Do you still buy paper books?

[scrapking]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

Text books and Illustrated books don't sit well on an ereader.

They're awesome on tablet style e-reader (Fire, Vox, etc.). I now by all my graphics novels for tablets, and I see that illustrated childrens' books are among the top sellers in the "Just for Kobo Vox" category on Kobobooks.com. And iBooks is pushing the text books thing hard.

[VydorScope]

Yea... I was going to say... textbooks are a big part of my purchases for my Nook Color. Highlight, searching, dictionary, etc... huge features when your talking about graduate level reading.

[carld]

Only the occasional cookbook, so I don't have to risk any electronics are the sink and stove. I've also bought a couple of reference books that aren't available in ebook form, but that's it. I think I've bought maybe 6 paper books in the last year.

[piperclassique]

Only secondhand and I give away one for every one I buy. Last was Buddism for sheep. Shelf space is the problem......

[Crusader]

The vast majority of my book purchases are still in paper. Given the same price point I'd rather choose the paper version and currently it seems most of the books I want to read are quite a bit cheaper in paper form. Then there's the secondhand market where you can often pick up hardbacks at a fraction of the ebook price.

[jenieliser]

I love the convenience of ebooks, but I do enjoy a good pbook with a cup of coffee... That said, I'll spend money on a paper book only if I already know I'll love it (a re-read, a classic, or by an already loved author) or it's dirt cheap. My most recent pbook purchase was a hard back of Daphne Du Maurier's books-excellent!!!

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by Crusader

The vast majority of my book purchases are still in paper. Given the same price point I'd rather choose the paper version and currently it seems most of the books I want to read are quite a bit cheaper in paper form. Then there's the secondhand market where you can often pick up hardbacks at a fraction of the ebook price.

Ditto.

If we didn't have DRM and there was some actual competition on the pricing of ebooks (instead of the price-fixing scheme they have now with everything at full MSRP), I'd buy ebooks. I buy virtually no DRM'd ebooks.

I still prefer hardcover for titles from my most favorite authors / favorite books.

[valb2953]

I don't!

[Justin Nemo]

Originally Posted by Crusader

The vast majority of my book purchases are still in paper. Given the same price point I'd rather choose the paper version and currently it seems most of the books I want to read are quite a bit cheaper in paper form. Then there's the secondhand market where you can often pick up hardbacks at a fraction of the ebook price.

So do you think that prices of pbooks will fall as the ebook market increases?

[Crusader]

Originally Posted by Justin Nemo

So do you think that prices of pbooks will fall as the ebook market increases?

In the second hand market perhaps. I doubt that it will happen for retail since publishers will likely do smaller print runs which will lead to an increase in the price per pbook.

[JoeD]

For fiction I'm 100% ebook and have been for many years. Lack of main stream authors in ebook form originally pushed me to try different authors, at some point I found enough new authors to switch to ebook only. Now, whilst many main stream authors are selling ebooks, pricing tends to keep me away from most of them.

For reference books I still buy now and then in paper form, but I'm increasingly switching to PDF to read on PC/iPad if it's available and cheaper.

I'd like to buy ref books via the Kindle, but really don't like the format most of the books end up in. The cost saving doesn't outweigh the format issues for those, so I'd rather buy PDF. Ideally though, I wish when you bought a kindle ref book you got a PDF + kindle format for downloading.

[jbcohen]

This is better discussed in a poll.

[Casey57]

Yes, but not anywhere near as much as I used to. Most of the time it is for a book that I really want to read that is not offered on Kindle. Sometimes I wait it out and the book does become available on Kindle, but sometimes I am not that patient. If I “discover” a new author and want to read their earlier books, I may buy their earlier books in print as well. But I normally stick with Kindle books. I own a lot of books and they take up a fair amount of space.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Crusader

In the second hand market perhaps. I doubt that it will happen for retail since publishers will likely do smaller print runs which will lead to an increase in the price per pbook.

I'm not sure. On the one hand: smaller print runs = costs more per book to print. On the other: more selective marketing = fewer returns = more profit from the print run.

Removing the 30-70% return rate for pbacks would *drastically* change the market dynamics, and that's probably what publishers need to do--which means that someone needs to do a lot more market research and figure out what will actually sell, rather than "here's a large collection of this season's expected bestsellers."

While publishers will want to hand this job off to bookstores, claiming they can't possibly know local market dynamics, booksellers would push back by just *not ordering anything* they're not sure of selling--possibly switching to subscription-style pre-orders only for most of their sales. Publishers who want to stay in business would need to actually figure out who would want to buy each title they produce, and where those people shop for books, to know how many to print.

And they'd claim that smaller print runs means they have to raise the prices, even though having an 85% sellthrough rate would indicate otherwise.

[Crusader]

That's actually a good point, although I think the publishers would just pocket the higher return.

What might also work is for publishers to have a large pre-order discount for books. That way they'll give people an incentive to pre-order the pbooks and know exactly how large the print runs need to be.