[HarryT]

Originally Posted by the.Mtn.Man

You say, "It makes sense because it works." That's a logical fallacy known as begging the question (which is to say that the conclusion of the argument is contained in one of its premises). It might "work" in the sense that publishers make money, but since treating a theoretically unlimited good as if it were perishable and limited is illogical, I can't help but think that another system might "work" better.

The fact that you can make an unlimited number of copies of something doesn't mean that it's not worth anything. Price still has to be based on the expected sales volumes, and very often sales are not particularly price-dependent.

I think part of the problem is that publishers are an outdated concept when it comes to digital goods. Authors used to need publishers simply because printing and distributing a physical book is prohibitively expensive for most people, but it's a different story when an author can sell directly to consumers, and ebooks are cheap and easy to make and distribute.

Publishers are still very necessary, to my mind. They play a vital role as "gatekeepers" to filter out the garbage, and they also provide services such as editing the book. Yes, in theory a self-published author can simply buy in equivalent services as needed, but in practice, the overwhelming majority don't. That's why I still buy virtually all my ebooks from mainstream publishers: life is too short to try to find the few gems that undoubtedly exist within the mountain of self-published crap.

The only reason people even care about "used" ebooks (as nonsensical as that concept is) is because ebooks sold through the obsolete publisher model are overpriced.

You may consider them to be overpriced. I don't. I'm paying about half for the typical commercially-published ebook that I used to pay for paperbacks.

Maybe we can take some lessons from the PC gaming industry which has enthusiastically embraced digital distribution and all but eschewed physical media. Steam, I think, is a good model for the future of digital books, where small and independent developers can gain broad exposure while avoiding the overhead typically associated with the traditional publisher model.

Steam is also a system which has rigorous DRM, and where games can only be played if you have an active Internet connection. I don't want to have to be connected to the Internet to read books.