Quote:
Originally Posted by Dopedangel
So any cheap device that can support all these diffrent media will result in more readers. Not of books maybe but the media that is of today.
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We're talking about reading
books, though. That's kind of the whole point of MobileRead. We have devices to read blogs already -- they're called computers.
As for the authors making millions of dollars: There are some, yes, but they're the ones with bestselling, high-priced hardcovers. People who read only one or two books a year read those books, and no others. Those bestsellers rake in money at the expense of the midlist. Imagine if people stopped eating out much, but on the few occasions when they did, they went to fancy, expensive restaurants. People who used to eat out twice a week at some cheap place would be eating out twice a year at some expensive place. So if you looked at the sales figures for the Michelin-starred restaurants, they'd be doing great ... but everything from TGI Friday to McDonald's might be circling the drain.
Maggie, your books already exist. Here's one:
http://www.amazon.com/DK-Chronicle-E...4116213&sr=1-2
The only problem is, people don't seem to want to buy them. Maybe I'm one of those old fogies, but when I read a book, I want to sink into that book and read it. If I'm reading a biography, I want to read what that author had to say about his subject. While I'm reading it, I don't want to be distracted by what other people had to say, what's in the encyclopedia, audio clips, none of that. I want that author's book, not a hodgepodge of related matter. The author put a lot of work into deciding exactly the best way to present his material, organizing it to build conclusions, and so on. Go haring off in all directions and you lose the benefit of that author's skill. A good book functions as a whole entity, not a mere framework to tie other things together. That's how a book on MLK differs from a Google search for MLK.
Right now, ebooks are second-rate books. The publishers need to make them into first-rate books, not second-rate websites.