E-books outselling paper books at Amazon

This is badly, badly incorrect. Now, some TYPES of film may no longer be made - but even Polaroids (I mean the instant type) have had someone pick up production of the "film." But film itself is still easily available for 35mm cameras. (Most common type.) Nobody makes 110 any more, its niche has been taken over by digital (110 being for those thin point and shoots for casual use - the very market for cheap digital cameras.)

VHS, I can still go to Wal-mart and buy. (Saw it just the other day, actually.) They're still selling VHS-only players and VHS/DVD combos. They're simple and cheap - people understand "put in a tape and have it record."

Now, movies tend to be sold mostly on DVD now, true. But VHS hasn't gone away yet.

When my sister visited, she had her Nook. It read books, went online, played music and did a few other things. Now, I'd prefer a larger screen (if I were buying something, it'd probably be an iPad - not fond of the android based ones I've seen so far,) but most non-bottom-end ones do more than one thing.
Go on vaction. Drive cross country (several days even if you're not taking a "relaxed" route - I know this from experience.) Even flying somewhere, staying a few days and flying back, I'd go through several books. Relaxational reading, reference for the area if doing some sightseeing and the like.

Why wouldn't it be? Go to florida, it rains. Sit in the hotel room, go to the restaraunt, wait on the weather - why NOT listen to music you like/brought with you?

Won't argue with this - but some books I've brought have been a fair sight more than $5 ($20-$80.) I'd be a bit miffed.

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Ugh. Don't remind me of that mess.

That said, some places *are* using electronic books in the classroom. (I've heard of a few districts using ipads, among other things.)

Also, http://www.coursesmart.com/ (just for an example.)

Trying to remember what one ereader was - I thought it'd be perfect for this sort of thing. Two screens, you could have one for books, one for notes/online/etc, pages on both screens - it was really flexible and rather nice. Can't recall the name though.

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Wait wait wait .... Where are you getting $5 paperbacks nowadays? I guess maybe used or off of Amazon (I visit a local store so I'm not up on Amazon's general pricing), but the cheapest 'list' price for paperbacks I've seen lately is $7.99 (let's just say $8). I've even seen mass markets as high as $10.

Used book stores are great. >.>

Heck, even dollar stores can have decent paperbacks here and there.

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They are, actually... e-textbooks are pretty much as expensive as actual textbooks, and renting them is ridiculously costly as well. Supposedly the costs of textbooks are so high because of their size and smaller print runs, but you don't see much changeup when you go to the electronic format.

I know there is some need to maintain profits, even in an electronic version, so I can understand how prices are somewhat close to paperbacks. But the textbook setup is also messed up.

Interesting article on how e-Readers aren't helpful for a lot of students here. I think the cognitive mapping issue is part of why I detest reading books on e-readers... and the computer, for that matter (I have read many stories on websites). I just have less of a connection to the electronic format than the content on a page. I understand that some people like electronic formats, but I know it's also not really for me, if I'm reading for fun.

I also think we're in a big state of flux with media and electronics, and how they will be distributed, so I'm not super keen on leaping in... even though my wife likes reading books on our Nook.

Word.

how is paper, which comes from trees - a renewable resource - not eco-friendly?

I have to say counter to this, one of the guys in my program at school bought E-books for his text book and paid about a third of what the rest of us did.

He did say that he didn't like using them as much because it was easier for us to flip through it and find what we were looking for than him, but for a third of the cost I'd say its worth it.

It really depends on the book, and your preferences. Most of the e-textbooks I have seen are maybe $40-$50 cheaper than a $140 textbook... which might be worth it to some. I don't really see that as a savings or worth it, for a harder to use tool for studying. When you combine that with how much you spend to take a class... I'd rather study easier than save $50 on a book.

I think the tech will get to the point where publishers can make a page look the same on multiple readers (and maybe they'll come up with some kind of standardization form... though I doubt that's coming soon), and help out with the cognitive mapping issue, taking notes, flipping back and forth, etc. But we're not there yet, and I'm guessing costs will still be fairly high for textbooks.

Pollution, by-products from manufacture, smell, deforestation. Lotsa stuff.

I've not seen real film in a long time. My last actual film camera was one of those with the drop-in canister. Local stores don't stock the stuff anymore. Kodachrome is dead, as well. Instant film is limited to FujiFilm and a group that bought up Polaroid's manufacturing equipment.

You may be buying blank tapes, but actual movie are no longer made on them. The last major VHS-released movie was A History of Violence.

A good rule of thumb with most mass market books is the “rule of halves.”
By this I mean that each part of distribution chain only pays half of what they sell it for.

So, Borders sells the book for $8. That means that their distributer sold it to them for $4. And the Publisher sold it to the distributer for 2$ and the printer printed the book for $1. Now there may actually be a another person in the middle which would push the price at the printer down to 50¢, but I’m not going to take it quite that far in this example.
So, for a print book, the Publisher makes only $1. Seems a little low, but it seems to work, especially when you are selling millions of books a year. With an e-book, Borders gets the file directly from the Publisher. Borders then runs the file through its filters to install DRM and whatnot. But if we use the ‘rule of halves,’ we see that Borders makes the same amount of money on both the paperback and the e-book versions. However, the Publisher makes considerably more profit by selling the e-book – three times as much in this case. If it were just a case of 'maintianing profits,' they could sell the e-book for $5 or $6 and still maintin their profits. Heck, they could sell it for $4 and maintain their profits.

So if the Publisher is making so much more money on the e-book, why do they resist the technology so much? Well one reason is that their business for the past several hundred years is built up on a physical product, and they’re terrified that their business will disappear. Another reason is that they are terrified of piracy, or at least the idea of piracy. However, as has been shown many times before, most people are basically honest, and if an item is easy to buy and use, most people will buy the item from the real store. It’s only when the items in question is hard to get, way overpriced, or has many restrictions on its use that the average person will turn to piracy.

DelRay has a selection of free e-books, and many its authors will attest that after placing their book on the free list, the sales of that book and others by that author will get a sales bump. This is because the customers like what they read and came back for more. Sadly most publishers do not understand this, and place unnecessary restrictions on their books.

I think I know exactly what you are thinking of: It’s the enTourage eDge. It comes/came in two varieties. One with a 7inch LCD touch screen and a 6 inch e-ink screen, and the other with a 10.1” inch android tablet and a 9.7” e-ink reader on the other. Unfortunately, both models may have been discontinued. The $500 price tag probably did it in.

Asus was planning one back in 2009, but nothing seems to have come of it yet.

Astri makes the MyID, which looks a lot like the enTourage, but is somewhat smaller with a 5” e-ink screen and a 4.8” lcd touch screen.

But I think the eDge is the one you were thinking of. The larger one. I recall seeing an article late last year/early this year about it being introduced into colleges.

Trying to remember who else did this - I know it was someone I read, not an unfamiliar name. Gaiman, Pratchett, someone like that. And saw the same thing. Sure, the book was shared/pirated (depending on your POV,) but the other books (and the same one, at times) saw sales boosts (sometimes of the print copy as well.)

Also, for other legit, free ones - http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ (from http://www.webscription.net/c-1-free-library.aspx)


Also, Dark One:

You may note that I said:
(the "put in tape and record" rather implying talking about blanks, and)
... pretty much the same thing.

so... :P

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Well, do remember that that article is specifically talking about "on Amazon," not overall.

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Very true, but I think given that Amazon are one of the biggest booksellers going, it's very indicative of which way the trend is going. Admittedly, Amazon are online, so it will be more likely for them to be selling e-books more as it's a downloadable format, bricks and mortar shops are less likely, but even my local Waterstones has an increasing e-book reader display all the time.

Sadly, it's likely to lead to the closure of more high street retail outlets

Bill, I think I may have misremembered which place had the free books. I think your link to Baen is the correct one as this http://www.baen.com/library/ link shows the very prose I remember reading earlier this year. I think I was getting some more recent comments from an author (Ursula K LeGuin I think) about conversations with Lester DelRay (who passed away back in 1993) confused with Eric Flint's descriptions of his conversations with Jim Baen (apparently sometime in the late '90s or early 2000). But thank you very much for pointing me and all the others in the right direction!

Yeah, this is true - is there even functionality at most (say) Barnes and Noble stores to buy ebooks, other than their wifi leading to their website?

And that's the other thing, too - the loss of brick and mortar stores. I've had some really good recommendations and conversations there. (Can't remember all of them, but I know I started into Kevin J. Anderson's Saga of Seven Suns because of it. Of course, thanks to used books, I was getting hardcovers cheaper than new paperbacks, too.)

... and aside from "used," one other thing physical media has over ebooks. You can give them to someone, discover them, and have them as part of your family history. Yes, I know you can (DRM allowing) transfer a file, but which feels better - receiving a file, or having someone hand you their beautifully leather-bound copy of, say, the works of Shakespeare or (as I did for my cousin - and she still remembers and treasures a decade plus later) the Hitchhiker's Guide, with a little message inside?

This tends to lead to other types of media, too. How many have run across old photographs of (say) their father or other relative in WWI/WWII/Korea/Vietnam, or "the old house" in a barely-recognizable town or the like? Short of a very nice printout on archival media - which takes it out of the digital realm - who's going to "run across" those holiday .jpgs of you in 30-40-50 years? Will the files even exist? (Heck, files nothing, will .jpg even be around then, much less some of the proprietary formats?)

We can read Shakespeare now. The language has shifted some, but we can read it. The printed word - the "book" - is a simple, easy to use, almost universal format. Meanwhile, there are file types less than a decade old that have lost support - I have to dig around for something to read a commercially produced PhotoCD.

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But.....but.....you don't have to unplug...because the internet is made of cats!

Well, you can DL whatever you want for the Nook at a Barnes and Noble, but I can't remember how their wifi internet works now... if it's something you have to pay for, or if it's free at this point. Either one means you could DL whatever you want, as long as you pass the requirements for accessing their internet.

It's been free since they released the nook. You can also read any e-book free for an hour per day when you're in the store on any model of the nook. Which is nice since it allows you to get more of a feel for the book than those sample bits usually do. Though it's not much use for those people who just sit in the store all day several days a week, read whole books, never buy anything and only drink the free water in the cafe (and occasionally fill up a water bottle with the milk from the milk pitchers) ...... Not that they bother me or anything ....

B&N also acquired Fictionwise a couple years ago. Not sure how big of a chunk of the e-book market it has though.

Yeah... hate people like that. I feel bad sitting there or at Starbucks reading or grading for a few hours with just one drink, and they don't get anything.

I do like the sampling you can do while there... checked out a few books that way, though mostly only when they didn't have the book in stock in the store. My wife and I are mostly reserving nook books (either purchased or ones that are past copyright and you can get free online now) for books we aren't sure of, or for light reads. If we know we like the book, it's in physical form, probably.