The economics of e-reading vs p-reading

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

BOb, the economics aren't there for a small number of books.

How should I cost it, say, tommorrow? $300 for the one book I'll get read by then? <Shrug> All the rest free over the next several years? I guess I go with the "sunk cost" method, because I sent the money whether I read the books or not.

Yes, I em understand math... but I think this formula:

Total Spent on reader + Total Spent on eBooks / Number of eBooks read

... or cost per book read is a much more correct number than:

Total Spent on reader + Total Spent on eBooks / Number of eBooks in library

... or cost per book in library. Because I could download 10,000 ebooks or get the Pagoda DVD or whatever.... and my cost per book acquisition would be much lower.

So, yes, you have to include all the books you bought in the cost... but only amortize the full cost by books READ not books D/Led for a real cost. You would do the same thing for pbooks... Total Cost of all books / Books Read. To me that is the more interesting number...

Am I babbling?

BOb

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by HarryT

eBooks are a heck of a lot cheaper than having to buy a larger house to store all the pBooks I'd like to have.

Like, say, George R.R. Martin, who bought a house in Tuscon, and bought another across the street to hold the library?

The most extreme example I saw was the late Oswald Train. Ozzie was a long time science fiction fan, member of "First Fandom", small press publisher of SF/Fantasy, and noted SF collector. (Forry Ackerman had the unquestioned largest collection. Ozzie and the late Sam Moskowitz were tied for number two.)

Every available surface in Ozzie's house had bookshelves - in the bathroom, going up the stairs... and it doesn't count the basement with the complete runs of Astounding, Unknown Worlds, Weird Tales and other pulps.

We tried to hold committee meetings for the Philadelphia Science Fiction Conference there years back and had to stop because the environment was too distracting. It's hard to get planning done when people are busy pulling titles off shelves saying "Holy jeez! I've heard of this but never actually seen a copy..." :-)

Some old friends are about to retire to a property they bought upstate. He has an interesting idea. He plans to purchased a used shipping container (of the sort carried by container ships), and have it placed on the property. Install bookshelves and flourescent lighting, run an electrical line, and Presto! External library.

Yes, they're aware of ebooks, but you will pry his first edition H. G. Wells hardcovers from his cold, dead fingers.
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Dennis

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Yes, I em understand math... but I think this formula:

Total Spent on reader + Total Spent on eBooks / Number of eBooks read

... or cost per book read is a much more correct number than:

Total Spent on reader + Total Spent on eBooks / Number of eBooks in library

... or cost per book in library. Because I could download 10,000 ebooks or get the Pagoda DVD or whatever.... and my cost per book acquisition would be much lower.

So, yes, you have to include all the books you bought in the cost... but only amortize the full cost by books READ not books D/Led for a real cost. You would do the same thing for pbooks... Total Cost of all books / Books Read. To me that is the more interesting number...

Am I babbling?

BOb

No, you're not. It's just, how do you amortize an up-front cost. And there's no "right" way to do it. (Ask any accountant.) P-books have no up-front cost, you pay as you go. (or read) It's an apple vs an orange situtation.

As to the cost/read ratio. I view it as one of the costs of affluence. Why do libraries get rid of books? (They do.) There's a check-out count over time. If a book sits in a library for years and nobody checks it out, it get dumped, to be replaced by something new, (and hopefully more popular). (Unless there's archival reference reason for keeping the item. Scientific periodicals are kept for very long periods.) I like to think that I'm "rich" enough to afford unread books, like I can keep hand tools I need once every few years...

I think a better ratio to look at is the p-book to e-book read ratio. In the last 50 books read, how many were p-books vs e-book. And why the ratio? Lack of availability of e-books? Prefer the esthetics of P-books? Already have the sunk expense of one or the other?

[ficbot]

Well, look at it this way. If I want to own a copy of Wuthering Heights (for example) I can go and buy one at the used book store, or I can go and buy a retail copy in a chain bookstore. My costs will range from $2-3 for a 'thrift' edition to$15 or so for an annotated or footnoted scholarly edition, all the way up to first editions or whatever which I am not counting in the equation.

If I want to *read* a copy of Wuthering Heights, I can rent it from the library at zero cost, or I can download or from Project Gutenberg or Feedbooks or Manybooks or the interface of my preference for 100% free (assuming one already has the internet and computer, of course---if one were buying them solely for the purpose of acquiring Wuthering Heights, that would be a different story).

So if I take this free copy of Wuthering Heights and read it on an e-device, I am reading a book on that e-device and getting that use out of it, so it is fair to count that in the equation---and reading a certain percentage of these free books does help to amortize the cost of the device over time and subsidize the money you spend on other books because if under the old scheme I had to pay $5 for Wuthering Heights anyway and now I don't, I have that extra $5 to spend on something different

But there are many books in the public domain and it would be unfair to say that *all* of them count as part of your library just because you *can* download them. For example, I have no plans at all to read Dante's Inferno in original Italian (I don't read Italian). so it being available on-line for free is not subsidizing my library costs at all because there is no $5 in my head that had ever been allocated which is now free. However, there are many works I do plan to read, and if I get my legitimate use out of my device reading them, I do count that in my total.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

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.

The costs may lower than that, depending upon who you are and what you do. There are a plethora of hosting outfits with racks of servers, who will happily rent you server space in a LAMP environment. You pay them a monthly fee for the servers used and the bandwidth consumed.

Programming, sysadmin, and database admin are on you, as is cost of acquisition of stock, but up front costs of hardware may not be.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

As to the cost/read ratio. I view it as one of the costs of affluence. Why do libraries get rid of books? (They do.) There's a check-out count over time. If a book sits in a library for years and nobody checks it out, it get dumped, to be replaced by something new, (and hopefully more popular). (Unless there's archival reference reason for keeping the item. Scientific periodicals are kept for very long periods.) I like to think that I'm "rich" enough to afford unread books, like I can keep hand tools I need once every few years...

Most libraries get rid of books for the same reason individuals do: because shelf space is finite. The last I knew, there ware about 50,000 titles published in the US each year. How many can the library actually stock, even if they have the budget to buy them?

And they will acquire multiple copies of various titles they expect to be popular.

Reference books and classics will likely have a long shelf life. This month's romance bestseller may not.
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Dennis

[Xenophon]

PilotBob wrote:

So, yes, you have to include all the books you bought in the cost... but only amortize the full cost by books READ not books D/Led for a real cost. You would do the same thing for pbooks... Total Cost of all books / Books Read. To me that is the more interesting number...

Am I babbling?

Nope, you're not babbling. But for many of us the ratio of "eBooks Read" to "eBooks Purchased" is very close to 1.0. In my case, it's within one or two percent. So it was easier to compute using books purchased.

I did notice, however, that I forgot to include the cost of my late great REB1100 eBook reader (given to my niece when I upgraded to the PRS500). With that included, my per-book cost is closer to $3.00.

On the other hand, I haven't included re-reading either, so...

Xenophon

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Nope, you're not babbling. But for many of us the ratio of "eBooks Read" to "eBooks Purchased" is very close to 1.0. In my case, it's within one or two percent. So it was easier to compute using books purchased.

Not for me. Also, I can get a quick count of books read because I enter each book I read into LibraryThing after I complete it. If it is an ebook I tag it as such. Also I've "purchased" only about 20% of what I've read so far... mostly read TOR and Kindle freebees.

BOB

[ePossum]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Most libraries get rid of books for the same reason individuals do: because shelf space is finite. ...

Reference books and classics will likely have a long shelf life. This month's romance bestseller may not.
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Dennis

Actually, many single title romance books have continuous high turnover - libraries get rid of them because they wear out! The 'glom' phenomenon is alive and kicking amongst dedicated romance readers - ie, where a reader discovers an author they haven't read before, finds that they like them alot, and goes hunting for the author's backlist.

[ePossum]

Related to glomming -

It's often cheaper to buy a second hand print book than it is to buy an e-book.

Over time, as backlists of e-books build up, the overall cost of acquiring e-books vs print books will start to climb (I'm assuming that e-book pricing isn't going to change in a hurry...)

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by ePossum

Related to glomming -

It's often cheaper to buy a second hand print book than it is to buy an e-book.

Over time, as backlists of e-books build up, the overall cost of acquiring e-books vs print books will start to climb (I'm assuming that e-book pricing isn't going to change in a hurry...)

I would disagree. Older ebooks and ebooks of back catalog do seem to generally be less expensive than newer releases. Perhaps around $3 each or less.

However, that is nothing like going to a yard sale and picking up a stack of pbooks, more than you can carry for about 10¢ each. Of course the ebook will be better for publishers and authors if the back catalog does offer $1 or maybe better prices because the used book market doesn't exist for ebooks.

BOb

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ePossum

Actually, many single title romance books have continuous high turnover - libraries get rid of them because they wear out! The 'glom' phenomenon is alive and kicking amongst dedicated romance readers - ie, where a reader discovers an author they haven't read before, finds that they like them alot, and goes hunting for the author's backlist.

I know, and that's another reason for "short shelf life". Libraries here tend to get paperbacks of such things, because they assume wear and tear.

And the "glom" factor affects more than romance. You see it in mysteries and SF, where readers discover an author they like and promptly look for the rest of the author's work.

My SO exhibits the phenomenon with mysteries - she reads very quickly, and can go through one a day, and I usually see a book by an unfamiliar mystery author from the library, and the next day three or four more from the same author. She does it with SF, too, but not quite as quickly.
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Dennis

[ficbot]

Originally Posted by ePossum

Related to glomming -

It's often cheaper to buy a second hand print book than it is to buy an e-book.

Over time, as backlists of e-books build up, the overall cost of acquiring e-books vs print books will start to climb (I'm assuming that e-book pricing isn't going to change in a hurry...)

On the surface, yes. But again, the cost of storage space comes up I just can't save every p-book I buy. So often, I will buy it, read it and then get rid of it. At least with e-books, I can keep them and therefore I get more use out of them and have something to show for it when I am done.

[HappyMartin]

For me in South Africa I would need to cost in shipping as our book stores are not great. A relatively small English literate population spread out over a large geographic area a long way from the large markets makes it difficult for local stores.

Another cost saving is not having to go into shopping malls. In this I believe the psychological benefits out way the cost benefits but the petrol and parking costs must be factored in.

Yesterday I plumped up my collection by downloading some very interesting books for free here at MR.

A growing tendency is for authors to give away a first book in a series. This allows me to test and avoid a series I may not like saving me money.

[ficbot]

HappyMartin, I lived in rural New Zealand for a year, so I feel your pain! One bookstore in the whole city, and it was a tiny shopping mall booth that only sold bestsellers. I wound up buying drugstore romances because it was literally all there was to read, and then I had to get rid of them because they would have weighed a ton in my luggage and caused me extra luggage fees. If only I had an ebook reader then!