Slashdot Mirror
Publishers Warned On Ebook Prices
An anonymous reader writes "The DoJ says Simon and Schuster, Hachette, Penguin, Macmillan and HarperCollins conspired to raise the prices of ebooks. The report originates from the WSJ, but the BBC adds comments from an analyst bizarrely claiming increased prices are somehow a good thing and thinking otherwise is the result of 'confusion'. I'd like to see an explanation of why the wholesale model, while continuing to work fine (presumably) for physical books, somehow didn't work for ebooks and why the agency model is better despite increasing costs for consumers."
Exactly. Who would pay $18 or more for a book on iTunes that you can't even LOAN to a friend?
Nothing is more dangerous than a programmer with a screwdriver.
Why not paypal the author a few bucks and torrent the ebooks? No trees getting cut nor used books getting shipped around and the author makes money. Keep doing this until publishers realize their short sighted stupidity and change their ways.
Except that, at least with Amazon eBooks, they appear to have left out the copy editor and the graphics editor. Typos up the wazoo. Horridly compressed jpegs for graphics. Pagination that makes little Johnny cry.
Maybe Amazon could crowd source those problems and give people a discount or something - but it gripes me to pay nearly full paper price for a substandard product.
I won't even mention the DRM since it's conveniently so easy to crack.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!