Quote:
Originally Posted by bgalbrecht
Unfortunately, the publishers are used to the DTB world, where people like me, who are unwilling to pay hardcover or trade paperback prices, are willing to wait for the paperback, get it used, or get it from the library. In the new digital world, you can't get it used, in the case of MacMillan and Simon & Schuster, can't get it from the library (in ebook form), and it's usually trivial to find a copy of their ebook with the DRM stripped on the darknet. The genie's not going back into the bottle, so I really don't know what the publishers will be doing in the long run. I don't think the Agency 5 are doing themselves any favors by setting the prices to what they want them to be, and forbidding discounting.
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Publishers will have to give in at some point and lower prices. As soon as ebooks start selling on par with regular books and most people own an ereader they will be forced to give in. Right now they only have avid readers and technophiles as their base. As soon as the everyday Joe catches on and ebooks can truly move beyond being a fad device more people will bitch about the pricing. Not to mention as more people move to ebooks and see the price of books and the DRM crap they will pirate more and publishers will be forced to change the way they play the game.