Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
The publishers had their chance and missed it a long time ago to enter the ebook market.
|
Not only did they enter the market. They let eBooks be sold on day one when the hardback edition was sold. And they did it at lower prices, closer to paperback, even though the eBook buyers, being able to afford mobile reading devices, are likely more affluent than other book buyers -- and even though eBooks have features superior to that of paper books -- notably, adjustable font size.
I'm not sure why you are saying publishers didn't enter the eBook market. I guess I'll soon find out
Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
I mean, it isn't like it might be obvious that it is in no one's best interest to lose the ability to gouge consumers and authors . . .
|
It seems to me that you are equating consumers as a whole with the minority of planetary readers who buy books the same year they are published.
The traditional system where books are only available in expensive hardcover editions at first, and gradually become available at lower prices through paperback publication, the used book market, and libraries, was characterized by extraordinary social justice. Consumers who could afford to pay top dollar got the book first, but their reading experience wasn't materially superior to that of the less affluent. Just the timing was different.
Is that model threatened? Maybe. But maybe not. Amazon-like tactics don't seem to have been the salvation of Borders and Barnes & Noble. And publishers, while swinging from profit to loss to profit from year to year, still seem generally more profitable than Amazon. Hachette and Random House may yet survive by making money at publication date while letting the world's less affluent folks in on the game just a few years later.