An interesting article from Associated press tells how ebooks are being sold and used to support gamers. The important point was made that these are used as reference aids to help the people play the games but also that some of the material is short, as few as five pages, and commensurately low priced, at $1 or $2. They have broken out of the physical rules and adopted an open PDF approach caring less about piracy and more about accessibility. Even their larger ‘books’ are priced cheaply and they recognise it is perfect for electronic distribution."The more we treat a PDF like a book, the less likely people are to get it," Gareth-Michael Skarka, of Adamant Entertainment said. "You price it low enough that the consumer thinks of it as disposable."
Toronto-based Harlequin Enterprises Ltd. publishes 120 to 140 romantic novels per month, all of which are also sold in the US as e-books. Although these sales only represent a fraction of their sales they are starting to see traction and have started selling short stories exclusively as e-books, pricing these at 89 cents.
The point may be that we have to rethink the book just as the K novel has been re thought in Japan. Maybe someone should step up to the Dickens serial model. After all that is what Jobs did to music by moving from the CD to the track.
Maybe we have to stop linking the price to the physical book after all it makes no sense for it to be linked to the hardback and then be linked to the paperback when that comes out. After all it’s the same product!
Maybe we have to stop linking the price to the physical book after all it makes no sense for it to be linked to the hardback and then be linked to the paperback when that comes out. After all it’s the same product!
