Dagmar wrote:
...and lastly, everyone knows there's a large chunk of money tied up in the books, themselves. It's not the marketing, it's not the royalties--it's the physical act of printing and storing and shipping and inventoring a bunch of slabs of compressed tree pulp. In it's physical form, it's a non-trivial cost and it doesn't exist with an eBook, yet we're being asked to pay for that by practically every single goddamn publisher out there. If you've not looked into eBooks before the Kindle came out, it was the same story all over. The sale price of the electronic version of a book was exactly the same as the printed paperback almost everywhere, every time. It's no wonder no one's quick to adopt these things. What's not to like about a copy of a book you don't really own, that might one day become unreadable due to bureaucratic snafu or lack of legal obligation to keep the DRM updated, and that you can't really pass on to your grandchildren (because again, you don't really own it).

Because the industry doesn't want the model to be one of producer to purchaser anymore and more like the software and IP model of producer to licenser. You can pass the book down to your grandchildren, but they'll have to pay each and every time they read, as you did all those many years.

Amazon's demand that the eBooks be sold for no more than ten dollars isn't exactly looking for fodder to fulfill their monopolistic dreams of a Kindle on every schoolchild's desk and two or three in every home--they're looking to drag the book publishing industry into the 21st Century, and they're willing to ignore the kicking and screaming to do it.

This makes Amazon sound like some benevolent savior, much as Apple and Google and [insert EMR company name here] are trying to do with other industries. Make no mistake, they want to insert themselves into this same producer to licenser model by mediating an industry that is too afraid and too inept to do it to themselves. The only reason why the pricing model has changed and the CEO's come out and trumpet themselves as just trying to get everyone into the 21st century is because they're running out of growth themselves. How's Amazon going to grow double digits for the next few years without raiding and plundering some moronic industry?

Innovation indeed.

RE: Why the book publishing industry is still freaking clueless