Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Maybe that's why so many are looking to Apple's iPad to "transform" the e-book world: Apple is known as a company with imagination, good at thinking outside of the box; if anyone can bring fresh and compelling ideas to e-books, it might be Apple.
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Apple's not going to change ebooks any more than they changed mp3s; Apple didn't create podcasts or mashups and doesn't promote them.
Publishers will need to figure out the ways ebooks are different from pbooks, just like they figured out how magazines are different from bound books, and then decide what features would make ebooks sell better. (And they need to get over the idea that that means "better than pbooks." Different media; different markets.)
Among other details, they need to figure out how to market short stories individually, the way iTunes sells individual songs. Record companies at least understood the marketability of single songs; publishers have never been able to do so because the per-unit costs of individual story printing was too high. With ebooks, it's economically feasible to sell 10,000 words instead of 70,000 or 250,000, if they can figure out how to market chapter-length works.