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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
That's what ebookstores are trying to promote, but that's not the way the law works for those purchases. If they want the legal right to treat them like sales, rather than licenses, they have to allow resale options. (If they want them treated like licenses, then among other things, they have to label them as "click to purchase license to read," with the terms described somewhere on the site, instead of "click to buy this book"--which would lose them sales.)
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I'm all for clarifying the legal position, especially as it can vary from country to country and it can be difficult for an individual to pin down exactly what the law is. I'd certainly agree that it would be preferable for everything to be as clear and transparent as possible. But in the meantime it seems that many buyers have a reasonable general idea of what they're paying for, which is something less substantial than what they would get with a physical book. I'd certainly hope the position will continue to be fine tuned with regard to both the legal fine print, and the degree to which buyers are aware of it, and I agree that it would be all for the better.
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Not compared the cost of a pbook. It doesn't matter how it compares to the cost of concerts or sports events; ebooks are providing the same entertainment-content as physical books, and that's what their price needs to compare to.
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This is simply a matter of you and I having different views. All the ebooks I've bought have cost less than the pbook prices, some moderately less, other substantially less. To me, they are good value. I don't resell my pbooks either, so any potential resale value is irrelevant to me (in practice, it's actually relatively small anyway). Their value to me is in the reading not the selling. I'm not alone there. Books in any format are another 'discretionary purchase' for me - in other words not a essential like food, or a work related necessity, but something that competes with all the other things I might spend my weekly 'entertainment dollar' on. Ditto for music.
Hundreds of thousands of customers like me are already regularly buying ebooks and paying for other digitally delivered material. So the debate is more about market reach than whether ebooks can be sold without doing this, that or the other differently. I expect that the models will improve, and I'm sure that there's still plenty of mileage in the debates, complaints, and varying viewpoints. But I'm certainly not going to hold my breath waiting until everything is done exactly my way. I'm enjoying it right now, and I'm satisfied with the value I'm getting.
(Where's the E-reader icon when you need it?
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Cheers,
Chris