What is holding back ebooks?
I have had my Sony eBook for some time now and am getting more and more frustrated. Pretty much all the books I want to download are either not available or they are charging rediculous sums for.
For instance how can publishers justify £16.38 for Gone tomorrow by Lee Childs This is as much as a Blu Ray DVD with all the productions costs involved.
I want to buy the whole back catalogue of all my favourite authors. Can I do this? Most definately not. I want to have all my current collection in eBook format but I plain can’t.
Publishers need to look at what happened to the music industry. Then look at how iTunes turned it on it’s head. I buy lots of music from iTunes and I have started buying TV programs and movies. I now spend almost 10 times on media from iTunes as I did previously in physical products. So the music, TV and film industry is getting more money from me with lower distribution costs.
If the publisher were to start selling books that are more than 3 years old for say £2.99 to £3.99 I would buy pretty much my entire book collection again. Recent releases I would happily pay £4.99 to £7.99 for depending on the size and quality of the book. A 2 year old 250 page light read would come at the bottom of the scale but a new huge 800 page Tom Clancy would come at the top end.
If they use the Adobe ePUB format I would be happy with that DRM as it is transferable to quite a few devices.
At the moment I am just downloading free books from feedbooks and a few cheaper books from whsmiths. The book publishing industry is missing out on a non trivial amount of income by not getting their act together.
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