In her annual end-of-the-year letter, Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy praised her company for surviving in a “lackluster” bookselling environment, but urged them to fight the pricing shift that comes with the eBook revolution.
Here’s an excerpt: “We must do everything in our power to uphold the value of our content against the downward pressures exerted by the marketplace and the perception that ‘digital’ means ‘cheap.’ We must work to defend the livelihoods of our authors at a time when instantaneous file transfer makes piracy easier than ever, and in a world in which many consider copyright irrelevant. Because we have feet in two worlds, we must establish the right balance of attention and investment between traditional publishing, which still represents the vast majority of our revenues, and the digital publishing marketplace, which is clearly poised to take off and is essential for our future.”
Get eBookNewser’s take on the letter at this link. These thoughts about cheap content surfaced repeatedly at the eBook Summit, as participants railed against Amazon.com (AMZN)’s common $9.99 eBook price and the devaluing of digital content. Read the CEO’s entire letter after the jump.