Have eBooks Peaked?

An anonymous reader writes "At Rough Type, Nicholas Carr examines the surprisingly sharp drop in the growth rate for e-book sales. In the U.S., the biggest e-book market, annual sales growth dropped to just 5% in the first quarter of this year, according to the Association of American Publishers, while the worldwide e-book market actually shrank slightly, according to Nielsen. E-books now account for about 25% of total U.S. book sales — still a long way from the dominance most people expected. Carr speculates about various reasons e-books may be losing steam. He wonders in particular about 'the possible link between the decline in dedicated e-readers (as multitasking tablets take over) and the softening of e-book sales. Are tablets less conducive to book buying and reading than e-readers were?' He suggests that the e-book may end up playing a role more like the audiobook — a complement to printed books rather than a replacement."

Comments

Piracy!

[MightyYar]

It's piracy! We need to make reading a felony!

Re:Piracy!

[ShanghaiBill]

Here's the reason I rarely buy e-books: A used paper book is usually cheaper. On Amazon a used book is often only $0.01 (plus $3.99 shipping). When I am done reading it, I drop it off at the local Goodwill, which then sells it on Amazon.

Re:Piracy!

[seyfarth]

I frequently face the same issue. The solution is to drop the price of e-books. I suggest less than 50% of the printed book price. I find it frustrating to see an e-book for $10 when a printed one is $12. I can easily resell or give away the printed book, which makes it a lot more valuable. If the e-book were $6, then perhaps I wouldn't care for the printed copy. Also a printed copy for $4 with shipping is not a big deal versus $6.

Re:Piracy!

[arth1]

Here's the reason I rarely buy e-books: A used paper book is usually cheaper. On Amazon a used book is often only $0.01 (plus $3.99 shipping). When I am done reading it, I drop it off at the local Goodwill, which then sells it on Amazon.

For me, it's not price, although I do think that e-books should be priced a lot cheaper because they cost a lot less to produce. No, the main reason is that I know that I'll still have the book I bought when I hit retirement. It's still readable.
With e-books, I know no such thing.
What I do know is that the books I bought in PeanutPress/eReader format (Peanutpress got bought by Palm who sold it to Motricity who sold it to Fictionwise who sold it to Barnes & Noble), I can no longer download or change the lock on. B&N killed it, with no compensation to the customers.
They can't do that with paper books. They're mine, and will be readable in my retirement years too.

Re:Piracy!

[CrimsonAvenger]

Calibre.

It can change your eBook format from pretty much any format to any other. I buy them, change the to ePub (unencrypted), and I'm good, forever.

Re:Piracy!

[Miamicanes]

It's because ebooks are a piss poor substitute for paper books. They're underpowered, lack 2D acceleration relevant to font-rendering, tend to store data in flash that's connected via the slowest and least-random-access-agile means possible, and basically suck as a reading experience. I have lots of ebooks, most of which have never really been read because the readers piss me off and distract me too badly from the actual task of reading.

Flipping pages feels like wading through wet concrete, and a computer-literate high school student circa 1990 probably did a better job laying out school papers in Pagemaker than most ebooks. Even pdf versions feel half-baked... like they just let some automated algorithm rip through the layout for the real book, and nobody bothered to make sure that the output actually looked good. I've seen ebooks from big-name technical publishers render with weird pdf errors (a random mangled unicode character, maybe a few characters where the kerning engine just vomited something vaguely resembling mashed-together text onto a page, etc).

Epub tends to not have the mangled kerning and wacky rendering problems, but THOSE ebooks tend to just look like someone blindly converted the professionally-typeset book to html-like layout and let it land wherever random luck happened to reflow it.

Then, there's Kindle... where even on a fast PC, flipping to random pages inexplicably brings the whole program to its knees for a second or two while it seemingly struggles to get its act together, and it just plain *intolerably* slow and laggy for random-access tech book reading.

There's really no nicer way to say it... ebooks, in their current form, are a miserable failure for anything besides reading novels from start to finish. Much of it is just due to underpowered hardware. 2D text isn't sexy like photorealistic rendered 3D, but realtime font rendering at high quality is a demanding (and unappreciated) task in its own right. OpenGL desperately needs hardware-level support for spline acceleration, smoothing, hinting, and everything else. There are some interesting ways you can use OpenGL to render individual glyphs, but with all the ram and T&L processing they have, it's still not enough to pre-define complete triangle-based definitions for 3 font families in 4 styles (normal, bold, italic, bold+italic with even a single UTF-8 codepage, like the one corresponding to ISO-8859-1, let alone even a tiny subset of a language like Chinese.

In a way, triangle-based high-quality font rendering vs photorealistic 3D is kind of like 720p60 vs 1080i60. People who don't understand what's going on behind the scenes tend to think the latter is a harder task, but when you do the real math, you quickly discover that it's actually the FIRST item in the pair that's the truly *demanding* task, simply because unlike the second item in the pair, the first generally doesn't allow you to cut corners and hide your sins... they get splattered in full public view for everyone to see, and there's nowhere to hide them.

Re:Piracy!

[dgatwood]

Right. At least for the small values of forever in which Kovid Goyal and contributors remain interested in the Calibre project enough to keep it going, after which you have to maintain the code yourself if you want it to keep working.

You don't need Calibre to convert it every time you read it. You do it once. Therefore, even if Calibre stops working in the future, that doesn't prevent you from using the books that you've already converted. Hence, "forever".

And the small values of forever in which ePub is a supported format on the devices available to you when your old ones stop working.

Ignoring a handful of special metadata files in their own quirky XML format, (DRM-free) EPUB is nothing more than a zipped folder full of HTML files and PNG/GIF/JPG images (and, occasionally, SVG). Given that HTML is now 23 years old and is still rapidly growing in popularity, and that ZIP is even slightly older, and that both are absolutely ubiquitous as technologies go, barring a technology-destroying nuclear holocaust or some similar catastrophe setting us all back to the stone age, I think it's safe to say that with minimal effort, you'll be able to continue reading EPUB books for at least the remainder of your lifetime, and probably for the remainder your grandchildren's lifetimes.

Re:Piracy!

[Immerman]

And *that* I think is the heart of the issue. Most publishers seem to charge as much or more for the ebook version, despite the fact that the incremental cost of an e-book approaches zero. Lets see some of those cost savings passed on to the consumer, and get rid of the ridiculous DRM that prevents me from actually owning the book, and then lets talk. In the meantime I'll stick to Project Gutenberg and DRM-free niche publishers.

Disappearance of E-Ink

[ElementOfDestruction]

Vendors are flogging tablets over E-ink; why get a one trick pony when you can have a multi-tasker.

Truth is, the one-trick pony feels much better on the eyes after reading for any extended amount of time. Staring at a backlit LCD just burns out your retinas, and changes reading from a relaxing experience to a tolerable situation.

Re:Disappearance of E-Ink

[king neckbeard]

Yes, but what you read it on greatly influences your experience.

Re:Disappearance of E-Ink

[Wordplay]

Even the new Kindle Paperwhite is meant to be used with a backlight, increasing the likelihood of headaches and eyestrain.

Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where people just aren't informed enough

...for example, they think that the Kindle Paperwhite is backlit.

It's sidelit. That means the light comes from the front, diffused across the screen via a fiber optic mesh, reflects on the screen, and then back at you.

It doesn't have any of the problems that backlit devices do, and is extremely similar to reading with a booklight--except for the not having to carry a booklight part.

Nook Glow is the same basic tech.

Re:Disappearance of E-Ink

[msauve]

As for the Kindle Paperwhite.... there is zero difference between reflected light (off a page), because the Paperwhite is not backlit. There's a diffuser sheet on top of the screen, and the built-in light reflects off the e-ink display the same as room light does.

Re:Disappearance of E-Ink

[mark-t]

The problem isn't backlighting, per se... it has to do with the difference between how bright what you are looking at is lit compared to ambient lighting... the pupils in your eyes adjust according to how much light they are receiving, and if what you are looking at is too much more brightly lit than your surroundings, it's going to feel like you are reading while staring into a flashlight. If, however (mostly because of limitations in most current backlit display technologies), the display is not brightly lit, then there will not be enough contrast on the display to actually read it. LCD readers which try to adjust their brightness dynamically based on surrounding lighting might mitigate this to a certain extent, but they are still only usable within a relatively narrow range of lighting conditions compared to what conditions a person could comfortably read a book in.

Re:Disappearance of E-Ink

[harlows_monkeys]

No, the Paperwhite readers (and Kobo Glo) use frontlighting not backlighting. Much less eye-strain, and one research study suggests less disruptive to sleep when used in the evening.

My Kindle Paperwhite is much less disruptive to sleep than my iPad, but it has nothing to do with the lighting. It has to do with the weight. The iPad is heavy enough that falling asleep and dropping it on my face hurts enough to wake me up. The Kindle is light enough that I can take one to the face and keep sleeping.

Sure...

[Mashiki]

Because they're charging the same price as a paperback, or hardcover, sometimes even more.

Re:Sure...

[hawguy]

Because they're charging the same price as a paperback, or hardcover, sometimes even more.

And eBooks typically cost more than twice the price of used paperbacks. And I can give the paperback to someone else after I'm done or sell it again for a couple dollars so it's even cheaper.

I really like my Kindle (the paperwhite with backlight is great for reading in bed without disturbing my partner - better than the clip-on book light) and prefer reading on the Kindle over reading paper books, but not so much that i'll pay twice what it costs to have a used book delivered to my door. My kindle to paper book ratio is about 3:1 -- lately I've only been buying Kindle books when I travel.

I know the publishing industry says they can't sell eBooks any cheaper, so they will continue to get very little money from me as I stick with used books.

Re:Sure...

[laura20]

Yup. They are greedy; they want all that sweet extra crash - and despite the attempts of people to mau mau the numbers to convince the naive that ebooks cost as much for the producers as paper books, it's simply not true. The fact they don't have to factor in the risk cost of returns alone makes them vastly cheaper, even before considering materials costs and storage and transportation costs.

I'm simply not going to pay hardback prices for an ebook, and I suspect there are plenty of others who feel the same way.

Re:Sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

$1 per book once it hits paperback, and you'll see ebooks rocket, ereaders become the next big thing, and therefore, people will be lapping up cheap content. Spending $15 on a book that's available for less in a B&M store puts people off. Maybe a buck is too low, perhaps $3 will be a sweet spot. There's too much shit available from self-published wannabies right now. Proper books will still sell on paper, a lot of us prefer the media, but there's a whole planet of people that will buy books. Once they've committed to some hardware, whether that's a kindle of other e-ink device doesn't matter, they'll be looking to load it up.

Publishers need to face reality, their wares will make a lot more money for them and the authors, once e-books aren't a total and complete fucking rip-off.

Re:Sure...

[ideonexus]

This.

Why should I pay $9.99 for an ebook that can be taken away from me anytime Amazon wants, can't be lent out or given away, and can't be resold? When I buy a real book, it's an investment. I can resell it, donate it to my local library, or buy other real books from used book sellers for $0.99. My wife's grandmother just passed away, and her family let me take a wealth of old books from her collection. All the money she spent on those books over her lifetime has transferred to her children and grandchildren. When I die, the hundreds--maybe thousands--of dollars spent on my ebook collection dies with me.

I love my kindle. I love reading ebooks. I love highlighting, clipping, and making notes in them, but there's a very tough tradeoff here. Real books are a material investment, ebooks are ephemeral.

Same price ?

[PIBM]

You pay the same price, but then you can't lend them easily to your friends or resell them, you can't rent them from the local library, depending on the device used, annotating or marking the pages is not effective and can't easily be shared between two people reading the same book at the same time (keep slowly browsing through to get to the current page), and you need to have that device charged up (more or less a problem depending on the device type). Beside having it instantly and the lighting on the kindle paperwhite / kobo glow for night reading, there's not much to like :(

More buck for the bang?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Perhaps it may have to do something with the price fixing scandal?

(I love it when publishers tell the public that e-books can't get cheaper because paper isn't actually that much of an expense and people need to get paid for the work, while the authors and translators are told in private that they can't get paid more because "paper and the printer shop costs too much".)

Re:More buck for the bang?

[jkonrath]

From http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-costs.html (Slightly old)...
Based on a list price of $27.95
- $3.55 - Pre-preduction - This amount covers editors, graphic designers, and the like
- $2.83 - Printing - Ink, glue, paper, etc
- $2.00 - Marketing - Book tour, NYT Book Review ad, printing and shipping galleys to journalists
- $2.80 - Wholesaler - The take of the middlemen who handle distribution for publishers
- $4.19 - Author Royalties - A bestseller like Grisham will net about 15% in royalties, lesser known authors get less. Subtract the author's agent fees and self-employment taxes from that, too.
- $12.58 - profit for the retailer.

In the case of an ebook, you're removing the $2.83 in printing.

You might be removing some of the wholesaling cost, but you might be using Ingram to do your wholesaling if you're a big company. If you're self-publishing, you might be using something like BookBaby or Smashwords. Yes, you can go to KDP and register your own book yourself, but if you're selling in multiple places or selling multiple books, you're going to use a middle-man to handle cataloging, recordkeeping, and listing things in multiple places. If it's more than $2.80 in headaches, you use a distributor.

Marketing, pre-production, royalties all don't change. (Or they get squeezed, and you get exactly what's going on right now, which is authors complaining "they don't pay us or market us or do a good job editing us like the good old days.")

As for that $12.58 of supposed profit, here's the interesting thing - Amazon doesn't sell books at list price. John Grisham's new book, The Racketeer, is an example. List price: $28.95. Yours for only $19.81 in paper.

I'm not saying that ebook prices should be equal to the price of a printed book, but removing the printing doesn't suddenly make a book cost a dollar or even five dollars.

Apple

[jbolden]

Something not mentioned was Apple pushing the price of ebooks up often by 25%. In general the main reason I haven't switched is that from Amazon used I frequently can get print books much cheaper than the corresponding ebooks. At the time ebooks were surging ebook prices were crashing and there was a huge difference between the ebook and the printed book price. Perhaps, not unreasonably, many people prefer printed books and given a high ebook price there weren't be a cut over.

Economics -- a pricing failure

[coats]

With paperbacks, my typical behavior is to buy the book, read it, and then donate it to charity (at a retail used-book valuation) for a tax write-off. Given my marginal tax rate (state and federal combined), the net cost of the book is about 65% of face-value.

With E-books, I can't do that "donate to charity", so the face-value is the net cost, which seems to be about 10% under the paperback price.

E-book prices need to come down by at least 25% in order to become economically competitive for me.

Re:Economics -- a pricing failure

[Princeofcups]

E-book prices need to come down by at least 25% in order to become economically competitive for me.

Except publishers do not want to sell e-books. Let me rephrase that. Publishers want to price e-books so high that people continue to buy paper books. Why? That's their business. They cannot conceive of a business with different distribution channels. The collusion between publishers was not to make more money off of e-books. It was to make sure that the prices are so high that it will not eat into their traditional sales. Something will come along to change the business, but not until a few rich fucks die or are bought out.

Re:eBooks are an easy sell to the uninformed

[DerekLyons]

60% of the cost of publishing a traditional best selling dead-wood book is printing and distribution.

[[Citation Needed.]] Seriously, every reputable analysis I've ever seen (like this one from Money magazine) places that figure much lower.