Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
The majority of ebook readers don't read only on a dedicated ereading device, so they can shift easily between bookstores.
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Translation: who cares about the reading habits of early adopters and the minority of customers who buy the majority of the books? What's good enough for most readers, meaning, "the ones who buy up to 10 books/year," should be good enough for everyone.
Quote:
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Besides, what's the cost of moving between bookstores? $79 -the cost of a dinner for two at a nice restuarant . That's not nothing, but it isn't an insurmountable wall locking the consumer into a device .
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Translation: it's no burden to carry around three or four mobile devices instead of three or four physical books, so that the one you want to read next is at hand. Nobody should have any problems with owning and using a Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Sony, and keeping them all charged and keeping track of what's on each of them.
(Also: $80 is a dinner for two? Not on the budget of most people who were unable to take the risk of a new device until the price of ebook readers to drop below $100.)
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The whole point of an ebook reader is *not* having to carry around a bunch of different things to read multiple books. Having to remember which collections are on which device makes them a lot less useful.
Your constant harping on what "the majority" do or want or will accept is getting old. The majority never asked for ebooks at all, and if BPHs want to cater only to "the majority," they're welcome to drop the digital branch of their business. Sorting out the buying and usage habits of the majority is useful market data--that's your baseline profits--but those people won't tell you what'll be profitable in three years. A company or industry-watch group that only pays attention to "the majority" will find itself constantly playing catch up when new trends appear.
The majority doesn't care about tech issues that don't affect them. Which DRM doesn't... until they want to change platforms, or something goes wrong with their account, or there's a gap in the distribution chain.
People who bought ebooks from Amazon between 2005 and 2007 got screwed. People who bought PDFs on the pre-ADE system no longer have access to those books, unless they cracked them. And so on.
And while "most people" don't care about rereading most ebooks, especially years later, you can bet that there'd be plenty of outcry if ebooks were sold with a tag that says "you may not be able to read this in three years; do not buy with the intention of leaving it on your digital shelf until you feel like reading it because it may not work then."