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Well there is a second economics of reading that I think we should consider here. We have been looking at the micro-economics of ereading here.. but there is a whole set of macro-economics that I think will in the long term serve to bolster eBooks far more than those currently in the Publishing/Book Selling industry realize.
1. Ebook Stores have a much lower cost to set up and run than a conventional brick and mortar store. I don't know exactly how big the store part of the fictionwise operation is, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were able to run the entire store from a single computer rack... So figure $200,000 every few years for hardware upgrades and replacement. Most of the rest of the expenses will go towards paying the programmers, system administrators and DBA (maybe just a couple of people multitasking) , and the costs of acquiring the books and paying the publishers for the sales.
2. The costs are also lower for the publisher. The publisher no longer has to worry about returned books. The book seller just pays you for the books they sell. When 100,000 books get sold, you know they are sold, not just sitting on a shelf in a book store somewhere until they are returned (or destroyed in the case of paperbacks).
3. eReaders I think are far more likely to buy books on impulse... something Amazon has clued into with their Kindle. More impulse buys means more sales.
4. Environmentally an ebook is far friendlier. I think it is pretty easy to see that the environmental cost of reading an ebook, even on a relatively power hungry PDA, is far lower than the ecological footprint of making a book, shipping it to a store.. maybe getting it back from the store, filling landfills with destroyed books...
Ultimately, not only on a personal level, but on every level, I think it is clear to see that ebooks make a lot of sense.
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Bill
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