Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
No. The people that read books do not think that one book is interchangeable with another book. They want to read a specific book. So they do not see it as just entertainment that can be replaced with another entertainment.
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I disagree with this. I am an avid reader. I agree that reading cannot be exchanged for TV or movies, each gives its own experience. In my case, TV gives no experience; I never watch it. I do watch, occasionally, movies as well as go to the movie theater. But in both instances, they are as much a social event as an entertainment event; that is, I do not watch the movie solo, it is nearly always with at least one other person. Reading a book, however, is a solo endeavor.
But I have found that one
fiction book can easily be substituted for another. I have found no problem in replacing, for example, epic fantasy by Terry Goodkind with epic fantasy by Richard Tuttle.
It is not that books can be substituted on an identical basis -- no two authors write the same just as no two books have identical content -- but they can be substituted on an entertainment basis, that is, Book B can easily be as entertaining as Book A.
Unless price is never a consideration when buying a book, we make these substitution judgments all the time. We decide that rather than spend $14.99 on XYZ's newest mystery, we spend $7.99 on ABC's newest mystery and wait for the day when XYZ's drops to $7.99. If it never drops and we find ABC's books equally entertaining, we are likely to never buy XYZ's book and are likely to buy ABC's other books.
Substitution is less likely with nonfiction than with fiction, but with fiction, it happens all the time, consciously or unconsciously.