Mycall4me wrote:What the heck do they think is going to happen WHEN (almost assuredly NOT if) all the dead tree stores go out of business? I've read that b&n is in a bad way, and it wouldn't surprise me if they just closed all their brick and mortar stores, and just support the e book business for their nooks.
I've had an e reader since the very first commercial e reader sold, the kindle. Since my primary source for new books was b&n I bought their nook when they first came out, and I've owned and updated my nook 4 or 5 times.
I am, in fact, totally spoiled by the convenience of my nook, and I have replaced ALL of my many,favorite hc's, and the thought of picking up and reading the bulky and cumbersome dead tree version of a book is almost repellant.
Obviously when that happens they will be forced to provide their product as an e book, but you would think that they'd want to get started now, and pick up all the business they're losing to e readers.I havn't bought any dead tree books AT ALL for too many years for me to count. If I couldn't get it in the e pub format for my nook, I just wouldn't buy it. Fortunately ALL of my must buy authors are available as e books, and I just don't consider a new author/story if it isn't an e book. Which is something of a shame because any of my must buy authors started out as someone new, and I would try them and their book because of the summary inside the cover, or from the back of the book.
If the Big 5 publishers could perceive reality and if they could think logically, they wouldn't be taking the position they've taken. They're refusing to recognize the changes that have already happened, and they insist that their current business model, which they have followed since World War II, is still valid, appropriate, and applicable in today's circumstances. The more fools they. They are emotionally wedded to the idea that hardbacks are king, and anything that reduces the sales or impact of hardback editions is evil. They are convinced that ebook sales hurt hardback sales.
They do produce ebook editions. But they seriously overprice them, and they frequently delay release of the ebook edition until two or three months after the release of the hardback edition to counter-balance the perceived effect on hardback sales. They have yet to figure out that a die-hard ebook reader is not going to buy their hardback edition even if there is no ebook edition available.
This is the same BS they've started pulling with sales of ebooks to libraries by limiting the number of ebook copies of a book a library can buy, and by again not delivering the library ebook editions until months after the hardback was released.
The flip side of the issue is that according to a number of articles I've read this year, independent bookstores seem to be making a comeback. So B&N may tank (which may actually be a good thing as it would remove their disproportionate influence on the distribution network) but there will still be a fair number of smaller book stores out there. Just not enough to save the Big 5 publishers from their own idiocy.
David