Book Lack and Anger - Book industry guarantees Apple turnover

It would seem that the e-Book industry has taken a good, hard look at what happened to the music industry in the Noughties - and decided to follow down the same road - NYT:

In the battle over the pricing of electronic books, publishers appear to have won the first round. The price of many new releases and best sellers is about to go up, to as much as $14.99 from $9.99.

Like all good plans in this space though, this one will probably not survive contact with the enemy - that is, us:

...there may be an insurgency waiting to pounce: e-book buyers.

Over the last year, the most voracious readers of e-books have shown a reflexive hostility to prices higher than the $9.99 set by Amazon.com and other online retailers for popular titles.

When digital editions have cost more, or have been delayed until after the release of hardcover versions, these raucous readers have organized impromptu boycotts and gone to the Web sites of Amazon and Barnes & Noble to leave one-star ratings and negative comments for those books and their authors.

It is totally daft - as with digital music, the punters know it doesn't cost as much to produce so are buggered if they can see why they should pay top hardcover whack. And on the Kindle there is no discounted shelf, no second hand eBookstore, no paperback version (though it will probably come).

In other words, the publishers have calculated that the margin on selling overpriced eBooks to the suckers who bought Kindles etc will more than make up for the smaller volumes. Trouble is, the suckers know this too.

And of course, as has been proven over and over again, if the public don't like the price, they opt for Piracy.

My prediction - this is yet another market full of F*ckwits (sorry, professional managers) who, by their short sighted behaviour over the next 2-3 years, will guarantee that an Apple iPod type play with the iPad or something like it, and a decent media pricing plan, will take them out.

Like the Medieval French nobility who charged English longbowmen in three battles with the same sad result, the Publishing industry seems to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from the slings and arrows of their past misfortunes.