Quote:
Originally Posted by mr ploppy
I think there will always be a market for real books, just as there will always be a market for vinyl records. Ebooks will become basically just adverts for a deluxe hand signed print version made and sold by the writer with no corporate leech taking 90% of the proceeds. Even if they only sell 10% as many books, with 90% of their fans reading them for free, they would be no worse off than they are now.
But ebooks have been around for about 10 years now, and they are still only a tiny fraction of a percent of all books that are read. At this rate, it will be another 50 years or more before ebook piracy becomes as much of a drain on profit as used paperbacks are now. Plenty of time for anyone with a vested interest to come up with new ways of generating income from them.
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Of course any drain on profits is more than made up by the social benefit of having more things out there and available. I mean sure there are certain types out there who want to rape the pocketbooks of anyone who sees a printed word, on screen or elsewhere and doesn't instantly empty their wallet on the spot and then call them thieves to boot but sensible people would of course see that a handful less sales isn't the end of the world and a few more eyeballs on the books beats the hell out of being unknown. And, anyone interested in a legacy later on or just one who switches publishers might like some DRMless copies floating around, they may even download one themselves to save time and energy.
Think of it as the making lemonade scenario. It has to be better than just sucking on lemons but maybe some people prefer that, I dunno.