Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
The big 6 publishing houses want to believe that they'll dominate the ebook market like they dominate the pbook one... but they're rapidly losing their window of opportunity to do so. And Godzillamazon isn't going to take over in their place--because it's trying too hard to meet the needs (or appease the fears) of those mainstream publishers, and that means *not* providing cheap, convenient ebooks. (TPZ means "not convenient," and the pricing ranges they've set up means "not cheap enough" in a lot of cases.)
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What they are doing now pretty much copies what the music industry did 10 or so years ago. They didn't want to loose their control over distribution, but private individuals had stepped in to provide a service they were refusing to provide themselves (digital distribution). So their solution was to provide the service themselves, but at a higher cost than the physical product so as not to damage their traditional sales and to put off new adopters.
Things won't really change until you can buy ereaders for £20 in your local Tesco, like you can with mp3 players. But for that to happen you need ebook piracy to be much more widespread than it is now so that it will create a market for the readers.