Quote:
Originally Posted by pilotbob
What about storage, delivery, warehousing, disposal. With an eBook you don't need to decided if the initial run is to be 10k or 100k. You just create a file as the books are purchased. This has GOT to be less expensive than printing etc. As you say, the "cost" of all this is in the price of the book. If those costs were eliminated and the books are sold for the same price (which already seems to be the case with eBooks) then the publisher gets that extra money, yes?
BOb
|
It would certainly seem that way to me. It would also give the publisher some "wiggle room" to compete on price, too. The ability to react rapidly to market demand, as you note, for a specific title would also seem to be a significant competitive advantage.
As others have pointed out in this thread the DRM issue is a big one. Until the industry adopts a standard that will function across most, if not all, platforms the promise of ebooks will not be realized. DRM is being used not only to prevent uncompensated sharing and downloading but to restrict competition and force (perhaps too strong a word) use of a specific platform and, most importantly from the vendor's viewpoint, book source. Amazon Kindle is a good example of this model which has been so successful for Apple.
By the way, I've just ordered a second Kindle so I guess in my case the business model is working.
