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Originally Posted by Liviu_5
Subscription services start with very powerful disadvantages so there need to be strong incentives for them; also the e-book content is simply not there right now for Amazon; maybe when Google digitizes everything that will change...
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Google would certainly be in a better position to offer such a service in the future (provided they figure out how to get their content to work with e-readers). But you don't think Amazon has enough content to lure in subscription customers? I'd say 97,359 ebooks and counting should be a good starting point. The only problem I see is that I don't think many people reread a large number of their books. So if people could get a subscription service, fewer people might actually be purchasing ebooks. That could certainly hurt profits (but I imagine the $9.99 price for new books isn't doing wonders for them at the moment, either).
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Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
I would have to say that an electronic copy (without DRM), provided it's made with the same production values as a paper copy, is worth much more. It's far more useful, portable, durable, accessible and storage friendly.
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It doesn't really cost anything to duplicate a digital copy, though. In that sense, a digital copy isn't worth more at all. Granted, the individual person needs to decide what it is worth to him, but if by owning a p-book I can make my own digital copy, there's little incentive to pay the full price of a p-book without a physical product to show for it. I think that's my main issue with where ebooks are right now. If I own a p-book, it's legal for me to get or make my own digital copy without purchasing it through a vendor. This might take some more effort on my part, but I still get the advantages of an ebook (without DRM, even) and have a physical product to show for the money I put into it. I think publishers should team up with Google Books and/or a similar project and find a way to offer people access to digital copies of books they already own. That would be phenomenal.
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Originally Posted by tompe
I am not willing to pay so much for just being able to search books.
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Ditto.