Being a discussion of the various merits and drawbacks of physical books and e-books

"Small minority?" 48% is nearly half.

 

I actually do see quite a few people reading physical books on the bus. Hell, I'm one of them. But I also see an equal amount reading E-Books, most are not who I would consider to be "senior" of anything.

 

I'm a bit old school but I always prefer hard copies whenever they are available. I only by E-books if that is the only format available of a story. Otherwise I always buy the physical novel. And in some cases, like Mere Anarchy which started as an E-book story, I ended up buying the hard copy that came out later.

I'm the same way with DVD/Blu-Ray. I'd rather have the hard copy. I've heard of cases there where licenses changed and the streaming format has gone away or changed hands for a particular movie/TV series. When you have the hard copy you don't have to worry about it. Just because Deep Space Nine went from Paramount to CBS does not mean now that CBS is going to come to my house and demand I surrender my old Paramount issued DS9 DVD sets and buy CBS produced sets for instance (I know it's not a great example since Paramount never streamed DS9 before CBS came on the scene--and since they are still under the same umbrella company it might not matter).

Not sure if that could happen with E-books or not....could an E-book potentially disappear from your device because of licensing or other issues? But it's not a problem if you have the physical copy.

But that's not the only reason. I just prefer reading from paper than an electronic device. Though I do admit it does cause some space issues, since I have 4 very full bookshelves of Star Trek books (I even have two rows of books on each shelf). And I admit I'm rather OCD about how my books are organized (as well as my DVD's, Blu-Rays and CD's--yes I still even collect and listen to CDs).

Right now things are good with Star Trek novels--they are currently available in either format so in this case for a change every one is happy.

 

The UK, as of July 2018, has a population of about 65.1 million. The US has about 330 million. So 48% in the UK works out to about 32.5 million —- 1/10th of the US’s population. Of course that’s probably more than the actual numbers. And for the US, you are doing around 80 million.

Aside from about $2 dollars (and that’s how much it costs to print, ship and market an individual physical book), an ebook costs just as much to produce as physical.

https://www.statista.com/topics/1177/book-market/

https://publishers.org/news/aap-sta...evenues-up-slightly-to-25-93-billion-in-2019/
Also e-books have been on the decline for years. Between 2015 & 2019, ebook sales fell by 30.8%. In January, February & March 2020ebook sales were down by 18% compared to the same time in 2019, while in April & May 2020 they were up by 4.3% due to the pandemic.


Suffice it to say, Ebooks are a money-losing part of the industry. According to the figures, besides physical print it would be more profitable to record the book and release an audiobook!

 

So it costs two dollars per unit for something that can sell for anything from five to thirty dollars per unit? I’m not seeing that as a losing mathematical proposition.

And there is no physical stock to store.

 

And how much of that is by choice? That age group includes a lot of college students, and professors often demand that students use physical books rather than eBooks.

 

I have several tie-in comics where the license has changed hands and I still have access to them. The problem is that they are only parts of the series, and I can't get the rest of the series since the new licensor hasn't done there own release.
Some of the recent Marvel prose novels are actually available from two different companies at the same time. The novels were originally published by Marvel, but then were eventually licensed by Titan, who did new versions of them, and now both the Marvel and Titan versions are available as e-books. As far as I know the only difference between the two versions is the cover art.

 

But there are servers to maintain, websites to manage and upgrade, internet connections to any number of 3rd party websites. And if an ebook isn’t selling, it can easily be deleted.

But also if it’s an old book from before 2000, it may not even be in electronic format, or the files maybe lost, and then you have the overhead cost of scanning and converting an old copy into a digital format and proofreading. And that could cost tens of thousands of dollars, and if the book doesn’t sell enough to make back a profit, or takes 20 years, then why release anymore in ebook.

 

Unfortunately, these days there are some streaming services which are not releasing their original programming on physical media. With very few exceptions, nothing on Amazon Prime has been released on physical media, and Disney+ hasn't released any of its content on physical media, and at the moment there are no plans for any of their stuff to get a physical release.

 

Thankfully CBS has been giving Discovery and Picard the Blu-Ray/DVD treatment, since I don't stream anything. Though I guess in Star Trek's case it makes sense for CBS. I don't know what kind of stats there are, but I get the impression Trekkies are more inclined to want to have a hard copy of the various series/movies when they are available. I think enough of a demand is there for CBS to do it.

I just have to be patient and wait a year for the Blu-Ray release.

So it sounds like more of a problem if you don't get everything you want before it changes hands. If the new licensor doesn't release older stories you might be out of luck, but if you already have it they don't just disappear.

In Star Trek's case, at least when it comes to novels, I guess it's less of a problem since S&S has held the license for 40 years now, though I suppose if that ever changes that could complicate things if there was an old e-book you wanted and didn't already have.

 

Not sure that that makes sense.

If I want to read, say, an old Star Trek novel and it’s not available as an ebook, I’m not going to look for something new; I will go on to Amazon and get the cheapest second hand pbook.

Therefore, the seller gets my money rather than the publisher.

 

That isn’t the fault of the format, there are still VHS movies that haven’t been released on DVD. That isn’t a flaw in the format, just a business decision.

Also, I just bought “It Can’t Happen Here” (1935) by Sinclair Lewis for my Kindle.

 

I wondered that as well. The CNBC article doesn't actually say if these are just retail purchases.
So when I see this (emphasis added):

"Publishers of books in all formats made almost $26 billion in revenue last year in the U.S., with print making up $22.6 billion and e-books taking $2.04 billion, according to the Association of American Publishers' annual report 2019. Those figures include trade and educational books, as well as fiction."​

I have to wonder if it includes text books purchases by students and institutions like school districts.

As for myself, I held out long against eBooks but the convenience and customizable reading experience far outweighs the nostalgia of the pBooks now.

 

I read in both paper and ebook formats today, and guess what? I had a great time with each one.

 

I don't like the trade sized pBooks. They take much too much room on the bookshelf.

You don't want to buy a Sony 13.3" Reader. It only handles PDF. Waste of money. If you want a 13.3" Reader, go for the Onyx Boox Max Lumi. It runs Android 10. Plus it does a lot more and handles more formats.

As for GoodEReader, I take what they say with caution. A lot of the time they are just plain wrong and most of the time when they are not, they steal the information from some other place. Mobileread is a good source for GoodEReader to steal from.

 

Where do you get $2? That's not correct. You have to pay for the paper, the printing, the packing, and the shipping. Then sometimes you also have to pay for warehousing. That's more then $2. Also, you sometimes have pBooks being remaindered especially when it comes time for a format change.

Another thing, I've been looking at prices of some older Star Trek eBooks. They are much cheaper then the pBook. $8.99 each for the two DS9 Mission Gamma books and $40 for the omnibus pBook. There are other examples where the eBook is considerably cheaper.

That's BS to say that an eBook will be discontinued before the pBook. The eBook is the one that won't be discontinued as it sits on a server in various eBook stores and does not take shelf space from other books that may sell better. Also, if the sales slump enough, the pBook may not get another print run as it's not economical. But the eBook is already done it doesn't need another print run. You have it backwards. There are a lot of pBooks that you cannot find as a pBook but can be found as an eBook. eBooks do not go out of print. The main reason an eBook is pulled is because the publisher's rights have reverted back to the author or the author's estate. pBooks that don't sell well enough may not be restocked and going into a bookstore such as Waterstones may not find the pBook you want on the shelves. eBooks are easier to find and easier to buy and depending on your needs, eBooks can be easier to read.

 

I think one should just go with what they are comfortable with. The existence of one doesn’t challenge the existence of the other.

 

Whether I go electronic or physical kind of depends on what I'm reading. For reference/research materials, I like having a digital copy. I also have dozens (maybe hundreds by now) of pdf scans of a wide variety of books published two to three hundred years ago, digitized by the Internet Archive, or Project Gutenberg, or Google (at least back when they let you download a pdf copy instead of making you log in to their e-reader app to read the books), or other historical archive projects. Such books are often obscure and out of print, and hard to get a hold of a decent physical copy that's not falling apart without spending a lot of money. And of course there's the issue of shelf space.

Kor

 

Then again, as a Jedi, he was clearly biased, and dealt in absolutes, so yeah.

 

I switched to a Kindle after having various Nooks for the past 10 years, and holy crap was I surprised at the speed. Page turns are fast and actually finding a book or a collection is so much easier than the Nook. It's not waterproof so I'm going to keep my Nook around to take the beach or read in the bath, but my Kindle is going to be my main reader from now on.