Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Utterly false.
The critical difference is that there is one copy of a pbook, and if you pass it to someone else, you no longer have it.
If the book is in electronic form, it doesn't matter if you make it available as P2P through BitTorrent or the like, post it as an attachment in email to all of your friends, or stick it on a website for download by http or FTP. You still have a copy, and so do more than one other people.
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Oh jeez. Again? The "scarcity is the only way" argument.
Look, Flint puts it better than I do: you don't build a business model (i.e. figure how to make money) and then make reality conforms to it; what you do is look at how reality is and try to build a business that works with it.
The model based on scarcity is dead (well, dying). If you can't face the new reality, tough luck. Nobody said life was fair. It just so happens that there are ways to face the issue. I won't say that what I described here is the best that there can be, but it's the best I can think of. I do know one thing though: whatever it is, the next successful model will take advantage of the non-scarcity, not fight it.
One last thing, to specifically give an answer to "you still have the file" and "the book doesn't pass around between a few friends but between hundreds or thousands of persons".
Well yes, it does. That's the whole point. That way the authors increases his exposure. And you know what, although there are no formal studies, we do have empirical evidence that it has no adverse effect (see Steve's books) and may have an overall positive effect (from everything we can hear from Baen).