>John,
>
>>Forgetting the specifics of e-books for a moment. If Whil had only made it available as a CHM file, he would have sole just has many. He could have sold it for the same amount, and would have made more money because the production costs of the book would have been eliminated.
>>The content of the book is the real value, that is what people pay for...
>
>Just curious about your publisher's views about that for your upcoming project. Do you think we will see a trend of major publishing companies going electronic *instead* of printed anytime soon, or is it more likely to be the smaller companies taking the lead?
>
>Perhaps EdR has some insight into this also, from his involvement in the publishing business....

Other than to say it's happening, and has been for a number of years, no great insight. One of the first market areas hit were the artist supply places - there was a market for books of ClipArt and Art Patterns that could be published and reused without royalty payments. Needless to say, there's about as much interest in buying books of clipart as there are in having bestsellers hand-calligraphed for production - the market disappeared as soon as the consumers (the graphic artists) found that they could get what they needed in a more portable and useful form (ie on CD) with less trouble, and for no greater cost. The survivors in the market now churn out CDs of their stuff, at less cost per unit to produce, warehouse and distribute, and no need to guess at how large production runs need to be, while the ones who kept producing their books are now filing in bankruptcy court and are trying to figure out if its cheaper to torch the warehouse and not file an insurance claim, or pay to have someone drag out case after case of their unsold and unsellable product and turn it into landfill...