Ebooks
I was very fortunate at Christmas to receive a Nexus 7. The screen resolution is great. The Google Play Books app for reading ebooks is great too. Page turns are just gorgeous to watch, and I love the ability to highlight words and have their definition show up as you read. I soon read “Shadow of the wind”, which I enjoyed enormously.
OK so what do I do with it now? If I had the physical book I’d give it my wife or my family to read. All I can do with an ebook that has DRM is tell them about it and say it’s a good read. From this recommendation they are unlikely to buy it to read.
This therefore means lost future sales for the author/publisher. By this I mean if I could give/lend the book to my family, they might read it and enjoy it. The next time they see a book or come across a book by the same author they are likely to buy it, and lend it to me. Without the opportunity to have read the book I originally recommended leads to no future sales.
My other bug bear is the cost of ebooks. Someone needs to explain to me, how is it cheaper to physically ship a paperback book from the UK/USA to Australia than it is to purchase an ebook. The experience is more restrictive with the ebook, so where is the extra value ?