I want an ebook reader.
In an average week I read 2 books, 5 magazines and about 100,000 words on various websites, blogs and message boards. I like reading but I really hate carrying around all the books I want to read, especially when I’m traveling. With all the weight restrictions on planes nowadays, I’m lucky to fit a hardcover book into my carry-on for each business trip I take. And if the trip is cross country or overseas, I have to force myself to read slowly so I don’t finish the book before I land and be forced to listen to my seatmate snore in her sleep.
Note to lady in 32F, next time get a nasal strip or I will shove Cheetos up your nose.
Now, you may be wondering why I don’t just buy an ebook reader like the Kindle and be done with my Geekish whining. Well, I’ll tell you why I haven’t bought one yet; cost. Not the cost of the ebook reader, but the cost of the ebooks that I’d put onto the reader. Most ebooks cost anywhere from $5 to $15 each, which might seem reasonable at first glance, but I beg to differ. You see, where a physical book has inherent costs associated with its design, construction and distribution, an ebook has none of those same costs. There’s no reason why an ebook should cost as much as a physical paperback other than to prop up an outdated publishing business model that, due to the advent of the internet, is no longer relevant. If there’s no longer a physical book that needs to be designed, created, warehoused, shipped, stored and displayed then why are we still being asked to pay for those costs?
I don’t know.
What I do know is that at some point in the near future the current cost structure of contemporary publishing will fail, and a new structure will rise in its place. Hopefully one that is far more consumer oriented, perhaps similar to the iTunes structure of $.99 per song. Imagine how many more books you’d be willing to buy if they cost $.99 each. How often has someone said, “There’s this book I’m reading that I know you’d love.” But you never buy it because at $24.99 it’s not worth your money to find out if your friend was right? If you could buy the book for a dollar, right then and there when your friend mentioned it, would you hesitate?
I know I wouldn’t.
Or, how about a club-like, subscription structure? Imagine if Amazon opened up an iBrary where, for $14.99 a month ($100 a year), you could download and read all the books in their entire ebook catalog. If you let your subscription lapse then all the books are removed from your device. However, for an added fee of say $5, you could “own” that ebook and even if your subscription lapses it would remain on your ebook reader and/or backed up on your computer.
That sounds pretty good to me.
Unfortunately, right now ebooks are being treated like the proverbial red-headed step-child of the publishing world. I truly believe the publishing world is scared out of their collective minds about what ebooks might do to their businesses. Just last week Macmillan strong-armed Amazon into hiking the price of their e-books from around $10 to between $13 and $15 depending on the title. Why they think this is a good idea is beyond me, but it does make me hesitant to buy a Kindle or any ebook reader right now. Why spend the money on the reader and ebooks when buying paperbacks and/or used costs less? In fact, I defy any representative of any publishing house to explain to me why the cost of an ebook appears to need to be higher than the cost of a brand new physical hardcopy of a paperback book. How can it possibly cost more to upload a single file to a central database than it does to design, create and bind a physical book, store it in a warehouse, ship it and display it in a bookstore?
Until I have an answer, or until the price of ebooks become more realistic, I’m think I’m going to have to stick with paper.
I agree, but if you’re going to get one, get a Nook. At least you can lend books to others and read all the books you want for free when you’re sitting in a physical Barnes & Noble. Also, I don’t know if you can get all the free books from Google on the Kindle, but you can on the Nook.
I also want an ebook, but I don’t want to be tied to Amazon (Kindle), B&N (Nook), Borders (whenever they come out with one) or any other entity. I prefer to have the freedom to buy books, mags, whatever, from whomever, based on price, format, discounts…. Free (library) is better. Sony’s ereader seems to fit the bill for now. Asus, HP and the rumored Google tablet, Gpad, Gpad with wings may be just the ticket for your trips.
You really think it’s cheaper for publishers to make an e-book than a traditional hardcover or paperback? I’m not so sure when you factor in the company’s cost for the infrastructure to store and distribute the ebooks. For the normal person, storing some files as cheap but not so for company with thousands of authors and millions of books. I don’t think e-books should be that much cheaper than regular books because you are still paying for the intellectual properly of the author. The author still has to get paid, as well as the reseller and the publishing house. Amazon only wants to sell it cheaper to establish market share for the kindle. You mentioned iTunes selling songs for .99 cents but do you really want that for an ebook? I guess they could sell each chapter for .99 cents or the whole book for $15. Amazon’s approach is that you can read the first couple of chapters for free and then buy the rest of the book if you want to continue. Your subscription idea isn’t bad and it’s similar to Rhapsody’s music subscription.
@Homina8or
You’re overlooking the fact that your main arguments are the same ones the music industry tried when they were demanding higher prices for music downloads a few years ago. But, let’s take each of your main issues on its own and explore.
1) The company’s cost for the infrastructure to store and distribute the ebooks.
The publisher wouldn’t need to distribute the ebooks except to upload one copy to each seller (Amazon, B&N, etc.) The publishers don’t sell the books, the distributors do, so the storage and distribution costs would be drastically reduced as I mentioned in my post. If the publishers told the distributors to sell their ebooks at $1 and that they wanted $.50 per ebook sold (giving the same 50% discount to the distributors that they currently enjoy when purchasing physical books for sale) then the distributors and customers would all be happy.
2) You are still paying for the intellectual properly of the author.
Authors get paid royalties for their work. A common royalty rate is 10% OF PROFITS for hardcover sales and 6%-8% OF PROFITS for paperback sales. If an average physical book sells for $15 then the usual profit for a publisher is about $7.50, or half the cover rate. So the average author will get $.75 per book sold. If I were an author and was told my royalty calculation would stay the same for physical books but be 20% per ebook sale PROFIT, or $.10 per ebook, I would be upset at first because it seems such a small amount for my hard work. But that would only last until I realized the potential INCREASE in sales due to the lower entry price ($1 an ebook) and ease of purchase (nearly instantaneous thanks to cell phones, Kindles, computers, iPads, etc. all of which makes for great impulse buying potential).
All in all, I still fail to see where selling an ebook for $10 or more does anything but prop up an outmoded business structure that is bound to fail in the long run. When the public, the author and the distributor all stand to gain from a new business model, sooner or later the publishers will either change their models (as the music industry is slowly being forced to do) or simply be replaced.
Don’t use Music Industry’s argument as a comparison because making an album in a studio is far more expensive than an independent writer using their own pc or typewriter – the publisher clearly makes hand over fist on that one compared to a record company. Storage costs are very expensive on the corporate level as compared to the consumer level. Netbackup, EMC, Arcserve, you name it and it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per month for backup and storage of data. The storage media itself is cheap, but the actual storing costs a lot more when you factor in hardware for the data and media and third-party storage vendors. You also cannot assume that only one copy is needed for distribution because each distributor may need a different source file for compatibility. A better argument is that since you are not getting a physical copy of the book, you should pay less per title. Factor in your own cost for the inital purchase of the device for reading e-books it should be all the more important reason for the retailers to sell the e-books for less.
I also want an ebook, but I don’t want to be tied to Amazon (Kindle), B&N (Nook), Borders (whenever they come out with one) or any other entity. I prefer to have the freedom to buy books, mags, whatever, from whomever, based on price, format, discounts…. Free (library) is better. Sony’s ereader seems to fit the bill for now. Asus, HP and the rumored Google tablet, Gpad, Gpad with wings may be just the ticket for your trips.