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I have to admit that the publishers are being blatant about wanting to stomp out re-sale of purchases. I can't sell my iTunes songs when I tire of them. Most shareware apps don't permit me to transfer my registration (tied to Hotsync name). I wish I could find the reference, but one compared the contents of a book to being like a chocolate cake. You are mainly purchasing the enjoyment of the food, not the plate it comes on. Once you have "digested" the story, it is unfair to the author to sell it to someone else so that they may enjoy it free of charge.
Tell you what, I'll "buy" that if the price comes down enough. iTunes works that way: I can't sell back my CD, but they are CHEAPER than buying CDs, so that buying used CDs and buying iTunes is about the same for me. As a bonus, some of my money goes to the artist instead of the just the bookstore, and less garbage is produced from creating the physical disk. Cool.
eBooks aren't like that. There is no paper, colorful cover, or anything that had to be physically produced, and it's not like the "store" has to pay for storage space to stock an eBook. Plus, I don't have the ability to recuperate a little of my costs by selling it back when done. Now, if you made it cheap enough that it was equal to the cost of a used book, or at least equal to buying new minus selling back, then I think the price would be about right.
Right now, I see some eBooks that cost MORE than paperback, and yet they have DRM! Granted, sometimes the cost is worth it to me because I have no space to store or carry the book, but it still feels like they are saying, "Please pay more to be restricted." If the markup is to cover lost sales for "sharing" (like markups due to shoplifters in markets), then there shouldn't be DRM.
Hey, there's a crazy idea. Offer DRMed for cheap, or textfile for an increased cost. At least then we'd have the option.
Just trying to find some sort of lesser-evil common ground here. In a perfect world, they'd sell text/html files at a fair price, and all the consumers would behave themselves and only share amongst close friends and family. I really wish it was like that.
But, I agree, the price has GOT to come down for more people to agree to buy instead of download. iTunes is successful due to price. If it cost more to download from iTunes then to purchase a CD, how do you think they would be doing right now? That's right, about as well as their "Business" machines.
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