Quote:
Originally Posted by tirsales
The point is - not releasing e-books won't change anything to this. As we have seen, book available in the darknet, wether they are released as e-books or not - without differing quality or availability.
And people still buy those books - in p- and in e-form.
I repeat: Not releasing e-books won't change anything. Fair deals for e-books WILL get bought - give good service (e.g. fast downloads, a good shop-system accessible from everywhere, clearly arranged and up-to-date), fair prices, and NO DRM - DRM does not protect e-books but annoys your customers.
|
This can't be stressed often enough. There's been a huge community for digitalizing pbooks since the beginning of the internet. Unlike videos, ebooks are small and the equipment for digitalizing pbooks has been around for a long time.
Not releasing ebooks will never stop this unless nobody is interested in the book. Likewise, selling DRMed ebooks will never work either.
This completely ignores the fact that all current DRM schemes are insecure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tirsales
Well - I guess a number of people won't buy books (or music, films, etc) because they can download them for free. But most people (and yes, there are studies proving this) use the darknet to "test" new books, music, etc - stuff they wouldn't have bought - and buy them if they are good. It is quite possible, that the darknet will kill libraries - but not the book-sales...
|
A lot of times, there is no distinction made between people willing to pay and people unwilling to pay. The later should be ignored if countermeasures have any negative effect on the former group.
If someone wants me to buy a ebook, they should make the decision as easy as possible: free chapters, even free first book in a series (BAEN style), no DRM, multiple formats, good price.
People that are looking to buy a book will do so if the deal is right and they can be more or less sure they'll like the book. Focus on selling books.
Since there is a huge amount of books and the book shops don't offer sufficient sample chapters and the like, the darknet is the only alternative. Some people will buy subsequent books in a series or even buy the book they've read for free. However, this situation
only exists because ebook sites are unwilling to provide the customer with sufficient info and proper formats.
People that wouldn't buy the books anyhow need to be ignored: they will never buy a book anyhow and are therefore not a lost sale. They are only noise. Perhaps some of them will start buying books but that is really irrelevant.