Publishers Simon & Schuster (Stephen King, Glenn Beck), HarperCollins (Neil Gaiman, Lemony Snicket, Sarah Palin) and Hachette Book Group (Stephanie Meyer, Stephanie Meyer, Stephanie Meyer), have announced plans to boost the flagging ebook piracy industry by voluntarily delaying ebook releases of some or all of their books for up to four months after hardcover publication. Other publishers may follow suit.
"Frankly, the ebook pirating business has been winding down," said Nicky "deathscanner3" Graham, 34, notorious e-pirate and food service employee. "Which is weird because with the Kindle, and the Nook, and programs like Stanza and eReader for iPhones, Androids and Blackberries, reading books on a mobile device has never been more popular. But when publishers put out quality ebooks at increasingly reasonable prices in a variety of formats, there just isn't as much call for my typo-ridden, possibly virused editions.
"But now I see a bright future for everyone out there with a scanner and some time to kill," he said happily. "This couldn't have come at a better time."
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I've never read an e-book and I'm not in that market at all -- but reading this really does make me wonder what the publishers are thinking. Good stuff. So Oniony I got tears in my eyes.
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I live a 5 minute walk from my city's central library, so I've never bothered with e-books, but what reason could publishers possibly have for delaying their release? It can't take more than a few hours to format it - I'm presuming you'd just take the .pdf of your final manuscript and convert it? It should be easier to do than printing and distributing to stores.
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