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Originally Posted by Hamlet53
I actually don't encounter that problem often with recent titles but do so all the time with older, but still in copyright, material. It is funny that kildanzig used the expression “catch-22” above because that is a title I would dearly like to see as an e-book. Hint hint, Amazon. I also understand that it's a business decision on the part of Amazon; To obtain Joseph Heller's permission (Amazon can't afford to flout copyright like 'darknet' participants), to pay to have the book scanned, proofed, and formatted as an e-book they have to anticipate that enough e-book copies will be purchased in order to justify it all financially. Unfortunately this analysis must take in to account the fact that there are those out there who think it is there right to obtain if for free once it become available on the 'darknet;' that it can easily be purchased be damned.
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Yeah, there's a kind of "ebook lag" problem for books dating from about 1950 to the present. Books that are still being reprinted, but not eprinted. There's a cost in moving those books into digital, and that cost might exceed the potential profit, for all I know. So the publishers could well have a problem, I suppose.
But Heller & Catch-22, that's a different matter. Heller is dead, so it's his estate. And C-22 probably sells the most copies as required reading in college. Ebook form is perfect for that book.
I just bought a pbook of The Annotated Alice. Now I ask you, is there a better time to have an ebook version of that book? And is there a better book to have an ebook version of? So where the heck is the ebook? Hello? Anyone listening?
I don't think that people will go to the darknet if there's an "ease of use" established channel. I buy some things on Amazon that cost me a buck or two more than I could get the same item at some other place, for the simple reason that Amazon makes it simple.
I think that with the issuance of the iPad, whether as a cause or merely coincidence, ebooks are about to take off. We'll see if publishers have enough sense to go with the flow, or decide to train a generation of readers to use the darknet, because the regular channels don't deliver.