MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Ereading all over today's Wall Street Journal

gastan · 08-25-2010, 11:33 AM

What got my attention was a quote in the first article, "Mr. Lynch, the retailer's former digital chief who was appointed CEO (added note: CEO of B&N) in March, said in the conference call that the company sees "only three to four big players in the e-book market over time" because of the cost and difficulty of converting books to a digital format..."

He's probably correct about "only three to four big players ... over time," but it irritates me that he pushes the notion that e-books are difficult and expensive to produce. I think it's just an attempt by the industry to brainwash people into believeing it's so to justify high e-book prices.

Typesetting is done by compter so there is no added cost for producing an electronic file. Scanning an existing book and OCR'ing it and editing it can be done cheaply. There are member here that say they can do it in 3-4 hours with less than $1k worth of equipment. Once the file exists, it is ridiculously easy to produce an ebook in any format you desire. Ask any of many people here at MR that produce the e-books in the download forum.

08-25-2010, 11:33 AM	#2
gastan Addict Posts: 221 Karma: 801624 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: US Pacific Northwest Device: LePan II, Kobo Aura	What got my attention was a quote in the first article, "Mr. Lynch, the retailer's former digital chief who was appointed CEO (added note: CEO of B&N) in March, said in the conference call that the company sees "only three to four big players in the e-book market over time" because of the cost and difficulty of converting books to a digital format..." He's probably correct about "only three to four big players ... over time," but it irritates me that he pushes the notion that e-books are difficult and expensive to produce. I think it's just an attempt by the industry to brainwash people into believeing it's so to justify high e-book prices. Typesetting is done by compter so there is no added cost for producing an electronic file. Scanning an existing book and OCR'ing it and editing it can be done cheaply. There are member here that say they can do it in 3-4 hours with less than $1k worth of equipment. Once the file exists, it is ridiculously easy to produce an ebook in any format you desire. Ask any of many people here at MR that produce the e-books in the download forum. Last edited by gastan; 08-25-2010 at 11:37 AM.