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I'd be curious to know: What percentage of the overall Pbook & Ebook markets 16-24 year olds represent?(I can't imagine they have huge buying power and lots of free cash -I know I didn't. I was on scholarship, working too, and still didn't have a lot of disposable income.) How likely they are to not want to carry a relatively fragile as yet device around with their phone -which most seem to be madly texting away on rather than reading ebooks? Younger people as a group tend to be a bit less protective of their devices or just less organized or distracted more easily, in my experience, so I wonder that a relatively fragile e-ink screen might not be a good fit for many.(though concede that multi-purpose devices with Gorilla glass are available.) Further, young people in that age range tend to be more social, going out more, etc. and less likely to be as in control of their immediate environment, other people doing stupid crap, etc., so maybe a fragile device is not a great fit except where they can better control the environment like at home, the dorm, etc.
But, I can understand the desire to possibly resell pbooks, and I can certainly understand the stance that ebooks are overpriced.(When was the last time you met people just scraping by in the publishing industry unless they were a cottage, fringe, or specialty publisher?) Materials costs, shipping, handling, etc. must be much less than eticket sales costs, which books bought online would share. I'm hoping that ebooks will shake things up and maybe open up space for an editor/publisher class of business with less overhead, but how that fits with deep enough pockets to provide advances I can't quite see. Let's be fair, many publishers are built on old money and a scion who liked books looking for something respectable to do once upon a time. Making money and providing a public service of sorts was once looked upon as a very respectable way of multiplying the old family greenbacks and taking on one's societal responsibilities. The other end of it is like most businesses in a tighter economy the smaller guys are getting rooted out and distribution is more and more at a premium. I'd rather buy directly from e-publishers that edit content and maintain a store or through e-retailers like Amazon, pay less and cut out the Middlemen as much as possible -hopefully with the author seeing more income.
Let's face it folks, publishers are in business to leverage the money they have in order to pay for advances, editing, distribution, publicity, and in turn make a rather hefty profit. Change would be nice, but who knows yet?
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