Quote:
Originally Posted by TheJohnNewton
Also I don't understand the fear of publishers that people will buy ebooks instead of hard copies. As long as they sell a unit for $x do they care what packaging the unit comes in? Do they actually sell ebooks for less per unit profit than hardbacks or paperbacks? So far I've been lead to believe they don't but I'm not sure I've seen any hard numbers.
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AFAIK,
no publisher will sell an ebook for
less than they would make on a paper edition. Publishers are in enough trouble. Part of the problem is that publishers tend to have exaggerated ides of how much they can sell an ebook for. When an ebook retails fro the same price as a hardcover edition, the buyer knows a lot of the costs are less (because there isn't a physical book to print, bind, warehouse, and ship), and says "No thanks!"
Part of publishing is fear of piracy: if you have the book in electronic format, you can then copy and share it with all your friends, costing them sales. Hence, DRM provisions.
The bigger problem is that publishers don't normally sell direct to consumers. They sell to distributors who sell to retailers who sell to you. Most publishers aren't set up to handle retail sales and sell ebooks directly to the customer. this is one reason why a lot jumped on the Amazon bandwagon. Amazon
is set up to do that.
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[pb]Dennis[/b]