Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
I agree that this is the key point. Now I have no background in marketing, and possibly, EW, you do. I wonder how you can be so sure that ad support could not noticeably lower prices. After all, it does so for games, TV shows, and apps, not to mention hardware like the KSO. Are you really trying to say that the ebook is the unique type of medium that ad support WOULDN'T lower prices for? That sounds perilously close to wishful thinking to me. You need to argue for this in more detailed fashion than you have done so far.
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Actually ads tend to lower prices for products TO START. Look at TV. Ads just to cover the cost of bringing TV into your home. But now we not only have MORE ads--we are all paying providers to receive TV signals.
Radio is still broadly free and supported by ads, but there are a lot more ads.
Some other services started out free (email, facebook) because they were ad supported. But if you look at where those companies go (google) they have to start "selling" something to keep making enough money. Yet the ads never go away.
I think the same would be true of books. You put in ads under the guise of making it cheaper, but over time the price of the book would revert back to a pay product. The ads would never disappear.
And no, I don't think that an ad revenue stream would necessarily make it to the author, not if the publishers put ads in. They would likely pay the author on number of books moved as they do now, at least to start. Since I don't think ads could completely support books, eventually I think there would be a sales price AND ads.
But I'm biased. I don't like ads.