Quote:
Originally Posted by rupescissa
Authors can continue to get paid in the usual way: by having books printed and sold. Authors are in no danger just because the e-book market is virtually non-existent. E-book readers, of which I am one, are mainly enthusiasts and hobbyists, or people who travel a lot, or people who live away from their home countries and desire convenient access to familiar reading material. Outside of those niche markets there is virtually no clamor for e-books.
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One of the reasons that there is not much of an ebook market is because the market has not been developed. One excellent ebook market would be the one for textbooks. I was always surprised that Rocket/GEM never tried ith this. Using ebooks instead of paper books could save everyone a tremendous amount of money, making new releases easier to distribute, etc. And the market for textbooks exists from 1st grade to postgrad studies. China is taking the concept very seriously- but we're not.
Portable technical documentation is another area where ebook readers excel. Much easier to carry a small reader around than a sackful of books or a knapsack full of notebooks.
No market for ebooks? I read all sorts of material on my PalmPilot while in waiting rooms, on shopping trips, even at boring meetings. Ereader.com seems to have developed a good market for ebooks for the PalmPilot.