Quote:
Originally Posted by Seli
I believe that one of the factors in diminishing music sales is that the market has different things to spend the 'entertainment' part of their disposable income on. Money spent is not spent on music but on mobile phones, ringtones, games, apps, dvd, blu-ray etc.. The spending budget is not infinitely flexible.
If this is the case it is important where the people buying e-books will come from. If it is purely existing readers, it is unlikely that the total amount spent will increase a lot. If non-typical readers end up buying a significant part of ebooks, the market might grow, but in that case it is likely (I can imagine) only in best-seller country. But at the same time this larger market is probably more vulnerable to competition with non-book purchases.
So, if you look at is in this way, again uncertainty about the future of the market means the publishing companies have to be careful if they want to survive in any way.
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There's a huge difference between "being careful" and "trying mightily to kill off a new market". Right now, the publishers are doing the latter.