I've been buying a few ebooks lately, mainly out of interest to see how things work. At the moment though I have a few problems with the way they work. This is currently what's stopping me from purchasing ebooks on a regular basis.
- Lower prices: Publishers like ePenguin are charging the same for ebooks as their pbooks.
- No DRM: Those who want to get past it will find a way and it causes problems for those who follow the law.
- Publishers obviously don't put a lot of work into them.
When I say publishers don't put a lot of work into them I'm really only refering to one thing. Book covers. When I downloaded samples from ePenguin, they had the same book covers as their pbooks. When I purchased the book on the other hand I was presented with a big Penguin logo as my book cover. The same thing happened with other publishers. A book I bought from Orion Books does have a proper book cover, but it's quality is terrible and has white borders round it. See image for an example of this.
Even if my books are only digital, it would still be nice to be able to browse them by cover and not publishers logo.
Also I noticed something interesting about pricing on Penguin books. The ebook of Pride and Prejudice is 4.99. The paperback however can be purchased for only 2.00. Even for a person like me living in Norway it's cheaper to buy the paperback and pay for shipping than it is to buy the ebook.