[jlong7]

If an Amazon Reader can search texts and is easy to hold in my hand and has a bookstore that I know won't go out of business I would be willing to waste $50 just to try it out AND not care what it looks like. For me reading books is not as style conscious an activity as listening to Christina Agulara on an i-Pod.

Of course, I'd want to try it out on free books such as those that were offered by blackmask.org. OR I'd want to use it with cheap books. I don't think I'd ever be into spending full price for a DRM restricted book. I can understand why publishers and manufacturers would want to use DRM (electronic formats can be shared much more easily than paper).

But publishers and manufacturers have to understand that I'm not going to pay full price for a library that slams shut every time my wife takes a book off the book shelf. Or a library that disappears every time I leave a reader in the pocket in front of my airplane seat. Or that makes me worried every time my hard disk goes out. Or that I can't buy for half price at a used ebook store. Or sell for some money once I've finished reading it. Or check out at the library if I just want some quick information. Or give away when I'm done reading it. Or can't return if someone buys me a book I already have.

Paper books are just so much cheaper when you consider how many times they can change hands for free. Let's take a popular best seller like "State of Denial" that really rakes in the cash for publishers. The book retails for $29.95. Joe Blow buys the thing for $16.50 new at Costco or Amazon. He reads it and gives it to his Dad for his birthday. Dad never reads it, but appreciates the gift. He sells it at Half-Price Books. Jane Doe picks it up for $10, reads it and loans it to her mom who reads the first chapter before getting bored and returning it to Jane. Jane then donates it to the school library where it is read one more time in the next decade. That's five reads for $16.50. During that time it has served two people with information, one as a gift, one as a curiosity, and another as a source for the two page paper he has to turn in for High School History on Monday. Out of these five people, only one of them was willing to pay the publisher. But the publisher still made a killing.

An e-book, on the other hand - I buy the book for 75% of the discounted price ($12). I either can't get into eink as I thought I would, I don't like the book (and can't figure out how to give it away), I loose my e-reader or my hard disk fails (and I can't stand figuring out how to reconfigure my windows and/or online profile and/or e-reader profile to reauthorize my book [or deauthorize the second reader my wife bought but never uses]), or the company selling the book looses the format war and stops manufacturing replacement parts after five years. Multiply $12 by the 50 or so books I've purchased in the last year and that's allot ($600). I don't read 50 books a year. But they are always there waiting their turn.

That's my pre-buyer's remorse syndrome keeping me from taking the plunge into e-books.

Jonathan