plunging in

[gfish]

I know I should stay clear of Amazonfail, but I just want to say that a publisher which can't make a profit selling $9 etexts (or $5, or $2) deserves to go bankrupt. If amortized editing and design costs are really the lion's share of a physical book, the system is deeply, deeply broken.

(Even applying design costs to the etext version is largely ridiculous. How much design work does an etext need? I'd prefer it as a raw text file anyway, but a LaTeX-generated PDF would also be just fine as well. The only reason for fancy design in the first place is to catch people's attention in a store. Etext selection and browsing is nothing like that, so why bother with it in the first place? Tradition? Snob factor? Anything that can't be seen in the scaled down image of the book cover in an Amazon listing is a complete waste of money.)

I remain unconvinced of the long-term viability of selling data as a business model. But if you want to find a way for authors to make money, don't make it even harder by trying to defend these dinosaurs at the same time.

Comments

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

For my company, patents are almost purely used to suppress competition and stifle innovation by companies without enough dosh to defend their innovations. Anything we actually care about is a trade secret.
I think copyright is much more defensible, insofar as it's *hard* to create a worthwhile artistic work, but incredibly easy to duplicate it. But I agree there is zero public good in nigh-indefinite copyright periods, and significant public harm.
But with that said, most of what I consider the greatest works of humanity were created before copyright existed. If we got rid of copyright, people would still be creating stuff.