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Ah, Ms Goodbody, I've been waiting for you.
Its good to be here Mr Evil. As you know, the life of an ebook censor is not an easy or charmed one.
What do you mean Goodbody, we as the publisher deliver the electronic files to you and you create the final ebooks for us.
That is true Evil, May I call you Evil? Just adding DRM was once enough to keep them from buying; but, with this new Kindle thing it seems that they will buy anything -- even public domain books with a double dose of DRM. I've had to add bad fonts, too small fonts, strange line ends, fuzzy graphics -- that last book you sent me had sharp pictures but we fixed them.
Goodbody, are you telling me that even after I hiked the price of ebooks above the printed version, demanded that you put DRM in each book -- even those we don't own a copyright on, small fonts, bad fonts, no fonts at all, and piss-poor formatting that ebook sales are still rising?
Yep Evil, that's what I'm saying.
Wait a minute Goodbody, we give them an inferior product -- not even one that you can smell, charge a higher price -- except for that d*mn Amazon, kill off the lending and resale market, and still they buy?
Evil, I don;t know what to say, but that's it in a nutshell. Got another cigar? These people are loco.
Here Goodbody, they're Cubans I got in through Canada. You have any thoughts as to how we can stop this trend. I gotta be honest, it gives me the willies.
Well Evil, trhanks, that's mild. If we strip the DRM out, format 'em good, and make them look like a top-notch product plus you drop the price to say half of the hardcover, I think the market would disappear overnight.
How's that Goodbody?
When we had an awful product at a high price people thought they were getting in on something new, something exotic. If we give them a quality product -- something with real class -- and we drop the price then they will think that ebooks have arrived, gone mainstream, and abandon us like a hot potato. We need to do this before the mainstream does catch on to how good ebooks could be.
Goodbody, I couldn't be prouder of you if you were my own daughter.
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