Hacker News Reader

Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

> "Publishers don't like the ebook market, and my guess is that it's because of how little control they have over it."

My interpretation is slightly different. They don't line it because of the commitment it creates.

1) From a legal perspective, it's only a matter of time before someone says, "You sold me this book. What do you mean I can't access it any more? I want my money back." What call action lawyer wouldn't love that opportunity?

2) The upfront cost of the ebook might be cheaper, but again, there's the ongoing infrastructure, etc. Those costs over time add up. Vs print the book once and be done with it.

View on HN

I think you may be confusing the e-book reader (which may well have infrastructure behind it) and the e-book itself. The latter is just a file and, modulo DRM, doesn't carry any more legal or infrastructure costs than a physical book.

So there's no accounting involved with dealing with Anazon? No internal systems to manage digital assets? Etc.?

Those ebooks don't create and maintain themselves. Print is finite. Digital is forever.

What infrastructure? A third party is managing the sales and downloads.

> What infrastructure? A third party is managing the sales and downloads.

Somebody is paying to run that.

It's reasonable to assume that they'll stop paying the second it stops making money for them.

Do any of us anticipate that Amazon is going to leave the digital book business anytime soon? It's about as theoretical as saying you shouldn't use EC2 because Amazon might get out of the cloud services business.

It shouldn't be all on Amazon/one-company. The whole industry needs to be responsible.

There's Apple, B&N, Kobo, and other also-rans but let's not kid ourselves.

A slightly different, yet more relevant example: digital music.

Microsoft had their “plays for sure” DRM. No one thought Microsoft would get out of the music game. They did. “Plays for sure” no longer works. Does not play.

The key word here is "DRM".

Did Microsoft at some point absolutely dominate the music market? No.

And those asserts come from where? And you simply trust the payments Amazon sends? Just because someone else is handling the transaction doesn't mean you have nothing to do otherwise.

As mentioned above: Books are finite. Ebooks are forever.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com