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Originally Posted by CommonReader
You really should have told people. The number of digitized books in German that are available in the darknet is surprising. The choice of illegal books seems to outstrip the legal offerings by far.
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My point is that publishers *could* give up on e-books. German e-books make up less than 1% of the market. The larger number of illicit e-books is a reason *to* give up the market, not a reason they *can't* give up the market. And since a pirated book doesn't automatically equate to a lost sale, there's no way of knowing how many people who found books on the darknet would have paid for the book if available legally.
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Anyway, price obviously is important. While there are always some people who will go for the illegal and free option many people will only choose to go down the illegal route if they consider the legal option (if there is one at all)) as overpriced or inconvenient.
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No. Price is *not* obviously important. That's the point that you and your fellow posters don't seem to get, despite all the evidence. Price (meaning the prices charged for e-books now) doesn't seem to matter.
That's what the evidence shows, clearly. I thought that price was going to be important, too, and that agency pricing would strangle the market. But, as I keep saying, the market tripled in one year, despite the fact that the cost of bestselling agency books went up 20-50%. This shows that, within broad ranges, price doesn't really matter, and suggests that the vast majority of e-book readers seem to regard e-books like paper books, and will pay paper book prices for them
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Unless prevented by geographical restrictions publishers of English language books can widely expand their reader base with ebooks. People who are keen on reading English language books don't depend on their local book shops any more and can obtain the books via the web now.
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Yes.