Quote:
Originally Posted by Ravensknight
And the whole tone of the article has not one single positive thing that the publishing industry COULD DO to make things better for themselves.
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Although phrased as something they should have done in the past, he does say what they could do. Charge Amazon a lot more for a book than is charged Waterstone's.
I don't buy many books, paper or otherwise, but I just did buy one -- and started reading it today on transit. For an hour or so, I was giving the U.S. Naval Institute Press free advertising by displaying their large format paperback book cover to dozens of people. So it would be fair to charge me a lot less for paper than for an eBook.
Someone will say that, fair or unfair, it would be dumb for publishers to try to prevent the inevitable death of high street* bookshops by undercharging them. Trying to save Waterstone's will just drive the public to go indie. As a practical matter, and for fiction only, that may be true. But I do think Waterstone presented a practical proposal that could save employees' jobs for a number of years.
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* Lingo due to having come back from Britain just last week
