On Feb 19, 8:59 am, Jonathan Sherwood <[email protected]> wrote: > yet we don't see massive pirating of books, and I have to believe it's > because A) no technology yet trumps a dead-tree book the way mp3s trumped > cassette players > ... > I think the ebook revolution will be a slow one, and it'll follow the model > of giving away books to gain a quality reputation, then using that > reputation to sell subsequent material.
Consider the possibility of an electronic book that exactly replaces a paperback and you'll see why it's not on the immediate horizon. You'd need something that would store one book's worth of data with a quality display, that is water resistant, is crush-_proof_, can last for over 200 years with basic maintenance, is pocket-sized, and weighs a few ounces. Oh, and make it cost one hour's worth of minimum wage -- with enough left over to pay the author and all the extraneous expenses. I think the music industry's mistake was to set their prices far too high. Consider purchasing that paperback for an hour's minimum wage ($6 today) and deriving 5-25 hours of entertainment plus the prospect of a lifetime of reflection -- and the "media player" is included. Compare that to a CD for 3 hours worth of minimum wage (about $18 today) and deriving an hour of entertainment plus the possibility of another 2 hours or so in the future (based on a guesstimate of how frequently I listen to old albums). A paperback's entertainment ratio is 1 hour's minimum wage pay to 25 hours entertainment while a CD nets 3 hour's pay to 3 hours entertainment. In other words, if that CD cost more like 1/25 an hour's minimum wage pay (about $0.25), there would be far less piracy. So I don't believe the Kindle is a threat at all. Except maybe to publishing piracy on the Kindle. ---Jason Olshefsky --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
