I include below the comments I made on the following thread on Teleread:
http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadow...reality-check/
I think the issues raised are worth discussing, though my comments only address the old devaluation meme.
My comments are as follows:
This devaluation argument is best described as yet another Zombie Meme. It has at its heart two unstated fallacies.
The first is that the value of books is equivalent to price, and therefore, because many books are “priceless” readers should be prepared to pay high prices for them. The use of the word “value” here seeks to introduce an element of emotion which is really irrelevant. Quite frankly, the best of the books that I have read in my lifetime are in a very real sense priceless, though this does not mean that I am prepared to go without food or water or shelter to read them or own a copy. Like many things, their “value” is not reflected in their price and is mostly irrelevant to that price.
The second is that the proper “price” of books is that set by the large publishers at the time when both readers and authors had no alternative. It is like saying that the correct price of sugar or salt is their value on the black market during the Second World War, when of course supply was short and rationing in effect in many countries. The truth is, of course, that technology changes and so do markets.
The large Publishers fears that books would be “devalued” by “discounting” was a valid one and has come to pass. The genie is out of the bottle, and the bottle has been broken. But, of course, what the large Publishers call discounting or deep discounting is often no more than the new proper price in the new market conditions. They would have readers put on blinkers and pretend the market has not changed so dramatically. That ebooks are a quaint fad, and even so justify a price tag the same as a paper book, despite the very real differences of licensing, drm, lack of a legal resale model etc. Personally, I think, like many industries facing their products going digital, large publishers hope was for a windfall. Prices the same but profit through the roof with negligible distribution costs and wastage, amongst other savings.
No, books have not been devalued for me. They remain as valuable as ever. But I refuse to be ripped-off by ridiculous and anachronistic pricing practices designed to preserve a dead business model and price gouge other consumers and myself.