Much like that Attributor Study which was obviously bought and “paid for” by some Dead Tree Publisher looking for a easy reference to use despite the underlying uselessness of it’s highly questionable data and methodology.
We now have Michael Cader running around acting as yet another “paid for” expert soothing the Dead Tree Publishers fears and anger with things like…
“People who can afford an ereading device can afford all proposed ebook prices.”
The Consumerist basically read this bozo the riot act over that. So think of this as your morning wank. You can smell the bad business decisions from here.
Another interesting post on this… The Idealog ~ Notes from a lecture by Professor Cader
Tags: Wank
kirsten saell wrote,
Right now, pirates already offer a product superior to what publishers offer–identical quality, no DRM, and a price you can’t beat. The only thing that keeps honest consumers honest is their sense of honor.
But man, a person’s sense of honor can only survive so much cornholing before he says screw it and offers a cornholing in response, and if publishers think readers don’t know they’re getting the shaft on this one, they’re in for a rude awakening. More and more people are going to start to see illegal downloading as inherently “not wrong” because when someone repeatedly tries to fuck you up the ass, you just care less and less about treating them with any fairness. My own sense of honor is perhaps overinflated–I don’t think I’ll ever be driven to download pirated books. I’ll just do without. But then again, I’m not everyone.
I’m really freaking happy I’m with a publisher who gets it, who understands that value is not a function of quality alone (whether that quality is a reflection of the product’s popularity, or the author’s name, or convenience of purchase and use), but a function of quality AND price.
But the sad thing is, the publishers who don’t get it are contributing to a pervasive climate where more and more people will download an illegal copy of a book without a second thought–like anything morally questionable, the more you do it, the easier it gets. And a lot of those people are probably not going to care whether the publisher gets it or not. They’ll download my books the same as they will that $22 bestseller from Asshole Publisher X. And once they get to that point, where stealing or cheating becomes as emotionally easy as snapping their fingers, well, it’s pretty hard to turn that kind of attitude around. Once that sense of honor is gone, there’s not a whole lot you can do do bring it back.
Just fucking infuriating.
Link | February 20th, 2010 at 9:05 am
AnneD wrote,
I’ve reached a point where I read this stuff and grimace while shaking my head, wondering how these people just don’t get it.
Link | February 20th, 2010 at 9:45 am
Amber wrote,
You’d think people would notice that a lot of voters and consumers are at the age where they need the ability to increase text size. I buy (used) hardbacks for my beloved Luddite because he likes to read himself to sleep with a little nightlight but paperback print has become too small to comfortably read except in very bright light. The price, both in ecological and my-dollars terms, is steep, so he re-reads often. For $50 I can buy him a reconditioned netbook and load a flashdrive with reading material. This is the current plan for payday (next week). The netbook is budgeted to last through hundreds of books’ worth of reading. Now, what part of this scenario says we “can afford” a dedicated ebook reader or books priced at $20-$25 apiece to stuff in that flashdrive?
What the paper-publishers are really saying is, “We can get away with doing it now, and will continue to do it so long as we are able to.”
Link | February 21st, 2010 at 6:38 am