Quote:
Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
You wish. You can, obviously, decide not to release a book at all, but once you do you might as well release a legal ebook as well. If you don't, do you really think there won't be an electronic version? There will be, but since you're not selling it there's no way to make money that way. Stupid move.
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If I was a publisher who was wary of e-books, I'd
much prefer to take my chances that my 300-page book wasn't going to be scanned page by page than I would to release an e-book and do all that work
for the people trying to screw me and my author.
The
vast majority of paper books only get into electronic format if the publisher decides to release an e-book or if Project Gutenberg copies it (which means it's out of copyright). If I was a publisher who hated the idea of the e-book, I'd be quite happy to take my chances that my particular book wouldn't get scanned. The odds would be heavily in my favor. Not only that, but the financial damage to me would be negligible, since said e-book would be deep underground, and the vast majority of readers would not even know where or how to get it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
They are cheaper to produce, and less valuable (no resale value, e.g.)
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The cost of production is only one part of a book, and not the main part. It's certainly true that there's no resale value, and that should be taken into account, but there are many benefits to e-books that can be weighed against that. Whether a person
does value those things more is certainly an open question, but that's a decision any person has to make when deciding what format to buy. Once you've bought an e-book, you've made that choice. You should no more expect to get money from the resale from an e-book than you would expect to get a jacket cover or a leather bookmark.