Legal Research

The Song Remains the Same - Judging a book by its cover

By scott

I was reading this morning in the Wall St Journal that HarperCollins (News Corp) , Simon & Schuster (CBS Corp) and Hachette Book Group (Lagardere SCA) have all decided that from next year they are going to delay the availability of e-book publications of many of their new Hardback titles in 2010 for between 1-6 months.

The reason? That the popularity of simultaneously available $9.99 e-book bestsellers with the new hardcovers puts the publishing industry’s business in danger and leaves them with less money to invest in new authors.

Hmmm, that argument sounds familiar. Try and save one market whilst crippling a newer one. Hmmm, Oh wait, of course, it’s the same one the Music industry trotted out. Let’s see what happened when they did that ? oh yes ? mass piracy.

Seriously, do these people in the tradition media not learn lessons? And do they also not see they’re missing the point in that there are people who would buy the eBook who may not have bought the Hardback at all ? this is a new additional sale = added revenue; there are also people who might buy both. What this sounds like is an attempt to make the eBook a replacement for the paperback release. It could work; but the price will be more eBook piracy.

I can’t help thinking the industry would be better served trying to convince those people who have become eBook buyers to just buy more eBooks than they would have had they been buying hardback books simply BECAUSE the price is cheaper.

Full post as published by Information Overload on December 10, 2009 (boomark / email).