Quote:
Originally Posted by toomanybooks
I disagree about publishers offering cleaner copies. I have found that books that have been handcrafted by enthusiasts often are better formatted and have less errors than professionally produced e-books. This is a major reason why I am against current ebook pricing. I think that they are charging premium pricing for shoddy product.
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I do agree that there are lovingly crafted copies of many books out there. The trick is finding them in the torrents. Your time is worth something so if you are offered a copy guaranteed to be well made or your money back, that has a value. How much of a value depends on how you personally view the cost of the time you might spend looking and how important quality is to you. The enthusiasts offering ebooks also have their own way of valuing their time which is influenced by their enthusiasm for a given book. The labor of love and the labor for bread often demand different wages. Beyond all that, I do think when ebooks become more popular the crafting aspect will be less of an influence. I think we'll see the ebook process go from digitized author copy to editor copy and from there to ebook and print at the same time. This gets rid of poorly OCRed publisher copies. If people turn to stripping DRM and sharing vs. OCRing and sharing then the quality will be pretty good. If the publishers eventually institute a good error reporting method then the ebook copy will likely be at least as good as the enthusiast bootleg. Even if they're close, many will take the copy that pays the author over the one that doesn't if the price is fair. I doubt they will read multiple copies to see which is the best. If they routinely find good quality and a good price on a legal copy through a given outlet, I believe many will go that route.