Quote:
Originally Posted by LDBoblo
Internet communism is a bourgeois conceit. We must have this thread closed before the true revolution can commence.
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Oh, of course... it's all quite ludicrous.
The whole reason for this thread's existence seems to be the delusion that anybody (even if they have never once written, typed, or pronounced the word "typography" before) knows more about bookmaking than professionals of the field.
That or the notion that eBooks are somehow a radically different medium--which they are not. They are a slightly different medium that can no more ignore the page paradigm than paper books. Their radical differences in the present day are entirely due to the fact that both the market and the technology are not worth a 10th of what the price tags show.
Of course, people who shop at Walmart and pay Prada prices do become fanatically committed to evangelizing Walmart's quality and deriding all alternatives, whether better or worse... but especially those that are better. Without doing so, the hundreds of dollars spent on inferior goods would start to become harder and harder to justify with a straight face.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ankh
No, it is a "dollar shop syndrome" society. Statistically speaking, quality is not recognized nor is the general population ready to pay for it.
By and large, people want cheap, not perfectly typeset books.
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A properly typeset book is not a luxury good. It's what you can pick-up from the bloody pharmacy on the corner for $10. (Less than $4 of which ever makes it back to the publisher, about $1 or less of which goes to the author.)
The proper comparison for improperly typeset books is a high-school book report. If you think multi-million dollar corporations should be selling you goods with basically no distribution cost at paperback-like prices that your high-school aged nephew could just as easily have made... that's not being thrifty... that's begging for abuse by corporations.
- Ahi