Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
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.
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.
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.
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.
|
I never said that something theoretically unlimited has no value, only that it should be valued differently. Obviously ebooks still cost resources to produce and distribute. They just don't cost nearly as much as a physical book does.
As for publishers acting as "gatekeepers", I'm not certain even that is necessary any more. Again, looking at the gaming industry, user reviews are a big thing right now, and Steam features them prominently on a game's store page, so you know right away what the mood of the consumer is (the fact that only those who have actually purchased a game are allowed to submit a review enhances the credibility of the review score since it eliminates "troll reviews" by people who haven't even played the game).
And speaking of Steam, I'm not sure what you've heard, but it only requires an active internet connection to purchase and download software. After that, whatever software you've downloaded can be used indefinitely in Steam's offline mode. Anyway, I was just using Steam as an example of what is possible once you move away from the outmoded "publisher" model. Ideally, anything you've purchased digitally should belong to you free and clear and unencumbered by any restrictions whatsoever, but we unfortunately don't live in an ideal world.
All of this is to say that the notion of "used" ebooks makes zero sense in a system where unlimited digital goods are treated differently than limited physical goods.