>Drive down the prices so the only way to make any money off books is to plaster the end of every chapter with full color ads of Kim Kardashian?
I feel that is a silly premise. I was unable to find any cost breakdowns of how much it costs to produce a dead-tree $8 US paperback, but I wouldn't be surprised if manufacturing & shipping is at least $4 of that cost. Lets just assume that after everyone else takes their cut, the publisher gets $2.
Now, with ebooks, you don't have that $4 manufacturing cost. No grinding up tree pulp, etc. No shipping boxes of heavy hard-cover books to stores. If publishers wanted to, they could sell ebooks directly from their own online storefront for $2 and, for the purposes of this argument, make the exact same amount of money.
Your grim future only happens if people stop seeing a $2 book as worth the money. Like mobile games- developers found out that even a $2 purchase price is too high a barrier of entry for many people, and free, ad supported games could make more money. If anything, cheaper purchase prices of books would help prevent this. Deciding between a free, ad-supported ebook or paying $8 for the same thing is a hell of a lot easier decision than deciding between free-with-ads or spending $2.
I feel that is a silly premise. I was unable to find any cost breakdowns of how much it costs to produce a dead-tree $8 US paperback, but I wouldn't be surprised if manufacturing & shipping is at least $4 of that cost. Lets just assume that after everyone else takes their cut, the publisher gets $2.
Now, with ebooks, you don't have that $4 manufacturing cost. No grinding up tree pulp, etc. No shipping boxes of heavy hard-cover books to stores. If publishers wanted to, they could sell ebooks directly from their own online storefront for $2 and, for the purposes of this argument, make the exact same amount of money.
Your grim future only happens if people stop seeing a $2 book as worth the money. Like mobile games- developers found out that even a $2 purchase price is too high a barrier of entry for many people, and free, ad supported games could make more money. If anything, cheaper purchase prices of books would help prevent this. Deciding between a free, ad-supported ebook or paying $8 for the same thing is a hell of a lot easier decision than deciding between free-with-ads or spending $2.