Quote:
Originally Posted by BVLarson
An embarrassing thrust of the head fully into the proverbial sand. I find it hard to believe the old-school publishers aren't scrambling to restructure themselves. They will not survive unless they utterly embrace the transformation their industry is about to undergo. Content prices WILL fall, the only question will be if they will fall to ZERO or not. Music is considered "free" by so many of the young now. Same with movies. Possibly even a "subscription-based" system should be looked at, like those 20,000 netflix instant-watch movies...
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What many are missing here is the psychology of profit in the modern multinational.
I agree with all of the contributions above exposing that production of ebooks is far far less costly than that of paper books. Adding to that the savings in distribution and retailer margin, the only rational and logical conclusion that can be reached is that Publishers could easily sell ebooks at a significantly lower price than paper books and make the SAME profit.
So we are left with the question .. why don't they ?
This is where I believe it gets murky. Yes old fashioned prejudice play a role. Fear of new technology. A completely wrong headed impression that illegal file sharing hurt the music industry. etc etc etc.
What we are leaving out here is that by selling these ebooks at the same price or even HIGHER price than paper books (which they are doing) the Publishers are now making super-profits on ebooks during this window of opportunity ... in their minds.
The frustrating thing for forward looking people and for people who can grasp the way the music industry has gained from embracing the new world, is that were these Publishers to open their eyes just a little they would see that by dropping the ebook prices significantly (still making the same profits that they used to) they would expand the market for books enormously and this small window of super-profits would translate into a boom time for publishers.
I know many many MANY people who would buy man many MANY more books if they could afford it. Books are a luxury item for so many people I know who are on middle income. They could afford a reader, at a stretch, and if ebooks were the correct price (in my view about 8 dollars) they would buy many many more of them.
But the Publishers are focused right now a) on the surge of super profits from ebooks, coupled with b) fear of the new business model.