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."

Comments

You cant hand an ebook to your friend...

[morphotomy]

Paperbacks will never die simply because once they leave the hands of the vendor they also leave the control of the vendor.

Re:You cant hand an ebook to your friend...

[hedwards]

You say that as if there's an inherent reason why ebooks can't be handled in a similar fashion.

Re:You cant hand an ebook to your friend...

[MBGMorden]

Guys, I'm not positive on this one, but I'm going to guess that maybe - just maybe - there's an easier way to crack an EBook's DRM than physically taking pictures of the screen (via scanner OR picture) from each page. That seems about as efficient as cracking your iPod's DRM by singing your friend the song yourself.

Re:You cant hand an ebook to your friend...

[fredjh]

I have two Nooks... believe me, I did not buy them for the "lend" feature, which is nearly pointless in it's implementation...

SOME publishers "allow" some books to be lent... ONE TIME ONLY, and ONLY for fourteen days. After that, you can not lend it anymore.

By buying into e-books (which I've done, I had my reasons why I ultimately thought it was a good way to go), you are removing any right to resale/donate you have with other books.

Because of this fact, cost of books should not enter the equation for determining whether to buy an e-book reader or not... most of the paperbacks I looked into cost less than a dollar more than the e-book version, and you didn't give up your rights.

NO they do not

[the_womble]

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.

love it

[Lord Ender]

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.

Re:love it

[pvera]

We got two Kindles here, it is just too convenient to have the books available anywhere. With two of us in the house reading so much, we already had one wall covered with bookshelves and it was starting to get out of control (those things are dust magnets). Now all of our purchased eBooks are kept in a convenient location, we don't even have to worry about losing a book because the device fails.

Even if I forget the Kindle when I leave the house, I can use the Blackberry client and pull whatever I was reading. The flexibility I get outweighs any concern I may have had about DRM and lock-in.

Re:love it

[cervo]

There is a format war, especially Amazon. From what I can tell it appears Barnes and Noble is willing to open up its store to other readers (see Plastic Logic). Amazon seems to want to lock users into the Kindle and their format so people have no alternatives.

ePub is becoming a standard and it does have a standard Adobe DRM (which the nook can read). But everyone seems to be inventing their own DRM. Nook can read the standard DRM and Barnes and Noble's DRM. I don't know why it felt compelled to invent its own DRM.

Anyway Amazon's DRM has been cracked, and there are utilities to convert from Mobi Pocket to ePub and the other way. Most of the formats are basically similar to HTML. However Topaz is different, it is a scanned image. The books are lower quality, but basically you just scan it and are done. For ePub/Mobi you actually have to publish your book in that format which is more work for the publisher. For publishers who don't want to bother at all with eBooks, they can just scan it into Topaz and sell a few extra ebooks. For the ones who are serious about eBooks, they often put it in the format and then publish both Mobi (Amazon's format) and ePub(most of the rest) with each store locking it into the various DRM. Sometimes I see the same book on Amazon, Fictionwise, Barnes and Noble.

But still it would be good if they all agreed on one format. But it seems like with the seamless utilities, if a publisher goes to ePub or Mobi they can convert to the other format and then each store just throws its own DRM. For a consumer it sucks because you are locked in. At least with Nook you can read adobe DRM so you have some choice. But in reality most of the DRM schemes have been cracked so even Kindle users can crack the DRM and convert to Mobi.

Re:love it

[Mongoose Disciple]

Assuming these are not purely rhetorical questions...

Are you OK with Amazon's ability to remove books from your eReader - without your consent?

I don't love it, but if push comes to shove, arrr, there be ways to be carvin' out me fair use rights in international waters.

How do you back up your reader?

Option #1: Via USB.

Option #2: Amazon (I have a Kindle) will let me download as many copies of the books I've bought that I wish to any reader associated with my account.

When it dies, would you lose your books?

Nope. Well, unless I had no other devices to read them on and was unwilling to buy another.

Would you take it with you to the beach, read it in the bath? Have it go repeatedly through the X-ray machines at airports?

Yes, yes, yes. In fact, one of the biggest draws for me is not trucking a dozen books with me on vacation.

I lend books occasionally to friends. How do you do that with your reader?

You generally can't, unless you have B&N's Nook, in which case you sometimes can do so in a limited way. Or unless you're willing to loan the reader.

Personally, I hate loaning books, because I like mine in fairly pristine condition and almost everyone I've ever let borrow one has beat the shit out of it. YMMV.

On the other hand, because both my Kindle and my wife's Kindle are associated with the same Amazon account, I can buy one copy of a book and we both can read it at the same time. That's one nice feature over dead trees, if not one that's helpful to everyone.

Short of using physical force, I can read my paper books any time I choose, privately and without restriction.

Sure -- but you have to plan ahead about what you want to read. In most cases, for me, that isn't at all an issue, but any time I'll be away from home for more than a couple days (vacations, business travel, etc.) it's really nice to know that anything I can easily carry everything I want to read in one hand. No more buying some trashy paperback in an airport bookstore because a flight delay has left me stuck in a strange airport overnight with nothing left to read, etc.

Overall -- yes, e-books are a trade-off: you lose some freedom, you gain some different freedom and convienience; whether that's a good trade or not depends on you.

Natural fit for travelers

[Lifyre]

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.

Re:'tis a sad day

[localman57]

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 hate the way paper feels.

[localman57]

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.

Re:I hate the way paper feels.

[localman57]

Carved into stone? Are you mad? When we get driven from our lands by invading barbarians, what are you going to do? Load up the ol' cart with a few hundred tablets? Good luck.

That's why we use oral history. Sure, it eats up most of a kid's childhood teaching it to him, and he gets unhappy when we beat him for forgetting parts, but it's mobile. Plus, we can make as many copies as we want, just by speaking to other people. The StoneCarver's industry is just using this to make sure you have to pay them for every copy.

Re:Who buys hardbacks?

[linear core]

Actually, the answer to the library question is simple. Most libraries, especially university ones, buy special library versions of the books. They typically come in hardback, printed with special ink on acid-free paper. The upside is that the book will last, supposedly, much longer, possibly a couple centuries. With no acid in the book you also won't get that nasty breakdown you do with older books that turns the pages brittle and the covers all '60s techni-color. The downside is that this edition of the book costs around $100+ for something as simple as Dean Koontz's new thriller.

Otherwise, libraries typically buy the best quality edition of the book they can and rebind it in hardback. But there is a huge market for publishers making special library editions that aren't available to the public.

Re:Dollars and sense

[gorzek]

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.