The flattening of e-book sales

[calvin-c]

I think it's lag time. Personally I (almost) quit buying ebooks a couple of years ago when Apple implemented agency pricing for everybody. Now that the courts have ruled those contracts illegal I'm starting to buy them again. I'm assuming others are doing likewise but it'll take time before that starts showing up in the statistics.

And I get tired of the arguments that ebook costs are minimal. It's true that printing & shipping costs are eliminated but those are the smallest part of publishing costs-by a large margin. About the only ebooks that should be 'low-cost' are older ones-and those are arguable. If the publishers did their jobs right when the book was first published then they have the proof-read version available in electronic form and it would require minimal work to (re)publish it in ebook format. Unfortunately few publishers seem to do their jobs right. Should consumers pay for the mistakes of the publishers? Probably not-but they do, don't they? I just don't see any way around that.

[Yamada]

Meh, doom and gloom, mixed with FUD FUD FUD.

[Prestidigitweeze]

1. We may be discovering that e-books are well suited to some types of books (like genre fiction) but not well suited to other types (like nonfiction and literary fiction)

This hapless writer seems to have touched upon a distinction which, despite their prejudices, has nothing to do with the ghettoization of genre or the anointing of literary fiction.

The question is not which niche the book fits into but how it's structured and formatted, and how its formal structure and format translate into the formatting of an ebook.

Current e-book formats are designed especially for continuous and singular texts with a minimum of formatting.

Book-specific objects -- books with peculiar formatting and/or structures which resist singular continuity and are idiomatic to the physicality of bound pages -- are less suited for e-pub, Kindle or even PDF formats.

This can be as true of an indie horror novel (Danielewski's House of Leaves) as it is of Raymond Roussel's New Impressions of Africa and Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch.

It has nothing to do with the stratification of supposed lowbrow and highbrow content.

Formatting a bilingual book of poetry is straightforward in a physical book but difficult in an epub. The problem is the facing-page format, not the level of the language or intent.

Another example of an e-resistant book: One in which transparent pages containing different kinds of information are layered over single opaque charts and illustrations. Yet another example: the popup book.

Here's how I think these issues might resolve themselves with readers:

The reader who notices that certain of the books they like are nonexistent or unsatisfactory as e-books might choose not to bother with what they deem to be non-inclusive formats. Physical books would win, but only because the content is always idiomatic.

The choice is for formatting compatibility and familiarity. The content is unimportant.

[Prestidigitweeze]

[Double post triggered by my excessive use of Firefox's lefthand arrow]

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Fbone

People discovered free ebooks.

I'm surprised that this thread has gone so long without anyone mentioning that maybe a significant number of people have become serious enough about making a dent in their TBR lists that hey have reduced or eliminated their buying.

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by danskmacabre

Now I mostly get books from Gutenberg and other legal free sources.

Prior to e-reader I was buying the classics and public domain books at the $5 table. Gutenberg actually contains books that were ON my tbr list. (still are, I am a slow reader).

I, too, have a handful of bought books. I mostly buy books that are drm-free, but a few that were DRM have been "fixed" so that I can choose which reader I wish to read them on.

But I don't "buy" a lot of books anyway. I was always either a re-reader of favorites, borrowed books, or whatnot.

I'm a cheap, boring date. I am a re-watcher/reader/listener extraordinaire. I can't count the number of times I have re-read my first chapter book ever (Anne of Green Gables), and it's free here on MR and on PG!!! I can *still* re-read it as many times as I like.