Althouse: Amazon now sells 180 e-books for every 100 hardcover books.

July 19, 2010

Amazon now sells 180 e-books for every 100 hardcover books.

Hardcover books. Don't get over-exercised. There are still soft-covered books.

11 comments:

Sarah from VA said...: This doesn't surprise me at all. I have purchased over a hundred books on the Kindle since I got mine two years ago, simply because a lot of times it's worth six to ten dollars to not be bored on my commute or have to go to the library. Plus, all I give up is MONEY -- I don't have to give up SPACE, which is the bigger issue to me.

There's a book coming out in the fall that I want desperately to read right when it's out -- and I'd be willing to pay the hardcover price for it -- but I'll probably just wait until it's on the kindle or is in libraries, because if I pick up the third book of a trilogy, I have to pick up numbers one and two so I have a complete set, and they ALL have to sit on my bookshelf and either get moved or given away next time I move.

If I didn't have a Kindle, I'd have bought maybe 3 or 4 books in the last two years, and done the rest of my reading online or at the library.; 7/19/10, 3:43 PM
William T. Sherman said...: I'm surprised the ratio isn't higher.

My Kindle now has over a thousand books on it, and I don't miss DTBs at all. Sat on the beach during my vacation, and had all those books plus a month's worth of magazines and newspapers at my finger tips. Paper is the new vinyl.; 7/19/10, 3:58 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: My father is an author and because his contracts were drawn up before Kindle etc. existed, he gets zippo when ever anyone downloads one of his books. Ordinarily when an in print book or new edition of the book is sold by the publisher, the author gets some small amount of royalties. Not so with E books.

New authors may have some recourse built into their contracts or if you are a powerful enough author you might get to re-write to get some of the royalties. Holders of older contracts are just S.O.L.

There is something satisfying and tactile about owning a book that an electronic screen cannot reproduce....at least IMHO.; 7/19/10, 4:05 PM
Anonymous said...: Sea Urchin, my library (Milwaukee) has ebooks you can check out online. (At least that is my conclusion after reading the home page.); 7/19/10, 4:06 PM
Sarah from VA said...: DBQ -- I'm sorry to hear that some authors don't get fairly recompensed. But on the other hand, almost all the books I read on the Kindle are books that I would not have purchased EVER in hardcopy form, so it isn't like the author would have some funds from me if it weren't for the Kindle.

Still, that's dumb that the contracts are like that. Hopefully all the authors I've read (well... at least the ones I've enjoyed) have been compensated.

And oddly enough, Class Factotum, it's also worth the six to ten dollars to me to not have to download the special software, get the file on my computer, and transfer it to the computer.

The main thing about the Kindle is that it takes advantage of my essential lazines, apparently. :); 7/19/10, 4:24 PM
traditionalguy said...: Many of my Amazon hardcover orders are for used books for a dollar + shipping at $4.50. And they are already "broken in" at no additional charge.; 7/19/10, 5:06 PM
Celia Hayes said...: E-books are what paperback books were, three decades ago - something relatively inexpensive, and a good way to sample a new author without being out $15+ bucks; 7/19/10, 5:23 PM
clint said...: Not at all surprising.

The only reason to buy most hardcover books is to avoid the long wait for the paperback release.

The Kindle version is available the same day as the hardcover release, without any shipping delay, at a fraction of the hardcover cost.

I've started to wish my Kindle had better ways of organizing the books, though.; 7/20/10, 1:36 AM
Expat(ish) said...: I just "suggest" a book to my library and they buy it. Even in these tough economic times.

Better yet, less "Obamabiography" and more History and Literature.

-XC; 7/20/10, 5:28 AM
Michael said...: The hardcover is a bizarre archaic convention left over from the business as it was in 1930. If there's anything the e-book ought to kill, it's the idea that you should have to wait a year to read a book if you're not willing to pay $10 for cardboard on the outside of it.

Ironically, Amazon actually made me buy more hardcovers for a while, since its price for hardcover was about the same as the trade paperback would be at retail in a year.; 7/20/10, 10:26 AM
hat said...: I personally always go for ebook over hardcover when given the option, though I still prefer paperbacks to either; 7/20/10, 2:09 PM