[Halk]

Going back to the actual articles posted...

Times.. the article is mainly made up from quotes from Tracy Chevalier, who wrote The Girl With The Pearl Earring (a book I could tell you nothing about, other than I've seen the cover and thought "No"), she also chairs the Society of Authors, which apparently represents 8,500 professional writers. It wasn't clear if they are book writers, journalists, or if they write the blurb on packets of biscuits, or a mix of them. So I had a look at their website - "The Society of Authors has been serving the interests of professional writers for more than a century. Today it has more than 8,500 members writing in all areas of the profession. Whatever your specialisation, from novelists to doctors, textbook writers to ghost writers, broadcasters to academics, illustrators to translators, you are eligible as soon as you have been offered a contract." They would appear to be some sort of trade union. No surprise then that their spokesperson is unlikely to offer anything like unbiased opinion.

"Cookbook authors are really struggling. I do it myself – if I want a recipe I go online and get it for free.For a while it will be great for readers because they will pay less and less but in the long run it’s going to ruin the information. People will stop writing. "

Doesn't bother me at all. If people want a particular recipe then they'll get it from people prepared not to charge for it. If people who previously made a living by writing these recipes can no longer do it then the world has lost nothing. There will always be a market for collections of recipe's, because people want ideas on what to make, and they want a "stamp of approval" from someone they trust - celebrity chef. People won't stop writing recipes.

"There’s a lot of ‘wait and see what the technology brings’ but the trouble is if you wait and see too long then it’s gone. That’s what happened to the music industry".

That's not quite correct. The music industry did not sit on their hands, they instead refused to adapt or change to what consumers wanted... and sued. Only now are they adjusting and finally finding things starting to work again. Music came on CDs. People stopped using CDs and started using MP3s on their computers and MP3 players. People stopped using CD players. The music industry instead of saying "oh, we'll, we'd better sell a more appropriate format" said "You'll all buy CDs, and nothing else!". So people, rather than walk to a store, buy a CD, take it home, stick it in the computer, type in the track names, and convert to MP3s.... they instead in a fraction of the time downloaded a pirate copy. The music industry attempted to adapt... by suing children, and releasing low quality, horribly restricted (and hence useless) versions of their product online. As DRM has matured and mobile devices now can use it, and as the bitrates have improved people are moving back towards buying music. For me though, the music industry are still far behind. I can't download DRM free lossless music, which is the only format I'd be interested in. So now I buy CDs second hand, rip them to FLAC, cross my fingers I get the right tags, fix any tags that need fixed, and then I have a permanant, perfect, copy of the music on my PC, and on my MP3 player. When I buy a 2nd hand CD, how can I be sure that the person I'm buying from hasn't kept a copy? I can't be sure. I hope they do though, I have no time or love for the music industry. If they'd instead sell me FLAC of albums at a reasonable price (3 or 4 quid for an album) then I'd be buying product from them, rather than buying second hand and effectively cutting any revenue for them out of the chain. So has the music industry sat back and done nothing? Sort of, they've done nothing to adapt, but instead have attempted to sue, and pursue new legislation. That's largely failed. Eventually they will admit "defeat" and start selling product people want to buy. When they do that they'll find out they've won.

We then move on to Scott Pack, someone with experience in the industry. “At the moment if you asked ten publishers what the future of publishing is you would get ten different answers.”

The reason for 10 different answers is that it would appear the publishers aren't attempting to do any real research. Bar one survey conducted on here (which I'm guessing was for a new reader, rather than by publishers of content) I've yet to see any publishers on here asking "How can we sell you books?". Perhaps they read (and post) anonymously, so I could be wrong there. Taking an optimistic view on things, perhaps they're reading the threads here and learning from it and realising that unless they sell the product in a way people want to buy then people simply won't buy it. I wanted to buy Dune, the biggest selling science fiction book ever. I can't.

“Tracy Chevalier is right, it is worrying. At the moment, though, even the most pessimistic commentators still think that printed books will be popular for ages.”

I'd refer them to Stardock Games, who have said "The reason why we don't put CD copy protection on our games isn't because we're nice guys. We do it because the people who actually buy games don't like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don't count. We know our customers could pirate our games if they want but choose to support our efforts. So we return the favor - we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry."