
E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead - sinak
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/business/media/the-plot-twist-e-book-sales-slip-and-print-is-far-from-dead.html?
======
TheGRS
I hope this isn't the trend going forward. I don't get the traditionalist love
of paperback books most of the time. Like the sort of people who go on and on
about exploring book stores or the smell of new paper. I love my Kindle and I
really hope to be able to use it as my primary reading source, its just so
convenient, light, portable and unobtrusive (especially with that newer back-
light option).

But the price of new ebooks turns me off for sure, I wouldn't buy a new novel
for $20+, in ebook, hardcover, paperback or ever really. $10 is the sweet spot
for novels and I think Amazon was driving that well for awhile. I'll stick to
older novels that are < $10.

Let me also state that paper really does have its merits, at least for now
until some smart tablet engineers can solve some problems with the format. I
love a comic book as paperback, but that is because I don't think tablets or
even color e-ink has quite gotten there yet. I also think technical reference
books (like programming guides) are best served in paper. Again, I don't think
its easy to flip through pages on a tablet or kindle, but maybe that will be
solved some day too.

~~~
Nav_Panel
I hold fairly different opinions, though I agree that digital reading sources
can make sense for completely new books read for pleasure.

As a longtime physical product, paper has a lot of benefits. My dad can give
me a book he read in college, just grab it off the shelf. I can go buy books
extremely cheaply secondhand, sometimes free. I can't imagine paying $10 for
an ebook when I can go to a used bookstore and pay $3, and then I own it
forever. Additionally, once I own it I can share it, give it away, write in
the margins, dog-ear pages, leave post-it notes, etc. I also can't imagine a
world where 20 years later I can trivially give my old Kindle eBooks to my
children.

On the other hand, I much prefer having searchable digital technical reference
books. I find the flipping and index/table-of-contents referencing to be very
"immersion-breaking" when I'm programming. For example, it's much quicker and
easier to Ctrl+F for "XCHG" than it is to dig through the intimidating multi-
thousand page Intel x86 Instruction Reference. When I was taking an OS course,
I had to do this all the time, and I much preferred the pdf reference over the
physical one.

~~~
pasbesoin
Additionally, human beings depend strongly upon spatial orientation. Printed
materials dovetail with this. Many recount being able to recall information in
part based upon its location within a printed text. IIRC, there was... I think
it was a lengthy New Yorker piece, a number of years ago, that went into this.
Including the "messy" professor's/researcher's office, until one has a
conversation there with them and observes them quickly referencing all sorts
of material based upon where they place it -- throughout the office and within
specific piles.

I wonder whether VR technology will enable us to better engage this in the
digital landscape.

~~~
snogglethorpe
For many words, I actually remember the location on the page, and the page's
location in the book, and the book, where I first learned it! [I usually don't
remember the exact page number, but some sort of general sense of the position
in the book.]

With a kindle book, I've found this effect to be much weaker, and for unpaged
ebooks (e.g. many free books in html form), it's almost non-existant.

It's important to me, at least, because this effect is one way I manage to
recall the meaning of words I only half-remember. Maybe it sounds weird, but I
think of the general concept I'm trying to remember, then the image of the
page floats into view, and ... ok maybe it is weird. ><

~~~
douche
I do the exact same thing. Glad I'm not the only one with a strongly visual
memory that works that way.

Incidentally, this may be one advantage of PDFs over other formats.
Responsiveness be damned, deterministic paging is also an important book
property.

------
ilamont
Small publisher here. I believe Ebook sales have been generally flat or
declining for many titles for the following reasons:

* Pricing issues

* Huge influx of new/republished titles entering ebook distribution channels are outpacing demand, including many free or low-cost self-published titles

* Kindle Fire sales negatively impacting ebook reading habits encourages people to do other things besides read (video, apps, games, etc.)

* Decline of marketplaces/platforms that are unable to compete, e.g. Nook, Sony.

* Subscription plans (especially Kindle Unlimited) eating away at paid digital downloads.

* Some people prefer print

Many established publishers are still focused on print because that’s where
the sales are and that’s where they still wield considerable power. For the
short technology guides I publish, print accounts for 70-80% of sales. Certain
ebook marketplaces that _could_ be doing well (Apple iBookstore, Google Play)
have really stagnated, unfortunately.

~~~
DannoHung
As an ebook consumer, the single biggest reason I don't buy more ebooks is
because I have to spend time and energy figuring out if the ebook has DRM or
if I can remove the DRM afterwards.

Also, I spend time thinking about the fact that if I ever move to Kindle, any
epubs I have won't work regardless of DRM.

I can't speak for other readers, but this is why I don't buy or read books as
much as I used to. And I used to read a lot of books.

~~~
iak8god
> if I ever move to Kindle, any epubs I have won't work regardless of DRM.

I've frequently used Calibre ([http://calibre-ebook.com](http://calibre-
ebook.com)) to convert epub to mobi. There are also plugins available for it
that strip DRM, though I can't vouch for them.

~~~
woodbrandon
Amazon also supplies
KindleGen([http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211](http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211))
to convert epub to mobi

~~~
iak8god
Neat, but weird that they don't offer it as a service through their site... or
do they?

~~~
lfowles
You can email documents to a specific email address tied to your kindle
account and they will be converted.

------
hullo
Buried paragraph at the end of the article that discounts the entire piece (as
a piece about _readers_ rather than as a piece about _publishers_ ):

"It is also possible that a growing number of people are still buying and
reading e-books, just not from traditional publishers. The declining e-book
sales reported by publishers do not account for the millions of readers who
have migrated to cheap and plentiful self-published e-books, which often cost
less than a dollar."

~~~
hga
Indeed; in other recent (last month or so) reports that others have mentioned
in blog postings, indie e-book sales are skyrocketing. Anecdotally, a number
of indie authors are reporting healthy and increasing sales.

And of course after the big five (and I suppose others) renegotiated their
contracts with Amazon to agency pricing, to raise e-book prices above $10,
often more than paperbacks and sometimes more than hardbacks (see other
comments in this topic to that effect), their e-book sales, unit and revenue,
took a substantial hit.

------
helipad
I've been really disappointed with the pricing of eBooks.

A new book is available for pre-order, and here is the Amazon pricing:

Kindle – $26.35 Hardcover – $19.23 Audible – $27.61 Audio CD – $30.00

All logic suggests the electronic version should be cheaper. Prices like this
will likely drive me, and others, to piracy.

Yes, the value of the book is what I am willing to pay for it, but I feel
insulted by the pricing structure offered time and again.

~~~
jonknee
Turns out Amazon knew what they were doing when they were selling ebooks for
cheaper. The publishers come in with agency pricing and boom, sales plummet.

~~~
xlm1717
This is what is really frustrating about the article. It spends the entire
first half boosting print books like there is something magical about them
that prevents them from being disrupted like movies and TV were.

>E-books’ declining popularity may signal that publishing, while not immune to
technological upheaval, will weather the tidal wave of digital technology
better than other forms of media, like music and television.

And only until near the end of the article does it reveal the actual reason
why print is far from dead.

>Higher e-book prices may also be driving readers back to paper.

The publishers put print books on life support by artificially inflating the
prices of e-books. They are just delaying the inevitable in my opinion.

~~~
coliveira
There is in fact something magical about printed books :-) Well, not magic,
but books are not just the medium of data transfer, they are also integral
part of the reading experience. This is unlike music, where it doesn't matter
if you're playing the content from a CD or transferring it over the network.
The feeling of reading a book will always be different from using a reading
device, it doesn't matter how to great the device is. Once the novelty of
e-readers wears off, you will start to see a steady-state of sales on paper
and other media for books. It seems that it is already happening. I, for
example, read books in printed as well as electronic forms. I use e-readers
for the convenience, but there are some types of books that don't work in
electronic format in my personal opinion - and I think there are lots of
people like me.

------
PLenz
To me, this is the best news I've heard all day.

See, used books made me - my local library as a kid was heavy on Nancy Drew
and Hardy Boys, and decades-old travel guides, not so much on other subjects.
I very distinctly remember wanting to find Catch-22 and not only was it not
available from my local, it wasn't available at any library in the county.

But used book stores didn't have that problem. I found my copy of Catch-22 in
the back of a Goodwill store. Tolkien came out of a Salvation Army. Scores
more came from library sales and yard sales, each a quarter or a dollar at a
time.

~~~
TheGRS
Much of these books you can borrow for free on your kindle from a library
though.

~~~
bduerst
Unfortunately you still have to physically go to the library to get them sent
to your kindle. It's almost worth $5-10 to me to not have to do that.

Edit: I think I need to have a chat with my library.

~~~
panzagl
No you don't, at least not universally. I get mine sent to me, I think most
libraries use the same system (Overdrive).

------
grishas
One word: price. E-book prices have soared! Almost everything on Amazon is
over $10 these days.

They're often going for more than the paperback price, and certainly more than
the prices you'd find at a discount bookseller.

~~~
FranOntanaya
I imagine the ebook is the one both providing greater value, and having a
harder time competing for production resources -- while paper may be
overcapacity now.

~~~
JupiterMoon
Clearly the ebook is not providing greater value if demand is slack compared
to paper books..

------
Booktrope
More bad information about the publishing business from the NY Times. Ebook
sales aren't declining generally; it's big publisher ebook sales that are
declining. Ebook sales for self-pubbed authors and indie publishers are
growing rapidly. If you have any doubts about this, check out the
authorearnings.com website, which tracks sales of ebooks on Amazon and other
platforms.

Buried in the article is information from Amazon that ebook sales are
continuing to rise. But this article isn't about ebook sales -- it's about big
publisher ebook sales.

The article also says that dedicated ebook reader sales have declined. This is
true but not because of a shift away from ebooks. It's that ebook reading is
shifting to tablets and phones, a trend that is widely recognized in the
industry, but not in this article.

The reason that big publishers (and some smaller publishers following the
traditional model) are losing ebook sales is that, in the big Hachette -
Amazon dustup last year, the big publishers won the ability to keep ebook
prices ridiculously high and to prevent discounting by Amazon. So big
publishers routinely price ebooks about the same or higher than paperbacks. Of
course their ebook sales are suffering! But self-pubbed and indie publisher
books are priced much lower than print books, and are of course gaining market
share very quickly.

The NY Times reports on publishing are all biased toward big traditional
publishers - after all, that's essentially what the Times is. (To the Times'
credit, they have a public editor who critiques their stories, and the public
editor has said that the last two major stories in the Times about Amazon
failed to meet journalistic standards.) They ignore information like what's on
authorearnings.com because they're trying to get people to believe there's a
trend away from ebooks. There certainly are some people who decide what kind
of book to buy according to what they think the latest trend is. But if you're
looking for accurate information about the book business, don't expect it from
the Times.

~~~
bduerst
This is a misconception - it's like saying Hollywood is worried about Youtube
celebs.

There was an episode on "What's the point" (a 538 podcast) where book
publishers talked about how they use data in their industry. Publishers are
primarily interested in cultivating "star" authors and use social media + a
number of other signals to find them.

They were asked about it and basically said that the hostility between
publishers and self-published authors is only perceived, and in reality the
self-publishing makes it easier to find the star authors and pick them up.

------
jstx
Is this surprising when you are charged similarly for print and digital copies
despite the production costs being nowhere near the same? Ebooks were supposed
to be the cost effective, cut out the middlemen, pay the author directly
format.

What wasn't accounted for was that the book indexers have no incentive to pass
on their savings to the consumer.

edit: Let's not forget the artificial restrictions imposed by DRM, either. How
difficult is it to share a digital book vs physical?

~~~
ghaff
The production costs are probably not as different as you think. The variable
cost of a hardcover book is in the neighborhood of a few dollars though the
exact figure depends on the size of the print run and some of the costs are
buried in the cut a distributor usually takes. (As a benchmark, an author-
ordered PoD copy of my ~250 page trade paperback from Createspace costs $3.75
before shipping.)

So e-books should be cheaper than physical books, all other things being
equal, but the cost difference isn't as much as many assume.

~~~
_delirium
Publishers aren't that forthcoming on costs, but for large-print-run, mass-
market paperbacks, numbers I've heard thrown about are a cost of less than
$0.50/book. So I wouldn't expect much savings from going digital. Similar
situation to software: the move from boxed software to digitally delivered
software didn't make it any cheaper, because the cost of the box and CD-ROM
was not really a significant part of the price.

------
acd
Sometime I wonder what the markering sales tag lines would be if the book was
released after the e-book.

Zero battery usage. Spill friendly throw it away. Environmentally friendly
fully recycable without ewaste. High contrast

If the price is similar, why go ebook unless you need it delivered right now?
Ebook has an advantage of of library in your pocket, zero delivery time.

~~~
mkaziz
That's outweighed by the fact that I don't own the ebook in the same way I own
the book. The book is mine to keep, loan, rent, throw away, donate, etc, in a
way that's not governed by esoteric license agreements.

I can wait 2 days for that. If you can't wait, consider that if you buy a
print book from Amazon that has an ebook available, Amazon will let you read
the beginning of the book on your kindle app/device, until the paper book
ships in.

------
arjn
Physical books still trump e-books for me, though I use both.

There is something nicer about a physical book which my e-reader is not able
to replicate or replace.

------
ChrisLTD
I only buy ebooks these days. I love having access to the same material on any
device without needing more bookshelves in my small apartment. However, I wish
I didn't have to pay a premium for that convenience. I certainly cringe
whenever I see a paperback price that's $2-3 cheaper than the ebook. I try not
to even look at the used price.

~~~
Evenjos
Indie authors usually charge less.

------
15charlimit
I only buy physical books in "collector grade" hardcover form anymore, and
those are very few and far between and mainly for display.

It's infinitely more convenient to do 99% of normal reading on an e-reader.
The recent surge in ebook pricing from amazon/etc does nothing but drive me to
other (cheaper) forms of entertainment/leisure. I'm not spending $25 on an
ebook, I don't care if it's by a NY Times Bestselling Author.

$9.99 is comfortably within the "impulse purchase" range and still provides an
enormous margin over cost of production/distribution. $20+ is well outside the
"impulse purchase" range for an intangible product like an ebook.

Not to mention that a "free" copy is literally 20 seconds and a few clicks
away.

------
chestnut-tree
E-ink readers are small and suited mostly to black-and-white paperback-sized
novels or non-fiction. That still leaves an enormous number of books (perhaps
the majority) that don't fit the paperback size such as illustrated children's
book, or oversized books or...anything with a non-standard layout or larger
than paperback-size. Plus, the lack of colour in e-ink readers remains a
severe limitation.

E-books have taken their place alongside print but I don't think many people
expected them to displace print books. Certainly not with the current crop of
e-readers.

------
aetherson
While lots of people are pointing to pricing as the reason for this decline,
and that's obviously a big factor, I think you also have to look at the
decline of the tablet here.

Phones just don't produce a really great reading experience. Actual computers
are obviously never going to be a big market. Dedicated e-readers probably
don't make sense to people who aren't voracious readers. And tablets are
increasingly being squeezed out of the market.

~~~
petra
>> Phones just don't produce a really great reading experience.

If i'm not mistaken, the kindle is 6".Many phone are 5.5" or 5" which isn't
that different - especially with the fact you can control the zoom.

~~~
FireBeyond
If I'm reading a book, I don't want to be zooming in and out. It's a pain to
hold a phone one handed in a way that also promotes easy page turning without
accidental page turning. Reading in bed while my partner sleeps is also a lot
less intrusive on my Kindle than my phone (which annoys me too, as unless
overridden, the brightness will be far too much in a dark room).

I love my iPhone/iPad. But they don't compare to the Kindle for reading
experience, at least for me. I just wish color eInk would get here already.

------
DanBC
One problem this article doesn't talk about is that people who get rejected
from every publishing house (or who don't bother sending to traditional
publishers) can now just throw their book on Amazon.

Ploughing through the slush pile was never seen as a fun job, so it's weird
that the stuff in that pile is now being sold.
[http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/may/23/thesh...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/may/23/theshockingtruthaboutthes)

There's no sensible way for me to find decent new content, so I stick to
authors I already know (until they put out a duff book, where I drop them) or
I read things like One Story which has let me discover some amazing writers.
(eg Caitlin Horrocks [http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Is-Not-Your-
City/dp/1932511911](http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Is-Not-Your-
City/dp/1932511911) )

[https://www.one-story.com/](https://www.one-story.com/)

~~~
Evenjos
Although any moron can self-publish a book, the serious ones stand apart with
professional book covers and blurbs, marketing, and multiple novels.

The ones who "trend" well often get picked up by traditional publishers or
movie studios (as was the case with Andy Weir's "The Martian.")

The traditional publishing industry consists of trend-chasers, not trend-
setters.

So yes, the self-publishing world is full of raw sewage, but there are some
diamonds and gems in that sewage--and they usually look shiny, with
endorsements and professional covers.

------
habosa
I don't know my own reasoning, but I am part of this trend. I have owned every
Kindle model from the very first up until the paperwhite. There were about 3
or 4 years where I did not read paper books. But recently I have gone to
paper-only, and my Kindle sits uncharged. I can think of a few things I like
about paper books (although I still love the Kindle):

    
    
      * Bookstores are awesome and getting a recommendation from an employee is much better than browsing Amazon.
      * Used books are cheap!  A used paperback is often cheaper than an eBook.
      * With paper I have sense of progress as I feel the right half of the book shrink as I read.
      * I can easily lend a friend a paper book, I have shared many books with people recently but with the Kindle they had to buy their own.
    

However I still think the Kindle paperwhite is one of the best single-purpose
electronic devices ever (rivaling the iPod Classics). Amazing screen,
lightweight, fairly cheap, etc. It's just made to read with, unlike an iPad or
a laptop.

------
ionised
I've got a Kindle Paperwhite which I've used every so often but I still prefer
'wads of dead tree' books. I bought it thinking 'hey this is the future!' and
expecting myself to get a lot of use out of it but I just haven't really. Last
five books I've read have been physical copies. The only use I really get out
of it now is if I want something on short notice and am not willing to wait
for a physical delivery, which isn't often.

People cite the storage space of e-books as a plus for using them over paper
books, so you can have lots of books when you're on the move. I've never
understood this though. When I'm commuting to work, or travelling on a plane
or something, how likely is it I'm going to read two or more books in one
sitting?

I can see it if you need lots of technical texts at hand for reference or
something, but most people use e-books to read novels and I don't understand
why you need your entire library of novels at your fingertips while you take
the train 40 minutes to another town. You're not going to read two or more
books in that travel time.

If I'm sitting at home I will _always_ prefer a hard copy of whatever I'm
reading. In spite of how awesome people claim e-ink to be now I still find it
much easier and more relaxing to read from paper, especially if it's a
technical manual. Perhaps it's because I'm staring at computer screens all day
at work, and when I program at home or play games. The last thing I want when
reading for pleasure and to relax is to stare down at another screen.

Plus there is something meditative in the act of reading from a physical copy
that I just don't get from an electronic device.

Then there is the issue of DRM which I am against in forms, and the dumb
prices that are charged for e-books.

------
artumi-richard
One thing I've noticed since using an e-reader that I've not heard anyone else
mention, is that I've become far less happy with the quality of print and the
quality of the paper in the physical books I'm buying. I once read a book [1]
that had unusually high quality paper which made it noticeably denser and the
pages had more flex in them, which made one handed reading a doddle. It wasn't
flawless, as the print would smudge if I rubbed my slightly moist fingers
against it.

Still, every time I go to a book now I'm usually thinking "the type is too
large" or "that font is awful" or "the paper is too thick".

I think it's time the industry had another look at how paperbacks in
particular should look and feel, given the influence of the e-reader.

1: [http://www.amazon.com/Unreliable-Sources-20th-Century-
Report...](http://www.amazon.com/Unreliable-Sources-20th-Century-
Reported/dp/0330435639/)

------
JupiterMoon
Multiple reasons why as a keen reader (a whale to the print publishing
industry) I don't use ebooks.

\- DRM: When I pay for a book I want it on _any_ of _my_ devices _my whole
life_ and I don't want to have to strip some crappy DRM first.

\- price: I can't justify how much more ebooks cost.

\- battery life: I get bored having to keep my existing devices charged I
don't need another one to keep charged.

\- First sale: one has the right to lend physical books to friends and family,
to me this social aspect is part of the reading experience.

\- Tracking: I like that I can buy a book for cash and no one counts how many
pages I read and when I read it. Books are partly about intellectual freedom
and tracking is the enemy of intellectual freedom.

\- Difficult to keep my place: For technical books I can look stuff up in
books I know based upon rough location very quickly. E-reader devicies (in my
opinion) need more skeumorphism.

------
user_666
The NYTimes misinterpreted the AAP data it reported: [http://the-digital-
reader.com/2015/09/23/nytimes-mistakes-le...](http://the-digital-
reader.com/2015/09/23/nytimes-mistakes-legacy-publishing-stats-for-market-
stats-foresees-the-decline-of-ebooks/)

A more complete look at the ebook market paints a very different picture:
[http://fortune.com/2015/09/24/ebook-
sales/](http://fortune.com/2015/09/24/ebook-sales/)
[https://stratechery.com/2015/are-ebooks-declining-or-just-
th...](https://stratechery.com/2015/are-ebooks-declining-or-just-the-
publishers-oyster-goes-out-of-business-media-notes/)

------
deegles
What's the current law regarding resale of ebooks? Do I "own" them or am I
merely licensing them?

~~~
InclinedPlane
You do not own them.

------
cyanbane
It's definitely the price of ebooks. I started purchasing tangible books again
in the last six months. They end up being almost always the same price as the
ebook on Amazon, so I just donate the book to the public library when I am
done with it.

------
facepalm
Could it just be the increased prices publishers forced on Amazon/ebooks? If a
hardcover books costs the same as the ebook, I am also tempted to buy the
hardcover.

The thinking is that I can sell it once i have read it, but I tend to forget
about the hassles associated with physical stuff. The ebook would still be the
better choice for me, but human psyche is too easily fooled.

Anyway, I expect that to be just a temporary "victory" for hardcover books.

I also seem to remember William Gibson tweet that the losses in ebook sales
are mainly in young readers who can't afford the pricier versions, but I have
no source for that.

So maybe both ebook and hardcover will simply lose out to YouTube.

------
nhebb
One of the reasons that I don't buy more e-books is because my Kindle's
battery charge is often depleted. Somewhere along the line, Amazon changed
airplane mode such that ads are still displayed all the time.

I haven't been an avid reader for the last year or two, and when I do get the
urge, I pick up my Kindle only to find the battery is dead. While it's
charging, I find something else to do. By the time I get the urge to read
again, the battery is depleted again.

When you're an avid reader who remembers to charge his device regularly, the
Kindle is great. When you're an intermittent reader, it just another
electronic brick.

------
WalterBright
I actually prefer to read scanned paperbacks on my ereader rather than the
ebook versions. With my Samsung tablet they are the same size as a paperback,
and the display looks like a paperback page. I like the typography, layout,
and general imperfections of a scanned page. The letters are all slightly
different, and are imperfectly placed. Ebooks are a bit too perfect and
sterile.

I'd like to take it a step further and have the background be a scanned blank
page, again so it looks a bit imperfect like paper does.

I buy the paperbacks, scan them (takes 5-10 minutes), then throw the book into
the recycle bin.

~~~
knight17
How can you scan a paperback book in 10 minutes?

Curious about the kind of hardware-software set up that allows to do that in
10 minutes

~~~
WalterBright
Cut off the binding and use a sheet feeding scanner. Turning the pages
sideways runs them through twice as fast.

------
uhtred
This for me is good news. I love reading printed books. If it's a novel, then
I enjoy being able to relax, away from an electronic screen, and go into
another world for a time. I also love the feel and smell of books, and the
cover art work. And browsing a book store to find my next read is, for me,
much more of a pleasure than browsing Amazon. Also, there's something nice
about a well filled bookshelf, and nosing through someone else's gives you a
great sense of who that person is.

------
macjohnmcc
I am not surprised. I wanted to buy a book and found the physical book price
was $39 but I could get it used for about $8. The ebook was $28. Even without
the used price option I would have rather had the physical book for the price
difference between $39 and $28.

Ebooks would be more worthwhile to me at the current prices IF you could get
updated versions of the book (errata not new content).

------
panzagl
For me a lot of the slow down has to do with how transparent it has made the
publisher price model. I can buy a new book today for $15.00, wait a year and
get it for $10, or wait longer and maybe get it for $5, if I haven't gotten it
out of the library by then. Publishers want to tax me for my impatience, and
I'm not going to fall for it.

~~~
douche
The same thing is trashing the indie video game market on PC. Why buy a full-
price game (unless you absolutely must have it now), when you can keep your
ears open and snag it for pennies on a Humble Bundle deal, or at 10-25% on a
Steam sale?

------
magic_beans
When I'm 85 I'll still be able to open a book I bought in 2012 and read it.

Text on paper ain't never changing file format.

~~~
Turing_Machine
EPUB is HTML, and that's not going anywhere, either.

~~~
36erhefg
Op is talking about time-spans longer than we've had the internet. Don't
flatter yourself by thinking you can predict the future.

( Ironically, neither Firefox nor Opera opened a .epub file out-of-the-box. So
much for compatibility. )

~~~
Turing_Machine
HTML still isn't going anywhere. Not with trillions of pages, it isn't.

We can still read cuneiform writing, and that's been around considerably
longer.

"Ironically, neither Firefox nor Opera opened a .epub file out-of-the-box. So
much for compatibility. "

An EPUB is a collection of ZIPed HTML files. Change the extension to .ZIP,
unzip, open.

ZIP isn't going anywhere, either.

~~~
36erhefg
You are taking a strawman position. Take a look at the bigger picture, my
other comment, and reevaluate.

------
xbmcuser

      Big 5 publishers eBook sales have declined becuase of agency pricing. Overall eBook sales have not declined.

------
dunham
A recent WSJ article suggests that the recent price increases in ebooks have
caused both the drop in sales of ebooks and a drop in overall revenue for the
publishers.

    
    
        http://www.wsj.com/articles/e-book-sales-weaken-amid-higher-prices-1441307826

------
Havoc
If they priced the e-books a bit more reasonably then they'd sell more.

~~~
visarga
I'd be willing to pay 10 bucks for a thousand page views of any books from
Google Books (not all from a single book). I like to dig around. A page view
should count as a page where I spent more than 5 seconds. What counts for me
most is the full text search with highlight capability, and of course, the
sheer number of books they have in there.

A single book should be much cheaper. I see ebooks priced at 100 bucks in the
Google Books store.

~~~
Havoc
To be honest the paying per page view somehow rubs me the wrong way. It'll
make me think about cost whilst enjoying the book which I don't want.

I just want a reasonable price. e.g. I bought a book today. 10 GBP for paper.
5 for ebook. Thats pretty reasonable. Still good money but acknowledges that
the real life costs are much lower. If its like 3% cheaper then thats just
devoid of any link to real costs.

------
sebular
This article just feels irrelevant and completely out of touch. As many people
have pointed out here, e-books are insanely popular, just not necessarily
through the traditional distributors.

Personally, I also believe that there's only one reason why the paper book
isn't far less popular than it is, and it's entirely temporary.

Get out of the tech-minded echo chamber and ask a person why they would still
buy a paper book when they could buy an e-book, and they'll pretty much only
respond with "paper books just feel right to me".

The problem is completely unrelated to pricing. Since the beginning of time,
people have comfortably navigated the sliding price structure of books. Some
people want to buy the next Hunger Games on day 1, and they pay $39.99 to buy
the hardcover and find out what happens to Katniss. Some people wait until the
hype dies down. Some people borrow from a friend, and yes, some people still
go to the library. And those exact same rules apply to e-books.

The entire conversation just reeks of idiocy and a bunch of industry
coalitions blindly grasping around for places to point fingers because they
apparently are overlooking the simple thing that everybody constantly says.
I've already said it, but I'll say it again:

"Paper books just feel right to me."

Steve Jobs had a beautiful intuition about peoples' relationships with
technology. It was a skill that's so painfully rare that he's still known as
basically the only guy capable of figuring out what would make an advanced
piece of technology attractive to an average person. Sadly, he was completely
wrong about the iPad being an acceptable replacement for a book, and I feel
like many people are continuing to follow him down the wrong path.

This has nothing to do with distribution and pricing. It has nothing to do
with the cost of manufacturing an e-book being far less than a paper book.
People still pay tons of money for games on Steam.

The single problem is that e-readers aren't good. They're garbage. That's it.
Amazon is the clear leader, but it's not good enough. For anyone who wants to
dominate the e-reader industry, here's your free advice:

1\. Make an e-reader with a beautiful e-paper screen capable of displaying
full color.

2\. Make the screen refresh very quickly

3\. Give it sensible touch gestures that you never accidentally trigger, and
give it very useful physical buttons.

4\. Make sure it can do everything a book can do. Can you quickly thumb
through a 500 page novel on a kindle? Nope. Can you easily write something in
the margin? Nope. Can you bookmark your current reading position, and also
earmark a few other favorite spots in the book? Nope.

5\. Give it a non-tech appearance. Make the damn thing out of wood.

6\. Sell it in 3 sizes from day 1: The current standard paperback-ish size, as
well as a smaller smartphone-sized one, and finally a large one, like ~15
inches.

Aside from the challenges of building a better color e-paper screen with great
refresh, the others are just so obvious and so stupidly ignored. I'm actually
frustrated just writing this. Make the e-reader personal, make it a lovable
object. People will not stop throwing their money at this.

~~~
Nadya
_> 1\. Make an e-reader with a beautiful e-paper screen capable of displaying
full color._

Color drains battery life. Let this be a 2nd/3rd gen thing. Few books will
take advantage of full illustrations. _This, however, can be huge for children
's books_.

 _> 2\. Make the screen refresh very quickly_

From my hardly-ever-use of a few e-readers. Is this really a problem?

 _> 3\. Give it sensible touch gestures that you never accidentally trigger,
and give it very useful physical buttons._

Physical buttons are a dying out thing and a signal of you being part of an
older generation. ;) The people I speak to hate physical buttons. While I also
love actual, physical buttons, it's a dying fashion over touch.

 _> 4\. Make sure it can do everything a book can do. Can you quickly thumb
through a 500 page novel on a kindle? Nope. Can you easily write something in
the margin? Nope. Can you bookmark your current reading position, and also
earmark a few other favorite spots in the book? Nope._

This needs entirely specialized/new software. DRM also limits the usefulness
of such features. Adding a highlighting/favorites feature akin to Slack that
you can easily browse on a per-book level would be a huge jump forward.

 _> 5\. Give it a non-tech appearance. Make the damn thing out of wood._

People want flashy. Make it shiny, not wood-like. Even books aren't wood-like
tomes. Additional cases/skins/stickers are for personalization, not the form-
factor itself.

 _> 6\. Sell it in 3 sizes from day 1: The current standard paperback-ish
size, as well as a smaller smartphone-sized one, and finally a large one, like
~15 inches._

Two words: production costs. E-books and e-readers need to be popular before
this can be a thing. Or huge, risk-taking investments need to occur. Which is
unlikely.

~~~
FireBeyond
"Color drains battery life. Let this be a 2nd/3rd gen thing. Few books will
take advantage of full illustrations. This, however, can be huge for
children's books."

1 - aren't we past generation 1 of eBook readers? Color might drain battery
life more, but my Voyage gets well over 100 hours with Wifi off, even using
the adaptive backlight. How much more is needed?

------
InclinedPlane
There are three huge problems that e-books haven't solved, which has been
holding them back.

First, consumer surplus. (Read this if you haven't:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html))
Printed books use different editions and market availability to segment the
market and bring in a significant amount of consumer surplus revenue. e-books
have very weak mechanisms to capture consumer surplus, and that represents a
huge potential loss of revenue. In theory it might be possible to make that up
on the other end with higher volume (see, for example, steam sales and humble
bundles) but so far e-book sales models have been too constrained to enable
that to happen very often.

Second, commodity pricing. This is a big problem across the board in a lot of
media (games, movies, music, etc.) but e-books have just doubled down on the
same model. Books are not like dried beans, you don't just go to a store and
buy books by the pound, but that's the model the industry has increasingly
been rushing towards. With only popularity as the sole determinant of total
revenue. This is a massively flawed model that hurts many talented writers and
perverts the market in unhealthy ways.

Third, ownership. People with physical books can gift them to others, or sell
them, or loan them. They can let their friends, their children, their other
relatives, or their family's friends borrow them and read them. They are a
profound asset of learning and shared culture. An e-book, however, is still by
default a jealously guarded personal possession that cannot be easily loaned,
sold, gifted, or inherited. Given the importance of books, this is a profound
disadvantage of e-books.

Fourth, vendor lock-in. The average user experience with e-books represents a
substantial dependency on a particular corporation (such as Amazon). If, say,
Amazon went out of business it could be especially difficult to gain access to
ones Amazon purchased e-books. Imagine, for example, some sort of world-wide
disaster, and now there are no more new kindles, no more Amazon, etc. What
happens when your one device storing all your books finally dies? This is
similar to the ownership problem. Buying an e-book today is partly making a
bet that the company that sold you that e-book will be around for as long as
that book is relevant. Given the history of both corporations and of books,
that's actually not a very smart bet.

e-books have a lot of short-term advantages but they have a lot of long-term
disadvantages, at least as they exist today. That's not an intractable problem
but it's one that so far the big powers in the e-book world have been deaf to
hearing.

