Quote:
Originally Posted by bill_mchale
Not to be snarky, but welcome to the world of capitalism. The rest of us have had to face these factors our entire careers. I would also point out that sometimes cost trimming actually has the opposite effect of delivering a more polished product.
Now, text books, are probably more subject to market forces than the average novel (after all, while there are differences in terms of quality and content, a 1st grade Math text book is in many ways going to be very much like any other 1st grade Math text book). Publishers have tended to escape the same rules that other industries have because if you want to read Harry Potter, you can't simply substitute a cheaper product.
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Bill
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As a 40-something person who has worked at lots of different places in various jobs, both hiring/firing and being hired/fired, and occasionally having the company bought out or fail beneath him, I don't need to be welcomed to capitalism. I, too, have been living it all my life. Just saying "not to be snarky" rarely makes such a comment seem less snarky to the recipient, Bill.
I never said I'm against capitalism. If anything, I'd be in favor of *more* capitalism rather than less, in the sense that there are a variety of factors that tend to work toward insulating big companies from the full effect of their bad business decisions.
But that's way off topic. I stand by my original point, which is that setting "the right" e-book prices, formats, and DRM are not necessarily as easy or straightforward as is sometimes portrayed. The usual answers I've been seeing, by the way, seem to be: price = heavily discounted, formats = every format, DRM = none. I guess my implicit second point would be that at least some publishers are listening and thinking about the issues and trying to make good decisions. Helpful feedback and thoughtful discussion are therefore much appreciated.