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Strategies & Market Trends : The coming US dollar crisis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: SG who wrote (18568)3/13/2009 10:03:39 AM
From: Tommaso  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 71475
 
>>>we'll all be staring at pieces of plastic who have the monopoly on what we read<<<<

Just like we drive along listening to circular pieces of shiny plastic instead of having a symphony orchestra in the car with us <G>.



To: SG who wrote (18568)3/13/2009 12:41:12 PM
From: benwood  Respond to of 71475
 
You are right, the economics are a problem. B&N and Borders have already put most independents out of business.

And if sharing is 'easy' -- removing a book from a Kindle and transferring it to another, along with the right to view (literally, to decrypt) -- then used bookstores will be gone in a flash, too, because it would be simple to 'sell' your book anywhere in the world, e.g. via Ebay.

It's probably why the Kindle is so expensive... keep the market fairly small while they figure out what it all means.

BTW, my friend just told me you can plug it into your PC and see the files, which are encrypted. He believes (as do I) that it's only a matter of time before the encryption is cracked, and so one way or the other, the nature of the business going to change radically.



To: SG who wrote (18568)3/13/2009 12:48:33 PM
From: benwood  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 71475
 
oh, and speaking of monopolies, the self publishing biz has never been better. Someone on one of my forums has a photography book available, and my cousin just published a biography of one of my ancestors, and the up front costs were minimal. They print books on an as-needed basis, so there's no inventory, little overhead, no ripped books being returned, etc.

That model will not be going away, Kindle or not.

Cheap paperbacks have a life of 10 or 15 years, and then they they are more or less shot. How nice if trees weren't used in 90% of that market. If you are at the airport, you wouldn't have a choice of 500 books at the little store near your gate, but instead a hundred thousand titles *at* your gate.