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comment by dublinben
dublinben  ·  4335 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Buy hardcovers if you can...

I wish the hardcover book I bought included a code for the ebook which I'm actually going to read.

Book publishers are able to sell multiple copies of the same book to the same customer because their product happens to not be easily format-shifted. Unlike music publishers, I think that book publishers are much less willing to embrace the new medium because they haven't been forced to.





aeontech  ·  4335 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think it will happen eventually. Publishers run on very thin margins as is, and as long as they feel that they can get more by charging people for ebooks separately, they will keep doing so. Also, most publishers don't publish ebooks yet, so for them it's additional work to actually create ebooks. That's why you only see smaller, technical presses like PragProg or O'Reilly doing something like it - they already have the infrastructure to create the ebooks easily, and their audience is tech-savvy enough to benefit from it.

b_b  ·  4335 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That's a really interesting idea. Are any publishers doing this? It makes perfect sense. They get their markup on the physical book, you get the sense of having a thing, and you get all the convenience of an eBook. Sounds like a win/win.

dublinben  ·  4335 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The only publisher I know that does anything close to this is O'Reilly, who offers a $5 upgrade to include the ebook.

As long as the big publishers can sell hardbacks, paperbacks, and ebooks for the full price, we'll never see this innovation take off. It will have to come from customer demand or smaller publishers.