Yet another example of an industry involved in the distribution of protected content just doesn’t get it. Yes, like the music industry, which makes you pay more for less quality.

I wanted to buy the David Allen book, “Getting Things Done”. Here were my options:

• $15 for the eBook - a PDF file - for download
• $8.99 for the actual book - free 2-day shipping from Amazon (via Amazon Prime)

Hmm…..  to store a 3MB file (one of the easiest to prepare from just about any document format) and distribute it via http download costs almost double a hard copy of the book, printed on paper, bound, shipped to Amazon’s warehouses, and then to me.

Then, to read the ebook, you can sit in your chair, if you have a desktop, put it on a laptop (really easy to read as you stand on BART, clutching the handrail with one hand), or read it awkwardly on a PDA or smartphone. Or you can read it on a “paperlike” Sony ebook reader, a $230 gadget.

To read the regular book, well, you just read the “paper” wherever or however you want.

What did I do? Downloaded the ebook from some of my friends because I wanted the immediacy of the read, and I’m considering ordering the book on Amazon (will see if reading the ebook on my laptop on BART is too much of a pain in the ass).

Sounds like the folks at Penguin Publishing need to check their math.

Posted on October 16th, 2007 by JM