Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I don't doubt it. And yet this is the guy we're supposed to bow to when it comes to industry knowledge in general? 
Read those first couple of sentences again. Seriously. You've just indicated that there was an "ebook revolution" as far back as Microsoft Reader and the .LIT format. You've even indicated that there was a leading ebook seller before Amazon. I don't care about specific companies. I'm only addressing the fact that there were clear indicators that ebooks were going to be a big deal before Amazon or Apple or Sony ever entered the device/ereader/app picture. You just supplied further evidence of that. So can we drop the pretense that publishers were utterly blindsided by ebooks? Please?
There were harbingers. It was their industry. I don't know if they could have done anything about it—I don't really care. I just know they (or Shatzkin, or you) don't get to claim they got t-boned without warning by the ebook's popularity. |
Well, you are moving the goalposts yourself. Your original claim was that the publishers should have somehow
engineered ebook expansion. Now you are saying that they should have just foreseen that ebooks would be big. Well, I'm sure some of them did. But the point is that HOW the ebook expansion would happen was not something that the could have "engineered"-because that depends on technological innovation, which they had no part in.
Now could the publishers have been more welcoming to ebook expansion? Again, you should understand that their job is not to make ebook adopter's dreams come through. Their job is to maximize revenue for themselves and their authors.That is an entirely legitimate and worthy goal, btw.
You should further understand that despite the ebook expansion ,
eighty six per cent of book revenues are from print. For most authors, print is what puts the roof over their heads. For folks in the book industry, its still print first-by a country mile. That will change in a few years. But it hasn't changed yet.