Quote:
Originally Posted by DrMoze
Minor point on the "book sharing": with p-books, it is pretty straightforward, one copy is all there is. With e-books, all of a sudden you can have widespread "sharing" (even between strangers) and hundreds/thousands of unauthorized copies, 'shared' around the globe instantly, from 1 e-book. (I'm an IP attorney by day--some evenings too!--so I do know a bit about copyright, piracy, etc.)
Second part--I actually do agree with you about portability. Which is why I'm looking at the 300 as my next potential purchase. I love the 505, but I also would like something a bit more portable. And PDAs/cellphones are too small for reading novels. But the 505 isn't "heavy" to me! I often read with one hand, and can wrap my hand around it to just hit the edge button with my thumb. A bit smaller would be better.
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And as Baen has proved, more copies being read translates into more books actually bought. Baen has staked their company on the fact that easier access to ebooks without DRM will not lead to fewer sales, but more sales. And they've been proven right.
http://www.baen.com/library/palaver6.htm
The publishing industry needs to start understanding that there is a huge upside to the e-book industry. People have been reading books for free for generations (the library) and they're not going to stop now, that's how I started reading and how I discovered most of the authors I would read, until the Baen Free Library. Now I read almost all the Baen authors, and Baen has made literally thousands of dollars from me, all because I could get a bunch of books in an easily readable format, for free.
The problem with current IP laws is they consider creativity finite, which has not been the case so far. Sure, if everyone reads book X for free, the author won't make any money from it. But they could make _more_ money from Books W,Y and Z and every other book they write from then on because they now have a larger following. IP law treats Book X as money lost, instead of marketshare gained, with the assumption that the writer has limited creativity and needs to extract every cent he can from his limited store of product.