The crazy part is, I haven't! I've seen those kind of comments on Scalzi's blog, and yours, and a couple of other places, and they're not all from the same lone lunatic. There are clearly multiple people participating in what can only be defined as a group hallucination.
It would be delightfully trainwrecky if it weren't so pitiable. I don't like to be reminded of the frailty of the human psyche.
It's not all readers, either. Published writer Lynn Abbey talks about why she believes this and has chosen to opt out and create her own direct-to-public e-book store, along with Jane Fancher and C.J. Cherryh.
Those are excellent links, particularly the second one. I'm certainly going to be following this ongoing story. I stand by my prediction that publishers in general want to embrace ebooks (or maybe just their production managers want that), but certainly the future will be interesting.
If you would like to write a rebuttal a little more detailed (and a little less earthy :) than this post, I'll be happy to post it to TeleRead as a guest column. We've been trending a little much toward the "conspiracy theory" side of things and I'd like to carry an opposing viewpoint.
I don't always curse in my blog, but apparently I'm at my funniest when I'm exasperated. ;-)
I would love to write a more reasoned and detailed version! I'm not sure when I can, though. If it snows as predicted this Friday/Saturday, then I'll be staying home instead of visiting my family, so I'll have time on my hands.
Cool. Drop me a line at the TLD .org, the domain name eyrie, and the username robotech (this is me, subtly attempting to keep my email address from being scooped by spammers about fifteen years too late) if you do. :)
Incidentally, along the lines of not ascribing to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence, here's an Ars Technica feature article from about a year ago written by an ex-employee of Peanut-Palm-eReader-wise, going into detail about how (from the author's point of view at least) most publishers never have and still don't "get" e-books.
along the lines of not ascribing to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence
-->That concept is right on. I'll give that article a read a little later. I just popped online briefly this evening. (Can't start up the computer without checking lj, even if I'm planning to work offline tonight...)
Something else I should note, by the way, is that this idea that publishers want to kill off e-books did not spring full-blown from the aftermath of the Amazon/Macmillan incident. As Siracusa covers in the Ars Technica link, it's been building up for the entire ten to fifteen year history of the idea of the commercial e-book, and if you had the time and resources to search the net over that period of time you would probably find it being said a lot.
A pattern of repeated cluelessness over that long a period can look a heck of a lot like intentional malice to frustrated observers who are annoyed that publishers are still demanding hardcover prices for e-books of paperback books.
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It would be delightfully trainwrecky if it weren't so pitiable. I don't like to be reminded of the frailty of the human psyche.
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Whether it's true or not, the publishers sure are making it easy to build a case.
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I would love to write a more reasoned and detailed version! I'm not sure when I can, though. If it snows as predicted this Friday/Saturday, then I'll be staying home instead of visiting my family, so I'll have time on my hands.
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I'm actually kind of proud of myself for figuring out what the heck that all meant!
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-->That concept is right on. I'll give that article a read a little later. I just popped online briefly this evening. (Can't start up the computer without checking lj, even if I'm planning to work offline tonight...)
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A pattern of repeated cluelessness over that long a period can look a heck of a lot like intentional malice to frustrated observers who are annoyed that publishers are still demanding hardcover prices for e-books of paperback books.
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"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
Heh. I like that one.
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