Privileging the reader

Kassia Krozser makes some excellent points in her recent post about how publishers should be serving readers when it comes to ebooks. A lot of it may sound obvious, but it's amazing how many of these ideas have not been as clearly understood by publishers as one would hope. I particularly identify with her third point:

3. Reasonable Prices — Ebooks are not the same thing as, physical matter wise, hardcover or paperback books. Consumers — real consumers, the ones who talk about buying ebooks, who buy ebooks, and who simply don’t understand why publishers don’t understand the differences in product — don’t like paying hardcover and trade paperback prices for ebooks.

What is even more amusing is that ebooks are priced competitively with physical books that offer a higher degree of flexibility, portability, and readability. What up? Are you trying to build a market or kill a market?

Over the weekend, I expanded my sidebar list of ebook distributors to 21 (!)--but only five of them are actual publishers' websites.