Quote:
Originally Posted by starrigger
Side note: One area where I might agree with the cynical view is in textbooks. Clearly an area where ebooks could be of enormous benefit to the user, the student. But my brother is a textbook author, and he says his publisher simply doesn't know what to do about it, and they are, indeed, running scared.
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This is one of the few areas where licensing might work--being able to sell 2nd edition (or 3rd, 4th, or whatever) to people who already have the first edition, at a reduced price, the way many software vendors sell 3.0 at half-price to registered users of 2.0.
College students probably only want a textbook once--but professors would pay for the upgrades, and so would professionals in the relevant field. And they could sell new editions at full price (whatever that is) to students, and upgrades to the pros, who might otherwise stick with the older edition of their ebook.
But overall, all publishing companies are going to need to deal with the ebook markets. They'll have to decide whether to branch into the new area, or license it out, or try to avoid it and watch their book sales drop in comparison to those that cater to customers who want ebooks.