|
I have no problem with people setting up private libraries of ebooks online, purchasing the books as a group and sharing them among themselves. It's just the old subscription library format updated to the modern world.
I am tired of the hypocrisy of the various media publishing associations; they don't protect their artists, actors, authors because those folks for the most part get less from the sales of their works than they truly deserve. All the associations are concerned with is perpetuating their lock on their various industries and keeping their personal cash cow flowing.
I hope the publishers are finally running scared, what with their foot-dragging to make books and back-catalogs available in ebook formats, their attempts to charge tree-book prices for a digital download, and the piss-poor formating of so many "legal" ebooks. Just as the music industry did before them, they are the ones responsible for driving their customers into the arms of the dark net - where almost any book anyone wants is available - in the format they need, and where the users themselves many times take the time to reformat the books into readability and check that pages/chapters aren't omitted from the final product. Fact is, some of the product on the dark net is actually better than the "official" version, and as more people realize that and take advantage of it, publishers are going to continue to lose out until they realize that they have to change their business model and become proactive rather than reactive.
Don't follow the MPAA/RIAA models, create a new one that works in today's world for your industry. Don't squander your good will like they did by treating their customer base as all potential criminals. Provide your ebooks in multiple formats - not locked into a single format, usable on only a limited number of reading devices. Price the ebooks cheaper than paper ones; we are not idiots - we know that a digital data transfer costs less than physically publishing a paper book. We are not asking you to give away the books, but don't charge us for something we are not getting; you will still make your profit. Take the time to format the ebooks so that they are both readable and complete. Give us a good ebook at a reasonable price, give us the ebooks we want to read, and we will buy your ebooks as our first buying choice, and not turn to some other option.
|