While looking up info on “Fire and Fury” sales, I found this intriguing article. It says for the past four years, book sales are up–and by far most of these are physical book sales. It’s no secret both physical DVD and music sales have plummeted over the same period. Why are books selling so much better? And will there ever be a time people will prefer to get their books by non-physical means, as they do for movies or music?
I don’t know the True Answer to these questions, but I will point out a couple of observations:
The experience of watching a movie, or listening to music, is pretty much the same whether that movie/music resides on a physical disc or is streaming. But there’s a noticeable difference between the experience of reading a physical book and reading an ebook.
Some people avoid physical DVDs and music because they no longer have a DVD or CD player. Or, they have one, but it’s confined to one specific location, like their car or their living room. If you buy a physical book, you can read it anywhere, without any special equipment required.
The move to streaming/downloadable content for music and movies has fundamentally zero impact on the process of actually listening to or watching content. You still make your selection (from the shelf, or from a menu), load the media, then sit back and listen or watch, just as you did 10, 20, 30 years ago. The human interaction with a speaker is the same, regardless of the media upon which the music is stored.
Moving books to the digital space requires an actual change in the process of reading. How you hold the device, how it feels, how it looks, how you turn the page, how much and what kind of light you need (or don’t need) to read it.
I’m not making an argument that one way is inherently better or worse, but that because of this difference I am not surprised that physical book sales aren’t tracking like CD sales.
Why is this a surprise? There are millions of people for whom reading a physical book is an act of pleasure. Not everyone has embraced all things digital.
Many people for some reason (that I don’t fully grasp) fetisize the physical act of touching and turning pages and even the smell of books. Myself, I think books are for reading, not to sit around sniffing, so I like ebooks.
The pricing. The Kindle price for Fire and Fury is $14.99, while the hard cover is only $18.
Since so much digital stuff is free a $14.99 price seems quite excessive–conversely a $18 price for a hardcover book seems reasonable. And note the hardcover $18 book can be easily shared among a large number of different readers. Consequently the hardcover book seems a better value for a large number of readers.
If you look at the history, ebook market share was growing by leaps and bounds–until the publishers vastly increased ebook prices. That stopped the shift from physical books to ebooks.
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I have hundreds of unread ebooks that never impinge on my consciousness, especially if the device they’re on fails, whereas I see the physical books and read them.
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I enjoy conversations with strangers based on what I’m reading, and that doesn’t work without a book cover.
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When the EMP hits, it does me no good to have my survival guide on my phone.
I used to buy exclusively ebooks but quickly realized that when I read a good 'un, it’s much harder to loan it to people who might be interested. Physical books don’t have that limitation.
I prefer physical books, as well. However, I don’t get to buy very many, due to budgetary constraints.
I agree that reading a physical book is a far different experience from reading an ebook. I have ebooks, and I’ve tried various readers. None is a satisfactory replacement.
What you should be asking is why anybody would watch media on their teeny tiny phone screens. That’s the true insanity.
I think this is part of it (it is for me, at least). Getting a physical object mailed to me for a couple bucks more seems value-added versus a digital product. Include the parts other mention about liking the tactile sensation of holding a book, displaying it, loaning it, etc and there just isn’t enough price difference to make the digital version feel like a deal.
Another factor: bookstores (which are also doing well outside of the chains). They are much better for browsing, since you can see more books at a glance. If you’re not looking for a specific book or author, Amazon is a terrible way to find things. Whereas a shelf in a bookstore can have dozens of books you never found online.
Physical books also have the advantage of being easier to go back to check something previously.
I don’t even think there IS a physical bookstore in the county I live.
I agree with, and understand both camps. One thing I didn’t see mentioned is I always have my phone with me, so ergo, I always have the current book I’m reading. My phone and kindle stay synced to the last page read. I never would carry a regular book around.
And I myself find it easier to browse at Amazon. All you really need is a hint of what you are interested in and the paths open up to all kinds of suggestions. And if I don’t have a book lined up to read (doubtful, but it happens), I can generally find another in a few minutes with having to go anywhere.
Another point in favor of hardcopy: You can wrap one up and give it to another person, who then unwraps it while you’re all sitting around in the living room next to the tree exchanging presents. You can, of course, also gift ebooks, but it’s not quite as personal to send someone an e-mail as it is to hand them a pretty wrapped package.
it boils down to “its just not the same” as a normal book and a awful lot of ebooks are self published unedited dreck from what ive seen …
I quiteagree (though “fetishize” is perhaps a little strong). For some people, the physical object is a vital part of the experience of reading. For others, it’s the words that are important.
Personally…I still have a lot of physical books, but it’s rare that I open one. On the other hand, I have more than 2000 books on my tablet. And reading an ebook transports me into the story exactly as well as a physical book.
Packing for a vacation used to be a hassle—How many books can I take? And which ones?!—but now it couldn’t be simpler. I take them all.
E books have exactly three benefits over paper, in my opinion: They weigh nothing, so you can carry hundreds with you, you can search instantly for specific words and phrases, and you can (sometimes) read them in the dark.
On every other characteristic, paper beats digital by a mile. A paper book requires no power, so it won’t ever die. It starts as soon as you open it and turns off as soon as you close it. You can loan it to your friends, hand them down to your grandchildren, or just give them away. You can highlight and dog-ear and underline passages, and you can scribble in the margins if you so desire, and it doesn’t require special tools or software.
You can flip through many pages as quickly and easily as you can turn a single page, and you can turn single pages very quickly, scanning an entire book for a vaguely-remembered passage “towards the beginning, on the top left page, where he talks about sloths” for example. Search might be helpful there, but knowing the physical location of the passage in relation to the rest of the book is a huge benefit. It also helps when scanning reference books, for which electronic, page-by-page navigation is often woefully deficient.
And don’t forget size. Paper can be printed quite large, and you can focus instantly on different areas of the page (this is very evident for maps). With a 4-inch screen, sometimes “zoom” just doesn’t cut it. Try reading an illustrated book of classical art on an e-reader.
It’s like analog versus digital watches and clocks. Digital displays were all the rage in the 80s, and they’re still around. But “4:45” doesn’t quite offer the tangible conceptualization of how much time is left in the four o’clock hour the way a 90-degree sweep of the minute hand does. And “page 345 of 415” doesn’t quite offer the same information to a reader as “a quarter inch of pages left in the book” does. And those details really help us navigate the time and our books in a way that hasn’t really been improved upon yet.
Smell is nostalgic, sure. But it wouldn’t be enough to stop the march of progress if dead-tree books weren’t still technically superior in almost every way compared to digital text.
In general, where’s that “paperless office” we all heard was coming in the 90s? Even young, hip office workers recognize the benefits of paper, and that’s in a domain where the main benefit of digital – being able to backup, copy and send files to any number of clients, teammates and bosses instantly and without “running out” – is not severely curtailed by large corporations intent on crippling the very technology they’re trying to sell.
I find browsing in real bookstores, especially used book stores, far more rewarding. I know Amazon lets you look into some books, but not to the extent you can look into real books. Also, while Amazon will suggest things it thinks you may like, you can find stuff on the shelves that you didn’t know you liked until you look into them.
I always want to look at real technical books, like programming guides, because the level they are written on and their style is vitally important.
I have no trouble borrowing e-books at the library for my Kindle, but I never want to read on my phone. And I get print subscriptions to sf magazines because I’m a collector and I want them on my overcrowded shelves.
I have this exact attitude. Borrowing e-books from the library works because they expire after 3 weeks. Buying them wouldn’t.
The same goes for Netflix. I get DVDs from them as well as streaming partially because the selection is better and partially because the envelope sitting by the TV says “play me, already.”
Further notes…
[ul]
[li]I don’t know how it is in the US, but locally (in New Zealand), bookshops really only sell bestsellers, or titles that they are being paid to promote as bestsellers. These seldom match my reading tastes. It’s a lot easier to find and buy the books I want as ebooks.[/li][li]Lately, the book industry seem to have moved to a significantly larger size of paperback. I don’t know why they’ve done it, but I know that I dislike outsize paperbacks intensely…so I am disinclined to buy physical books even if the shops have what I want.[/li][li]Finally…the pricing model for books has gone fairly mad here. The average paperback is NZ$30 or more (say, US$20 or more). Buying ebooks, even new-release ebooks with their artificially-inflated prices, is a lot cheaper.[/li][/ul]