You need to look at what Baen Books(www.baen.com) is doing with e-books. Their entire SF/F line is available in e-book form BEFORE publication at below-pb prices. E-book software to read them is free. They are opposed in principle to DRM, so everything is unencrypted. They even have a FREE library of complete e-books to get you hooked. Authors you may like: Asaro, Bujold, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (just recently joined for e-books only- see Korval.com for details.) Unlike some e-book publishers, they will download the e-books that you purchase as many times a necessary or you can read online.

The failure to have it available in ebooks leads to piracy and loss of royalties, imo, as Itunes has shown that a great majority of people would rather buy than pirate.

There simply is no iPod out there for eBooks yet. There will be though.

The initial response of the record companies to Apple was that exact same argument of piracy. The record companies would very likely have you paying full price also if Apple had not fought tooth and nail to keep it low and enticing to the public and they in most respects won on the whole 1.00 per song deal.

Some groups will still, after it was proved that iTunes did not open the flood gates to complete anarchy, not let Apple sell their songs due to that pricing policy. Others have gotten their way and made Apple change that policy in order to carry their catalog. But… in the end it was not piracy that was the real underlying issue it was “how can bands make a bigger buck out of the deal”.

The funny thing is that those groups making their songs and albums unavailable online or more expensive are most likely going the ones who get pirated.

People for the most part will by the official version of something as long as it is reasonably affordable. Grabbing pirated copies of anything is difficult and time consuming and you know you are not dealing with kosher people so you also worry about other things.

I think writing to publishers and NYT is a brilliant idea. (Despite Cary Doctorow, I don’t want a pbook if I have a digital edition especially if the ebook is free). Does anyone know what percentage of book sales are ebooks?

I don’t mind ebooks as long as they’re easy to read and inexpensive. iTune is relatively cheap (and I can buy the songs I want, not the entire album) although the player can be a bit pricey. But with ebooks, they’re just as expensive as print books (and some are priced as same as hardback!!!!) and I have to buy an ebook reader, which costs at least $200 or so. So I don’t understand, at this point at least, why I should buy ebooks, some of which don’t even have the standard format / incompatibility, at the same price as print books PLUS shell out a lot of money for a reader that won’t destroy my eye sight.

No dear the camera is not going to steal your soul but here have some salt to throw over your shoulder anyway if it makes you feel better.

At some point I have to think money will talk and the old print sales will drop and someone… some CEO, I should say, will discover the low cost magical land that is e-publishing.

Notice how everyone hated the I-Tunes idea till… well the iPod and now you can’t find well stocked record stores much anymore.

Until then, we can all just shake our heads and smile at the simpletons on th grass. They are cute even if they are terribly scared of their own shadows.