Google throws down the gauntlet, announces plans to sell e-Books (NYT)

[jamesbeat]

Originally Posted by cjcherryh

I cannot see any reason for the publisher to charge the hardcover price for an e-book. No warehouse, no truck, no printer, no shipping. The other costs of production do stand.

You might argue that the role of the publisher is rapidly becoming obsolete.
The whole reason that authors use a publisher is because they have the facilities and finances to physically produce a paper book and to distribute and market it.

We, as owners of electronic reading devices, are very much early adopters of this technology.
Look what's happened with music and the ipod. Nowadays, buying a physical CD and then ripping it to mp3 is more trouble than just downloading it.
In fact, I simply downloaded my music collection to avoid the hassle of ripping 300+ CD's

Making the system complicated by introducing various proprietary formats and DRM is a last gasp.

DRM in particular is really stupid.
Once people realise that they might not be able to keep a book that they have paid for if they change their OS or whatever, they will look for a way to circumvent it, and in doing so discover that they can also pirate books.

The only reason for an internet savvy person to actually spend money on a book nowadays is honesty. Alienating customers by overcharging for ebooks or making them useless with DRM will not incline them towards honest behaviour.

I think the idea of charging such a high price for an ebook is probably more a way to persuade people to buy the paper version (higher perceived value, same price) instead, thus keeping the industry afloat.

Having read this you might think that I think publishers are approaching the problem in the wrong way and that I have thought of a better way. I don't believe this for a second, I'm sure they're doing everything they can to delay the inevitable.
Publishers as we know them today will cease to exist in the next couple of decades because their business model no longer works.