Who is going to win? Bet on Bezos. The mainstream publishers can hold on for a while, based on reputation and while e-readers aren’t widely available; there’s still some prestige to being published by a reputable publisher like MacMillan. But eventually, some publisher will realize that a book that would have sold for $29.95 in a physical edition can be sold for the cost of the royalty, plus a small markup for production and administration. Our $29.95 novel would sell instead for $3.95. When that happens, except for coffee table books and an occasional print-on-demand hard copy, the physical book is dead.
The dead tree book business is dead, it just hasn’t realized it yet.
I totally agree.I love the idea of a device like a Kindle but until the hardware drops to a least $99 or less and the books drop to below what I would pay for a paperback version I am not interested.
I disagree, there will always be people, like myself who want paper books. Technology fails and breaks. I can read a book over and over and never worry about a software upgrade, a battery going dead, a cracked screen.
I do agree their will always be paper books but I think that the industry will change It will be more of a print on demand system and not a mass market printing system we have now, users will have a choice.Publishers will be irrelevant in the future it will be cheap and easy for authors to self publish and reap the profits for themselves.
I want my paper-bound books. As topofthechain wrote; never breaks, never wears out, always available. I lurvs my library.
The only downside to dead-tree books is weight and space.