Some publishers try to make "apps" out of their bestsellers, turning them into multimedia presentations... that don't work on ereaders.
There's the issue that fancy collector editions are often for sharing, or at least showing off; fancy ebook editions, like all other ebook editions, are officially Only For You. Would you spend an extra $10 for artwork you can't show to anyone else?
And there's the side problem that ereaders don't consistently support formatting. None of the portable readers supports footnotes, even though the ePub spec does. And having chapter headers in a fancy, script-heavy font that beautifully captures the feel of the book is meaningless if it's read on a program that doesn't support that font.
Publishers' real panic-point isn't so much about piracy or digital markets; it's that a major portion of their skills has become nearly obsolete, and at the whims of unknown software designers. They used to be able to put their expertise into the design & layout of books for easy & pleasant reading; "books" were different from "typewritten pages cut in half" even after desktop printers with multiple fonts were everywhere. Now, "ebooks" are often plaintext things, with no leading control, no kerning at all, no font support... I can understand their distress.
They weren't just selling "story content;" they'd put a lot of effort into making the packaging for that content invisible while simultaneously making it compelling. And that whole skill family is now shot to hell.
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There's the issue that fancy collector editions are often for sharing, or at least showing off; fancy ebook editions, like all other ebook editions, are officially Only For You. Would you spend an extra $10 for artwork you can't show to anyone else?
And there's the side problem that ereaders don't consistently support formatting. None of the portable readers supports footnotes, even though the ePub spec does. And having chapter headers in a fancy, script-heavy font that beautifully captures the feel of the book is meaningless if it's read on a program that doesn't support that font.
Publishers' real panic-point isn't so much about piracy or digital markets; it's that a major portion of their skills has become nearly obsolete, and at the whims of unknown software designers. They used to be able to put their expertise into the design & layout of books for easy & pleasant reading; "books" were different from "typewritten pages cut in half" even after desktop printers with multiple fonts were everywhere. Now, "ebooks" are often plaintext things, with no leading control, no kerning at all, no font support... I can understand their distress.
They weren't just selling "story content;" they'd put a lot of effort into making the packaging for that content invisible while simultaneously making it compelling. And that whole skill family is now shot to hell.