Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
Here's another question: how enthusiastic will publishers be to find out that they have lost actual sales because customers who wanted to buy the book were unable to? I recently emailed an author whose books were previously available in eReader and were now only in mobipocket, and I directly told her she lost a sale as I would have bought the book if it was in eReader as I was accustomed to. She was, I assure you, very concerned 
I think we are seeing a shift toward publishing being les about what the publishers want and more about what the customers want, just as we did with the music industry beginning to capitulate on DRM. Honestly, there is so much competition for people's entertainment dollar these days that publishers should be happy to get sales any way they can. |
yes, those are excellent points, and more or less what i think as well. the copy of
l'élégance du hérisson that i will not buy because it's NINETEEN bloody euros for the ebook is a lost sale, since i would *definitely* buy it at a lower price. who knows how many others there are in my situation, and how many other books i won't buy in future because of the ridiculous price ? and every book i want to buy through BoB or fictionwise and whose sale to me is suddenly refused because i don't live in the US, is also quite clearly a lost sale.
publishers claim to be so terrified of losing sales to illicit copy sharing, but they're certainly doing their very best to make legitimate sales as difficult as possible (and sometimes impossible). what exactly do they think all those frustrated would-be customers are going to do ? some of them will just skip it, of course. some will get the book from the library, or borrow it from a friend, or buy a paper copy used... and some of them will download a copy from a p2p network somewhere. and probably some of *them* will even feel somewhat justified in doing so ; after all, they *would* have paid, if the publishers had only allowed them to...
i'm not trying to justify copyright infringement or unauthorised copying, but i think
realistically this sort of trend will ultimately encourage it, and it will be publishers' own fault.