Thanks guys--

Personally I would have called the publisher (except for the fact that we are doing a booksigning on Friday and them on Saturday at the same event, with the same book!).

My boss probably got the idea and made the poster at midnight on a Saturday or something.

And I assumed (you know where that leads you) that he a graphic which would work before I sent it to the printer.

So there is nothing to be done to get a better quality image of a book cover which can be printed LARGER than the book itself.

Excellent quality? No. Better quality? Certainly.

For example, if his original scan was done at 150dpi, and you rescan at 1200dpi, the poster will definitely look better, but it will still be pixelated and fuzzy.

Go Steve Jobs! Power to the People!

September 20,2005 | PARIS -- Apple Computer Inc. CEO Steve Jobs vowed Tuesday to resist music companies' "greedy" demands for price increases on the iTunes music download site and warned that such a move would encourage piracy.

Jobs, speaking to reporters before the opening of the Apple Expo in Paris, acknowledged that some record companies were pushing him to raise the price of each song download, currently 99 cents on the U.S. iTunes site.

Record companies already make more profit by selling a song through iTunes than on a CD, with all the associated manufacturing and marketing costs, Jobs said.

"So if they want to raise the prices it just means they're getting a little greedy," he said.

The Apple co-founder and CEO indicated he plans to stand firm. "We're trying to compete with piracy, we're trying to pull people away from piracy and say, `You can buy these songs legally for a fair price,'" he said. "But if the price goes up a lot, they'll go back to piracy. Then everybody loses."

Apple has sold about 22 million of its iPod digital music players and more than 500 million songs through the iTunes Music Store. The service accounts for 82 percent of all legally downloaded music in the United States.

How stupid can record company execs be? Overpricing legitimate downloadable music will not help their problems with piracy....

The music insdustry is actively working on trying to get the marketplace to a model where the consumer is charged each time they listen to a song. They are on crack, and live in fantasyland.

Charging more for popular songs and albums is not an unreasonable position, especially if it's accompanied by a cut in price of less popular tracks. It's how CDs in stores are priced.

[link]

An opposing view to Tom's link: [link]

Yeah, my expereince is that new and popular albums are discounted, and you pay through the nose for back catalogue stuff.

Jon, here's where I think the penguin's argument is flawed:

The likely outcome of the variable pricing model backed by the industry is an enormous amount of catalogue simply disappearing. This already happens in the world outside of Internet economics, let me give you an example.

I don't know much about the music industry, but from a layman's perspective there's a significant difference between Internet economics and the traditional music industry: the costs of distribution. Under the old model, printing and distributing records/tapes/cds is costly and there's going to be a price point at which it's unfeasible. But internet delivery costs are practically negligible. So songs that are in low demand can be cost-effective even for mere pennies.

Or maybe I'm a wrong-headed ignoramous.

I was thinking the same thing, Wolfram.
t on edit errr... your first paragraph, not the ignoramus part.

FTR, by posting that link I wasn't saying I agreed with the penguin guy or the other guy. I'm not sure where I stand. I just wanted to spark some discussion.

Tom's link makes some interesting points. I'm just afraid that if the record companies get their way, they'll raise prices on new, popluar stuff without lowering prices on other stuff.

And there's still a lot of stuff I want that's still out of print and not available on iTunes. I've spent a small fortune on used copies of rare, out of print CDs in the last year. Come to think of it, I would have gladly paid $1.50 per song on iTunes for them. It's just if the majority of stuff went for the $1.50 that would piss me off.

eta: Anyone know if the record companies also want to raise the $9.99 per album price that most stuff goes for on iTunes?