I was doing my usual The mainstream failure of the ebook was not simply a case of poor technology, nor of the market being unready for the idea. While those things both have played their roles, it should be made clear that there was and is a very determined effort, ongoing to this day, to kill the entire ebook market.
In the rest of the article, he hits the nail square on the head by placing the blame solely at the feet of the publishing companies.
An ebook can be sold very profitably for a few dollars. But selling an ebook for $3, and a hardcover for $30, illustrates rather clearly which is the better deal, and makes the dead tree version look overpriced.
His last point is the biggest thus far. There are at least four versions of ebook readers. Palm users are familiar with EReader, there is Adobe's PDF version, MobiPocket and Microsoft's Lit. Rarely is a book available in all four versions and never simultaneously. And it is often hard to find the latest best sellers at a price I am willing to pay.
Case in point, I was browsing my local Target one day and came across a paperback science fiction novel that seemed to be pretty good. If memory serves me, the paperback was $4.99. Liking ebooks and having an account with EReader, I figured I could get it cheaper as an ebook. I tend to read sci-fi and other purely entertainment books as an ebook since I don't expect to want to "collect" them as I would other books.
Anyway, make a long story short, imagine my surprise when that very same book was $5.99 as an ebook. A whole dollar more in electronic form than the one they had to kill trees, mass print and ship to Target. To make matters worse, NONE of the other formats had the book to price shop.
Why does it cost more for an ebook than a paperback? As Adama says, there are minuscule cost associated with transmitting an ebook, especially when compared with a physical product. And why was it offered in only one format? Why stop at just one? Answer: book publishers don't want the format to succeed.
So publishers embarked on a half-dozen seemingly contradictory courses. They priced ebooks as a luxury item, rather than at a market-appropriate rate. They greatly limited the availability and title selection. And, last but not least, they locked up their ebooks using excessive DRM, which had the effect of making ebooks harder to use than many people were willing to accept.
I'm still buying and reading ebooks on my UMPC, but it feels as if I am fighting a losing battle when I know there is no reason NOT to be able to get a larger variety of titles to read at a price I am willing to pay.
Do you take donations via paypal?
Posted by: M Martin | April 27, 2008 at 11:28 AM