Quote:
Originally Posted by CommonReader
That's true, but what do exactly want them to do? It's not as if public readings by authors are an alternative source of income as concerts are for the music industry.
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Most people will, given the option, be honest. People who want their money should be looking to make it not just possible but easy for them to be honest. When someone has a choice of two books -- one is high-quality, DRM-free, available in their language, available in their country, and oh, yes, free, and the other is full of errors, DRM-locked, not even available legitimately, and costs more than a pbook, that's
not making it easy to be honest -- it's making it not only hard but harmful to be honest. There are a lot of people who look at that situation and ask "why am I hurting myself?"
The people who are not going to pay you no matter what you do aren't your customers. They weren't your customers for pbooks either. If they can't get a "free" ebook, their alternative isn't paying for an ebook -- it's finding some other entertainment that doesn't involve you. If they're not your customers in any event, ignore 'em. If you can turn them into customers (offer them good books at a good price) so much the better, but if you can't, it doesn't matter what they do, you were never going to have their money anyway, and nothing you do will get you their money. Smart businesses do not harm their customers in order to try (and fail) to inconvenience non-customers.
The situation we have now, where even if ebooks were all free, pirating them would
still be a better alternative because it provides a superior product (and in some cases, the
only product -- see georestrictions) -- is not beneficial to the publishers. It's not beneficial to the customers. It's damn good for the pirates, though. Is that
really what the publishers want?