
A Penny for Your Books - nols
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/magazine/a-penny-for-your-books.html?_r=0
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Mikeb85
> Ever since a university gave me a literature degree certifying that I have
> read Chaucer in the original Middle English, my taste in books has reverted
> to very specific, lowbrow stuff.

This implies Chaucer isn't lowbrow...

Edit - Anyhow, as for the rest of the article, it's an interesting look into
the trade of used books. I'm glad that people are given a chance to give these
books a second life and spare the landfill, and there definitely is something
comforting about reading from an actual paper book (I definitely prefer them
to digital). Maybe it's the sense of permanence, vs. bytes which are all too
easy to delete?

~~~
lexcorvus
Indeed, there's pretty much nothing bawdier in English literature than "The
Miller's Tale"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Miller%27s_Tale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Miller%27s_Tale)).
Some Shakespeare comes close, though. Which kind of proves your point.

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themartorana
I feel like this record has been played a lot. Pun intended.

Back in the day, horology went through the "quartz crisis" when quartz watches
entered the market. The pendulum swung back, and mechanical watches are
magnitudes more expensive and desirable than their quartz cousins.

Audio went through the same thing - digital replaced analog and became
exceedingly cheap. Now the good money is in vacuum tube amps; good record
players cost thousands, and people pine for the warmth of analog.

I imagine the same will happen here. Maybe not to the same degree... But that
penny analog book probably still costs several hundred times for the digital
download. E-books are a convenience and the way of the future. But purists
will always hold onto books, and rare books will become more and more
valuable. The dog-eared copy of Huck Finn that's worth $10 today will be worth
magnitudes tomorrow after the pendulum swings back.

Technology disrupts right up until people have a crisis of nostalgia, and
realize all isn't inconvenience in an analog world.

~~~
m52go
This is definitely happening in the collector car world, where the simpler,
lighter, manual gas-powered examples are being bid up in price dramatically as
porky, computerized, electric cars are introduced.

~~~
rtpg
Way off topic now, but I'm pretty sure that a Tesla's components (basically an
electric motor and some batteries) are way simpler than all the shenanigans
you need to turn explosions into spinning wheels.

Though I guess you're more referencing ICEs with more computerized control
systems..

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fpgaminer
What would the book market look like if there were some way to completely get
rid of used books (ignoring rare, collectors, etc books)? Would there be more
money in it, or is the market already earning as much as it's going to earn,
and the used books have no impact?

There is a rather large subset of society that consists of creatives, and for
the most part those cursed with creative passions tend to perform economically
poorly. I suspect that this is in part due to the selling of used creative
goods (music, books, movies, etc). Most importantly the concept of used books
may itself devalue the medium in people's minds. Much like what happened to
mobile apps; things that used to be several dollars or more on the desktop are
$0.99 on mobile. The idea of a $20 app is offensive to people. The idea of
spending full price on a book is also, perhaps, offensive to a large number of
people.

All that said, even if getting rid of used books was economically beneficial
to those writing the books, there still seems to be no practical way to
achieve it. So it's really just a thought experiment driven by hopeful desire
to help those around me who are more artistically inclined and suffering as a
result.

Perhaps the right solution is to come at it from a different angle.
Subscription services seem to be one solution that is working in the sense
that it gets those who normally pirate content to pony up for convenience.
Though that doesn't seem to translate into greater income for the content
creators...

~~~
thadjo
> Would there be more money in it, or is the market already earning as much as
> it's going to earn, and the used books have no impact?

This would have a pretty huge impact on the publishing industry. Traditional
publishers make a ton of money on their backlist – perennial best-sellers like
"Catcher in the Rye". These books are great for publishers because production
costs are covered and the cost of sale is low (no marketing, book ends, book
tours, etc..), and is part of the reason why legacy publishers like Penguin
Random House are still such strong companies.

Allowing publishers to completely control the market for these books (no
competition from used book sellers) would be hugely beneficial for them; it
would make their most lucrative titles even more so.

I'm a little surprised they don't try to do this. They could set up their own
used book operation so they can corner the market for their titles.

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thadjo
This is an under-appreciated strength of ebooks: they can't be resold.

With print books, publishers risk undermining their own inventory. The more
print books they sell, the more they fuel the used market, which drives down
prices. This is countervailing force to the typical upward price pressure of
high demand.

Not so with ebooks. Plus you don't have to cut down trees, stamp them with
poisonous dyes, and move them around with oil-sucking cargo ships,
frieghtliners, forklifts and such.

If only ebooks didn't suck so bad...

~~~
theatgrex
They can't be resold ... But They can be copied and transmitted for free

~~~
thadjo
This is true. My point was more about how publishers should value print as
opposed to ebooks. The value of a print sale is diminished to some extent by
it's fueling of the used market. So whatever a publisher values a print sale
should be discounted to some degree. The same is not true for ebooks. An
additional sale of an ebook does not discount the general price of ebooks.

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WalterBright
I'm waiting for the $9.99 ereader sold on a tab at the supermarket.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Amazon tablets are already at $50. We're almost there.

~~~
WalterBright
Although I already have ereaders, I couldn't resist (shakes fist at Amazon!)
ordering this one to see how good it is for $50.

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apryldelancey
I can't help it. I love books and have a huge collection. I used to have a
really bad habit of buying something almost weekly but have since recovered to
only go through buying spurts every 3-6 months. My dream is a house with a
massive built-in bookshelf. Sick? Maybe.

~~~
ChuckMcM
At one time I had plans for a 2,000 volume library in the basement. Basically
book cases on rails that you could stack all to one side or the other, each
capable of holding roughly 200 books. Books are really awesome.

These days I digitize them (or buy them pre-digitized if I can get them
without DRM). That is because a large portion of the books I buy and keep are
nominally "reference" works rather than fiction. The reading experience is
certainly different but with screens not horribly so and everything fits on a
couple of flash drives so no risk of having my library burn up or get buried
in an earthquake.

~~~
EvanAnderson
I'd love to hear about your digitization workflow. I have an enormous backlog
of books that would be much easier to read (more portable and available) if
they were digitized.

~~~
noonespecial
I use a hydraulic paper cutter at work to cut the spine off and then feed them
through a Fujitsu ScanSnap. It scans double-sided straight to PDF. It takes
about 10 minutes/book to create Hi-res color PDF's. The scanner is pretty
fast.

My archival format is this hi-res color PDF (sadly, I _like_ the yellowed
color of old pages and like to have that retained when reading on an iPad.)
These files are quite large (100 meg or so). Lucky enormous hard disks are
cheap.

For daily reading, I send the PDF's through an epub converter that turns them
to lower res, B&W epubs and then onto a Kindle Paperwhite.

I used to be bothered by the destruction of the book, but now its almost
spiritual. The book must go through the ritual and give up its corporeal form
so that it can live forever in my digital Valhalla.

~~~
kbutler
I like it. Thanks for sharing, and wish I had access to that setup. I spent
years trawling through used bookstores accumulating tons of books. Starting to
divest them now, though. Electronic is just so much more compact and easier...

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ggchappell
> In 2014, publishers sold just over 2.7 billion books domestically, ....

Estimating the U.S. population at 320 million, that's about 8.4 books per
person per year -- higher than I would have expected.

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GPGPU
I buy used books on Amazon frequently (about 5/month)--when the Kindle
version's price is too high or isn't available. It's a great deal and I've
rarely been disappointed.

