There's an interesting article on Slate about the book industry pushing Amazon to raise prices on e-books and how this could lead to the "Napsterization" of the book industry. We all remember Napster. Jack Shafer explains:
Right now, the electronic-book market finds itself roughly in the same place the market for MP3s was in 1999, the year after the release of the first portable MP3 player. First adopters of e-books, who are filling their devices with content and proselytizing to their friends, have it better than the early MP3 users. The iTunes store, which was established in early 2003, was among the first online sites where music fans could easily buy music files, a la carte, from a huge selection. The other commercial sites, wrote the New York Times, were "complex, expensive and limiting" and "failing because they were created to serve the interests of the record companies, not their customers." Basically, before iTunes arrived, if you wanted portable tracks, you had to rip your own, borrow collections from friends, or grab "free" tunes from the "pirates" at Napster or other file-sharing sites.
Shafer goes on to say that although relatively few people expect e-book content to be free,
...that could change in a matter of months if the book industry insists on 1) jacking up the price of e-books and 2) withholding potential best-sellers from the e-book market. Cool devices that make electronic reading painless are just around the corner, and the e-book market is about to explode. If publishers insist on pushing prices too high and curbing availability, consumers could rebel—as they did with the sharing of MP3s—and normalize the trafficking of infringing e-books.
Interesting points all, and a very worthwhile piece to check out. Highly recommended.
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