One issue that is going to HAVE to be dealt with effectively in order for e-books to become truly popular is this: once you buy a physical book it's yours until it falls apart, which can be decades. I have books that were my grandparents'. An e-book is only good until either the file gets corrupted, or until the new edition of your reader doesn't read the old file format.
If I buy a book, I want to be able to go on reading it for years, if I feel like it. An e-book won't give me that, not yet.
And there is also the issue of piracy. Right now e-books are pirated the moment they become available, whether they have DRM or not. DRM-free advocates insist that they want to be able to do whatever they want with their e-book once they pay for it and that publishers don't try to keep you from re-selling the physical books they produce. What they aren't addressing is the fact that physical books have rights management built in. Once you buy a physical book, you can certainly lend it to friends or sell it to someone else ... but only one person at a time. You cannot physically lend it to 10,000 people at a time, and you cannot give it to *anyone* else and still keep it for yourself.
This isn't an issue for people who create for fun, but it most certainly *is* for people who create for a living ... and let's face it; most quality work is put out by people who put effort into becoming skilled, and, just like other types of people who do skilled work, they want to be paid for producing quality work, and preferably be paid enough that they can do LOTS of quality work, and continue becoming even more skilled.
Which brings me to why self-publishing is looked down on: once the printing press was invented and became readily available, anyone who could afford one could publish their own writing ... which led to some truly execrable work. Satyr suggests you read a book called Really Bad Poems, which is a collection of poetry mostly published around that time (the 1700s). Vanity press has no quality control, which leads to exactly the quality you'd expect--none. Which is why self-publishing is looked down on. One way to create a better product is to put quality control in place; in the case of writing that means several different kinds of editing ... and most authors just do not have those skills OR the willpower to use them on their beloved children. And if you want to get paid for having THOSE skills, you have to go to someone who utilizes them--a publishing company. (I have a friend who does freelance editing; she doesn't really get enough business to eat on.) So, the one reliable source for quality writing is ... publishing houses. Because that's where the editors are.
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One issue that is going to HAVE to be dealt with effectively in order for e-books to become truly popular is this: once you buy a physical book it's yours until it falls apart, which can be decades. I have books that were my grandparents'. An e-book is only good until either the file gets corrupted, or until the new edition of your reader doesn't read the old file format.
If I buy a book, I want to be able to go on reading it for years, if I feel like it. An e-book won't give me that, not yet.
And there is also the issue of piracy. Right now e-books are pirated the moment they become available, whether they have DRM or not. DRM-free advocates insist that they want to be able to do whatever they want with their e-book once they pay for it and that publishers don't try to keep you from re-selling the physical books they produce. What they aren't addressing is the fact that physical books have rights management built in. Once you buy a physical book, you can certainly lend it to friends or sell it to someone else ... but only one person at a time. You cannot physically lend it to 10,000 people at a time, and you cannot give it to *anyone* else and still keep it for yourself.
This isn't an issue for people who create for fun, but it most certainly *is* for people who create for a living ... and let's face it; most quality work is put out by people who put effort into becoming skilled, and, just like other types of people who do skilled work, they want to be paid for producing quality work, and preferably be paid enough that they can do LOTS of quality work, and continue becoming even more skilled.
Which brings me to why self-publishing is looked down on: once the printing press was invented and became readily available, anyone who could afford one could publish their own writing ... which led to some truly execrable work. Satyr suggests you read a book called Really Bad Poems, which is a collection of poetry mostly published around that time (the 1700s). Vanity press has no quality control, which leads to exactly the quality you'd expect--none. Which is why self-publishing is looked down on. One way to create a better product is to put quality control in place; in the case of writing that means several different kinds of editing ... and most authors just do not have those skills OR the willpower to use them on their beloved children. And if you want to get paid for having THOSE skills, you have to go to someone who utilizes them--a publishing company. (I have a friend who does freelance editing; she doesn't really get enough business to eat on.) So, the one reliable source for quality writing is ... publishing houses. Because that's where the editors are.