Nifty article with a good insight into why e-books are not taking off on the net. If you think about it, when we buy music, we also buy a separate player - a Sony Walkman, for example, or a stereo syste, "But when a publisher sells us a novel," writes the author, "they?re also including the 'player'?the display mechanism traditionally called a 'book.'" We have no history of buying text players, and so have no inclination to buy them for electronic content. The key for the publishing industry will be to discuise the 'player' as something else - an ultra-light notebook computer, for example. All well and good, but the author stops here. Take the logic one step further: the publishers are failing because they don't understand that they are in the business of selling us players, not content - they have this expensive system where we must purchase a separate player for each bit of content (music publishers, too, if you think of the plastic CD as an essential part of the music player). There's obviously no longer a need to buy so many players - but here now is the other side of e-books: the publishers expect to keep their original profit margin on each book, as though they were still selling players! No wonder consumers are cynical. They know that most of the cost of a book is the paper and the distribution, not the content. But for electronic content, publishers are asking for essentially the same price - and are passing the cost of the player on to the consumer.
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