Quote:
Originally Posted by radius
The thing is though, that publishers aren't doing this out of spite. It costs them money to make and market ebook editions and they need to recoup that somehow. With modern publishing workflows, where there is an existing electronic compy of a work, this is mitigated somewhat, but for older works they need to scan, proof, "typeset", possibly commission more modern cover and so on before they even market. I think it is mostly worth it for authours that have a large-ish body of work so that they can spread the marketing costs over multiple books or over a series.
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Understood. But there are two things to consider:
1. I have a friend that scans books for a living. There is cost, but it isn't prohibitive.
2. If the publisher still considers it not to be worthwhile, they could license the books to a smaller publisher or kick them back to the author
I'm sure these answers are naive to someone in the industry. But in the absence of either of these, bootleg copies, well, they don't flourish, but they sprout up.
On the plus side, as I have mentioned, there are cases where bootleg copies of e-books have been used as the basis for later, legitimate e-book releases.