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It is the authors that have the key
and I'm not talking about the little-known guys. It is all very well and good to sneer at Dan Brown, his books don't ring my chimes either - but he is a well-known best-selling author, and THAT is the combination that is required. If Dan Brown or Stephen King or someone like that (all the someones like that) were to tell their publishers, "you may not have the ebook rights unless[list of conditions]", do you think that publisher is going to say no? Knowing the author could walk and ANY publisher would grab them crying in gratitude for the opportunity? The big guys, the best-selling authors, are the ones who have the power to haul the publishers into the 21st century.
But WE the readers have to support them by living up to our part of the bargain. We want books DRM-free? We need to be willing to buy them, not pirate them. We want to be able to give them away or share them? We need to be willing to take them off our readers when someone else has them (if you loan your p-book, it ain't on your bookshelf till the loanee gives it back). We want our books to be good-quality? Quality is not free. I agree that an ebook should not cost as much as a pbook - once the work is done for the pbook I believe the book is already in some kind of electronic form and the conversion to ebook cannot possibly cost that much. But griping and griping - ebooks for 9.95 are too much, ebooks for 8.95 are too much - folks, if you can afford the reader, give it up for the book.
To my mind, the whole thing is a bargain between we the readers, and the authors. And the big-name authors are the only ones to bring the publishers in line.
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