Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
People keep saying this, but it's not true. E-book publishers may have made their own mistakes but they have *not* made the mistakes that music publishers made.
The mistake music publishers made was that they *did not provide a convenient, legal way to buy digital music*. Not that they charged too much money, or set monopoly prices. They simply did not make the music available at all. Music publishing's problems were *never* about how much they charged for digital downloads, no matter how much people who don't like the cost of e-books would like for it to be.
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I agree with what you say but for this;
ebook publishers have not made it a totally convenient experience to buy ebooks. It may appear they have, but in reality the impost of geographic restrictions means a buyer can buy a book via a webstore or locally, but cannot buy the same book in ebook form due to the antiquated distribution system that publishers are most reluctant to change.
These stupid and un-necessary restrictions do contribute to piracy.
The comparison I drew is that the publishing industry, like the music and entertainment industry, are still bumbling along with the same distribution system that served them well enough pre digital age. There was several years of stumbling around before those industries got part way to a solution.
With such prime examples of what not to do, it does seem the publishers (agency 5) are moving down that same path.