Writing books in a time of ebooks.
I think ebooks stimulate more impulse buying. The instant acquisition is so satisfying. The article is about fiction writers, specifically the genre-writers in mystery, thrillers, and romance, where readers consume favorite-author product voraciously.
I mostly buy nonfiction, but I have hundreds of unread and partially read books in my iPad. It would be annoying and slightly guilt-inducing to have the book-objects piled up around the house (along with all the other books whose ability inspire guilt faded long ago).
I'm not the best test of whether ebooks lead to overbuying, because I buy many books for the direct purpose of doing word searches and cutting and pasting quotes for this blog.
What about you? Is the ebook format causing you to buy/read way too much/too impulsively?
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You can see — and buy from — lists of bestselling ebooks here.
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44 comments:
I'm fascinated there are that many people to read that many ebooks. I would have thought that "distinguished educator", William Ayers, and his friends at Columbia University would have rendered reading a lost art.
Ann Althouse said...
It would be annoying and slightly guilt-inducing to have the book-objects piled up around the house
Sounds like a line from an old C++ exercise.
What I do is get a lot of sample chapters. For instance, I just downloaded the sample of Robert Caro's excellent book on LBJ. (He is the role model of the current -and best - POTUS. Obama/Biden forever!
A sample chapter gives you a view of the book before buying it. Often times, the first chapter tells you more about the author's writing style. Amazon is also very expense for Kindle books. (I have a Kindle Touch 3G, the same model that the WH staffers prefer, naturally.)
What is the best about e-books are singles. The best writing I have encountered is in the Kindle Singles. Check out, "I'm Starved for You" by Margaret Atwood.
So, last night at the Oval Room we had a blast. Later we went to Equinox, next door and met up with all the K-street and Hill and WH gang and stayed till closing time. We are now more and more convinced that we will win SC by over 50%. The reddest the state the bigger our victory, thanks to Mitt's total and complete incompetence.
Feliz día de las Madre.
Answer to question, no. But gracias for buying those things just for this blog. Appreciate it.
I only buy e-books if they are considerably cheaper, at least 50% of, I have no intention of wanting to keep the physical thing, or there is no hard copy cheap enough.
I overbuy them as often as I overbuy hardcovers, which is plenty. E-books are far easier to purge, after the prolonged binge.
I'm the opposite. Why would I buy an e-book unless I'm going to read it, and read it soon? It will always be there.
On the other hand, a trip to Half-Price can easily put me over. The $1-$3 shelf especially tempts me to fill my bookcases with all kinds of things I still have yet to get to. The book you're looking for won't always be at half-price. And certainly not on the $1 shelf.
By the way, I've noticed that if there are multiple copies of a book at half-price, often one or two copies go on the $1-$3 shelf while the rest are kept at the regular price. The point being, it's always worth checking the $1 shelf.
I like the physicality of the books. And I don't think they truly will ever be replaced.
I like my Kindle because I can read nasty conservative titles on the subway -- no cover to advertise my proclivities.
Also, books are cheaper in the Kindle format. And fewer trees are pulped.
But what I miss is the three-dimensionality of a book. It's harder to know where you're at in a Kindle, or get a sense of the size of the book you're reading. The format doesn't invite you to bounce around in the text to reread passages, or to glance ahead to see where the author is taking you. The kindle forces you into a linear narrative, and I hate that.
I love actual books and never thought I'd download one ... until last night, when I downloaded "A Game of Thrones" on my new iPad. I can see how this might become a habit. I kind of like the convenience of just buying when the whim hits me. On the other hand, I can't resell an ebook (i.e. Half Price Books) and chances are the books I download will be ones I don't need around forever.
As for the list of popular ebooks: man, people read a lot of bad literature. (I will say that if I was going to read those "Shades of Grey" books, I'd download them, too, and avoid the embarrassment at the checkout counter!)
Absolutely, and the cheaper prices make it even more attractive. I am so far behind I will never catch up—and early on I picked up a conviction that if I start a book I should finish it. Jansinist Irish Catholic guilt, I guess.
Regards — Cliff
How can anyone "read way too much"?
I ran out of room for more dead tree books a long time ago so it's nice having digital ones stored on the Amazon cloud.
Coincidentally, I'm in the middle of "A Game of Thrones". Even though I love the show I wasn't sure I would enjoy reading the book but I downloaded the free sample and it sold me.
The nice thing about ebooks is that so many of them are literally free. My Kindle is crowded with public-domain stuff (Dickens and Saki and Chesterton and Cobbett and Bastiat and Mark Twain and so on). There's also new stuff, mostly mysteries by authors I don't skip -- Elizabeth George, Ruth Rendell, P.D. James.
I thought the implosion of large physical bookstores would be a catastrophe, but it isn't. Between the Kindle and Alibris (both are Amazon, of course), I do very nicely. I need Alibris because a lot of my favorite mystery writers are mostly out of print and not resurrected for the Kindle. Also, I do a lot of reading while walking, and I don't dare walk reading the Kindle. I haven't tripped yet, but if I do, I'd rather not be holding a fragile electronic device that cost $200. A dropped paperback will still be readable.
I buy e-books only if they are cheaper than the physical book. I ave trouble paying more than $14 for a book unless I get a real book that I can have and hold. Having said that, it has cut down on the number of books I have lying around. Also, it has resulted in me buying more books overall, when you add the ekind.
"...buy/read way too much/too impulsively"
This only makes sense if it starts to negatively affect my budget.
I read what I buy and I read what I get from the library. At present, I have two books on my Kindle that I haven't read yet, but that's because I bought them 10 minutes ago. They both happen to be fiction. I've one non-fiction that I'm in process of reading.
I've also one fiction and one non-fiction that I'm reading in book form.
Granted it's sometimes hard to wait a year for the next of a series, but with so many series to follow one can endure. Waiting 5 years, however, for Martin's A Dance with Dragons was torture.
While I'm a big fan of genre fiction, mostly I find the more prolific the author, the less they interest me. I stopped reading Patterson years ago, but he has, with his kid novels, engaged the attention of a hard to please nephew.
Anyone read Scottiline, the author quoted in the post headline? I tried one of her novels but tossed it aside after about 3 chapters. Not my cup of tea, but apparently she is very popular.
I'm also a big fan of the Janet Evanovitch series about Stephanie Plum, but the novels repeat the same basic jokes so are better read a year apart.
Libraries now allow kindle downloads. Perfect for disposable fiction.
Every ebook I buy is an impulse buy sparked by something I read online.
Finishing one is near impossible. There is just too much material to read everyday that's new, current, alive. The internet pushes all other reading to the back of the line. I read far more with the internet than I did before it, but less books.
Maybe the very idea of a book is on it's way out. A book has a requirement that the author create something of some length if you are going to charge for it, so an idea that could be expressed in one page becomes a chapter.
I wonder what is the lower limit of our human default span of attention? With so much material so easily available competing for the eyeballs, length could lead to extinction in the world of verbal Darwinism.
I was surprised at what happened to me when I got my Kindle. I used it to get a free public domain book. Then I put it away for quite a long time.
When I got it out again it was to take with me on a trip. It was so easy to download whatever I wanted, and saved a lot of room in my luggage.
Since then my husband got me a Nook Color and I got the Amazon Cloud function and I can get books from almost anywhere. I also love having the option to borrow a book on Amazon.
I've spent more money on e-books for myself in the past year than I ever spent on books before. It's all about instant access. I have tons of e-books I haven't read all the way through. I get them because I want to be able to go to them for research or to read just the part that interests me. I do reread e-books and I share them.
As a librarian it makes me a little nervous about where libraries will go. I can easily see a day when public libraries won't exist. At least not the way they are now. It's going to be an exhilarating ride.
I've always been the sort who was working on two or three books. But that meant carrying them around or not having what I wanted to read with me. With the Nook, I can pick up a book I haven't looked at in a month, pick up exactly where I left off and move on to something else when I've had my fill. I especially do this to work through things like accounting, management and self-improvement. Instead of watching them accumulate dust because there's no room in my briefcase, I get through them as the spirit moves me to.
If you're buying the books for this blog and assuming you make money with this blog (and Amazon $$s), you might be able to deduct the cost of the books! A bright side to it all.
I love the easy availability of reading material now, but it is seriously competing with my real life of doing things. I need to develop some discipline, or I will become a lump of fat and nerves with a mouse attached. The internet will make being elderly and even bedridden much more enjoyable and alive, but it has the opposite effect on our lives when we are still young.
Must. fight. the. machine.
ebooks have made me less selective but not impulsive. I have Amazon as a favorite and use it for many purchases. It's just a good way to shop. I bought a higher end video camera a couple weeks ago and got it cheaper than anywhere else I looked. However, I may not be a good subject to assess impulsivity since I am in the lowest stanine in that category. Suggested read: Hard Measures, written by CIA official in charge of EIT.
fleet, Good tax advice, as long as she declares income from those who choose to link via this venue.
The argument I often have with myself ends with: "Get going, you'll have plenty of time to read when you're almost dead."
But, the one that usually wins is: "Just a few more minutes, then we'll go out." I'm very tricky and insidious.
To those who love paper books, I was w/ you but now I'm a kindle person. I can read @ night w/o bothering my bride. And, if you travel like we do, it's a no brainer. Do you want to pack 6-8 books in your suitcase or just your kindle or nook. I'm Kindle, my bride is Nook, our daughter IPad, our son is still paper. The full Monty!
Amazon is an amazing thing. I often order something on Friday night and it's on my doorstep Monday morning. It's evil, and I love it.
The other side of that is that it's much harder to find a local place to get something today if I want it right now.
It's conveniently inconvenient or instant delayed satisfaction.
I make a habit of downloading the sample preview of any book that I hear of that looks interesting. That way, when I finish one book I already have a large store of preselected previews available. It works much better than relying on Amazon's recommendation system, which tends to give you 100 variations of the most unusual book that you rated highly.
I find that this system leaves me with a much smaller collection of books that I've bought but haven't gotten around to, because it reduces hoarding behavior.
Christy,
While I'm a big fan of genre fiction, mostly I find the more prolific the author, the less they interest me.
Yes, this. I never did read Patterson, simply because I worked at bookstores for many years, and figured that anyone who turned out that volume must be writing crap, because there wasn't time enough to write anything else.
Agatha Christie did it, but she lost her head more than once, even discounting the "thrillers," which are very bad. I think the low point in her legit mysteries was the one in which she had a woman marrying the same man twice, without noticing. Close second is the one in which a girl's roommate is also her stepmother, and she doesn't twig either.
What about you? Is the ebook format causing you to buy/read way too much/too impulsively?
I buy ebooks much less impulsively than regular books because I download the samples first. Most books turn out to be not that great and not worth buying.
The ones that have the best odds of being worth reading are the free ones.
Amazon is an amazing thing. I often order something on Friday night and it's on my doorstep Monday morning. It's evil, and I love it.
And Amazon Prime makes it even more tempting. The upside is that Prime lets me stream lots of free videos to my Kindle Fire or computers.
I don't like to read on my iPad. It's too heavy and large.
Love the Kindle though. Love it ten times as much as I thought I would when I bought. Use it all the time. Text to speech is a boon. Read, read, read, continue book via text to speech while jogging, read, read, read, continue book via text to speech while driving. Love it.
That said, I like to have a physical library for the best books. I also like the young people in the house to be able to browse, so there are hundreds of physical books for them.
Freeman Hunt,
This place is piled high with physical books. In this house (which we haven't had all that long) there's enough wall space for more shelving to accommodate them, but I've yet to buy the shelves. Everything is double-stacked, just as the CDs are.
This place is piled high with physical books.
This has also contributed to the enthusiastic adoption of ebooks in our house. My husband and I started out our marriage thinking that one could never have too many books or DVDs. Ten years later, and it's easy to see the error in that thinking!
AP,
I just finished the new Vol 4 of Caro's LBJ bio and I agree it is excellent. Vols 1-3 are great as well.
I would disagree that Obama models himself on LBJ. LBJ was competent and authored much legislation. As Senate leader for 8 years he also got a lot of other legislation passed including a Civil Rights bill that NOBODY thought had a snowball's chance in Hell (1957)
Caro has a whole chapter on Kennedy and I think Obama is far more like JFK than LBJ. That is not a favorable comment on Obama, BTW.
Caro points our that JFK in the Senate took a conscious policy of never sponsoring legislation and never voting unless he could not get out of it. Caro cites him saying that if no matter how he voted, someone would be annoyed about it. This would come back to haunt him when he ran for Prez.
JFK was also totally incompetent in his dealings with Congress and the Senate. He would not even take advice from the undisputed master of the Senate, LBJ. His reviled VP.
LBJ was a really nasty piece of work on a whole variety of levels. We are still paying the price for his 5 years in office.
He was probably the most competent president we have ever had in the sense of getting his chosen programs implemented.
I wish he had been less competent.
That is what scares me about Romney, his competency. Just think where we would be today if Jimmy Carter had been more competent.
Competency in pursuit of bad ideas and policies is a horrible thing.
John Henry
I've been reading 2 books a week since I was about 16. I probably have 750-1000 paper books in my house even after having given many away over the years.
Other than some research, I've not read a paper book for a year and a half. When I have had to, they feel incredibly clumsy and hard to read.
I love my Kindle.
Someone mentioned samples and I think that is one of the best things about the Kindle.
If I hear someone mention a book and it does not sound like something I would be completely disinterested in Bang! I get the sample and read it.
I probably read 10 samples for every book I buy. If it turns out to be something I like, I keep it on my Kindle for when I am looking for something to read. I probably have 30-40 samples on my Kindle at present.
Sarah Hoyt mentions Terry Pratchett in passing the other day? Never heard of him, check him out. I liked the sample am now reading "Color of Magic"
I also never buy a book until I am ready to read it. As someone said, why bother? It will be there when I want it.
I was hooked an hour after I got my first Kindle. I love my Kindle Fire.
I also like having Kindle on my phone. I usually have a separate book going on my phone and read it when standing in line, eating at Mickey Ds and so on.
And the back titles. Where else could you find all 60 or so of Trollope's novels? Or Eddie Rickenbacker's WWI memoirs? And for free?
Thank you, thank you, thank you Amazon.
John Henry
One other think the Kindle does is make it simple to be a publisher.
I was interested in the mechanics of it so last summer I got permission to publish the 40+ articles and columns I had written for Food & Beverage Packaging magazine.
Once I had found them all, it too about an hour to format them for the Kindle and upload them as "Machinery Matters: John Henry on Packaging, Machinery, troubleshooting" (Buy it through Ann's link)
I also published it in paper through Amazon's Create Space subsidiary. It took me a while to figure out the formatting and I had to design a cover and so on. I probably spent 8-10 hours all tolled.
A few days later it too was available on Amazon.
I have finished a book "Achieving Lean Changeover: Putting SMED to work" which is being published traditionally by a technical publisher. (Available for pre-order at Amazon. Use Ann's link)
I am also publishing a textbook "Fundamentals of Packaging Machinery", should be out in August.
This was supposed to be traditionally published but the publisher decided that they wanted to publish it only online and I got my contract back. I've hired an editor, am designing a cover and will publish via Create Space as well as Kindle.
It is a lot more work but I get a much higher royalty.
So I will eventually have a nice side by side comparison of traditional vs new media publishing from an author's perspective.
It's a brave new world for books.
John Henry
This is turning out to be a "me too" comment day for me. I second the recommendation of Terry Pratchett's books. I think my favorites are "Soul Music" and "Hogfather".
The British TV productions of "Going Postal", "Hogfather", and "The Colour of Magic" are worth watching (DVD or Amazon streaming video) if you like the books.
"Is the ebook format causing you to buy/read way too much/too impulsively?"
No.
Although I have an iPhone and an iPad, both of which more than one ereader on them--Kindle, iBooks, Stanza--and although I have read ebooks on these devices, I still much prefer books printed on paper and bound between covers. When I want to read a book badly enough to spend money on it, I buy a "real" book; ebooks are for books in the public domain--works by H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, etc., that I obtain from Project Gutenberg--or for ebooks I check out from the library or for books I want which are no longer available in hard copy format.
One thing about reading ebooks that bothers me (and which pleases me in reading printed books) is that I cannot tell where I am in the book: in the middle, near the end, not yet even halfway through? Yes, I can check the contents page, or look at the "Page 300 of 456" notices and such, but it's all conceptual, hard to feel. With a real book, one can see and feel materially where one is. I like that.
Plus, I've always fetishized books as objects.
Ah, I see "Scott" shares my feeling about knowing/not knowing how long a book is or how far along one is when reading an ebook.
But why feel self-conscious about reading "nasty, conservative titles on the subway?" Be proud of your reading choices, (unless you're reading books with the Hustler imprint)!
"I thought the implosion of large physical bookstores would be a catastrophe, but it isn't."
Oh, but it is.
In a physical bookstore, serendipity is your guru! One browses the shelves and tables, maybe with an eye toward something in particular, or maybe not, but then one comes across a book that looks interesting, that one has never heard of, about a person or subject you've never heard of, and you...try it!
That can only be approximated in an eBookstore, (i.e.,"Recommendations For You"), but even then, one can't actually examine the book, read the covers and flip through the book, see if it actually appeals. I've seen books on Amazon that looked intriguing, but upon examining them in physical form, I have known immediately I did not want them.
Another thing about the disappearance of physical bookstores--and record stores and video stores, and the increasing prevalence of people watching streaming videos rather than going out to movie theaters--is the rapid shrinking of the public space. As it becomes less and less necessary for us to go out to obtain or enjoy activities, as we spend more time inside living in and through the digital world, we become disengaged from the social world, the world of other people.
I never realized how many e-books I had till this question about "too many?" got asked. But anyhow - paper or e-book - I read all the novels, mysteries and science fiction, most of the history, sections from travel books and political biographies (but all of Caro on LBJ). Psychology and sociology I buy second hand and throw in the trash as soon as possible and it's nice to be able to decide - this goes in the garbage. You can't do that with Kindle and Nook.
PS I was very interested to see that The Hunger Games is a big seller as printbook because it has a video game feel to it and yet kids who don't read much and text a lot want to buy it as book. If we knew why we would know where books are going.
I think e-books will stimulate demand for shorter works- short stories, novellas, and perhaps non-fiction works that would be just a chapter in a paper book.
I'd guess there's also a lot more potential for teasers- offer the first chapeter of a novel, or the introduction of a non-fiction work, for free, for example.
In the longer run, there's potential for non-linear works. Think of a time-travel story in which one could read the story linearly from the PoV of one's choice of characters, for example.
Which is to say, today an e-book is just an electronic representation of a paper book (just as a car was once a horseless carraige). But there's no reason for it to remain so.
E-books cause me to buy impulsively and to spend a lot more on books than I used to spend. Also, I don't get as many books from the library as I used to get. For me, the kindle makes it too easy for me to expand upon what I am reading by being able to purchase a book that is mentioned in the book that I am reading with just a few click--that is where my impulse buying comes in.
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