Book People Archive

Re: Internet piracy spreads from music to books

> P..S  2.50 isn't that many dollars any more....(sigh)...but it's still
> a lot more than FREE!! They must be crazy...let's hope no one is stupid
> enough to buy any. Thanks for the entertainment Richard.

Well, there are plenty of folks, myself included, who are willing to 
pay a premium for a good edition.  In print, you can get many of
the classics extremely cheaply from library sales, or in
new Dover editions.  But I'll sometimes pass those up for, say, a
more expensive Penguin, if the introduction, notes, and other
editing is good, and the book is laid out, carefully proofed, based
on good source texts, and sized nicely.   If I'm willing to spend, say,
$4 more for a well-produced print book, then I might well be willing
to spend the same amount for a well-produced electronic edition.

Sure, I've seen folks who've done nothing more than take
a Gutenberg text, mechanically repackage it for their proprietary
format, and try to peddle that.  I don't see it worth spending money
on those.  (And even if they're free, I don't even find
them worth *listing* them if, like many proprietary "ebooks",
they limit what you're able to do with them, and open-format
alternatives are freely and legally available.)

But I've also seen electronic publishers that prepared their
editions with special care, and with new material and features
that add to the enjoyment of the work.  (Voyager was an early
pioneer in this area; there have been others since.)  Those
I could see a market for, even if free editions also exist.

Of course, it would take more time and work to prepare such
editions, which is why I could see such a publisher only
putting out, say, 200 books the first year, even if they could
release a lot more if they were content to just repackage free
transcriptions.

So at this point, I wouldn't jump to conclusions.  If Penguin
can sell for 2.50 UKP (about $3.75 US) electronic editions of
public-domain works that are high-quality, well edited and annotated,
conveniently packaged, and without crippling usage restrictions,
more power to them.  They'll still be outside the scope of my page,
which concentrates on free editions, but I'll be happy to see
them available.   Let's wait and see what they come up with.

John