Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Why didn't you just buy the eBook version in the first place? You would have saved $20, and had something that was more convenient to carry around.
|
Look, I wouldn't mind paying, say, $5 for an e-book copy of a paper book I own, given that the ebook is not DRMd. But as a consumer, I am not going to support any idiot schemes that require crappy DRM or allow a publisher to rip me off.
Furthermore, I am very surprised that no one mentions library services in these discussions- like Safari from O'Reilly. I have belonged to several of these over the years and- if I wanted- could have copied all of the books they have. Aren't these a huige source for piracy?
When one considers digital media, given the fact that it costs nothing to produce a new copy, some of the old economic rules have to be reconsidered.
It seems that producers want to keep only the old rules that benefit them. For example, the customer must pay almost paper book prices for the e-book, but he does not have the right to return or resell the e-book. The reality of the digital marketplace is that you have sunk costs (the costs required to actually produce the work) and you have extremely minimal dfistribution costs- you don't have to buy paper and ink, etc. You aren't offering a tangible physical product, so your prices should go down. But greed steps in at this point, and the publisher thinks- hey, I can increase profit per copy sold tremewndously, because I have just eliminated raw resource cost, transportation cost, etc. The reality of this situation is that market forces will drive prices down and, in the end, publishers distributing electronically will probably make about the same amount per work as they do
under the old system.
And hopefully books might get better as a result. Publishers should realize that, with today's digital technology, the ONLY real function they serve is as a filtering mechanism- to keep the real crap off of our electronic bookshelves. I think we'll see more authors going off on their own, sans publisher, once they are established in the e-market....