Little Magazines Are Back

(wsjfreeexpression.substack.com)

30 points | by prismatic 2 days ago ago

3 comments

  • teeray an hour ago

    > A quarter-century ago, conventional wisdom held that ebooks, read on electronic devices, would replace books made of paper.

    Until publishers thought “huh, we can increase our margins AND increase our prices too for ebooks?!”

    • amarant 32 minutes ago

      I've made the switch to ebooks.i haven't yet had a problem with pricing like you suggest, but I have been a little worried about my library of purchased books might one day disappear since they all use DRM, and I don't really own any of my books in any real sense of the word.

      Then again, even that doesn't worry me too much, since I almost never read a book twice anyway. I think the only book I've read more than once is the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.

      For now, in my experience, ebooks have always been cheaper than print versions of the same work. I suspect that if one calculated the resell value of a printed book, the prices would come out about equal. Which is why I chose eBooks for their convenience.

      • xp84 3 minutes ago

        The resale value of books isn’t that great for most individuals since you have to do at minimum the work of listing it on eBay, and maybe even listing it on Amazon, and the pay for shipping and platform fees. But the value to publishers of killing off the used book market by not printing the paper book in the first place is the reason ebooks are so popular with them.

        Did you know that when libraries buy ebooks, the license automatically evaporates after a set number of loans? Like 10 or 20 IIRC.