On 29/04/2013 23:27, Paddyjack wrote:
Ray,
I was wondering about something..... in the printing world, there is
of course a limited amount of books that are printed, and once you get
to the end of that for one particular book, then it's done and final
unless you get to get a second edition, a third etc. It means that
some books can no longer be found in bookstores except second hand stores.
Now, with the ebooks era, how does that work? Is there a limited
"copies" that has to be sold, or are these books going to be in
e-stores forever? Is there something about this in contracts with
publishers?
There are several aspects. And considering all aspects at the same time
can be confusing.
Technically. Once you have set up a system to distribute e-books, there
is no technical reason to stop to provide a given one, and little
incentive to do so. Little as in "so little than setting up the means to
do so has a cost you'll need years to recoup and such a a risk of
introducing spurious costly problems that I won't recommend doing it".
But you may change of systems -- just an upgrade or after a merge or a
buy out -- and then there may be technical reasons to stop providing
some things at that time.
Legally. License to distribute may be limited in time and could be not
renewed nor given to someone else or be on hold pending the resolution
of a conflict and I probably miss things.
Commercially. The company may go out of the business of providing
e-books totally. Then stopping the system make sense. And you get to
the "change of system" issues if the e-books are sold to someone else.
And then you get all the marketing reasons; deciding to go with period
of scarcity just to increase the demand (like Disney is reputed to do
with its movies), providing special limited editions (either with
additional material at premium price or temporary bundling at reduced
price several books you intend to continue to sell separately at normal
price -- Bragelonne, Ray's French publisher, is doing that now for some
other authors). And marketing reasons may be as obscure as legal one for
the uninitiated.
Yours,
--
Jean-Marc
