According to this Infoworld story, the publishing industry is about to find itself in the same situation as the music industry. Hopefully it will have a better response than the record companies’ “the customer is our enemy” mantra.
On the other hand, as with digital music industry it’s hard for me to get all worked up about the billions of dollars the publishing companies stand to lose.
Look, throughout history technological progress has led to an overall decline in the costs of goods. Why should intellectual property be any different? The problem the book industry and music industry is going through now is exactly the same as the other industries have gone through.
The problem the book industry is going to have is that I’d much rather pay $7.50 direct to an author for an electronic version of his book than $27.95 in a bookstore for a hard copy version, especially since a book in electronic form can do things that would be prohibitively expensive in print (there’s a reason, for example, that most illustrations and diagrams in books are strictly black and white — color’s extremely expensive in print, but basically free in electronic form).
The only industry that’s really adapted to this sort of cycle of declining costs and improved performance is the computer industry. Imagine somebody today coming out with a 486 PC with a 14″ monitor and expecting you to pay $1,500 for it. After you finished laughing, you’d probably question the mental health of the outfit behind such an offer.
But this is precisely what the record companies and publishing companies think they can do — offer yesterday’s products at today’s prices. That’s why they won’t succeed.