[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by harryE123

Well, I never said this was anything but my opinion.

Understood.

Yes I firmly believe that an ebook copy should be given with every paperback too, it costs close to nothing extra. Even if pbook prices rise by a % I think they should ALL include a cross platform ebook version too by default.

You don't understand how costs are accounted.

Like I said, 80% of the costs of an average book occur before you get the file that will be sent to the printer as a PDF to make plates and print the book, or will be turned into an ebook for electronic distribution.

And ebooks impose an additional cost because they are an additional step in the production process. Right now, writers submit manuscripts in the form of Word documents. Once line editing, copy editing, and proofreading are done, the final version goes to desktop publishing. DTP imports the Word document into Adobe InDesign to do typesetting and markup. The output from InDesign is a PDF file sent to the printer, who feeds it to an imagesetter to make plates the book will be printed from.

InDesign can generate an ePub file, but current versions do so badly. A good ePub file requires starting from well-formed XML, and something has to produce that and generate the ePub. It's not automatic, and someone must be involved in that stage.

Add to that the fact that ePub isn't the only ebook file format in current use. Consider the Amazon Kindle, that uses the Mobipocket format. InDesign doesn't generate that at all - something else has to, and once again, someone has to be involved.

But even if InDesign produced good ePub, and the processes were in place to automatically convert ePub to other formats like MobiPocket (which is possible, as ePub contains the content and metadata required), it still would not be considered to have "no extra cost". Accounting doesn't work that way. The same P&L generated for a paper copy would be generated for an electronic edition. The electronic edition will be expected to cover a portion of the overall costs of the book.

And what would you do in the case where there was only an electronic edition? We are seeing that now, and are likely to see a lot more in the future.

I want to continue buying my paper books and have a physical library, yet I also want the right to read a few pages or take a few of them with me on an ebook reader without having the bulk for the occasional trip. Should I pay almost twice for that? Of course I and others shouldn't. The status quo as is, is unacceptable.

You shouldn't? Why not? The status quo is unacceptable to you. The question is the rest of the market.

I suspect we'll see three market segments: those who buy only paper copies, those who buy only electronic copies, and those who buy both. The main change I see in the next few years will be the number who buy only one format, as people who bought paper move to electronic editions. The number buying both will remain a fraction of the total market.

And this is not self corrective by the market, that's a long gone myth.

It is? Do you buy things you think are over priced?

In a competitive market, the price is what the market will bear, and value is what the customer is willing to pay for. If enough of my market is willing to buy my widget at the price I sell it for to cover my costs and make enough money to justify selling it and keep me in business, by definition, I'm charging a fair price. You may think my price is too high, but that's your problem. You vote with your wallet and don't buy. Enough other people do buy that I have no strong incentive to lower my price.

I am sincerely sorry for authors losing profits, but most lesser known authors do not have their copyrights violated on the web.

Don't bet on that...

(Though you can argue that less known authors are in the same relative position as less known bands whose work is copied and shared. They might well be happy about it, as it exposes more people to their music. Less known authors might have similar feelings. SF writer Cory Doctorow said "An author's real problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity.", and he has a point.

The question is how many people download and read a pirated electronic copy instead of buying a legitimate version. It's possible to track the downloads, but lost sales are quite another matter.)

In any case this is a certain radical stance that will possibly show publishers that whatever they do unless they start offering a fair product, which is to say a slightly higher price for ebook+pbook combos over ebooks, better cross platform standards (no more of that pdf garbage), open non drm books (that is questionable even to me too so far), they will face the radicalism that the web affords. Do they want to be like the music industry that was too late to notice this and has hemorrhaged profits every since (and hadn't it been for apple they be shooting themselves on the foot), or do they want to wizen up?

They don't seem like they do. Shame.

PDF isn't garbage. There are some books for which PDFs are the only realistic format to use, with textbooks as a good example. (Especially those containing any significant amount of math.)

But cross-platform standards aren't just the publisher's problem. Amazon's Kindle uses Mobipocket format. Barnes and Noble's nook and the Sony Reader use ePub. Do you think either is likely to drop the one they use and adopt the other?

I have hopes DRM will go away, but am not holding my breath.

Of course you understand I am referring to physical libraries. These are irreplaceable to me. The sense of owning own, having friends and relatives browse it over a cup of coffee, making a reading room where you read surrounded by your books, and you can get up and move about the physically browse it outside of that perennial screen we have in front of us...handing out a book, the tactile sense of the book, the dog eared pages, the inscribed note etc. etc. are all irreplaceable to me. More so than for music. But even with music I miss that physical item a lot as well, vinyl in particular.

Understood. I own about 1,500 vinyl LPs. I still have a turntable, and the vinyl isn't going anywhere.

But I feel the same way about electronic music files as I do about ebooks - it's an additional format, not a replacement.
______
Dennis