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Originally Posted by BreezyDay
It seems that readers are opting for ebooks over print books more and more (at least for books that don't require complicated formatting, etc). Lately, I'm selling a lot more ebooks than print books and other author friends have indicated their experience is the same. Could it be possibly the lower prices for an E vs P book or is it portability/convenience/space issues that's driving that?
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If I had to guess, the latter. Price is a factor, but probably not the most important.
Reading is by nature a foreground activity. You are concentrating on it when you do it. It is therefore competing for your discretionary
time as well as your income, and must take its chances with all the other things you could be doing instead. I think for most folks, the real limiting factor is the time to read the books they buy, and not the money available to buy them.
Ebooks provide portability and convenience. You can carry a library in your pocket or bag, and read anytime you have a few spare minutes, where ever you happen to be. Because of this, they increase the discretionary time you have to read. Reading's biggest competitor is TV, but you're unlikely to be watching TV while commuting or standing in line for something. You
can be reading.
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My guess is that it'll be the publishing industry (publishing houses, distributors, bookstores) that decides if/when print books go away or become less available. They control the presses. Even if there is still a demand, that demand may not matter. It may not be cost-effective for them to continue.
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The don't control the presses. Every one I'm aware contracts out actual printing and binding.
And Print On Demand is established and pervasive. It's actually easy to get printed books created.
The question is demand. Depending upon the publisher, there will be minimum numbers that must be printed and sold to make it worth doing. If demand falls below that, the publisher may choose to offer an ebook edition, or may simply opt not to publish that book.
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I know that way before ebooks starting becoming popular, some companies were no longer providing printed documentation of technical manuals along with their software, only pdf versions. There was no option to "purchase" a printed set even if you were willing to pay extra for it.
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How
much extra? Those printed manuals are expensive.
It's a part of the evolution of the software market. BAck in the 1980's, for example, Word Perfect ruled the PC world as word processing software of choice. They had a toll free tech support line to answer questions, and a warehouse in Orem, UT, with one of every printer they could find because the documents WP was used to create would be printed, and WP wanted to work on whatever printer the user had;.
Of course, back then, a copy of WP cost as much as a full productivity suite with WP, spreadsheet, database, and presentations costs new, and WP was the number one seller in its category.
Vendors no longer provide that sort of support free, and don't include printed manuals, because it simply costs too much.
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Dennis