Quote:
Originally Posted by NatCh
Actually, I think the original point was that Baen's model might be a better choice of example of what works than the example of Apple's model, because Baen deals, successfully, with e-books rather than music -- the gist being, why compare oranges to apples when you have a perfectly good orange to compare them to? 
That being said, the facts that Baen does have an actual e-book store, from which they show a profit, and have a number of bestseller list titles available from, which seem mysteriously resistant to piracy despite their glaring lack of any DRM would seem to be extraordinarily relevant to the current topic of discussion. 
I understood that you wished to discuss how e-books might be successfully and profitably marketed in the mainstream, but perhaps I misunderstood your intent?
If I don't misunderstand, then I'd figure that a specific, real-world example of a company that's doing a darned good job of doing precisely that in a particular genre would be of interest, along with the details of how they're going about it.  |
NatCh hit most of my intent. The one missing piece is that the content-providers for the stuff Apple sells via iTunes perceive themselves as having been screwed over (whether correctly or not), and I fear that the Big Publishing guys worry about having the same thing happen to them. The iTunes model has clearly worked for Apple and for the Consumer, but it is at best arguable whether it's worked for the big record labels (they don't think so, certainly).
So the Baen example is relevant because they're a publisher too. A content-provider, not a widget maker. It's an example that a Big Publisher might look at and say "They're like us. Small, but like us" instead of saying "iTunes? The content guys got screwed! I don't want that!!!
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Even with the Kindle, we have Amazon trying to act more like Apple with iTunes. And the publishers are probably quite concerned (and understandably so). I think that they're
wrong to be concerned, but I understand why they would be.
Xenophon