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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.
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.
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.
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.
Why shouldn't they be writing in them? My favourite books are marked up with my thoughts and insights. When I go back and re-read the books I can see how I've changed in my understanding of the book. I totally understand that I can mark up ebooks as well, but I'd be terrified that my notes would disappear from certain devices.
Or water damage, or forgetting it on the bus/plane, or even damaged from something heavy landing on it.
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.
Some of the readers on the market allow you to "mark up" the books as well.
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"
Or, of course, the fact that some people like the way a book *feels*. The way a page feels when you turn it. While simulated page turns are nice eye candy, an e reader doesn't provide the tactile feedback of a physical object.
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.
Not all devices. Sony's ereader, for example, has no remote access, and can be used entirely on an un-networked pc. Oh, and by the way, Amazon, when you're coming up on the wrong side of Sony on a digital rights disucssion on Slashdot, that should tell you something.
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.
Power and DRM aren't the only problems. You also have to deal with the reliability and durability of the device. I don't want to have to buy a new one every 3 to 5 years because of a blown cap, an intermittent button, faded screen or some mandatory "upgrade" to accommodate a format change.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
It has, but the population was all of 24 people, all of which had never picked up an ebook before.....and they read for 20 minutes, hardly a book's worth. Also, they read the same text 4 times, no one knows how the huge selection of 24 people were chosen, and no one knows how old they were as yet. So no, not really.
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.
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.
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.)