Re: "The Elusive E-book"

On Wed, 7 May 2008, Robert Harris wrote:

> "In the 12 years I've been researching electroic publishing

Hmmm. Since 1996. A *lot* of water under the bridge in that time.

> Had the pundits been correct, half of the reading material 
> today would be delivered electronically.  In spite of these 
> rosy predictions, individual e-book sales in 2005 were a mere 
> $11.8 million.

What an odd complaint.

I'd believe that half of today's reading material IS delivered 
electronically.

Of course, if you disqualify anything as reading material if it 
isn't a cash sale, you're going to get some skewed statistics.


On Wed, 7 May 2008, Aaron Walker wrote:

> I think part of the issue hurting e-books is authors and 
> publishers seeing e-books solely as a way to drive paper book 
> sales - and mostly for free.
>
> I'm new to e-publishing so I can't really say how that came to 
> be. It makes it very hard for e-publishers to compete on equal 
> footing if traditional publishers will happily give away the 
> e-book version in the hopes to drive paper sales.

I'm guessing you wouldn't agree to accept the terms of sale of 
"content satisfactory or money happily refunded"?

What stops you from doing the same thing as the traditional 
publishers? Have a POD version on standby. Use the electronic 
version as marketing to find the people who really, REALLY, want 
a paper copy. Nothing like the real content to find out who your 
most appreciative customers really are.


:: chris smith :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 
:: nihil tam munitum quod non expugnari pecuna possit - cicero ::

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