Slashdot Mirror
eBook Sales Outpace Hardbacks
dptalia writes "Amazon announced that for every 100 hardback books they sell, 180 eBooks are sold. In addition, they've seen sales for Kindles triple since they lowered the price. But traditionalists shouldn't panic yet — paperbacks are still the king."
Paperbacks will never die simply because once they leave the hands of the vendor they also leave the control of the vendor.
Printed books are only superior in possibly 3 ways, being able to trade them, being able to use them without electricity and being able to mark them up. Which is really only 2 ways, as anybody that enamored with them shouldn't be writing in them. Both of those can be dealt with, solar cells and fixing the DRM model.
E-books outsell hardcover books at Amazon.
Amazon is the dominant ebook seller and pushes ebooks very hard.
Unless Amazon have nearly half the hardback market, then hardbacks still outsell Kindle ebooks in total.
Anyone else a little weirded out by the WSJ image of Jeff Bezos trying to show you 1880s porn on his Kindle?
My work here is dung.
Now corporate suits can decide what information society retains access to. If they want to "recall" a book, (for any reason) they can just delete it from your device remotely.
I never bought hardbacks to begin with, but several hundred paperbacks adorn my shelves.
I would much rather lose a single paperback to either forgetfulness, water damage or a friend borrowing and never returning it that losing my ereader that way.
I love my Kindle. I buy about one book per week. It's gotten to the point where if a book I'm looking for isn't available in ebook format, I simply don't buy that book. I want my entire library available to me anywhere I go. I don't want to haul around dead trees.
The publishers who haven't released their books in ebook format are simply daft.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
US Book sales totaled $715.3 million in May 2010. Adult hardcover sales were up 43.2% from last year to $138.5 million. Softcover sales were down 2.2% to $110.7 million. Now, the important bit: E-book sales were $29.3 million (up 162.8% from May 2009). So, while Amazon may be doing a fantastic job of selling software for the Kindle platform, it's not yet indicative of the broad market. There's still a big battle ahead.
This is not at all surprising especially for travelers or those who have limited space but like to read many books. As military my PRS-505 allowed me to bring and entire library with me for the size of a small notepad to Iraq as opposed to a half dozen books. The reading experience was close enough to reading a paperback that it isn't worth mentioning except for a few purists.
The picture viewing and manga reading was also sublime. To me the pictures while grayscale looked like they could have been pencil drawn and were easily readable.
The ONLY downside I found was the screen refresh but it wasn't much more than turning a page and easily adapted to.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Even if Amazon's selling 180 ebooks for every 100 hardcovers, not every one of those ebook sales was a choice between an ebook and a hardcover; many are a choice between an ebook and a paperback.
Obviously, ebook sales are still growing, but even limiting that number to just Amazon (which is naturally pushing the Kindle), it's still a little misleading.
While waiting for a dental appointment several years ago, I read an article from some magazine that presented the hypothesis that one's speed in comprehending written language increase with the quality/resolution of the font. The general argument was low resolution computer text (this was back in the 320x200 days) takes longer for the eyes/brain to correctly recognize as compared to printed text.
However, the article also clearly acknowledged that as screen resolution increases, this will be less of a problem.
I think this has some merit, especially in light of an article posted to slashdot some days ago that stated it took longer to read an ebook than the printed counterpart. Until epaper hits 300 dpi, I don't think you'll see it seriously competing against the printed word. (I think the Kindle is halfway there at 150 dpi...)
On a side note, my second language is Japanese, and today's ebooks are still far too low resolution for many kanji character. You can read them, but they look like crap.
How much does the average eBooks cost for you?
I have a feeling a lot of this whole "outpacing" business is that hardcovers are simply more expensive, and some people are not willing to shell out when a softcover is available.
Publishers have started to make less softcover books and more hardcover so that when you want the latest book in a series, all that ends up available at bookstores is the hardcovers, all the softcovers sell out too quickly. They make that much more in mark up.
So - if an eBook (not the reader itself) is more affordable than a hardcover, I wouldn't be surprised if they started outselling.
I don't know about all this 'eReader' hub-bub, but personally, I miss the way parchment felt between your fingers. Yeah, I know everybody says the printing press brought literacy to the masses, but in my opinion, it's just another way for the Kings and Lords to control what us serfs read.
There was a time when you traveled from village to village meeting people and looking for new parchment you hadn't read before. Now, they print off 100 of something like it's no big deal, and hey, look, now everybody in the village is all up on the "bible" all of a sudden.
Now all they have to do to ban all books is just silently delete them remotely from your kindle while you sleep. No firemen required.
And you'll have people in small camps living like vagrants reciting books to each other.
We've already got the wall-sized TVs blaring idiot-shows at us all day long, so banning books can't be far behind.
Never mind Orwell, we're closer to Bradbury's reality. Oh Montag, we need you!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I think that if the ebook stores were more like book stores as far as selection and competition things would be a lot better. It is still very frustrating to have to hunt around several stores before finding one that actually even has a book I'm looking for. In some cases this means it is locked away in a drm store so I can't even give my money over for buying said book. That fact alone hinders in the sale of the devices since you don't exactly know which store the next book you want might go to. The model that the indie ebook stores have, where they try to have as many of the different formats for every book, is really nice. I also like the way the electronic library model is: you get a timed drm book to do with what you please, just check it out again to get more time. The problem with the library version is the same as the ebook stores, horrible selection. These are the real problems, and they come about because of exclusive rights caused by drm schemes.
"But traditionalists shouldn't panic yet — paperbacks are still the king." [Citation Needed]
http://xkcd.com/285/
Hey, I was only kidding. You don't have to MOD me "Troll" . . . again . . . .
With an about a 50/50 mix of books that were it not for the Kindle I saved the cost of the Kindle in less than one year. The savings came from shipping costs and reduced costs for the books. Admittedly I was ordering almost all of my pre-Kindle books from Amazon.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
But the story became much much shorter : at the first autodafe the evil censors all died of toxic fumes inhalation....
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
hard cover, soft cover, and ebooks.
Each one has its best use. I don't use foreign language dictionaries much any more. But I still read Science magazine and New Scientist on paper, and I still buy biology books. Medical students have stopped carrying the bible-paper Merck Manual around in the pocket of their white coats.
Online newspapers have pretty much replaced paper -- my apartment building used to have stacks of bundled newspapers on the curb waiting for the garbage collector, but it's been replaced by packaging from Amazon shipments.
But there's something missing in online newspapers. A broadsheet page organizes information in a way that nothing can match. A friend of mine got two New York Times-sized LCDs, and reads it online in a two-page spread.
I'm sure there will be e-book readers that do everything that paper can do. I'd love to have a tablet with the color, size and resolution of the National Geographic, that I could write on. Not yet.
Well, the Amazon ebook store is a bit like Steam. Prices are a little lower, but delivery is faster and you get free "cloud computing" services (backups, available from anywhere, etc.), but on the downside, DRM stops you from reselling.
Of course, you can always use PDFs or .txt files or even HTML files on your Kindle, but only stuff you buy through Amazon has the CC service with it.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Usually when a new best seller first comes out, it will only be available in hardcover, so it's a little worse than simply not supplying enough paperbacks, they don't make them available at all. Think of it as the early adopter fee, if you're willing to wait 6 months you can get the same book in paperback for much less. That annoys me but doesn't really piss me off, yes you have to pay extra for a new release but you get a superior product in the form of a more durable hardcover. What pisses me off is when they charge $10 (or some publishers even $15 now that the courts decided they can decide pricing) for a new release eBook. Now you're getting the exact same product as someone who pays $5 a few months later, and it seems like many books stay at that price point even after the paperback versions are available.
Basically, if you want to see what's wrong with the eBook industry just take a look at this.
Kindle price: 9.17
New Hardcover: 6.70
I shouldn't have to price shop between a purely electronic, zero marginal cost version and a hardcover version. Even assuming the problem is simply that they overestimated demand and now someone has a stock of hardcovers lying around they're trying to get rid of, the Kindle price should be adjusted to at most the lowest available hard cover price.
Since many print books are never even released in hardback, being released first in paperback (this is true both of technical books that are only released as large-format softcovers, and many novels, etc., that are released only as mass-market paperbacks.)
Wake me up when ebooks sell more than paperbacks, and when the numbers are overall in the market and not just from one particular retailer that sells both and has been heavily promoting ebooks.
E-books don't make economical sense to me. For example: this book, as of this writing the paperback version is $8.99 and it has the four books for the price of three promotion so if I buy four books (about one month's worth) it will cost me $26.97. I could also go with the kindle version and buy four books at $7.99 each or $31.96 and I'm not even getting something physical out of that transaction. It simply does not make sense to me.
"I see undead people" Warcraft III - Necromancer
So, I have books on my shelf from the 1960s. Sure, they're old and tattered but still readable. What happens if Amazon goes out of business in 30 years and my Kindle is dead? What if I buy a Nook and Barnes and Noble goes out of business in 15 years? I can't really move DRM'd stuff over to another e-reader can I? Or is that something that we'll be able to do one day? I've always liked the durability of books. Sure, they can be destroyed but they are physical "things" - not bits stored somewhere.
The real problem with those prices is the publishers. Publishers don't view ebooks as a revenue stream, they see them as a technology that cannibalizes physical book sales. So, they don't price ebooks with the mindset that it is basically 100% margin--instead, they're thinking "how much of the cover price on a hardback or paperback am I losing on this deal?" And that is the basis for the ebook pricing. It makes sense if all you care about is preserving your dying business model.
Basically, publishers still don't take books seriously, and they price them as such.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
In most parts of the country you can check out ebooks from your local library. Once your check out period is up you delete the book from your computer and someone else can check it out. Works great for audio books too. If it's a book you want to keep buy a copy.
I buy a lot more used and bargain books now because I prefer hardbacks, and often I can only get them as such. For example, I bought the entire The Gap Cycle series in hardback; it's available new, in poor-quality paperback. The paper quality of the hardbacks is better-- stiffer, more sturdy, better tactile sense-- which is why I also bought the Harry Potter series NEW imported from England in UK Adult Edition box set for $165, rather than locally or imported for about $70 in paperback.
Note that the entire Gap series (5 books) cost me about $30 hardback, since I got them used or NOS bargain... Heinlein and i.e. Xenocide and Ender's Exile came the same way, minimal wear and dirt cheap; a new hardback can cost 2-3 times as much as a new paperback!
I'd eBook technical manuals if I had a reader; though O'Reilly books I tend to enjoy collecting.
Side note, I hate gloss cover paperbacks; matte cover paperbacks don't curl and the covers are often more durable.
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One: always back up your entire library, DRMd or not, to some other media. For example, B&N has Nook interfaces for all platforms, and by logging on to their site you can download your library to your PC.
Two: Calibre. Ya gotta have it.
Three: pycrypto and your choice of python scripts to strip DRM. 'nuff said :-)
PS "four" : if you haven't tried it, open any epub file with a ZIP utility. Full of cool stuff!
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Hardcover books are expensive. My favourite author releases them at about $50 each. Even for an avid reader and book collector like me, I consider hardcovers to be luxury items that I reserve only for my favourite author's books and a few others. Combine that with the current economy and I wouldn't be surprised to find that harcovers are not selling well. Many of my friends have 'rediscovered' libraries to save some money.
I wonder how many people buy the 'cheap' ebook first, decide they like it, then buy the paperback or hard cover after in order to have it for their shelf.
You won't catch me with an e-reader though, until DRM dies (probably not even then... I'm a collector).
Some of us would say "you're paying almost as much and being saddled with physical objects when you could pay just a few pennies more, save yourself the trouble, and get virtual objects!"
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
As a somewhat avid reader I've seriously considered one of these readers. But I just can't bring myself to spend $150 on the device and then pay for an electronic book that isn't significantly cheaper than a paperback. I realize that the bulk of the price doesn't come from printing costs, but the fact is that the $150 spent on the reader could go to 10 to 15 additional books. Of course, if I really wanted to save some money I'd just borrow books from the library.
Additionally, I like having a bookshelf stocked with books. I like having those books within easy reach. I'm sure these readers can hold quite a few books, but I'm still bound by DRM and the device itself. The reader might last me a good 10 years, or it might not. And what happens when it does fail? It's safe to assume that I'm not going to be able to just go online and download all those books I've already purchased onto a new device. Even if I crack the DRM, it's not guaranteed future devices will be compatible and it's only a matter of time before all this turns into more trouble than it's worth. And if a friend wants to borrow a book all I have to do is pull it off the shelf and hand it to them.
Of course people talk about the convenience of buying books online. Like every last second is a precious commodity. It's like people can't wait an extra day to get something they want, or they can't devote 30 minutes to head down to the local library. It's unreal how wasteful people can be for the sake of a little convenience.
So I'll stick with paper books. They'll last my lifetime at least and the biggest inconvenience I'll face is moving them and finding enough shelf space. Probably one of the bigger asset of these readers is easy access to magazines and newspapers. But then there are a million and one ways to get this content another way and also get a complete web experience.
Up until recently, I was an ardent purchaser of paperbacks. That's changed somewhat in the last few years, as I found myself replacing some of the more beloved titles in my library (sometimes on the third purchase) as they fell apart due to wear-and-tear. As I may re-read some of my favorites a handful of times over the years, along with loaning them out, normal paperback-bound editions just simply couldn't survive all that well. Hell, they even looked awful after two or three passes through, no matter how carefully they were handled.
Because of this, I started replacing them, slowly but surely, with hardback editions. Some of these are purchased at used-book shops, but many are purchased for me as gifts or picked up new at some discount (often on clearance) at brick-and-mortar big-name retail bookstores. My library shelves look a lot sexier filled to the brim with edition-bound books rather than creased-up paperbacks.
Too, as I've gotten older I've made friends who are writers - and as such, I make sure to support them by buying their works in hardback. :)
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
So I could buy a proprietary device to read a proprietary format (which I also have to purchase) which will be obsolete in 3 years, or I can buy a physical book and still have it (perfectly readable!) in 25 years?
Er...thanks, Amazon, but I'll pass. Give me a book made 'o paper. (May as well buy a hardcover. Paperbacks are so expensive anymore that I feel ripped off spending 8 bucks on something that disposable.)
online retailers actively push ebooks, offering special sales to entice, so they do not have to muck around with shipping. also, I heard many ebook devices can be purchased pre-loaded with a default bundle of ebooks...whether the buyer really wants them all or not...and that bumps up the "ebooks sold" tally. ebooks are the future? man Hitler would have loved ebooks...Third Reich would have had it easy, Nazis would not have had to get off their butts to burn ebooks...an electro-magnetic pulse would have burned all ebooks, effortlessly. these days if there is ever an EMP, the masses will be left with hordes of religious books to flip through yay. all the good how-to stuff would be gone...better hope people actually know their skills enough to write all the knowledge down again...dunno if people in power would let knowledge trickle back down. ifya truly care about somethin, I say have a hardcopy. cheers!
There are open formats that can be read with e-book readers (like the Sony)
Also there are books that free in open formats. Go look at gutenburg; also look at wikipedia where you can compile articles into a book that you can take away with you.
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
Wait, that specific example you provided is not a valid comparison. The new hardcover price you quoted is from a random third party seller (no Amazon itself), and it has a $3.99 shipping cost. Total: $10.69 or $1.52 more expensive than the kindle version.
The price of the new hardcover sold by Amazon itself is $10.40, and the List price (what you'd likely pay at a brick and mortar bookstore) is $25.99.
So I would say the ebook price wins out in all cases. I've never owned an ebook reader before, but I'm starting to notice that they usually seem to price the ebook versions just under their already low prices for the printed versions.
I published a geeky sci-fi novel a few months ago and so far the vast majority of sales have been for the Kindle edition. It might be because the paper version costs 5x what the digital version costs. I don't know if it's the added convenience or the lower price, but to me, digital books seem to be the future, and the change is happening faster than most people expected.
I got rid of my books made of paper. Got very tired of boxing them, moving them, unboxing them, having proper bookshelves and shelving them.
Bought my Kindle and I've never regretted it. By the way, if you have the *slightest* bit of initiative, download the files off your Kindle and strip the DRM off of them. There you go. Books that last forever and can be read on almost any e-reader.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Your point is valid. ebooks come out the same time hardcovers come out, but cost paperback prices. So if you simply want to read the next story in the series, you buy the ebook version because its cheaper (lets forget that you shelled out $150 for your kobo reader).
However... you start using your reader for a while, and wonder why you ever read on paper before. Why go into chapters when you can stay at home and order precisely the book you want... and its ALWAYS in stock! The entire experience is simply better on an ereader, its nicer to hold, you dont have to fuck about wetting your finger before you flip the page and you dont worry about breaking the spine.
You see, you start with replacing the hardcovers, then you move into replacing the paperbacks.
with kindle you lose the $2 resell value.
I'll wake you up in 4 or 5 years then.
My mom inherited all her parents books. I'll inherit all my parents books. My children will inherit all the accumulated books and so on. ebooks and DRM are fail in so many important ways.
I loan the old kindle out all the time to friends. It's no big deal. Just make sure you don't let it buy books with your 1-click while you've loaned it out.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
That's a fine idea... the problem is that I've read most of the "classics" that I really wanted to, and while I've downloaded more, the fact remains I want to read what I want to read an won't limit myself to 100 year old stuff.
Then allow me to recommend you stick with the Nook, rather than the Kindle. The big difference is that the Nook supports the EPUB format, which is rapidly becoming the standard for e-books. The Nook even supports EPUB files that have been encrypted with Adobe DRM, which means I can use my Nook to read e-books that I have checked out from my local public library. You can't do that with a Kindle.
My library (the San Francisco Public Library) actually has a pretty good range of e-books available, too, including recent bestsellers and genre fiction. So far I've checked out two books, both published in 2010. One was published in hardcover as recently as May.
Your mileage may vary, because your local library needs to purchase digital editions before it can offer them for lending, and your library may not be as committed to the e-book format as mine seems to be. Most libraries seem to be serviced by a company called OverDrive that provides the Web site and DRM infrastructure, however, so it may start happening at your library sooner than you think.
Breakfast served all day!
I researched the different ebook formats/readers a while back, and came to this conclusion: buy ePubs that lack DRM or have DRM you can crack. Back them up in their non-DRM'd form.
I haven't bought an eReader yet, mind - I'm actually finding it surprisingly easy to get along with reading ePubs on my android phone with "Aldiko Premium". When I do buy one, you can bet it will support ePub, or at the very least include software that will convert ePubs on-the-fly as it fills up the device.
Any reader scores extra points for supporting PDF also - some types of document (though not so much novels) are better off as PDF than ePub or another ebook format.
I'm reluctant to move to e-books for similar reasons, but do see the advantages of an e-Reader. Perhaps if the technology gets cheap enough, they'll start giving away e-Readers and instead concentrate on selling the e-Books, then I for one wouldn't be as concerned about lock-in, I'd just end up with a half-dozen e-readers on my coffee table instead of a wall of bookshelves.
I work for a publisher. I'm not sure where you come up with the 100% margin.
Costs:
1. Pay someone to read submitted manuscripts to determine which are viable products
2. Pay authors up-front-royalties and on-going royalties on accepted manuscripts
3. Pay copy editors to clean-up the manuscripts / check for accuracy
4. Pay designers to create lay-out / book covers
5. Pay royalties or one time costs on images used in covers or in the book
6. Pay overhead for the building, finance dept, IT dept
7. Pay advertising for the finish product
All of those expenses would still apply to eBooks. And they add up. That can be several thousands of dollars.
And then if you put your eBook on Amazon to sell, Amazon takes 60% of the sale.
The cheap part of producing a book is printing/binding it. Once the plates are on the press, a 192 page paperback costs less than $.25 a book to print/bind on a run of 3,000 copies.
The price you pay is covering the thousands dollars it cost to get that first copy ready and to cover the retailer's expense--not the so much the paper used.
I fail to see the 100% margin on eBooks.