No, you got it. Book sharing has been part of literary culture for centuries, and publishers have always been caught between wanting to encourage the advertising effects and discourage sharing that doesn't result in buying. With ebooks, they decided that digital technology would let them insist that 1 buyer = 1 reader, and that meant they'd make money off all those damned moochers who'd been reading without paying!
Except, um, they never did want to acknowledge how many of those "moochers" were never going to pay new book costs for anything.
It's my biggest issue with ebooks right now--while there's more and more ways to access them, and more ways to get ereaders to more people, and we'd *love* for kids to not have to carry 50 lbs of textbooks... ebooks can't become the dominant form of reading if they can't be shared. None of us learned to love books by only reading things we'd bought new at full price.
What we're moving towards is a weird class rift where the "elite" and wealthy readers get access to new, big-name ebooks, including textbooks, and the poor, non-US, and otherwise disadvantaged readers get freebies and indie published books--and a large group of the poor breaks various laws to get access to the "elite" books because you need them to keep up on some aspects of society.
(And the idea that "if you don't pay for your ebooks, THERE WILL BE NO MORE BOOKS" is a fascinating display of cluelessness and class privilege.)
no subject
Except, um, they never did want to acknowledge how many of those "moochers" were never going to pay new book costs for anything.
It's my biggest issue with ebooks right now--while there's more and more ways to access them, and more ways to get ereaders to more people, and we'd *love* for kids to not have to carry 50 lbs of textbooks... ebooks can't become the dominant form of reading if they can't be shared. None of us learned to love books by only reading things we'd bought new at full price.
What we're moving towards is a weird class rift where the "elite" and wealthy readers get access to new, big-name ebooks, including textbooks, and the poor, non-US, and otherwise disadvantaged readers get freebies and indie published books--and a large group of the poor breaks various laws to get access to the "elite" books because you need them to keep up on some aspects of society.
(And the idea that "if you don't pay for your ebooks, THERE WILL BE NO MORE BOOKS" is a fascinating display of cluelessness and class privilege.)