[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Much as I'd like to believe that, I think we've got another year or two before mainstream buyers really notice the problems with DRM and agency pricing. Last year saw a serge in e-readers; this year, they were a common gift item--but most of the people who got them don't even know that they can get ebooks in places other than the store attached to their devices.

It'll take a while for that information to spread out to people who haven't been avidly following ebook news for much of the last decade.

And most people still won't care. Most people with e-books want the same books they want in paper.

I think that it *will* get out, and torrents and fileswap methods for ebooks will quietly grow, because publishers will rant about Those Evil Pirates but try hard not to mention any details (because any details they mention can be googled & lead to more Evil Piracy). And of course, they won't mention the indie ebook stores, because those don't have DRM and the big publishers refuse to be carried in them--which means that, as people discover indie stores and legit free ebook sites, they'll feel the publishers have been trying to hide the competition from them.

They won't care, and most people won't torrent. A point that Amazon emphasizes with the Kindle is that you don't even need a computer. And one of the reasons that the Kindle, in particular, has been so successful is because it is so easy to buy a book - you click once and it's either sent to your device from your computer or downloaded to your device. No connecting to your computer, no sideloading - you just click and buy.

And, no, people won't feel that publishers are trying to "hide" indie stores because they aren't mentioned on Amazon's website.

And then there's the hassle of tracking down a torrent for a free PDF of an ebook they bought on Amazon but won't work on their new Nook, which they didn't understand before they gave the Kindle to their cousin (and they think that's "not piracy," it's just "replacing what they already bought") (because the anti-piracy rants don't describe piracy because they don't want to tell people how to do it)...

No one who doesn't understand that his kindle-format books are not compatible with a nook is going to know how to track down a torrent.

The Big 6 publishers are doing a cracking job of building the foundations of both the underground and the independent markets that will soon be their solid competition. And when those are well-established, mainstream prices will drop, amidst much yelling about how "piracy" is destroying the future of publishing. (There will be no mention of how having access to 10,000 books published over the last 50 years means you might not be interested in the two dozen that publisher released *this* year.)

I see no evidence that independent markets are going to provide any serious competition to big publisher. It didn't happen in music; I don't see why it would happen with books. Look at the music market - where are the vibrant digital indie markets providing serious competition to iTunes and Amazon? They don't exist. Where are all the indie music groups that were supposed to flourish, driving music publishers out of business? That prediction didn't happen, either. The music most people want comes from the traditional music publishers; the same will be true with books.

And big publishers print tens of thousands of books *per year* in the US alone. HarperCollins published 80,000 books in 2009 (of the 270,000 published in the US in that year). Thinking that they only bring out two dozen per year is just crazy - even tiny Baen brings out 70 or so new titles a year.