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Comment by gioele | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting to note how many of the variables in these equations are no longer relevant when you deal with electronic books.

* «We have 100 widgets in inventory», you have one file copy,

* «a publisher prints 60,000 copies (instead of 80,000)», you still have only one file copy,

* «this book is out of print», files do not go "out of print",

* «dispose of inventory -- i.e., pulp it --», physical books have another counterpart: they are paper that can be sold, this has no parallel for electronic books,

* «competition for rack space», there is no rack space to compete for (there is competition for attention, that that is the same for every sellable thing).

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If I am not mistaken the publishing has continued to grow since the orignal writing of this article (1993). Things changed, but it was not killed.

• «competition for rack space», there is no rack space to compete for (there is competition for attention, that that is the same for every sellable thing).

I'm not sure I see the difference.

There is no opportunity cost for putting a digital book on the "shelf".

Alternately, you must build a rack a mile long to offer the same breadth of selection.

Exactly, and even if you could do that, where would you set it up? Even the largest bookstore has limited floor space, and that's not even considering those small convenience store spinning racks and the like.

Ebooks are roughly 50-250 KB in size. Figure out how many of those you could fit on a hundred buck TB drive. :-)

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+terabyte+%2F+50+kilob...

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+terabyte+%2F+250+kilo...

So, between 4x10^6 and 2x10^7.

> there is no rack space to compete for (there is competition for attention, that that is the same for every sellable thing).

So, how much is the front page of Amazon worth or the featured section of the iBooks store, since that is the digital equivalent of the front of store in B&N?

> > there is no rack space to compete for (there is competition for attention, that that is the same for every sellable thing).

> So, how much is the front page of Amazon worth or the featured section of the iBooks store, since that is the digital equivalent of the front of store in B&N?

That is what I was referring to as "competition for attention". You can only suggest or push a limited number of items but this is different from competing for rack space: you just cannot afford to have on your rack all the books you could sell. You must also choose how many copies of each book you should put on the shelves. All these aspects are no longer relevant when you are selling "bags of bits".

Frankly, it's a pretty goofy article. The variables it cites aren't even relevant for printed books. If the Thor decision had an impact on publishing, it was to encourage faster turnaround at the printing facilities and development of just-in-time processes across the whole industry, from acquisition to retail.

It is very hard to argue that anything has actually gotten worse as a result of Thor, from the perspective of authors, publishers, retailers, or consumers.

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