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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
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.
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This may be their fear but if so they have a limited grasp of reality. You can easily find copies of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or any number of other books available on the dark net. By releasing legal ebook versions they would at least give people the option of buying a legit copy. Not offering them does nothing to stop piracy. It just frustrates potential customers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
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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I don't see the problem? If they sell to Amazon or to Walmart or directly to Joe Reader and make the same per unit profit what does it matter to them? The article makes it seem that they have some fear that selling an ebook will bring lower retail prices but what they should be concerned about is what it does to their profit not the retail price. I don't get the emphasis on retail price. I could see the retailer being concerned about that but does it affect the publisher (assuming they are not direct selling to the end user.)