Well, I did read the reviews, not the books, neither did you.
Publishing books is expensive largely due to the cost of paper. When you say that publishing a thousand page book should cost about $15, it's a silly statement. It's like saying that a car can be produced for $500, could it be done? probably. would you want to drive it? no way.
The economics of publishing are very complex and the factors that go into unit cost vary wildly (paper, print run size, color, binding type, etc.)
And it's not a service that many, many businesses can provide. If it were printing companies like RR Donnelley would not be so huge and profitibale.
Publishing already is democratic, I think what the author was railing against was capitalism, which is another matter entirely.
Granted, publishing companies have taken liberties with their content and their pricing structure. But what a good publisher brings to content delivery is filtering of garbage (which is what most of these free books are), quality editing, and a vehicle to reach a wide audience. Publishing books is expensive, the average profit margin for a text books is about %35, a lot less than the margin for jeans, sneakers or routers.
If publishers learn to apply their knowlege to web delivery, which few have yet to do, then we may see quality content delivered on-line for a good price.
Slashdot Mirror
and who pays the author for his work? Cause your an honest guy, you won't email the PDF to 85 of your best friends, will you?
mismanaged as hell
Well, I did read the reviews, not the books, neither did you. Publishing books is expensive largely due to the cost of paper. When you say that publishing a thousand page book should cost about $15, it's a silly statement. It's like saying that a car can be produced for $500, could it be done? probably. would you want to drive it? no way. The economics of publishing are very complex and the factors that go into unit cost vary wildly (paper, print run size, color, binding type, etc.) And it's not a service that many, many businesses can provide. If it were printing companies like RR Donnelley would not be so huge and profitibale.
Publishing already is democratic, I think what the author was railing against was capitalism, which is another matter entirely. Granted, publishing companies have taken liberties with their content and their pricing structure. But what a good publisher brings to content delivery is filtering of garbage (which is what most of these free books are), quality editing, and a vehicle to reach a wide audience. Publishing books is expensive, the average profit margin for a text books is about %35, a lot less than the margin for jeans, sneakers or routers. If publishers learn to apply their knowlege to web delivery, which few have yet to do, then we may see quality content delivered on-line for a good price.