Quote:
Originally Posted by haroldgh
The real problem is that ebooks are extremely small, which makes them very easy to pirate in mind-blowingly massive quantities. You can download a 6GB torrent of ebooks in an hour or two, containing tens of thousands of books, enough to read for free until the day you die. Publishers need to open their eyes and realize that if ebooks aren't reasonably priced consumers will just turn to illicit avenues. "My way or the highway" doesn't cut it when your product is trivially easy to steal with negligible consequences.
But of course they won't drop their prices, because they're wed to their dying business model, just like all the other content providers. They'll heavily litigate their former customers, and over time, they'll bleed to death. And that's not a good thing for anybody, because the lack of centralized monetization will mean less books for us to read.
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same problem as with mp3s and the music industry.
You'd think they have learned by now, but no, they are about to repeat the same mistakes all over.
When I read things like:
"“People would have heart attacks if they knew all the costs associated with digital publishing,” says Maja Thomas, senior vice president of the Hachette Book Group’s digital division. Tacking an e onto a book requires antipiracy software, digital warehousing, extra legal support, and programmers to adapt each title for Android, iPhone, Kindle, and all the other formats. That’s on top of the regular costs of turning a manuscript into a finished product."
I wonder... why don't the just *show* us these costs? I'd like to see how much a digital warehouse for ebooks costs. Is it gold plated? And I also wonder why they have to write the "antipiracy software" (provided by amazon) for every single book. Same with extra legal support. None of these statements appear to be true.