"Publishers make a hefty margin of $2.15 per e-book -- 8X the 26 cents they get for a digital copy."
Did I miss something that would allow this sentence to make sense?
"releasing the digital copy of a book along with the print version is like releasing the DVD version of a movie the same day its out in theatres"
Anyone want a pile of links to downloads of the new Star Trek movie? (I don't actually have any; I just know it'd take me all of about twelve minutes to get one, or several, ifi I cared to.)
Anyone think that those unauthorized digital versions are cutting into theater viewings?
I can understand delaying the low-cost variant until the "premium" version has had a good shot at the market. However, DVDs no longer trail cinema releases by six months; sometimes it's as little as six weeks.
Or less. And ebooks are different from pbooks in ways that theatres are not different from large-screen HD televisions; while many people prefer theatres, almost nobody disdains movies-on-tv-screens entirely.
Publishers need to start figuring out how much of the ebook market won't buy hardcovers at all, regardless of whether an ebook is available, and possibly won't buy paperbacks. Many of those customers are going to buy a handful of books every month, from whatever's available right now. Publishers need to pay attention to how many ebook sales they're losing to less-paranoid competitors.