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Originally Posted by GeoffC
and the 'obvious' way is to cut costs, in other words removing the vast expence of keeping a printing press and its drain on resources...removing the costs of transport and storage...
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Not obvious at all.
First, the publishers don't own the presses, and don't have the cost of maintaining them. They contract the work out to printers with the capacity to handle the volume. (Supply chain management is a major headache, as all of the pieces need to be in place at particular times, to insure that books scheduled for release are actually available when stated. Authors who miss deadlines are a particularly thorny problem...
)
They do pay for the printing, shipping, and warehousing.
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as a business model it makes more sense for publishers to ditch paper forms of most popular books and actively encourage by all means the electronic options...
their biggest problem is likely to be creating a large enough customer base, which should not be difficult if the will is really there...
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It makes sense
if the market the publisher serves is all capable of downloading and reading electronic books, and
wants to read ebooks rather than paper books.
This is not currently the case, and is unlikely to be for the foreseeable future.
Personally, I consider ebooks an
additional format for books, and not a
replacement for paper books, and I have large numbers of both.
Dropping the costs of printing, warehousing, and distribution will not magically solve publisher's ills. The bigger problem is that books compete for the potential reader's discretionary
time as well as their money. Reading is a foreground activity, demanding your attention. What might the potential reader being doing
instead of reading a book?
The biggest problem publishing faces is simply that too many people would rather do other things than read.
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Dennis