Over time you'd see
multiple digital editions of books.
Not exact matches
Instead
of hedging their bets and only getting
digital editions of the most popular titles (which are then always unavailable to most patrons), they can offer access to an entire library and not only allow
multiple people to read the same
book at once but also avoid paying for unpopular titles.
If you check out ANN's thread about the Ipad App, Ed Chavez from Vertical steps in and explains the difficulties involved with getting
digital releases on
multiple devices - every device has it's own coding / programming / delivery system [so you can't just plunk in your high - res PDF for your print
edition], which can sometimes be time consuming or restrictive depending on their policites [the Playstation Network one was rather icky by the sounds
of it - they only want chapters, not full
books, and they want the comics cut up into a panel by panel slideshow].
For this space, that means the rise
of companies like Kotobee, a
digital textbook development platform that lets anyone create their
book in
multiple formats, including apps and cloud - based
editions.