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Old 01-29-2012, 09:43 AM   #13
fjtorres
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kumabjorn View Post
They really have a hard time embracing change.
They don't have much trouble embracing fear and using it as a weapon.

Apparently they aren't in the business-management camp that believes it is better to obsolete your own product than to wait for a competitor to do it to you.

The thing about the Glass House Publishers war on ebooks is that they themselves set the ball rolling. If they had never supported ebooks in the first place, they wouldn't be running scared now.
They seemed to think that ebooks would forever be a hobbyist/techie preserve and that ebooks would never appeal to print book readers. Once they created the "monster" they have spent their time trying to keep it away from their "cash cow" instead of realizing ebooks are a bigger cash cow than print ever was. And every move they make, only makes things worse for themselves and better for their competitors.

The main thing the NYT articles glosses over is that the NY Glass Tower publishers are *not* all there is to the US publishing business and that the more they drag their feet and try to marginalize ebooks, the more their competitors will prosper at their expense. Even if the Glass Tower gang does end up living on the streets (Yeah, riiigghhht!) the overall publishing industry will survive and prosper.

The real issue, btw, isn't the viability of the publishers; it is that they've lost their oh-so-cherished gatekeeper power. They are no longer seen as kingmakers because there are plenty of kings and queens that are in no way beholden to them. Note the whining in the article about how they would have to actually figure out how to *market* books themselves instead of just flipping them over the wall and letting retailers market them.

The sky isn't falling.
But a lot of golden parachutes will be deployed in the next few years.
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