|
something I have yet to see anyone mention is the cost of oil in relation to the cost of a printed book. Face it (oil) the price has increased over 3x in the past 8 years. That means the cost of processing the raw materials needed to produce a book you know ink, paper and what not have also increased significantly. Perhaps this will be the motivating factor to push these CEO sorts to ebook format...to reduce production overhead.
Face it we in the US are in a recession no matter what "they" tell us and have prescious little cash for things like books with gas around $4.50/gal. CEO's these days are only as good as they last quarterly report so they look for new ways to increase the margins. Best way to get us to buy stuff? Find a way to make it easy & cheap as well as a profit "glory hole" for the publishers. Hence these CEO are all coming out in favor of ebooks all of a sudden. Because their production costs of paper have likely gone up 200% or more...so suddenly ebooks look better to them.
Of course then there is the needed spin on the convenience factor. Ummmm, dude guess why I shop at Amazon? It is not simply convenience, it's because it's CHEAPER. Also though these days we no longer are buying most of our staples locally, preferring instead to buy as much as possible on Amazon as we opted for the Amazon Prime and get free 2nd day shipping and can get over night for just $3.99/item. Not everything comes that way but the vast majority does. And we no longer pay inflated chain store prices plus we can spend more time not running from store to store because one store carries this and one carries that and none carry the other...but the primary motivation is the PRICE. I would not do it simply for the convenience factor. These publisher CEO's would do well to understand that point.
|