Quote:
Originally Posted by Pardoz
That sums it up pretty neatly, yes. Problem is, the people making the decisions are pretty heavily invested in a failed model, so they're unlikely to change their tunes.
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Not so much a failed model, I think (although it's got some serious problems) as one that doesn't apply to a new market.
The publishers who don't do ebooks at all are doing as well as they ever have. (Those are mostly small publishers. Some are doing okay; some aren't. But they're not collapsing from ebook piracy.) It's the publishers trying to apply print-market methodologies to e-commerce who are floundering.
Eventually, the print-only publishers are going to need a digital presence--but not yet; ebooks really are a tiny market at the moment. If they've got sense, they'll wait until the market's more established & stable, look at what works & what doesn't, and move into it when they've got the resources to expand in that direction.
In the meantime, Random House and Macmillan are thrashing around madly while the customers back away slowly from the crazy. (Oh, and while scam artists make off with what they can, because the thrashing serves to confuse the legal and ethical issues until nobody's sure what's going on. Neither the companies nor the pirates are providing *quality* ebooks... but the pirate ones are at least worth their price.)