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Originally Posted by random50
How is this not trivial? They surely have any newly published work stored in a text based computer format.
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I don't know the details, but the conversion process isn't that simple (nor is it cheap), especially with ePub. They also have to convert the rest of the WoT series, which they may or may not have in an electronic format.
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Originally Posted by Blue Tyson
Not true at all. Their corporate parent - who is far from small, just has senior management who are not competent to run the business in this environment....
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That does not mean Macmillan will throw unlimited resources at Tor for an ebook conversion process. In fact, if Tor doesn't turn a profit because they're investing too much in things like ebook conversions, the parent company isn't going to be too thrilled about the situation.
Nor does it mean that Tor is absolutely bound to Macmillan's policies, as one might guess in this
interview with Tor senior editor Patrick Neilsen Hayden, Tor's experimentation with free ebooks as a marketing device, and so forth.
By the way, I don't regard Sargent's comments as "idiotic," especially in the absence of the comment's context. The man may not be the most forward-looking exec, but the reality is that while ebooks are more convenient than paper, I don't see anything about the platform that is so undeniably compelling (especially in its current forms) that it will definitively, categorically and unquestionably result in more people spending their time reading books.