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Originally Posted by calvin-c
I think Bezos is an expert-or at least hires experts-although I'm not certain he's telling the truth. I'd prefer to develop the figures myself, but I haven't found any so far.
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There's a problem with his quote: "When we have both editions, we sell six Kindle books for every 10 physical books." Does he mean, "we sell 10 new Amazon-official copies for every 6 ebook copies," or "we sell 10 copies, new or used, Amazon or 3rd party distributor, for every 6 Kbooks?"
The second would be impressive ebook data; the first is negligible.
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Several studies have shown that people who buy ebooks tend to buy more books, on avarage, than people who buy pbooks. No studies, that I know of, have tested for cross-correlation (i.e. most people who buy ebooks also buy pbooks-so how does that skew the 'market growth' figures?)
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I've bought more ebooks in the past two years than non-RPG pbooks in the last ten. (Somehow, I suspect the gaming book market is not going to prop up Macmillan and Hatchette. Especially the indie press gaming book market.) Possibly I've bought more individual ebooks than I've bought gaming books in the last ten years. Definitely, if I count Fictionwise's short stories as individual ebooks. I'm never sure what I think about those.
I'm more likely to buy a new pbook now that I was 5 years ago; now I consider it something to chop, scan & convert. However, most of my pbook purchases remain used--no royalties to authors, no profits to publishers. My ebook purchases, small as they are, all benefit the authors & sometimes publishers. (Sometimes, the author is the publisher.)
So... I'm a solid potential ebook customer: I wasn't going to buy a new pbook anyway, but I might buy a new ebook. If the format's usable. If there's no DRM. (Right now, my home computer's not set up to deal with any DRM.) If the price isn't too high. If I don't have to jump through too many hoops to get it. If I'm more-than-reasonably sure of enjoying it, because I can't easily hand it off or sell it to Other Change of Hobbit if I didn't care for it.
Macmillan's sure not making any effort to convince me to buy their books. I'd buy Tor books, except they're not available. Instead, my next available money for ebooks is designated for the PC Hodgell collection at Baen, and two books by ZA Maxfield at Omnilit. (All of which I know I could torrent. All of which I very much want to be reading *now*. I am pretending I have real ethics, and not downloading free books from authors I actively want to support. In the meantime, I console myself 80,000-word fanfics.)