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Originally Posted by JSWolf
But what we need is to have series in eBook form be complete. This is one reason people won't make the switch. And it's going to hurt eBooks big time if it's not sorted.
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Ah, but it's becoming clear that the publishers haven't figured out that they *need* to be concerned about the future of eBooks.
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Originally Posted by TheLongshot
It seemed obvious to me from their first E-book release, which was on PDF only, that they weren't really thinking that hard about E-books as a sellable product. They were looking at it as a freebie that they could give away to promote their new web site and some of the series that they publish so that they can sell more p-books. Considering that E-Books is still very much a niche thing right now, that's actually quite understandable. I think if anything this promotion has made them more aware of the demand for E-books than before and now they need to figure out what kind of approach they want to make for it. I wouldn't expect them to come up with a full solution in 6 months.
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Bingo!!
And I suddenly saw the original idea when I read Cory Doctorow's explanation why he gives away free eBook versions of his titles:
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Originally Posted by Cory Doctorow
What's more, I don't see ebooks as substitute for paper books for most people. It's not that the screens aren't good enough, either: if you're anything like me, you already spend every hour you can get in front of the screen, reading text. But the more computer-literate you are, the less likely you are to be reading long-form works on those screens — that's because computer-literate people do more things with their computers. We run IM and email and we use the browser in a million diverse ways. We have games running in the background, and endless opportunities to tinker with our music libraries. The more you do with your computer, the more likely it is that you'll be interrupted after five to seven minutes to do something else. That makes the computer extremely poorly suited to reading long-form works off of, unless you have the iron self-discipline of a monk.
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So ebooks sell print books. Every writer I've heard of who's tried giving away ebooks to promote paper books has come back to do it again. That's the commercial case for doing free ebooks.
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Now, I'll have to allow that Doctorow wrote this sometime around 2006 before the current generation of dedicated readers were available. I agree with him about reading books on the PC. I've had MobiPocket Reader and the RB eRocket installed on my PC for a long time, but I was never inclined to read a novel on the PC because all the other application there just *nagged* me about not using them.
But once I bought the Kindle, I decided that my book budget was going to be spent on electronic books and not on new paper books. I will continue to buy the occasional used paperback. But if the publisher and author want part of *MY* not inconsiderable book budget, they'll sell eBooks to me. (Note that yesterday, I finished reading book #94 for the year. I'll do the analysis of where the books came from later.)