eBooks Nearly Outsell Print Books At Amazon

destinyland writes "Thursday Amazon.com announced that they're selling more ebooks than paperback books — and three times as many ebooks as hardcovers. If you combine their statistics into a pie chart, it shows that 45% of all the books Amazon sells are now ebooks. And Amazon's statistic doesn't include all the free ebooks people are downloading to their Kindles, so if just one user downloads a free ebook for every nine paid ebook purchases — then Amazon is already delivering more digital ebooks than they are print editions." Another reader tips an interview with Brian Altounian, CEO of ebook marketplace WOWIO, in which he discusses an encroaching feature that ebook aficionados love to hate: ads.

Comments

Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[intellitech]

This is same phenomenon that has made millionaires out of many a mobile app writer. Cheaper prices per item can lead to exponentially increased sales, which leads to more market visibility, which leads to more sales, and so on and so forth. This shouldn't surprise anyone, considering the popularity of the Kindle and the costs of physical books.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[hardtofindanick]

I believe your analogy is wrong. ebook prices are not as low as you make them to be. Used books are in fact cheaper than kindle versions (libraries are full of used books too, that doesn't seem to bother anyone). Go to Amazon and compare a few books. e.g., Change We Can Believe In: Kindle: 8.09, Paperback: 8.49, Used: 3.68. But you don't have to pay shipping and you don't have to wait, it is very convenient. Combined with the curiosity factor, no wonder it ebooks caught up so fast.

This is an expected transition that was eventually going to happen.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[commodore64_love]

>>>Kindle: 8.09, Paperback: 8.49, Used: 3.68

And if you turn-around and sell the Used book to somebody else for ~$3.00, then you've really only paid 68 cents. That's why I prefer the real thing - it has resell value when I'm done with it.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[theaveng]

And if you turn-around and sell the Used book to somebody else for ~$3.00, then you've really only paid 68 cents.

Kindle - $8.09
Used - 0.68

Wow that is a bargain. Over 90% off the kindle price. If you read $1000 worth of books each year, you'll save over $900 buying used instead, and then selling it back via amazon's marketplace.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[geekoid]

OTOH, my wife can get 100's of romance for free.
It varies from book to book.

For example, Jim Butchers publishers are forcing the Dresdan books to be 10 bucks for the kindle version.
  That more expensive then the paperback. They are hurting the author and themselves.

Then their are other books I can get for 4.99. The industry hasn't settled down.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[fuliginous]

I've bought about 12 books for my Kindle so far and 11 of them have been priced at £0.00. So I'm with the suspicion that they are including those in the numbers for what sells the most.

And I'm disappointed with the one book I have paid for; it doesn't really fit well even in landscape so I think I'll be sticking to web pages, pdf and Gutenberg items after that one failed purchase.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[mattmarlowe]

Unfortunately, amazon caved into the demands of the large publishers and is now allowing publishers to set prices. Naturally, the publishers have started to test having ebook prices of popular new releases actually be $1-2 higher than the equivalent hardcover and after the release has been out awhile reduce the ebook price to be just the same as paperback. So, in effect we move from the situation a year ago where kindle readers were receiving a discount on books and publishers could complain that the future of publishing was in peril - we now have a situation where kindle readers are being pushed as an extra money maker - kindle readers are paying a premium for fast access to books above and beyond the cost of the kindle itself. Somewhat of an interesting situation where if a kindle owner has an amazon prime account, he is actually paying amazon extra not to kill a tree and burn additional energy to send him the physical copy.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[xwizbt]

This is so true, but in practice I'm selling books on eBay for 0.99 and charging a postage rate of three times what the book is worth just to break even. That's because the postage rate for books is murder...

Why eBooks aren't priced to reflect the lack of paper, shipping and bulk is beyond me.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[nomadic]

Besides the portability factor, I also like the fact that if I buy something on the kindle, I can access it from multiple devices, and if I lose the kindle I can just re-download everything.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[morari]

Hell, most new hardback books are cheaper than their ebook equivalents. It's utterly ridiculous, given the minimal amount of resources involved in producing an ebook. I own a Nook and am very happy with it. I've yet to be disappointed in the ebook prices from any of the major distributors however. It's a good thing that there are plenty of freely available public domain books out there to read through. My library selection in Calibre will keep me reading for a few years at least. ;)

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[commodore6502]

You can ship books via media mail at $3.24 or if the book is light, first class for $2. Plus whatever delivery confirmation costs.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[mattack2]

I think it's unfortunate that they're starting out more than hardcover books, but before, were ebooks dropping in price at all?

Just like with video games (wait for Greatest Hits editions, general price lowering, or buying on eBay), movies (wait for netflix), generally I don't care that I 'had' to wait since there was plenty of other media to consume in the meantime. (The only exceptions to 'generally' I can think of are a few books I specifically buy hardcover, and those are sometimes remaindered books.)

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[Anonymous Coward]

This is same phenomenon that has made millionaires out of many a mobile app writer.

[citation needed - and not the Trism guy; he doesn't count because he didn't make that money off of Trism]

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[Count Fenring]

I've bought about 12 books for my Kindle so far and 11 of them have been priced at £0.00. So I'm with the suspicion that they are including those in the numbers for what sells the most.

They are explicitly not; maybe less suspicion and more fact checking next time?

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[Count Fenring]

One thing to keep in mind: there aren't minimal resources required, because most of the cost of publishing a book isn't the physical manufacturing/shipping/etc; it's edition, author advances, advertising, and other processes that wouldn't disappear even if the book was exclusively digital. Granted, most books aren't - which means that these costs are spread across both physical and e-Book sales, not that e-Book copies somehow cost nothing to make. Additionally, depending on the publication process and eBook store, reformatting and edition may have to take place when converting from the files used to create the physical book and the eBook edition.

That being said, eBook prices are still unreasonable, and they ARE competing with a lot of compelling free material. Something has to give - and I think many people will be using their readers primarily for Gutenberg until (paperback-equivalent) prices drop into a saner, 4-6 dollar range.

Also, "LONG LIVE THE FIGHTERS!" - Paul Atreides, The Unfortunate Motion Picture Version of Dune's Trailer, But Not The Film Itself, Because Who Wants a Rallying Speech in an 80s SciFi Movie, AMIRITE?

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[noidentity]

Hell, most new hardback books are cheaper than their ebook equivalents. It's utterly ridiculous, given the minimal amount of resources involved in producing an ebook.

One thing to keep in mind: there aren't minimal resources required, because most of the cost of publishing a book isn't the physical manufacturing/shipping/etc; it's edition, author advances, advertising, and other processes that wouldn't disappear even if the book was exclusively digital.

I think he was talking about the resources to make another copy of the book. Hardback book: page printing, cutting, binding, cover, shipping. Ebook: sending a few megabits of data. As he says, it's ridiculous that the ebook version is more expensive, because it's the same intellectual content in both. Even if we assume that their source was a physical copy, with no digital versions, so they had to digitize it for the ebook version, that still can't explain why the amortized digitization cost exceeds the per-book production cost.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you blaming Amazon for the Agency Distribution Agreement that Apple created in conjunction with the publishing industry?

This was presented as a fait accompli to Amazon, who had to choose whether to let the majority of its ebook sales go to Apple or to relent on pricing strategy.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[DNS-and-BIND]

maybe less suspicion and more fact checking next time?

Give the guy a break, he's just acting like a journalist.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[DNS-and-BIND]

So...they're paying a lot more for a product that doesn't "kill trees", as you put it? Got news for ya buddy, there is an entire world out there called "green products" wherein people are accustomed to doing precisely this. No surprise that the situation is evolving in this direction.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[Phoghat]

When the Kindle first came out it was too expensive to warrant me buying one. Now that the Kindle 6" WiFi is available at a price point affordable to me at $139, it made sense. There are always lots of free and low cost books on Amazon, and there are many sites on the webs that have free Kindle content

. It's not all unknown authors too. Sometimes an author will plan a trilogy and make the first volume available free so that he will interest you in buying the other volumes. Sometimes a publisher Baen Free Library will do the same.

I have over 400 books in my Kindle WiFi right now, some have been bought at Amazon, some free from Amazon and the rest free from other sites. I guess I am part of the phenomenon because it makes sense to me

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[narcc]

That being said, eBook prices are still unreasonable, and they ARE competing with a lot of compelling free material.

And yet they're selling remarkably well. It seems the market has decided that the convenience is worth both the cost of the initial investment and the regular "print" cost for the books.

I would guess, given the numbers, that a sizable portion of the book market doesn't care about owning a physical book; they're more interested in just reading the text.

It's also possible that a large number of readers find the physical book 'inconvenient' after they've read it -- if they don't want to just toss it in the bin, how do they get rid of it? (I'm not one of these, but the used book market and the annual library book sales seem to indicate that lots of people don't want to keep their old books around.)

In any case, ebooks are selling well at their current price-point, and earning publishers millions in the process.

Something has to give - and I think many people will be using their readers primarily for Gutenberg until (paperback-equivalent) prices drop into a saner, 4-6 dollar range.

Again, the numbers tell a different story. Prices won't drop unless there's more profit to be made by increasing sales by lowering the price. I don't see this happening, as to half the cost means they'd need to sell more than twice as many books. I don't think we've got that many people willing to plunk-down $130 for a reader who would balk at paying $8, but happily pay $4, for an ebook to read on the thing.

As for Project Gutenberg, they don't exactly have a selection that's terribly compelling for the majority of readers. Nor do I think a sizable portion of the market has even heard of PG. The additional complexity of getting the books on to their device keeps PG books completely inaccessible for non-technical readers.

My wife and I are both big readers and consider physical books to be, metaphorically, sacred. I never would have considered even reading an ebook, let alone buying one. My attitude completely changed after I tried out a Kindle 3. Now that we both own e-readers (a Kindle 3 and a Sony PRS-350) not only do we read more books, we purchase more as well.

My over-burdened bookshelves are grateful; now we only buy a physical copy of a book if it's something we decide we want to keep.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[Count Fenring]

Hah!

It just irks me sometimes that people, supposed "Information Age," can't even be bothered to read the things sourced in the link before they wander off into hypothetical-town.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[Count Fenring]

I think he was talking about the resources to make another copy of the book. Hardback book: page printing, cutting, binding, cover, shipping. Ebook: sending a few megabits of data.

Maybe, but I don't think it's clear which he's referring to. When I think "producing an eBook," I don't think "just the physical part of the chain." If so, though, my objection is pretty much withdrawn.

And replaced, unfortunately - printing more copies of a physical book that's already published can be a MUCH cheaper process than digitization, actually - at least digitization to publishable standards of a book with average sales numbers. And keep in mind that, while the prices for web-hosting, discovery services, etc, are low, they aren't zero - and literally centuries of bulk printing and warehousing has rendered that process fairly cheap when managed well. And this digitization cost, unlike edition, advertisement, etc, is ONLY amortized over the digital copy, because you don't have to digitize a paper book to sell it. Of course, this is true in reverse - distribution and printing are only amortized over paper. This cost does go down substantially with books where both can be created from the same master documents, but it wasn't the largest part of the book's cost to begin with.

Additionally, the places where money IS being saved aren't actually attached to the publisher - because the publisher doesn't normally pay costs of transport, warehousing, etc. It's the distributor and the retailer that save money (although not as much as is generally claimed, for reasons above). Which brings it back to Amazon and Barnes and Noble, in both cases. Aha! I found an article I read that explains this - http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/amazon-macmillan-an-outsiders.html .

The one last thing I would like to say is that we all know that book sales operate on extremely narrow margins; while it would be great to see some kind of savings out of e-Books, customers aren't actually entitled to the entire sum total of the price difference, especially in early stages where the infrastructure is still being built. Again, we should damn well see some savings, and the market won't bear the costs they're charging - but part of those costs are a much saner royalty structure for authors, which makes back-catalog sales MATTER even if you're not selling millions of books a year. So the "ALL EBOOKS THREE DOLLARS!" crowd isn't really realistic (I realize that you're not coming from that POV - sorry this has generalized out so much).

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[Count Fenring]

They are selling remarkably well to hardcore book enthusiasts - eBook owners are still a minority. My hope is that when readers hit $80 and books hit $6 or so, we'll actually see them as a driver of mainstream adoption.

Also, tons of people read out of copyright stuff - Austen, Shakespeare, etc, are really, really popular. They don't tend to make up the entirety of most people's reading material, but it's not an uncompelling set of books - and as copyright creeps over the mid 1900s, it's just going to get more compelling.

I'm a huge fan of eBooks, and I love my Kindle - but I don't buy many books from Amazon; and those tend to be the ones where there's a positive price-difference from the paperback. It's not the only draw possible, or even the only draw that leads me to purchase them, but it is a factor.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[Garwulf]

Actually, that's what Amazon wants you to believe about it. The reality was somewhat different.

The thing you have to understand is that for a major publisher, the actual production cost of a book is a very minor cost. Most of the cost of getting that book ready is editing, typesetting (even for an e-book), cover design (also even for an e-book) and marketing. And, e-books represent around 10% of trade fiction sales, give or take, so they bring in less money overall.

What Amazon was doing was trying to force publishers into a contract wherein they had to offer Amazon the lowest list price, and lock them into an agreement where nobody (including the publisher's own website) could sell the e-books at a lower price than Amazon. And, to make matters worse, Amazon was trying to monopolize this market while offering the e-books at loss, essentially forcing everybody with a representative price (one that would actually put the e-books into the black) out of the market.

The publishers rebelled, and Amazon backed down.

But, Amazon was never doing it to protect consumers from the greedy publishers. Amazon was doing it to knock its competition out of business while ensuring that publishers couldn't do a thing about it.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[BlackCreek]

If anything, e-books outselling paper backs at the world's biggest book seller shows that they are now mainstream.

I buy perhaps too many e-books from Amazon. But even then, the "send sample" feature has allowed me to stop buying books by impulse. Now I always ask for samples. Always. When I finish the sample, I buy the book.

For me the biggest drawback at Amazon is the lack of non English books.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[Count Fenring]

A shift in Amazon's selling patterns, by itself, shows that e-Books are now mainstream? I disagree, for two main reasons. One, Amazon is already an online retailer, and the main draws of online purchasing (immediacy of purchase, not having to go anywhere, etc) apply to e-Books, often more-so. Two, book-buying is an enthusiast-driven market - so high volume shifts in purchasing can come out of small population segments. The sample thing is really useful, and the lack of non-English books is a problem - not my problem, sad monolingual chump that I am, but a problem. My personal pet peeves are DRM and price.

Re:Same phenomenon as the mobile app market

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you're upset at the karma-burn your commodore64_love account took (though why you created it I will never know why), but the answer to being karma-burned is not to go around pimping your own posts. The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is to not be such a troll.

Kindle owner

[MTTECHYBOY]

I have a Kindle - love it - wish the ebook prices were lower, but who doesn't. I doubt I will ever purchase a 'old style' book again...

Re:Kindle owner

[rudy_wayne]

As long as the Kindle has the ability to remotely delete books, they can go fuck themself.

I will accept ads

[denshao2]

if the books are free.

Re:I will accept ads

[Obyron]

And I'll never buy another eBook the first time I see an ad in one. We balance out. Books are about immersion, and having ads will ruin it for me.

Re:I will accept ads

[damnfuct]

Definitely agree. Dropping $0-$8 on a good book is easily justified.

Re:I will accept ads

[thetoadwarrior]

I rather pay and not have my book turned into TV.

Re:I will accept ads

[InlawBiker]

The answer is of course, product placement in-line with the text. They could do this pretty easily on the back end of many books automatically.

"... all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as he opened forth his Pepsi-Cola, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it."

Re:I will accept ads

[macshit]

And I'll never buy another eBook the first time I see an ad in one. We balance out. Books are about immersion, and having ads will ruin it for me.

It seems like it depends critically on the presentation and content of the ads.

Many (physical) paperbacks I buy have little fall-out inserts advertising other releases by the same publisher, book clubs, etc. I don't mind these -- I glance them, sometimes read them, usually toss them out (though the mini-catalogues of other books are actually useful enough to keep in some cases). They're easily ignored, not in my face, often informative, and topical.

Ebook adverts with these same properties wouldn't be too objectionable I think.

OTOH, I imagine the likelihood of ebook publishers not screwing it up is very low -- there's this weird idea amongst publishing entities (not just books but movies, music, etc) that any change of medium means that all the rules change, that any and all conventions and lessons learned from the old medium should be tossed out, and that the new medium is carte blanche to viciously ream the consumer while bleeding him dry.

One would hope that consumers (and regulators, where appropriate) would disabuse publishers of this notion...

Re:I will accept ads

[Draek]

You'd be surprised at how much it takes to break you out of inmersion. Try reading a short story online sometime, 99% of them have ads left and right but one is easily able to follow the narrative without ever taking a second look at them.

Kinda like the rest of the web, actually.

Re:I will accept ads

[noidentity]

Definitely agree. Dropping $0-$8 on a good book is easily justified.

I don't know man, sometimes I find dropping $0 on a book isn't justified.

Re:I will accept ads

[Obyron]

I use Adblock Plus, so I'm not entirely sure I take your point.

Re:I will accept ads

[Anonymous Coward]

so you are basically not consciously aware of the ads. and the marketers win again.

Keep in mind

[c0d3g33k]

That Amazon does not represent the entire book market - they sell to a subset of customers that don't mind getting their books online. The fact that a significant portion of those customers are equally happy with ebooks isn't exactly a revelation. There are still a lot of people out there who prefer to buy real books, whether or not the big bookstores are catering to them.

Re:Keep in mind

[geekoid]

um, Amazon caters to all story lovers, whether it's print or electronic. It sells a huge base of books in a wide swath if genres.

Like it or not, it's a strong market indicator

Yes, there will always be book lovers. People who think the value in reading is the number books on their shelves.

I pity them.

Re:Keep in mind

[alen]

is that why i see tons of kindles everywhere i go?

Re:Keep in mind

[geekoid]

They should purchase the newest version of the kindle, it's lighter.

Re:Keep in mind

[icebike]

There are still a lot of people out there who prefer to buy real books, whether or not the big bookstores are catering to them.

But you have totally hand waived the story away!?!

Similar results are shown by Barnes and Noble, which actually has more titles than Amazon.

Ebooks are already nearly outselling Dead Tree Books, and the trend is only getting started. Ereader penetration is far from being mainstream. Yet the most avid readers seem to be adopting the devices at an astounding rate.

Borders and Books-a-Million have also added eReaders. Its not a trend you can dismiss lightly. Just as the family photos have disappeared from the shoebox in the closet into digital storage that may die at any given instant, the family library acquired over generations is headed for extinction as well.

Re:Keep in mind

[Microlith]

Well, when Amazon decides to delete a book you aren't supposed to have, the people with the physical copy will still have it.

They've done it before, I have no doubt they'll do it again at some point.

Re:Keep in mind

[rudy_wayne]

Well, when Amazon decides to delete a book you aren't supposed to have, the people with the physical copy will still have it.

They've done it before, I have no doubt they'll do it again at some point.

Unless you have stolen the book, there is no such thing as "a book you aren't supposed to have".

Re:Keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHA - wish I had mod points

Honestly though, I was shocked how much more I like the new kindle. Got the old one for a birthday present (the white 3g one). I got my mom the new one (with just wifi) - she liked the old 3g one more, so I let her have that one and I kept the new one. ANYWAY... the new one has incremental improvements on everything (contrast, screen refresh speed, size, weight, battery, and I prefer the wifi), and it all adds up to a much more impressive improvement than I ever thought it'd be. I wasn't expecting to like it any more than the old one, but I do... lot's more!

Re:Keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there will always be book lovers.

Certainly, but "book lovers" is not defined as:

People who think the value in reading is the number books on their shelves.

Re:Keep in mind

[rm999]

Not to mention that they are the primary source for Kindle books. My mom gave my dad a kindle last year, so he started using Amazon to buy all his e-books instead of getting print books from the local Barnes & Noble.

Re:Keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that they are the primary source for Kindle books. My mom gave my dad a kindle last year, so he started using Amazon to buy all his e-books instead of getting print books from the local Barnes & Noble.

We did the opposite. Got B&N Nook readers because it was more supportive of open formats. We read a lot of Gutenberg books around here. Considering Amazon's "1984 Moment" and their recent WikiLeaks actions, that was a good move. I've changed my book and media purchase ratio from 66% Amazon/33% B&N to 99% B&N and 1% Amazon.

I read a LOT of open-source documents, both fiction and tech manuals, so the only real objection I have to the way the Nook handles it is the fact that you can't pull them directly the way you can stuff from the B&N store.

My house is ready to explode from books. And I almost always bought paperbacks because they're smaller (and, of course cheaper). But I figured I'd try the actual B&N eBook store just to see how it worked. One less physical book. After I bought it, I realized that I can't pass it around the house the way we do "real" books. And, while B&N does have a "lend an eBook" program, this book isn't one of the relatively few that are in it. So the book is inherently less valuable than a physical book.

I can at least console myself with this: the book is a PDF, hence has a known document format. PDF's can be cracked if B&N stops supporting them. So insofar as any DRM object can be considered "mine", this book is.

Re:Keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of us who do a lot of reading in mathematics (among other subjects), being able to refer to 3 or 4 esoteric books on the subject at the same time is very useful.

Then there are those people who think the value in reading is the number of electronic gadgets they can use for the purpose. I pity them.

Re:Keep in mind

[tixxit]

Actually, I recently bought a Kindle, but up to now have purchased most books at bookstores (excluding textbooks & obscure stuff). I've been planning on switching to an eReader for a while, but was waiting for the price to drop (which it finally has). Anyways, eBooks are real books. The book is the content, not the delivery mechanism. You lose some things (loaning the book out), but gain quite a bit (try reading a novel w/ thick gloves on while waiting for a train in the freezing cold).

Re:Keep in mind

[Troll-Under-D'Bridge]

Semantic nazi here. You used the word "book" in two different senses in your post: (1) books as something you read whatever the medium (e.g. when Amazon "sells a huge base of books" whether "print or electronic) and (2) books as something you treasure as an artifact, whether you read it or not (e.g. coffee-table books).

As for me, I belong to the first category. People who bewail the demise of the individually bound physical book should remember that the "book" was itself a replacement for older forms of reading media, which included the scroll and the clay tablet.

I draw the line however at multimedia apps that resemble a newspaper from the Harry Potter universe. We should differentiate between the act of largely decoding symbols and that of viewing moving images. The first I would call reading, the latter pornography.

Re:Keep in mind

[Count Fenring]

I love my second gen, but looking at the third gen, I have to say - getting rid of the goddamned stick has to be almost worth the price of admission all on its own. Seriously, I can't count the number of accidental deletions that thing has caused.

Re:Keep in mind

[Count Fenring]

If you're reading primarily Gutenberg and other open documents, there's not really a practical difference there (a principle difference is fine, of course). Their 1984 moment (which was forced by the publisher, legally the correct action, and reversed basically immediately) wouldn't have affected your Gutenberg books, because you don't buy them through Amazon, and their recall only applies to books with their DRM.

Again, if it's just "Amazon were dicks, yo," 100% with you there. Although, given that e-Book sales are largely handled under licensing law, rather than sales, it's hard to come up with something else Amazon could do, really.

I've got a similar problem with exploding house syndrome - although I haven't had your problems with passing the book around. Me and my wife (and my roommate, come to think of it) have Kindles, and so out-of-copyright stuff is actually more convenient - we don't have to wait for the first person to finish the book.

I feel like I'm coming off as if I'm way more critical of your points here than I actually mean to be - I mostly agree with your conclusions, just not all of your premises. One thing I do disagree with strongle is that an eBook is "inherently" less valuable than a physical book. It's value is different - it's higher convenience in some ways, lower in others. You can't lend it (if it has DRM), but you can also re-download it if the file gets lost. You don't have the physical object (item fetish), but you also don't have the physical object (space clogger). It's an apples/oranges comparison. I think the industry is complicit with making it LOOK like an Apples/Apples comparison, though - lending, attachment to physical stores, and other features are meant to make eBooks seem like an exact analogue to physical books; but they aren't. Even with DRM free books, the qualities of and rights attached to what you're buying are radically different than the rights and qualities attached to a physical book. You're not buying, you're licensing, and it has to be that way, to a certain extent.

By the way, if "cracked" is your "mine" criteria, the DRM on both Kindle and Nook are quite thoroughly broken, and reasonably easy tools for doing so are freely available. And seriously, no part of this is meant to be offensive or mean - I think you make a lot of good points, and I'm trying to talk coherently with you. Which I probably shouldn't be trying to do at 2 in the morning after a 12 hour work/school day.

Re:Keep in mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you have stolen the book, there is no such thing as "a book you aren't supposed to have".

And unless you're the one who gets to decide what books can be deleted from other people's Kindles, your opinion doesn't count for jack shit.

Re:Keep in mind

[Garwulf]

Amazon is problematic, in fact, because among other things, they don't release their actual sales figures. This means that their claims are very difficult, if not impossible to verify. According to the trade book publishers themselves, as of October 2010, e-book sales represented 8.7% of their net for 2010 (up from 3.31% in 2009 - the full figures for 2010 aren't out yet, though).

As far as what is going on in the actual e-book market vs. the print book market, it is important to note that while the product is books, the mediums are different, and there is every sign that the markets are different too (for example, e-book sales figures are not impacted by any of the peaks and valleys in the printed book market). I've been tracking these markets for a while using the data from the publishers (you can find it at publishers.org), which strike me as far more reliable than Amazon, as they actually give you numbers to crunch. Everything I've seen suggests that e-books are a brand new and growing market, with very little overlap with the printed book market. Yes, the e-book market is growing, but at the same time, it is NOT cannibalizing the print book market (with the notable exception of tech manuals and a large part of the reference market, where an e-book version is far more useful due to the ability to do word searches).

This makes a great deal of sense. The e-book is an inherently technological product, while the printed book is not. The printed book is a self-contained and simple object, while the e-book requires a technological reading device. And, it would not surprise me in the slightest if it turned out that the e-book market has its links and associations with cell phones and the cell phone app market. In fact, I would credit the increased adoption of cell phones by the public with raising the e-book market up.

Now, this leads to two main questions. Question #1 is how far up can the e-book market go? If the printed book market is only tangentially related to the e-book market at best, then the printed book market tells us very little about what is likely to happen to e-books. They could reach very high, or they could be about to plateau.

Question #2 is how badly will the e-book market be impacted by the piracy wave? This is also a question of longevity - if the e-books are representing less than 10% of trade sales, then publishers are not likely to fight to keep the market alive if piracy makes major in-roads. They are more likely to cut their losses and leave the market. So, if the piracy wave is too great, the e-book market may not survive the next five years.

(And, I would point out, a lot of major console game production companies started off in the PC game market - when the piracy became endemic in the PC game market, they voted with their feet. So, such a move by publishers would not be unprecedented.)

And, I don't have any answers to these questions. I wish I did - I'm trying to formulate an e-book strategy for my own little publishing company. Among other things, I can't find any figures for the cell phone app market, to see if they do track with the e-book market, and give a sense of what will happen next.

But, no matter what, it is vitally important for people to keep in mind that the e-book market is not necessarily part of the book market, and therefore e-book sales from online retailers tells us a great deal about e-books, but relatively little about print books.

Re:Keep in mind

[jamesoutlaw]

I have a NOOKcolor (and had a wifi Nook before that). Like you, I waited until the prices dropped a bit on the readers before I purchased one. I sold my wifi Nook when I got my NOOKcolor. eBooks are great for a lot of genres, but I still buy a hardcopy book from time to time. I prefer hardcopy cookbooks and I prefer getting magazines in electronic format.

Sure, you can not really loan an ebook, however, I rarely ever loaned any of my hardcopy books, so that's not a big loss for me (many of my friends are not readers, and the ones who do read are generally interested in other things). I think technical books are good candidates for ebooks, simply because many of them are huge and take up a lot of space on the shelf.

I especially like being able to take a "stack" of books with me while traveling and not have to worry about "books" taking up space in my luggage.

Sure, This Month...

[severoon]

...but when they finally ship all those backordered copies of Knuth's 4th volume, ebooks may never recover. Wait, is TAoCP available on e-book? Hang on, brb...

Re:Sure, This Month...

[hf256]

Sadly no Kindle/e-book version of TAOCP.

Re:Sure, This Month...

[Kijori]

I'm not sure that it's really a big loss that these are not available on Kindle. I've tried using a textbook on mine and it just isn't particularly useful; flicking from page to page looking at quick bits of information just isn't the use-case that the Kindle works well for. There's no way I could justify paying the price of a textbook to get one on Kindle.

On the other hand, the ability to search is quite handy and the weight of the Kindle is a massive advantage. This is actually one scenario where the user might benefit if they could come up with unbreakable DRM, as it would mean publishers could bundle an ebook copy of a textbook with a print copy, or sell the ebook copy very cheaply to owners of the print copy. Although in fact for some textbooks they could probably sell the ebook very cheaply anyway since, due to the drawbacks of textbook use on an e-reader, it's only really going to be useful to people who have the paper version as well.

No ads

[93 Escort Wagon]

Putting ads in ebooks would totally kill my interest in buying ebooks - and I'm a Kindle owner. If they start putting ads in there, I will sell my Kindle on eBay. I suspect inserting ads would kill the nascent ebook market.

It's not like eBooks are a new product - they're just a repackaged offering of a product that's been sold for years and years. I've got lots of paper books, and they don't contain ads... with the exception of occasionally hawking another title by the same author.

Re:No ads

[geekoid]

If the books I want to read for free, and the included a small ad at the beginning of every chapter, I wouldn't mind.

Hell, it could be an ad holder page that gets update with adds every 6 months.

Re:No ads

[alexander_686]

I am going to guess that it will be a long time / rare event if you ever see a ad in a novel.

A magazine on the other hand.

And yes, I know the argument that people will pay for ad free content – except they don’t. The number of add free magazine is rare [Consumer Report – anything else?] because so few people are willing to shell out the extra dollars that advertisers will.

Re:No ads

[grking]

I suspect inserting ads would kill the nascent ebook market.

We did jailbreak our Kindle's for some other reason than to replace the screensavers didn't we? AdBlock FTW!

Re:No ads

[quasigenx]

Cooks Illustrated is ad free, and it's only $24/year.

Re:No ads

[Anonymous Coward]

If the books I want to read for free, and the included a small ad at the beginning of every chapter, I wouldn't mind.

You won't get good ad-supported e-books for "free". Not for long. If you put up with ads now, the model will evolve to "pay us a lot of money for the product, and we'll spam you mercilessly anyway" - just as it has at the movie theaters, and with cable TV.

Re:No ads

[Anonymous Coward]

If the books I want to read for free, and the included a small ad at the beginning of every chapter, I wouldn't mind.

Hell, it could be an ad holder page that gets update with adds every 6 months.

I would mind.

I rather pay for the content and have the author's work uncomrpomised; advertisement has a dangerous way of slowly -but surely- influence the medium which supports.

Re:No ads

[RockDoctor]

If the books I want to read for free, and the included a small ad at the beginning of every chapter, I wouldn't mind.

Hmmm, PTerry (one of the biggest individual sellers in the English language market for the last couple of decades) would be most unpopular. Most (not all, but most) of his books more-or-less completely eschew the "chapter" paradigm.

Hell, it could be an ad holder page that gets update with adds every 6 months.

Now, just what makes you think that an e-book reader would have a wireless connection, or be within several hundred kilometres of one? Ah, sorry, I'm forgetting : it's marketing to the masses, not marketing to people for whom an ebook reader might be useful.

Oh well, continue trying to make the sale. But you're doing no better than the last dozen salesmen.

How things have changed

[Caerdwyn]

In the days of Kenneth Starr and the Monika Lewinski "The Skank Kept The Nasty Dress" Investigation, people were livid and up-in-arms when Lewinsky's book-purchasing records were sought.

Now all you need to do is give Amazon a few pennies and call yourself an "advertiser".

How times have changed.

This is a tragedy.

[MarkvW]

The money spent on ebooks should be donated to libraries to buy those exact same ebooks. The books could then be shared.

It is a tragedy that this is not happening.

Re:This is a tragedy.

[geekoid]

yes, because both those things can't happen together~

Sheesh.

Re:This is a tragedy.

[icebike]

The money spent on ebooks should be donated to libraries to buy those exact same ebooks. The books could then be shared.

It is a tragedy that this is not happening.

What possible justification could there be for depriving an author of their money in order to donate to libraries? Even fewer sales over all because you insist they stock the libraries with their sales revenue?

Re:This is a tragedy.

[geekoid]

It's a common place for people to learn. It's needed for a literate society. It's a great place for young readers to find new authors. And it enhance sales overall.

And it'd not 'depriving' anyone of anything.

Re:This is a tragedy.

[icebike]

Every single thing you said is false in the digital world.

Its not a common place for people to learn. Library patronage is falling fast.

Its no longer needed for a literate society. We have thousands of book stores, the Internet, and millions of totally free ebooks.

Finding new authors? ---> Google.

Enhances sales? Suppresses sales you mean.

And libraries deprive authors of thousands of royalties.

So wrong on 100% of your points. A case can be made that libraries in the digital age serve precisely one purpose, and that is to assure continued availability of works unpopular with the State or the Church or the general times.

Its an unpopular view, but never the less, libraries have largely outlived their general usefulness.

Re:This is a tragedy.

[Michael Wardle]

If I can borrow a book for free from a library, why would I buy it?

If nobody buys the books, what is the incentive for someone to write one?

Re:This is a tragedy.

[Charcharodon]

This is hardly a tragedy. Considering how many books range from cheap to free on the Kindle, it makes libraries redundant.

Close the libraries and use the money to subsidize the purchase of readers for a town's residents and school children. The next itteration of basic eBooks will most likely drop below $100. Once that happens print sales will be decimated.

Re:This is a tragedy.

[Count Fenring]

So, how does this argument not apply to paper books? In fact, it's actually a better argument for paper books, because most libraries have long practice in being very convenient to borrow paper books from, whereas most eBook lending programs aren't very convenient at all; usually they're so rights-encumbered that they give up most of the advantages of being digital copies.

I'm a grad student for Library and Information Science, in my last semester. While it's great when people contribute to libraries, it's not a tragedy when they buy books for themselves.

Re:This is a tragedy.

[Count Fenring]

Actually, nothing he said is false, and also, library patronage is seeing a rise lately. FUNDING is falling, true; but libraries serve a variety of social functions, serve as the main driver for many literacy programs, facilitate research in any number of areas, and, oh yeah, generate royalties through book purchasing.

And the "libraries hurt authors" chestnut has been stupid since roughly the 1800s. If you can't bother to do enough reading to debunk that crap, I can't be bothered to hold your hand through it.

Additionally, the impact of libraries is larger on certain populations - namely, those who can't afford books and other services offered by libraries (including the kind of open access to the internet required for participation in your "digital world").

Those millions of free eBooks - where do you think a lot of them came from? Magic fairies? A huge percentage of the people involved in Gutenberg work at libraries. Hell, half their mirrors are on various library-owned servers. You know where the books Google scans come from? Largely libraries. Oh, shit, and you know where the metadata that lets you find those books comes from? The OCLC - the L in which stands for, you guessed it, Libraries. I just interviewed for an internship there - they're looking for librarians with traditional cataloguing skills.

Re:This is a tragedy.

[Dan Ost]

Most books that I buy are purchased after I've already finished reading the book.

I buy books that I've decided that I want to have handy as references or that I want to be able to loan out to friends and family.

So based on my own habits and the fact that most avid book buyers I know have similar habits, I would expect that having a book in a library would do much to increase the sales of that book.

Re:This is a tragedy.

[jamesoutlaw]

A lot of libraries "loan" eBooks.... I know plenty of Nook users who borrow eBooks from libraries all the time ...

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/26619/how-to-loan-an-ebook

the ebook ripoff

[Anonymous Coward]

Am i the only one who finds ebooks to be a complete ripoff? I received a kindle for christmas and was completely floored by the fact that most amazon ebooks are $10+! I can go to a half price books and get the book in paperback and sometimes hard back for the same cost or less in most cases. The fact that I'm expected to pay the same for a product with zero manufacuturing costs as a physical "it's mine" copy is outlandish.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[QCompson]

As I understand it, soon after the ipad was introduced, most book publishers renegotiated their contract with amazon and B&N. The retail chains had acted previously like a normal brick and mortar store and could set their own prices for ebooks, but after the renegotiation they switched to the "agency model" which lets the publisher set the price. Amazon and B&N have no control over ebook prices now, they only receive a certain percentage of the profits.

As a result, prices skyrocketed nearly overnight. The last 4 or 5 books I have been interested in buying have been more expensive as ebooks than in hardover or paperback form. So yes, it is a complete ripoff. Especially since you don't really own the ebooks you purchase and cannot lend them easily or sell them.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[icebike]

Well the argument is (I don't totally believe it myself) that the actual printing and distribution of paper books is so cheap these days that it makes up only a small percentage of the costs.

The cost of editing, ebook creation, and Author's Royalties account for the price of an Ebook. The difference in price between a hard cover (or paperback) and an ebook is the printing and distributional costs.

Take any popular book such as Steven Kings "Under the Dome" and compare prices. Ebook 10, Paperback 12, Hardcover 20).

If you wait a year or more the price diverges even more in favor of the ebook. Sometimes the prices are upside down, with ebooks being higher than print. Usually this does not last beyond 9 months after release.

Now what you pay for a second hand book is entirely another matter. The author gets none of that money, and neither does the publisher. You have arguably arrived at the social value of the underlying literary work as all profit has been paid previously and stripped off.

The reason one buys older books in ebook format is for convenience, and not having to line ones walls with shelves against the day you may want to re-read the work, or to avoid having to carry around a mountain of paperbacks.

For those who want to read once, and not retain anything, used paperbacks are the way to go. For those who think an author's work is worth paying for, paperbacks or ebooks make the most sense. For collectors: hard covers.

But in no case can you make the claim that an ebook has zero manufacturing costs.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[QCompson]

Take any popular book such as Steven Kings "Under the Dome" and compare prices. Ebook 10, Paperback 12, Hardcover 20).

Check out a current bestseller, "Fall of Giants" by Ken Follet. It's more expensive as an ebook than in hardcover!

Re:the ebook ripoff

[Facegarden]

Am i the only one who finds ebooks to be a complete ripoff? I received a kindle for christmas and was completely floored by the fact that most amazon ebooks are $10+! I can go to a half price books and get the book in paperback and sometimes hard back for the same cost or less in most cases. The fact that I'm expected to pay the same for a product with zero manufacuturing costs as a physical "it's mine" copy is outlandish.

Can you carry 1000 books in your pocket?

You're paying for other things when you buy a Kindle book - mostly, convenience. You can carry many books at once and access them from anywhere, even without the Kindle device present (they have a PC/Android/iOS app that syncs your library and last read page).

If the Kindle were cheaper, I may even be willing to pay *extra* for books. I've got several books I'm reading right now and I hate having them all over the place.

You also get books instantly. You can get books from a bookstore pretty much instantly too (depending on your proximity to a book store), but they cost more at a bookstore - because you're paying for convenience.

I recently paid almost 3 times the "shipped from online" Barnes and Noble price for a book to buy at a B&N store because I wanted to start reading it that night.

Its interesting actually:
The book (ReWork - though I don't exactly recommend it, turns out) is:
(all prices from B&N since they have a brick and mortar and online store)
$7.47 Paperback online (on sale from $9.00)
$9.02 Nook edition
$12.91 Hardcover online
$21 (approx, from memory) in store hardcover price

I paid $21 for the book because I wanted it that night. Compared to the digital version, I spent an extra $12, or 8.5% of a kindle (I'd rather have a Kindle than a Nook)

I'd miss the smell of a good book, that's for sure, but otherwise, as long as it can't be DRM'ed out of existence, I wouldn't mind paying the same or even more for a Kindle version.

-Taylor

Re:the ebook ripoff

[icebike]

I addressed this above.

This is strictly a temporal imbalance due to the way paper books are marketed when the the work is a new AND a best seller. Somebody has to pay for all that travel to book signings, the speaking engagements, etc.

After the hype wears down, the price straightens out.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[Facegarden]

Err, I was looking at the wrong item - there is no paperback, that was an MP3 Audiobook price. Everything else is fine.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[QCompson]

It doesn't have to be new AND a best seller. Just one or the other is enough apparently.

Behold a $12.99 ebook of a novel written in 1968: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/True-Grit/Charles-Portis/e/9781590206508/?itm=4&USRI=true+grit

Note the paperback is $7.93. No one has to pay for Charles Portis' book signings or speaking engangements. I fail to see why ebook prices should be above paper book prices any time they might be popular. Should that be the selling point of ebook readers? That you can buy older books which aren't popular for slightly cheaper than their paper versions?

Re:the ebook ripoff

[icebike]

True enough, New is not always necessary.

In this case the movie is certainly driving the hype. This book was out of print for 20 years and this edition was released only because of the potential for movie driven sales. So in a way it is still New, as it was published on November 2010.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[QCompson]

So they are essentially just driving up ebook prices to try and make a money grab. Otherwise the movie tie-in paperback would be just as expensive. Seems like a pretty clear rip-off.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[icebike]

Welcome to America.

You will find it different here than the jungle hut you used to live in. Here people do things for money. Since you work for free, you might not notice this. But don't tell Charles Portis he is ripping you off by selling you a book. (Yes, he's still alive and collecting royalties).

One might ask why there was even a remake of True Grit. Must be just a clear rip off.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[ErikZ]

Welcome to capitalism.

Buy things you think are worth the price, don't buy things you don't. The market will respond.

As for me, I agree with you 100% and I've been a Kindle owner for years now. This has lead me down the path of trying new Authors who are trying to build a name for themselves. They do it by offering lower priced books, or even giving away the first book in a series.

It's been great!

Re:the ebook ripoff

[noidentity]

Also, let's correct this quote in the summary: "they're selling more ebook licenses than paperback books". Give me a real book I can lend/sell/give away.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention zero resale value, zero ability to give to a friend once you're done with it, essentially zero lending capability (2 weeks once in the lifetime of the book is a joke). I only use my Kindle for free (out-of-copyright) books.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[Count Fenring]

The paperback's discounted heavily - its list price is $14.95.

That being said, prices need to come down - I think something in the #12-16 range for new releases, fading to two dollars under paperback price.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[QCompson]

Hilarious. Anyway, the point the OP and then myself made are that ebook prices, even in this profit-driven world, are a ripoff. That's it.

One might ask why there was even a remake of True Grit. Must be just a clear rip off.

I'm sure if they came out with a new vhs version of the original True Grit that was three times as expensive as the blueray, you'd defend that as a "temporal imbalance" due to marketing as well. God forbid anyone criticize a ridiculous price structure.

Re:the ebook ripoff

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I'd really noticing just how many of the people around me will admit to being book sniffers. Is this the most widespread fetish or something?

Re:the ebook ripoff

[jamesoutlaw]

I've had the opposite experience... all of the eBooks I've purchased have been less than the hardback version. I've not checked the paperback prices on all of them (some were not available in paperback) and generally the eBook price was comparable. In the few instances where the price was slightly higher, the convenience of an eBook offset the slightly higher price.

I buy a few books a month, just what I can read in the time that I have. I am pretty sure that I spend less on books than most people spend on other forms of entertainment.

The loss of the ability of lending a book is not really a big deal for me because I never really loan any books out. My friends who are readers generally read different things than I do and if I find something that I think they might enjoy, I'll just buy it for them. In the past, I've sold some books that I no longer had any use or need for, however, not being able to resell an eBook is not that big a deal either.

I still buy traditional books. It all depends on the book and what I'll be using it for. However, the majority of my book purchases have been eBooks over the past year.

Not believable

[Flector]

What does the average eBook sell for?

Re:Not believable

[Anonymous Coward]

over 9000

Re:Not believable

[geekoid]

It's all over the board, from free(a lot of romance) to 10 bucks like The Dresden Files.

It's hard to find a generic average that will have any meaning what so ever.

And yes, it's very believable. It turns out something I have been saying for years is true. Most readers don't use the books on their shelfs as some kind of score card. Kindle is a light weight reader that's extremely convenient and handy.

Re:Not believable

[icebike]

Define Average.

Re:Not believable

[jimfrost]

I can't speak for industry averages, but in 2010 my average e-book price was $8. I calculated out how much it would be for cheapest new versions in paper; ignoring shipping costs, it was about $13. I bought 87 books last year, IIRC. 87*$5 gives you the approximate amount of money I saved by buying e-books. It is quite significant, and actually 2010 was the worst year ever. 2008 e-book prices were more than $1 lower and all told I believe the savings were well over $700 (not including books I got for free).

I note that most of the "higher than paper" prices I'm seeing come from B&N. I have seen the effect on Amazon, but it's very rare ... one book in all of them I've ever purchased. It's fairly common to see differences of about a buck, though, which to me is essentially equivalent. And the difference between current hardcover and e-book prices is usually stark: Around $18 in paper, versus $10 to $12 e-book. That's huge. Back-catalog books used to be great deals but the prices have crept up over the last couple of years, though they still tend to be at least a couple of bucks cheaper and there are many deals where they're being sold for only a few dollars to try to drum up business for relatively obscure authors.

Several people here say that there's no reason to buy them if they're available in your library. I don't know about the rest of you, but library hours in my town so heavily overlap working hours as to leave only four hours per week that I could possibly visit. For a heavy reader that's untenable.

To me the value of e-books is several fold. One, I can get them whenever I want with no waiting. When you've finished your current book at 3am and still can't sleep it's great, and god help me I can't even put a price on the value of being able to have a decent book selection while stuck at the Salt Lake City airport (that bookstore BLOWS). Two, it is becoming increasingly easy to get books that are out of print, and which are difficut to find even used. Three, I can carry around a lot of books without much bulk or weight. I don't need hundreds or thousands, but I'm usually reading several books concurrently and it's nice to have all of them with me for whatever mood I happen to be in. Four, I have a personal paper book library of thousands of books. They take up a lot of space, and it has been difficult to trim (though a flood last spring got rid of five cubic yards of them). There really aren't many books I feel I must have in paper; these days I just buy those kinds of books and save the shelve space everything else used to use.

The fact that they save money, quite a lot of money, is just gravy.

Not yet for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Ebooks (one would hope) are never out of print. Far less floorspace needs to be dedicated to bookshelves, and no books have to be stored in boxes in the garage for lack of space.

However, I don't want to lose my library when the reader breaks or the publisher flips the kill switch. I will keep my hardcopies until ebooks are sold in, say, an unobfuscated XML format. (In fact, ebooks might finally provide a justifiable reason for XML to exist!)

Re:Not yet for me

[93 Escort Wagon]

However, I don't want to lose my library when the reader breaks or the publisher flips the kill switch. I will keep my hardcopies until ebooks are sold in, say, an unobfuscated XML format. (In fact, ebooks might finally provide a justifiable reason for XML to exist!)

A good reason to strip the DRM off your ebooks - as is recalling what happened to the music libraries of people when their preferred vendor (e.g. Walmart) decided to exit the digital music business.

When I purchase a Kindle book, the first thing I do is strip the DRM off, then copy the file over to the same hard drive my ripped (purchased!) DVDs are on. That drive gets backed up regularly, so I figure I'm covered. The only downside is certain formats - like the "Topaz" format Amazon uses for a minority of books - don't seem to be transparently "strippable".

Re:Not yet for me

[icebike]

XML is overkill for books. Its a case of the only tool you have being a hammer causing you to look at every problem as if it were a nail.

A simple text file is all that you need. An epub is not much more than a packaged web page.

In any event none of these survive a hard drive crash. Hang on to your hard copy books.

Percentages do not exist without pie charts

[mauddib~]

Interesting, it seems that nowadays we suddenly first have to put numbers into a pie chart, before we can see what percentage it has. This seems like primary school knowledge to me.

Re:Percentages do not exist without pie charts

[Anonymous Coward]

unfortunately, slashdot's super-special-awesome new look doesn't seem to allow type comments anymore, so it's a bit ragged, but:

                      B = P + H
              E + B = 1
                      E = 1.15 P
                      E = 3H

            E/1.15 = B - H
            E/1.15 = B - E/3
E/1.15 + E/3 = B
          1.203 E = B

E + (1.203E) = 1
            2.203E = 1

                      E = 0.4539 = 45.4%

there, happier now?

Do you assume we're all idiots?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I need to put it into a pie chart to recognize the significance?

I don't care.

[RobbieThe1st]

Personally, I will buy books when I see them at the local used bookstore, or I can't find a gopd online version. As far as ebooks go, I will buy one when I find something I -really want-, cheap enough, in a drm free/strippable format; Something that's convertable to HTML/text/ePUB for viewing on my N900 via FBReader. The one eBook I've bought so far was in an Adobe PDF-based format... Never doing that again. It was DRMed, didn't allow printing/copying, and I couldn't find a stripper for that type, sadly. Recently, I've been simply looking at free "online novels", and I've found some excellent material - Sure, you may see occasional errors, but you don't have to worry about a book getting cut short by the publisher.

Re:I don't care.

[nomadic]

I will buy books when I want to read them.

Re:I don't care.

[shutdown -p now]

in a drm free/strippable format

DRM is fairly easy to strip off Kindle books.

really?

[Anonymous Coward]

i have a hard time believing this...i could probably count the number of times i've seen an e-reader in "the wild" on my hands

The whole idea about books

[Flector]

You write your initials and day you finished it on or near the title page. Long after you're gone, somebody will read it.

Re:The whole idea about books

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps that's the "idea" for made-up-story books.

Some of us use the same book every day for reference and don't have this quaint concept of "finishing" a book.

> Long after you're gone, somebody will read it.

How many people in 2011 are interested in reading "Borland TurboC for DOS Reference"?

"Books" is a much larger set than pulp novels.

May be selling lots of ebooks, not lots of Kindles

[itwbennett]

Amazon is quick to talk up exactly how many ebooks it has sold, but the company won't disclose how many Kindles it has sold (it just says 'millions'). Ryan Faas thinks that 'one reason that Amazon may be enjoying this level of success and yet be unwilling to disclose how many actual devices it has sold is that many of those ebook sales may not be tied to actual Kindle devices.' By making the Kindle a platform that can be run on just about anything, Amazon has positioned itself to rake in ebook sales even if it can't move Kindle hardware in vast quantities, says Faas.

Replace those record albums with CDs!

[Fantastic Lad]

Is this real?

A manipulation from Amazon would be nothing new, and this one costs them nothing and has the potential to create a profitable trend. Those Jonses and their Kindles.

But whatever. Let's take it at face value. . .

All those people who got an iPad thingy for Christmas are eager to try it out and never ever get bored with their cool new Buzz Lightyear.

So yeah, they're going to buy media, because that's the whole premise of the device. You don't get a Buzz Lightyear and *not* click his wings open a bunch of times.

And the same way everybody had to replace their album collections with CDs, there is a market spike as new media is adopted.

The question is. . . Will it stick, or is this just another digital watch?

Well, let's consider. . , all those iPads were bought at around the same time. But their batteries will wear out according to usage, and when your digital book stops holding a charge for long enough. . , do you replace it? Was the experience good enough for you? Can you port all your purchased 'books' over to a new reader easily? Do you have to stay brand-loyal just to read your stuff? Will there be law-suits forcing personal library porting because Apple is the new anti-competitive demon? Will people even care? (Do you still have all the same crap you downloaded from Napster or have you moved on, secure in the knowledge that all that old music is basically free any time you want it? Or are you willing to pay a buck to play it on your iPod?)

Will owning an eReader of some sort be like owning a car? Or a phone? Considered a basic necessity just so you can access your stuff?

Maybe.

I think eReaders are probably here to stay, and they will probably be a viable income source for publishers, but I wouldn't let all that limelight blind you. Paper ain't going away. It's just going to have to share.

Remember: Theater never died. There's a half dozen full stages within a ten minute walk from my place, and they're all booked regularly.

-FL

Re:Replace those record albums with CDs!

[BitZtream]

Will owning an eReader of some sort be like owning a car? Or a phone?

If you consider a car, a phone or an eReader a necessity, you have a serious disconnection from reality. I suggest you take your spoiled ass off your segway and go for a camping trip or a hike just to remind you that people are fully capable of functioning without technology.

Considering the majority of the people on the planet seem to be able to survive just fine without any of those things, I think you might want to take a step back and get some perspective.

Re:Replace those record albums with CDs!

[Fantastic Lad]

Jeezus. A little benefit of the doubt before hitting "Sumbit" would be nice. Rash assumptions make you look rather sanctimonious.

I don't own a car or a cell phone.

I was speaking to broad cultural trends in the West, where, if you'll notice, this story was produced by and for. It's about eBooks, for goodness sake. I think those consumers are going to be car and phone people, don't you?

-FL

Amazon still sells physical stuff?

[BitZtream]

Last time I used Amazon (which I now avoid like the plague) I was unable to buy a product from them. I was able to find plenty of products sold by someone else ON Amazon, but not actually anything sold from Amazon themselves.

Seems too me they've been outsourcing all the physical items for years anyway and just taking a cut and the tax breaks. I don't really see how you can use this as a useful measurement.

Yes, Amazon, which is doing everything in its power to not ship physical items and move its core business to moving bits of data around is selling fewer physical books than ebooks.

Tesla Motors has sold more all electric cars than it has gasoline powered cars ... yet that has absolutely nothing in relation to the gasoline car market does it?

licensing, not buying

[seifried]

You are licensing the eBook. Not buying it.

Amazon recalls (and embodies) Orwell's '1984'

Re:licensing, not buying

[ErikZ]

What kind of licence gives you your money back after you're done with it?

Re:licensing, not buying

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right and something is going to have to change. There is something wrong with "selling" these digital products when the rights that the purchasers have is more limited than in buying a tangible product. Placing an "e" in front of the product (e.g. "ebook") is insufficient (IMHO) from distinguishing these from the rights a consumer has when buying a book.

A book falls under the first sale doctrine and the consumer can give or sell that book to a third-party. Currently that's not allowed with an ebook. The license prohibits resale or giving the ebook away; DMCA further prohibits any technological work-around to give or sell that ebook to a third-party.

So... the question (I believe) is to see what is going to change: (1) publishers accurately advertising these as "life-time rental" instead of "buying" (a class action suit will eventually bring this about); (2) statutory clarification / modification to apply first sale doctrine to digital content that is "sold" (regardless of whether we're calling it a license or not); (3) case law to prohibit use of DMCA against consumers asserting rights in digital material that they've "bought"; or (4) a combination of these.

This is a clusterf*** of forces coming together in an interesting way and although consumers are currently getting screwed over the smart publisher will become the market leader by modifying their license agreements and DRM limitations to provide some type of pseudo-first sale doctrine capabilities ... they've already conceded the need to allow libraries to participate in digital content.

Re:licensing, not buying

[Anonymous Coward]

did you link the rest of that story? where they returned them all with apologies?

Re:licensing, not buying

[Anonymous Coward]

Test

Re:licensing, not buying

[aliquis]

You are licensing the eBook. Not buying it.

No. I'm copying it.

Re:licensing, not buying

[BlackCreek]

You are licensing the eBook. Not buying it.

What you say is true, and still many people (including me) are only buying e-books.

There is more to e-books & paper books, than the licensing difference. The impression I get at slashdot is that most people bashing e-books have never used an e-book, or are not old enough to understand the 'costs' associated with a large library.

I can only speak for myself but:

• For starters, the lack of physical space in my house for even more books had -for a number of years- made me buy less books than what I would otherwise. Formulating in a different way: the price of space in my house is a lot higher than any extra cost I might incur due to DRM.
• Since I had to move so many times, most books I bought in college were either donated or are at boxes in a different hemisphere than the one I live at.
• people that don't move much perhaps don't appreciate this in its full truth but moving boxes full of books is a PITA. I moved a lot in the last 10 years...
• I can avoid carrying 10 books when I take vacations
• I can buy any books during my vacations
• adjustable font sizes
• dictionary look-ups
• easy way to back-up annotations and highlighted text from books.

What I haven't seen

[Wansu]

... is someone coming out of a restroom stall with a kindle or an iPad. Over the decades, I've seen plenty of people taking hard copies of books to the toilet.

Re:What I haven't seen

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever tried wiping with an iPad?

Re:What I haven't seen

[R4nneko]

I don't know about you, but the kindle fits in my pocket (only just, but it does)...

Re:What I haven't seen

[swfranklin]

Nice thing about eBooks is they are not tied to a single device. I start one on my tablet, read a bit more on my PC, and some more on my iPhone. My spot in the book is always up to date, I can pull it up on any device I want and continue right where I left off.

So not "Seeing" the Kindle or iPad coming out of a restroom stall, doesn't mean they weren't reading an eBook in there.

Re:What I haven't seen

[jamesoutlaw]

On a few recent flights I was on, I took a look around the cabin.... the majority of the people who were reading, were reading eBooks (and there were more iPads and Nooks than there were Kindles).

ads without DRM?

[bcrowell]

The WOWIO interview left me with a lot of questions, and those weren't cleared up by the very brief info on wowio's web site. As far as I can tell, they sell DRM-free books with ads in them, give 100% of the purchase price to the author, and keep 100% of the ad revenue for themselves. What I don't quite understand about this is what's stopping someone from writing software that simply strips the ads out of a WOWIO book. There's also the question of what WOWIO sees as the service they provide to authors and/or readers. As a reader, what service are they providing me that I couldn't get by buying a book directly from the author? Do they filter submissions at all? As an author, what are they doing for me that I couldn't do by selling directly to readers? I doubt that any significant nuber of readers browses WOWIO looking for books to read.

Re:ads without DRM?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I don't quite understand about this is what's stopping someone from writing software that simply strips the ads out of a WOWIO book.

Nothing - except that a single ad before and after the content mayhaps isn't felt annoying enough to be worth the bother?

There's also the question of what WOWIO sees as the service they provide to authors and/or readers. As a reader, what service are they providing me that I couldn't get by buying a book directly from the author? Do they filter submissions at all?

One more central spot to find books instead of having to visit each author's own site, repository of my purchases should I lose my local copy/copes As to filtering I have no idea. Those are what I can think of off the top of my head, never having used tthem...

As an author, what are they doing for me that I couldn't do by selling directly to readers?

Additional publicity/exposure? Possibly higher income per sale as the ads cover WOWIO's end rather than, for instance, Apples' 30% cut? Again, just as an outside observer...

I doubt that any significant nuber of readers browses WOWIO looking for books to read.

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe not today, but who knows how things will evolve in a fairly new and immature market...

not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently got a kindle, and i love it. This is even though i don't like the page turn button placement.

People harp on about there being 'something about paper books' like they couldn't possibly lower themselves to read e-ink... but with a kindle i can download any book almost instantly. Free books, "free" books, and $ebooks from amazon are available to me on the internet and I don't have to browse a store with a limited and overpriced range. I'm reading way way more with my kindle than i was without - and i don't have a big bunch of paper books to lug around when i move.

Paper books are nice, but the convenience of an ebook reader far far far outweighs them.
Also I'd obviously prefer a good open source alternative, but kindle has the best hardware and price from what i can see. I highly recommend e-ink readers to anyone considering, best purchase I've made in yonks. And i dunno what the cutoff point is before its environmentally better than paper books but im sure its realistic, anyone know it?

Cheaper prices?

[withears]

Right now, ebooks are price fixed. You can EASILY (as in 100% of the time) find new paperbacks for much cheaper at Barnes and Nobel and Borders (as well as Amazon) and cheaper even still at Wal-Mart. Couple that with the outlay of the reader and ebooks just really don't make much sense from a purely cost perspective. Now, ereaders are pretty great and they do a lot of cool things. If those reasons compel you to buy an ereader and ebooks, then by all means jump right in. But sticking with paperback books in cheaper in EVERY case. (except for the free ereader books, of course.)

Re:Cheaper prices?

[Count Fenring]

1. No, they're not price-fixed; they're priced out of the market. Being too expensive is not price-fixing.
2. No, it's not 100%; the Kindle edition of Haruki Murakami's After the Quake is about two dollars cheaper, to pick the most recent example that I've purchased. Also, if you're into space opera or military sci-fi, Baen's e-Book store is MUCH cheaper than printed copies ($4-$6, generally - higher for brand new or pre-release stuff).
3. I do agree that eReaders are unlikely to bring large cost savings if you don't count the vast amount of free material out there. But, well, it's kind of Vast. I mean, I've saved somewhere between $90 and $140 on out of copyright stuff that I would have bought, and I've had my Kindle for a year. Now, I might not have bought all of those, but the ones I wouldn't have bought, it's because I couldn't have FOUND copies, at least not easily. And if I was back in college, doing a Literature degree? The Kindle would have saved me money by the end of the first semester. So there are use-cases that make an eReader economical. I don't quite meet them, but four or five years ago, I would have.

Ads in ebooks

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really simple. Ads in and I am out.

Intersting Experience

[$0.02]

Back in September I went (from USA) to Bosnia for a two weeks and both a Kobo reader so I do not get bored in the plane and airport in a case of a flight delay. It came pre-populted with 100 public domain classics. Many of the I have not read before. I was reading every day for almost a month before I needed to recharge.

Howver, I have not bought a single eBook yet. Why? I'm reading History of the Fall of Roman Emprie. I have not finished it yet. There are a way more books on it that I wish I would read had I have more time. My wife and I carpool. So I keep the reader in the car and read when waiting for her to finish her work. So that is great. But there will pass a lot of time before I read a set of books from the reader that I intend to.

So, there is a big difference between an eBook and an mp3. An mp3 last for few minutes and probably you are bored with it after listening to it for one hundred or so time but it takes a long time before you finish a book.

E-Calibre?

[willynate]

I'm just curious why no one has mentioned e-calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) as a great tool for essentially removing the DRM from Amazon books. Just suck your .amz or .mobi books off your Kindle and convert them to .epub and back. A buddy and me have permenantly "loaned" each other copies of several books we bought off Amazon in this manner.

Re:E-Calibre?

[BitZtream]

A buddy and me have permenantly "loaned" each other copies of several books we bought off Amazon in this manner.

Thats not impressive, it just makes you a thief.

I'm all for stripping off DRM, and I have no problem sharing digital data when you're actually sharing, not just duplicating someone elses work, but your sort of ignorant comments and actions just justify why they do it. Please don't tell others you do this, it just makes it harder on those of us who do it for legitimate legal reasons, not because we feel like ripping someone off and calling it a 'permanent loan' ...

Re:E-Calibre?

[janetlim32]

I'm just curious why no one has mentioned e-calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) as a great tool for essentially removing the DRM from Amazon books. Just suck your .amz or .mobi books off your Kindle and convert them to .epub and back. A buddy and me have permenantly "loaned" each other copies of several books we bought off Amazon in this manner.

ebook is king and is the new digital book. Look what happened to barnes and nobles. single mother grants

Don't blame Amazon, blame Apple

[Shivetya]

Whose deals caused prices to jump. Amazon was left with allowing Apple access to books they would not have or going along with it.

http://www.fictionmatters.com/2010/02/01/amazon-flanks-the-first-battle-of-the-ebook-wars/

Is one story, but as you read others it becomes more clear. Amazon was more than happy with its 9.99 structure but publishers were looking at the iPad cash cow and Apple was willing to cut them better deals. So Amazon moved first and yes prices went up but it secured them the numbers and books they wanted

While you're at it....

[BigBadBus]

You may just want to buy my ebook too!

Slightly different headline

[Anonymous Coward]

eBooks Nearly Sold Out At Amazon

GIGO

[niteshifter]

Let me say what will happen here at Homey's Place - where you can do anything you like until you get on my damn nerves - when my first .epub with ads shows up:

They, having got on my damn nerves by putting Garbage In ...

Cause Homey to write an Garbage Out script. and plaster it all over the intartubes.

Homey - with nerves now becalmed - then resumes his blissful, no intrusions permitted reading time.

EBooks have a drastically lower value

[tm2b]

I just can't get past how tremendously short-sighted it is to buy an eBook at current rates.

I have (and often reread - Larry Niven and RAH titles most recently) hundreds of books that I bought more than 30 years ago, dozens bought by my parents 50 years ago, and a few that my grandparents passed down from before that - does anybody think that Amazon DRM will still be maintained in even 20 years? How's that Plays-For-Sure working for you?

So I would probably buy eBooks for "rental" type fees, but no more than that - because with the DRM-encumbered titles, you really are just renting them, you just don't know how long for.

(And stripping the DRM doesn't count, since nobody around here does anything that's illegal!)

Re:EBooks have a drastically lower value

[shutdown -p now]

I just can't get past how tremendously short-sighted it is to buy an eBook at current rates. does anybody think that Amazon DRM will still be maintained in even 20 years? (And stripping the DRM doesn't count, since nobody around here does anything that's illegal!)

It may be illegal in US, but not elsewhere. And even in US it's one of those "illegal but who cares?" kinds of things. But it kills your short-sightedness argument right on the spot.

Oh, and you do realize that Amazon isn't the only one selling ebooks, right? And that you can buy them without DRM elsewhere?

Re:EBooks have a drastically lower value

[slim]

I just can't get past how tremendously short-sighted it is to buy an eBook at current rates.

It depends on your reading style.

Some people buy a novel, read it, then give it to a charity shop. For them, only the last step is lost -- now certainly that warm and fuzzy feeling counts for someone, and the life of the book after donation is significant in the wider scheme of things, but for the original buyer it's not a hugely degraded experience, which might be compensated by the convenience of reading on an ebook platform.

Or, there's technical titles -- O'Reilly books and the like -- which are obsolete within 5 years. Realistically, my 1st edition Programming Perl is only good for throwing away, so an electronic version of it would have been just as good. With electronic versions, too, it becomes realistic for the publisher to include lifetime updates in the price of the book.

Re:May be selling lots of ebooks, not lots of Kind

[shutdown -p now]

But wasn't Kindle always just a vehicle to drive more book sales? It seems to be the strategy for both Amazon and B&N so far. That's why they're priced lower than other readers.

Quite the User

[konohitowa]

"...so if just one user downloads a free ebook for every nine paid ebook purchases — then Amazon is already delivering more digital ebooks than they are print editions."

That one user must be downloading a huge number of free ebooks.

Wow...newsflash!!!

[hesaigo999ca]

Imagine that, the very reason why we invented eBooks, to save paper, is actually working, and coming true, we are now selling more ebooks online then paper books, soon we will have no more need for book stores or libraries, because in 20 years, we will have digitized everything, and will have no need to waste our precious resources creating stuff that can be put on computers....wow, imagine that.