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Originally Posted by foghat
I doubt any of your 'terms' above are considered by the author/publisher/whoever when setting the price of a pbook.
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They're certainly aware that customers are considering those traits; that's why "collector's editions" exist. They're aware that most customers consider hardcovers "better" than paperback, and it's not just because of the larger print size.
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Even if I were to concede (in fact, I'd argue the opposite, except in the case of physical presence) that a pbook meets your 'terms' better than an ebook, ebooks offer their own advantages.
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They do. However, some of the potential advantages of ebooks are negated by DRM. DRM'd ebooks are trying to be accepted as one-person, single-use entertainment purchases, while pitching themselves as permanent zero-space archive editions. ("You can just re-download your Kindle books!"... unless, of course, they were magazines, or Amazon has stopped carrying that title for legal reasons.)
Authors and publishers both argue that a great deal of time & effort goes into the creation of a book, and it provides more entertainment (by number of hours) than a movie, and therefore you should be willing to pay more than a movie for the ebook, for something you'll read once, maybe twice, and don't share. And the logic there is sound--except that's never been how "books" worked.
They're counting on the longstanding appeal of "books" but trying to sell things that don't act like books.
Meh. The publishers & authors who understand digital purchases will find themselves successful; those who don't, will either shift business models or die slowly.