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Originally Posted by Shaggy
How many ebooks have you seen that were cheaper than the paperback? In most cases the publisher is charging the same, or even more for the ebook. They're still trying to charge for the physical delivery method, which is a significant part of the price. That's basically my point.
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Yes, and this is ridiculous - I agree. The problem is that they are simply afraid of totally loosing the "hard" market (real books, cds, etc) 'cause of the lower price of the new technology - and thus loose its controllability.
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Yeah, you don't have to give away ebooks for free (that's just one model people have suggested), but you'll need to find a price point that consumers will be willing to pay versus just copying/downloading it themselves. I don't know how high that will be though. The idea is that a significant part of the price for physical books today are for things that no longer exist with ebooks, but the music companies and book publishers are not wanting to change.
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Whoah! I agree again! It will need some try and error - but (greatly) reducing the price (adopting to lower production costs) and selling more service is a different thing from "giving away for free". Guess we were just misunderstanding each other
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With the internet, it's also conceivable that they could effectively promote themselves as well.
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Publishers would need to rethink their business model - they give some service (e.g. lectoring, ads (dont underestimate the power of ads e.g. in stations etc - even better if you can just download the book there), etc) and get paid for it. Only the production-step gets lots, and that (I guess we agree) means lower prices and a higher profit-margin for authors / musician. Publishers ARE providing some service that is crucial for authors/musicians. But I agree, the internet gives creatives the possibility to decide for themselves...
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The sale price of their mp3/ebook would be a lot lower than it is today (no middle men anymore), and the artist would probably take a much bigger cut than their current royalties. This idea is pretty scary to the RIAA/publishers though, and you can bet they're going to fight it very hard.
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Yes - we can see this in germanys new copyright laws.