If you are a dedicated ebook industry watcher then for years now you must have been wondering – why bother?

After all, you can often get a print edition (real paper – read it anywhere – no batteries required – give your personal copy to a friend – works on aircraft, trains and under canvas in the Rockies) for less than a digital edition, or version, so why bother?

Well, actually eBooks appeal to several classes of people who are not in the least bit interested in reading books (now here I mean real books by serious authors like Shakespeare, Dickens, Ludlum, Brown and so on) on their computers (or PDAs or cellular phones – I mean, get real, who with any vestige of sanity figures out you are going to want to read War and Peace, or even The French Lieutenant’s Woman on their cellular phone for goodness sake?  And I don’t care if it’s illustrated or not!  So don’t bother to insult me with the picture version of Lady Chatterley’s lover on my mobile.)

Now the great institutions, the British Library, the Smithsonian, and so on, have a duty to make non-copyright works available to all, and to ensure that those works are reproduced faithfully and accurately to all those who wish to see them. And to do it economically.  They are currently the great drive behind the need for eBooks.  Because they are facilitating the transfer of knowledge to the public – the very cornerstone of freedom of information!

At the same time there is no shortage of people who are buying financial reports, or using service manuals, or receiving internal company documentation where the enterprise actually has to control use and IPR and all.  But the fact is that they are not reading eBooks.  They must not be confused with the users of information from the great national institutions, the protectors of our literary and cultural heritage.

So this is where the DRM market is a tad off message.

There is no actual reason for the seriously big print publishers to move into digital editions or versions.  In fact there are serious reasons why they would not.

Volume publishers can make a profit on a 400 page novel selling at $6.99 in the shops, so they are not paying $2.99 a copy fully delivered.  Now to photocopy 400 pages is going to cost you $40 (okay, maybe $30 with discount), and quite frankly who would want to read a V I Warshawski story as a photocopy – I mean, just turning the pages on a photocopy would be such a pain you wouldn’t want to go there.  So ripping off a print publisher is kind of stupid in the extreme.   Who would actually try to bankrupt themselves just to give their mates a copy of what they had bought? 

Now the guys ripping off music and films are aiming directly at the digital market, where copies are perfect and sales are good.  And if you don’t have a digital edition then it is just that bit more difficult to get ripped off, and if the competition produce a printed copy you can go after the printer and the publisher with your lawyers, and because they have been stupid enough to make actual copies they can be tracked down and the Hell sued out of them.

Now this might not sound like the normal rant about how eBooks ought to offer more features or they are doomed, but it is a real economic analysis.  And that is what makes it more important.

There is no market for eBooks as volume print because the methods of delivery available today are not up to snuff. 

There is a market for IPR controlled information that has a specific value to an organization or has a niche value (how to pull girls, design kitchen cabinets, sell ice cream to Eskimos and so on), but it should not be confused with the more general market that does not actually exist.

So is there a market for an eBook?  Maybe not.  But there is a market for electronic DRM, and maybe you should not confuse the two.