[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

I don't think the genre matters, really. I'm not much of a classical afficionado, but my tastes are not exactly mainstream either, and I always find something worth listening to.

And I will always find something worth reading. The question isn't whether you can find something worth reading, but whether there are high-production-cost genres, such as responsible, heavily researched, investigative journalism, that will decline (even more than it has already declined) without scarcity.

I fail to see the harm if people, who can afford it, buy the eBooks, while the rest of us wait a bit. To me, financing the production of these books through voluntary payments from the affluent, while I have to wait a bit or accept a slightly non-preferred form factor, is ideal from a social-democratic standpoint.

So how's that working for movies, or TV shows?

Movies have theater income. TV shows? Here they have laid off the professional writers and actors because the production cost of reality shows is much lower. I'm not saying that's due to insufficient DRM. But if you are saying that TV reveals what happens without scarcity, I'm unimpressed.

In academic circles Springer does exactly that: they licence all of their books for university-wide use for a yearly flat fee. They seem to be doing fine.

I just checked this out using the university library account of a family member. I don't like this word, but, well, the Springer eBook approach sucks. Every chapter is its own PDF, and some chapters are held back. I just criticized use of the intensifier vastly in another thread, but DRM'd books are vastly more convenient for getting the text onto my Kindle Keyboard than the Springer model. And Overdrive doesn't hold back chapters to get me to buy the book!

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

. . . all of the titles are out there on the internet.

I've seen this claim a few times, but I don't believe it. However, it is hard to refute without mentioning web sites I don't want to publicize.

Pick a medium sized country of your choice. Search for the five best-reviewed English language books on social or political problems in that country, written in the last ten years. I'm going to be surprised if you find more than one of them on the darknet. So I think this horse hasn't quite left the barn yet.

Also, most people who read that kind of book are not thieves. It's one thing (if I am wrong about what is really on the darknet) for the book to be freely available, without any waiting or borrowing time limit, illegally. It would be a much worse blow to sales if the book was available, without any borrowing or time limit, through a user-friendly public library site.