Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Tell someone that they'll have to pay up front, $400, for an MP3 player. Then $10. for a CD that isn't even on a real disc, or $1 for a music file that also isn't on a disc. The files you bought have DRM, can only be played on that player you bought, and they can't be converted to MP3. Unless you record it on a blank CD first, then burn it to MP3. And oh, yes, Apple will keep track of everything you've bought, and everything you've searched for, in perpetuity.
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The problem with this analogy is that for music (e-mail, software, movies...) you need a device, for books you don't.
Leaving aside the fact that iTunes content is 1-5% of the average iPod content, that the iPod is very useful in a way a ebook reader is not since music is consumed a lot on the go and so on...
After all the interesting discussions here about e-books, I realized that the main hurdle for
commercial e-books is essential usefulness.
Yeah, e-books are useful, but essentially so, no, at least not right now when print books have so many comparative advantages. Until e-books bring something really essentially useful, I think that the only way they will compete with print books is if they are free or very cheap relative to print.
So I still believe that the commercial e-book pie while possibly increasing (though it decreased in the latest quarter compared to the previous after several quarters of increases), is going to be a tiny, tiny slice of the book business pie for quite a while...