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wgrimm · 08-10-2007, 09:08 AM

There have been many discussions on this forum regarding proper marketing and pricing of e-books and competition with paper books; has anyone mentioned the similarity that exists between television and e-books? Before TV, people paid to watch movies in movie theatres. When TV came along, this same business model would not work to generate income for several reasons- people wanted to watch TV in their homes, the screens were too small for display to a crowd in a theatre, etc. Businesses managed to design a valid business model for TV- that allowed the broadcasters, as well as entertainers and TV manufacturers to receive income.

I think something like this will happen with e-books; hardware ebook manufacturers as well as authors will be able to generate income from e-books. I am not so sure that the traditional publisher will retain their importance, but definitely some sort of filtering mechanism will need to be in place so that we are not inundated with garbage (although traditional publishers have inundatted us with reams of garbage- consider authors like Harold Robbins).

I don't care for the Public Lending Right system, like Canada and the UK have, where authors are paid for borrowings of their work. Because I see a potential for abuse (schemes to have people borrow the book many times to increase author payments- similar happened with L. Ron Hubbard's book- the Scientologists would buy and return these books en masses. Made the books "bestsellers" I believe). Also, why should I, the person who ultimately funds this scheme, pay an author for a crappy book? I borrow books all the time that are crappy- and read maybe 20 pages before returning mostly unread. Would libraries allow the reader to deny payment for crappy books?

08-10-2007, 09:08 AM	#1
wgrimm Addict Posts: 230 Karma: 334908 Join Date: Oct 2006 Device: multiple	A Good Analogy There have been many discussions on this forum regarding proper marketing and pricing of e-books and competition with paper books; has anyone mentioned the similarity that exists between television and e-books? Before TV, people paid to watch movies in movie theatres. When TV came along, this same business model would not work to generate income for several reasons- people wanted to watch TV in their homes, the screens were too small for display to a crowd in a theatre, etc. Businesses managed to design a valid business model for TV- that allowed the broadcasters, as well as entertainers and TV manufacturers to receive income. I think something like this will happen with e-books; hardware ebook manufacturers as well as authors will be able to generate income from e-books. I am not so sure that the traditional publisher will retain their importance, but definitely some sort of filtering mechanism will need to be in place so that we are not inundated with garbage (although traditional publishers have inundatted us with reams of garbage- consider authors like Harold Robbins). I don't care for the Public Lending Right system, like Canada and the UK have, where authors are paid for borrowings of their work. Because I see a potential for abuse (schemes to have people borrow the book many times to increase author payments- similar happened with L. Ron Hubbard's book- the Scientologists would buy and return these books en masses. Made the books "bestsellers" I believe). Also, why should I, the person who ultimately funds this scheme, pay an author for a crappy book? I borrow books all the time that are crappy- and read maybe 20 pages before returning mostly unread. Would libraries allow the reader to deny payment for crappy books?