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Originally Posted by nekokami
Regarding the "money in the crowd" scenario, since money is deliberately made scarce, I don't think you can compare it to ebooks. Your analogy to the soda with the recipe on the side is more apt-- and I think the soda bottler would still make money in that scenario, so long as the product tasted good and was reasonably priced. There are a lot of things I could do for myself that I pay someone else to do, like make clothing (or weave cloth or spin yarn, for that matter -- I know how to do those things). I pay someone else so I can have consistent quality and spend my time doing other things. The darknet is not user-friendly. Amazon is. If I could get replacements for my paper books in a non-DRM format at a reputable book seller for the prices you charge, I don't think I'd even bother with the darknet, even for books I'd already purchased. It would take a while, but I'd gradually replace my entire collection with well-formatted, legal ebooks-- and never look back. And I don't think I'm all that unusual.
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You aren't. I also pay other people to do things I
could do, because my time is limited and I
can't do everything, and wouldn't want to if I could.
And there are things I could get from the darknet I don't want because of time. There are folks who scan paper books and post plain text versions to various newsgroups. I
could grab the plain text version and convert it to a properly formatted ebook, but it would be more of my time and trouble than it's worth, and reading in plain text is unsatisfactory. If I want it that bad, I'll buy the paper edition. For me, ebooks are an additional format, not a replacement for paper.
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Take a look at Linux, as an example. It's free, but takes some extra work to set up, even new "user-friendly" versions like Ubuntu, and then every task takes that bit of extra effort to figure out how to do if you're used to a commercial OS. But it's free, right? Wouldn't you think Microsoft would be completely out of business by now? Ok, MS may be engaging in non-competitive practices with regards to bundling Windows licenses on new machines, but apparently there are people out there who have paid to install Vista, when they could have gone to Linux and gotten more functionality for free.
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Free is relative. What value do you place on your time?
I could install and run Linux. I'm a *nix sysadmin, and know enough to do it. I don't bother on the desktop because I don't wish to invest the time in getting Linux running, then finding and installing applications to do what I do on Windows. I've got XP Pro tweaked the way I like it, and applications that handle what I want to do (most of which are freeware and open source as well), and Windows versions of critical *nix tools like the bash shell when I need to do something the *nix way.
MS isn't worried about the desktop. They're worried about the data center, where *nix leads.
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As far as I can tell, all authors and publishers need to do to ensure sales is offer a good product at a good price, with--very important-- a good user experience during the sale and use of the product.
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Correct. Offer a product I want to buy. Price it fairly. Make it easy for me to buy it from you, and easy to use when I have it. You have a sale.
The first is something publishers have to do in any case: publish books people want to read.
The second is an issue when publishers think they can price an electronic edition the same as a hardcover (or even a mass market PB.)
The third is a problem because publishers aren't set up to sell directly to consumers and don't know how to do it. They may actually offer electronic versions, but ti can be a challenge navigating their website to find them, and a larger one to buy what you've found.
The fourth will hopefully be addressed by standards. I want to buy electronic copy
once, and read it on whatever I happen to have at hand. This means I need a format supported by viewers in PCs, PDAs, smart phones, and blackberries, and DRM that lets me read the book on more than one device.
We'll see.
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Dennis