Cory Doctorow seems to me to have got one thing completely wrong. He asserts that because digital stuff is so easy to copy, no-one will be able to make money selling ebooks, because they'll just be downloaded for free from the 'darknet' by everyone.
This completely ignores the music industry's experience. MP3s of almost anything are available on the 'darknet', but the Apple iTunes Store now sells more music in the US than anyone else. Digital downloads now account for a significant percentage of total music sales, and that percentage looks set to rise still further, as digital sales increase and CD sales decrease.
The same is likely to happen with ebooks. I don't see the digital revolution as bringing in a fundamental change to the way authors get paid - in royalties on each copy sold (as an advance or otherwise).
There are three things holding back ebooks at the moment
1) Lack of cheap, good, robust readers. eInk's good, but too slow. Ideally we want something with <0.1s page change, and as good or higher resolution and contrast than eInk. And under $100. It'll happen within the next ten years.
2) Multiple formats. It'll take a while for the format wars to go away. ePub looks set to be the winner here, in the end.
3) DRM. It adds costs. It makes things harder for consumers. It doesn't work. The sooner publishers realise that DRM is a cost that does them no good the better.
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Originally Posted by Alisa
Yep. Reading devices are still pretty rare so most people who download his books are going to read them on their computer. They probably don't want to read the entire thing on their computer so once they figure out they like it well enough, they go buy the paper copy. Even though people have the whole book, it functions more like a free sample in this case and samples are an effective marketing tool.
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