Paperchains

Although many people love the feel and smell of a (new) book, there are also many who believe that a move towards ebooks could be a good thing.

Personally I hate the problem of ‘old’ books. I have problems giving them away or selling them, as they are often just not wanted. And I have huge resistance to throwing a book in a bin, whether for recycling or as rubbish.

Dave Balter suggests authors should release their works as ebooks, as a way of testing the market before publishers print copies:

• Authors self-package their book entirely on their own.
• Authors distribute digital copies of their books for free to attract readers and to identify a market. They use self-distribution tools to sell as many books as they can.
• Based on the response, the publisher determines which books to pick up, and pays a licensing and distribution right and uses their relationships to distribute a product that has developed an initial marketplace of buyers (note: great new potential business model for some plucky entrepreneur: track the ‘response’ of free book downloads as a data set for publishers to review opportunities).
• Publishers take the completed product, make tweaks as author and publisher feel necessary, print more and distribute them through the strength of their partners.

[Via : How the Book Publishing Industry Should Reinvent Itself - Harvard Business Online's Conversation Starter.]

I think the whole matter of ebooks is more complex than that, but it’s an interesting point of view.