The growing popularity of e-books has raised a difficult question in the publishing marketplace that used to have an easy answer: What's a book worth?
Because they cost less to produce, consumers think e-books should be cheap. But publishers are afraid that if the price goes too low, they may never recover from the diminished expectations.
Say what you will, the Kindle, Nook and the forthcoming Apple iPad will revolutionise how we read books. Bottom line, will the ebook "kill" publishing as we know it? Publishers are concerned, as they well might be.
npr explains:
"The growing popularity of e-books has raised a difficult question in the publishing marketplace that used to have an easy answer: What's a book worth?
Because they cost less to produce, consumers think e-books should be cheap. But publishers are afraid that if the price goes too low, they may never recover from the diminished expectations.
Some observers wonder if the publishers' pricing strategy is short-sighted. Jason Epstein, a well-known editor, publisher and author who has worked in the business for more than a half-century, says e-books are "the most exciting event, as far as books are concerned, in 500 years."
In a recent article on the future of publishing in The New York Review of Books, Epstein, whose own view is that the technology is on the verge of utterly transforming the industry, wrote that many publishers fear that transformation will make their current model obsolete.
"There will be no inventory. There will simply be digital files, and they'll be available worldwide at the click of a mouse. This makes much of what publishers now do irrelevant: creating inventory, putting it in the warehouse, keeping track of it, selling it, shipping it. All that's going to go," Epstein says.
Each of these elements cost publishers money, which in turn increases the price of a paper book. But despite radical changes to the industry, Epstein says it's a mistake for consumers to assume that e-books should necessarily cost less than their printed counterparts, at least for the time being."
Because they cost less to produce, consumers think e-books should be cheap. But publishers are afraid that if the price goes too low, they may never recover from the diminished expectations.
Say what you will, the Kindle, Nook and the forthcoming Apple iPad will revolutionise how we read books. Bottom line, will the ebook "kill" publishing as we know it? Publishers are concerned, as they well might be.
npr explains:
"The growing popularity of e-books has raised a difficult question in the publishing marketplace that used to have an easy answer: What's a book worth?
Because they cost less to produce, consumers think e-books should be cheap. But publishers are afraid that if the price goes too low, they may never recover from the diminished expectations.
Some observers wonder if the publishers' pricing strategy is short-sighted. Jason Epstein, a well-known editor, publisher and author who has worked in the business for more than a half-century, says e-books are "the most exciting event, as far as books are concerned, in 500 years."
In a recent article on the future of publishing in The New York Review of Books, Epstein, whose own view is that the technology is on the verge of utterly transforming the industry, wrote that many publishers fear that transformation will make their current model obsolete.
"There will be no inventory. There will simply be digital files, and they'll be available worldwide at the click of a mouse. This makes much of what publishers now do irrelevant: creating inventory, putting it in the warehouse, keeping track of it, selling it, shipping it. All that's going to go," Epstein says.
Each of these elements cost publishers money, which in turn increases the price of a paper book. But despite radical changes to the industry, Epstein says it's a mistake for consumers to assume that e-books should necessarily cost less than their printed counterparts, at least for the time being."
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