Honestly Ive put some thought into this and wondered a few times if that is what publishers are trying to do. By gouging peoples eyes out with prices on ebooks they are insuring that no one buys them and sticks to paperback or hardcover. Knowing that they have basically eliminated the need for an ereader.
'Why buy a Kindle and a book when I can get the same thing for half the price', many may ask. We can justify things as many times as we want with things like
'Yes but you can have the book RIGHT THAT MOMENT', but if money is tight who cares? Would you rather have the book at twice the price that very second or wait a few days and have it half off? This pertains to alot of older books, the prices are ridiculous. I know that topic has been beaten to death, Im not trying to
but I just wanted to say that.
IMHO it should never be cheaper to buy an older book and scan it, essentially possibly breaking copyright law Im not sure how that works out, then buying an ebook. I dont care about their reasons, if the book is old news drop the price. If its selling on
Amazon on the Marketplace for a penny do you really think people will pay $8 for a Kindle version? Ive seen books like this. Its ridiculous.
Then you throw in this whole format war, DRM, EPUB vs Kindle version, its too much darn trouble. Recently I got a Kindle for Christmas. Great present and I really like it. Friend of mine got a Nook Color. Well, they can get textbooks on their Nook. I looked, seems I cant. I almost regret getting it. Almost. I still like it and know its better on the eyes but Im dismayed that I cannot get many textbooks on it. Im also dismayed that I had to spend so long converting many documents, why couldnt it read the original format? The PDF viewer let me down, why wouldnt it change the font size like it can on a Kindle book? Why cant it read comics? I understand no to color comics at the moment, but what about webcomic collections and other black and white comic anthologies?
'Sin City',
'Maus',
'Bone', things like that, why cant it read those? I could go through the trouble of converting them but I spent enough time converting books, Im sick of converting. Why cant it read some of this stuff right off the bat? These are the kinds of things that make me wonder. All this trouble when I can just buy the book and open it? No DRM there. Cant change the font size, sadly, but some vary in sizes anyway. Comic? Whichever one you want, go for it, color or not. I think about some of these things and the amazingly small library, Im so sick of requesting books for the Kindle, that I wonder if they really do want this to succeed or not.