There has been a loot of discussion about ebook pricing, the end of the life of physical books and so forth of late on Mobileread.
I am of the belied that traditional publishers are on the decline and will become more so unless there are fundamental changes in how they distribute and run their businesses in this, the digital era.
The modern online age of retailing respects no boundaries. The longer that publishers continue with their old selling and distribution systems the more people will simply look for alternatives.
This Christmas, my wife and I gave a Kobo to our son in law, filled up with a selection of his favourite authors books, plus a few more. Our oldest and youngest daughters received book 2 and book 3 of a favoured series they have been reading. They both received the first book the previous Christmas.
The paperbacks were purchased on eBay, brand new and free postage. They could not be sourced at a local brick and mortar book store.
The books on the Kobo for my son in law were purchased from Amazon, "processed' and converted. Several of them had to be purchased in very indirect routes as Australians were not meant to have an ebook version at all. Another couple of ebooks were purchased author-direct via Smashwords and author webpages.
Two of my daughters love real books, one loves her Sony ereader. My sons in laws and sons are leaning towards ereading. The hardcover might become extinct, but the paperback should not.
The video (linked below) shows the dynamics of the change, including an interesting segment by a successful author on author direct selling, the direction a lot of publishing is going to go. With the reach of the internet, self publishing makes sense and using a major publisher, with the slice of profit they take, sees less so.
http://video.news.com.au/2180711410/...ed-to-continue
It will be interesting to see the sales figures for ereaders over the Christmas sales period compared with the sale of regular books. We gave away both. I wonder if our situation is similar to others?