Amazon Kindle e-book downloads outsell paperbacks

[mdmorrissey]

In my opinion, the ebook market is dead in the water until publishers bite the bullet and drastically reduce the prices. They already know to do make the books uncopiable -- see Google books, Amazon etc. where pages (usually only samples) can be displayed but not copied. I suppose the only problem then is to make them downloadable (to ereaders) without making them infinitely reproducible. Short of that, they could figure out some scheme to charge for reading online. In any case, the bottom line is that the cost of reading the stuff -- in digital form -- MUST COME DOWN. Pricing ebooks like paper books is quite simply unjustifiable and it will not stand.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by mdmorrissey

In my opinion, the ebook market is dead in the water until publishers bite the bullet and drastically reduce the prices. They already know to do make the books uncopiable -- see Google books, Amazon etc. where pages (usually only samples) can be displayed but not copied. I suppose the only problem then is to make them downloadable (to ereaders) without making them infinitely reproducible. Short of that, they could figure out some scheme to charge for reading online. In any case, the bottom line is that the cost of reading the stuff -- in digital form -- MUST COME DOWN. Pricing ebooks like paper books is quite simply unjustifiable and it will not stand.

I do not want to read my books 'online' ....

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by mdmorrissey

In my opinion, the ebook market is dead in the water until publishers bite the bullet and drastically reduce the prices. They already know to do make the books uncopiable -- see Google books, Amazon etc. where pages (usually only samples) can be displayed but not copied. I suppose the only problem then is to make them downloadable (to ereaders) without making them infinitely reproducible. Short of that, they could figure out some scheme to charge for reading online. In any case, the bottom line is that the cost of reading the stuff -- in digital form -- MUST COME DOWN. Pricing ebooks like paper books is quite simply unjustifiable and it will not stand.

Ebooks sales in the US tripled in 2010, despite agency pricing. The market is *not* dead in the water; the market is speeding ahead.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by mdmorrissey

They already know to do make the books uncopiable

If you can read it, you can copy it.
Even if it came down to automated screen captures and OCR, there is no way to allow someone to view the content without copying it.

[CleverClothe]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Ebooks sales in the US tripled in 2010, despite agency pricing. The market is *not* dead in the water; the market is speeding ahead.

And Amazon says that the Agency publishers have half the growth rate of the other publishers in their store.