

My mom even bought two subscriptions to the print edition of Wired – one for herself, and one for my brother-in-law.  The more interesting one is for my brother-in-law.  Here’s a little timeline.

• 9/2/07 – Purchased a gift subscription for two years
• 7/21/08 – Received an email from Wired, breathlessly stating that the subscription was about to run out!
• 8/14/08 – Another email, another urgent reminder to renew!
• 9/X/08 – Renewed for a year (until 9/2010), thinking the subscription was about to expire
• 6/17/09 – Another email from Wired – your gift subscription is expiring!
• 7/15/09 – Yet another email
• 9/16/09 – Finally, a letter urging her not to “disappoint a friend who’s looking forward to staying on top of our technological future”, once again making it as hard to figure out as possible that the subscription still has a year to go before it expires.

Now, I understand that the magazine industry is struggling.  There is so much competition for our time and attention.  Honestly, when was the last time you read a magazine when you weren’t on an airplane or in a waiting room?

But you would think that the magazine that employs the guy who wrote The Long Tail would maybe have a clue.  Deceiving your customers is no way to keep them.  Wired tried to walk a fine line between aggressively pursuing subscriptions and outright lying to customers, and then crossed right over.  It’s possible that the software people who wrote their email reminder system forgot to look at the year the subscription expired, only focusing on the month.  As a software person myself, I’d be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.  But when my mom emailed Wired to complain, she got a form letter that totally ignored her question and suggested that it was her responsibility to keep track of her subscription, not theirs, and that she should just ignore their urgent emails if she had already renewed.

It’s sad – I think the magazine industry fills a good niche.  They’re more specialized than the newspapers, though not as timely.  But they’re more succinct and faster than books.  There is clearly a spot for something resembling a magazine in the future of media.  But when the pursuit of another year of subscription fees becomes more important than how you treat your customers, you’re waving a white flag.  You’re telling the world that you are unable to compete, unable to adapt to a changing world, and you’re clinging to deceptive marketing to prop up the status quo.

I feel like I repeat the same thing, over and over, but too many people don’t seem to get it.  There will always be a place in the world for talented people.  But when those talented people refuse to acknowledge that some of the ways they used to make money might not work anymore, and start demanding that the world change back to the way it was, they lose their relevancy.  You can’t try to limit technological advances to save you from having to redefine the way you do business.  You have to look at what the technology enables, and how it can help you.

You’d think a technology magazine would get that.