Do some publishers have any idea?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

We disagree about the characterisation of Indie book pricing as a "race to the bottom". And like it or not, in my view at least books are already a commodity and have been for a long time. We have disagreed about both of these things in the past and continue to do so. The publishing industry are pricing ebooks in what they consider their own best interests, which of course includes a consideration of the effect on print book sales, which most Indies do not seem to place a high emphasis on if they care at all. I don't like it very much, but it is certainly neither stupid nor unreasonable. They are making a good effort at having their cake and eating it to by reducing prices to Indie levels later to catch those who would not pay the initial price and having
It's a very interesting new world with ebooks and backlist. I do wonder what the real world data is for how sales have been changed by ebooks and audiobooks, but we aren't likely going to find that out unless individual authors decide to share that information. I haven't run across anyone actually doing it since Scalzi did it with Redshirts and Lockout, and that's been a while. sales and promotions.

A limited number of authors releasing data is interesting but of little value compared to more broad based analysis such as Author Earnings used to provide to the public. Somewhat ironically given its origins this data and analysis is now provided only to subscribing customers and is likely being used by the Big 5 together with other industry reports to inform their pricing decisions.

Author Earnings is another area where you and I disagree. I've never really considered someone's wild ass guess, no matter how much hand waving and equations one uses, as the basis of a broad based analysis, especially given that authors have come out and said that the information in there for them was off by orders of magnitudes. If the people who are in a position to know tell me it's wrong, then I'm going to be very skeptical of it's accuracy.

You may consider books commodities, but book sales tend to be driven strongly by best selling authors. It's no different than movies in that respect. Race to the bottom doesn't imply Indies, or at least not all Indies. The ultimate race to the bottom is free fanfic, or PD books. Some people like it. More power to them. I've noticed that many of the Indies that I end up reading seem to settle for a price point quite a bit higher than the commodity Indies go for. For example, Glynn Stewart sells most of his books in the $4 to $5 range. Many of David Weber's books are in the $7 range. Not much of a difference. Personally, I don't find it terribly surprising that the Indie market has split up into a number of different price points, many of which are just a bit lower than the traditional publishers.

[Deskisamess]

How? DRM prevents that.

You can have more than one device registered to your Amazon account. I imagine other sources can as well, like Kobo. I have 4 family members using my account for Kindle books. Adding for clarity's sake...I don't hand out copies of Kindle books to anyone. Only those family members who have devices registered to my account have access to my books.

How many actually use those things?

Seriously? I use the font control daily, and the line spacing control when my eyes are acting up, as well as the dictionary, instant delivery, easy access to multiple books. I switch between books almost daily as well, which is very easy when they are at my fingertips.

Adding...my elderly mother needs a larger font than my 35 year old DIL. My husband is able to use a small font. So we all adjust font size, and sometimes style as well.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by Timboli

One cannot fail to consider the money sometimes spent on the promotions that occur ... essentially a gamble and loss until recuperated. I wonder how they pay for that? Might it be a better promotion to sell ebooks for cheaper? Just saying.

Airlines sometimes sell flights for $1 or $5 as a promotion, that doesn't necessarily mean they are making huge profits on the normal price of the flight, but promotion like that can get them a lot of free advertising as long as they don't do it too often. The loss they make on the occasional promotion might be less that the cost of an equivalent advertising campaign with the tickets at full price.

It is normal practice in many industries to have different prices for the same product, e.g. travel where you might pay full price if you want to travel tomorrow, but get various discounts if you book in advance. The price is not based just on how much the travel costs, but more on what the travellers are prepared to pay.

This can actually work out to be a better deal for those without lots of money than if they charged one fixed price based on the cost of the travel, because the people who can afford to pay full price are to some extent subsidising the ones who pay the lowest price.


I personally couldn't afford to buy every ebook I read at full list price, but that is not a problem because I don't have to. I do buy many at full price, but I keep a big list of books I want to read and pick many of them up at discount prices to bring the average price down.

If I had more money I might not bother with that and just buy everything at full price. If I had less to spend I would put more time and effort into planning, bargain-hunting and buying in advance to manage my limited budget.

I don't choose what to read based on price though, I think it is important to make the list of what to read without considering the price. But I do choose when to buy and so when to read based on price to some extent.

I think a higher list price with discounts is actually fairer than having one single price based on cost of production.

[Squirsier]

Regarding the OP, I'm in a similar boat. I used to say I'm buying so many ebooks to cover when I'm going to retire but I do believe I will need a second lifetime to read everything.

Regarding the prices, very rarely do I pay full price for an ebook, unless it is something I have been waiting for and want to read right away.

So what I did is this : I have a 100+ ebook wishlist in iBooks (I use iBooks simply because it's very easy to see most of your books at once with their prices) and I check once a day for lowered price.

If I find one, I go to kobo and I buy it.

In Canada this works well because no matter what store you want to use, they all have the same prices for the same ebooks (most of the time).

I also am a fan of Tor, so I bookmarked their listing on Kobo and check daily for new 2.99 books (sales).

But yeah, I'll never read everything either... I hope my girls develop a taste for the same subjects as their old dad

At the risk of stating the obvious , one thing I've done the last few years that helps cope with the cost of owning books is become a heavy user of my local library. If you have a decent library accessible, I'd highly recommend it.

This was not only for cost savings. It was also part of a lifestyle shift a few years back, we decided to downsize and simplify. One aspect was simply buying less stuff, not feeling like we need to 'own' everything. We thinned out all our attic and storage, and now every time we buy something new, say a new shirt, I'll donate or get rid of at least one existing item. In the area of book buying, I've cut the amount I spend on books roughly in half over the last several years. But I read as much as ever.

I use an approach where on my want-to-read list, I indicate which books I plan to own. Anything that is not a target for owning, becomes a candidate for borrowing. Really, the majority of stuff I read now fits in this category. All the more so for ephemera like computer books.

For the borrow items on my list, I actively update my list, doing things like placing holds long in advance on popular books, placing holds on *many* books so that I always have a rotating supply of check-outable books at any time. Also leverage interlibrary loan heavily for stuff the library doesn't have. Another thing that has helped is, Amazon lets you permanently save your book annotations in your account even on library books, so I use that heavily.

Anyway, none of this makes the issues around ebook cost go way. But it's one affordable option that lets you deal with it and keep reading.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by barryem

I began buying paperback books in the mid 1950s and I just went to an inflation calculator to see how things have been going. In 1955 most new paperback books were 15 cents in Houston where I was living. Quite a few were a dime. A very thick book might have cost a quarter.

According to the inflation calculator 15 cents in 1955 would be $1.41 in today's money. However, paperbacks cost a lot more than that today.

So I think the bigger disparity is in the price of books in general. They've gotten way more expensive than inflation can account for. Compared to that the difference in ebooks and print books is small.

Barry

I got some 35 cent ones from the 60's. and a huge part of my collection is under $2. Then prices went crazy (and I am allowing tat word count doubled for today's offerings)

back in 55 a RCA 19" (round tube) color TV was ~$700 (you had to watch Bonnaza in a darkened room as the Red's were weak). Today Walmart will sell you a 65" flat panel for that amount. OTOH Cars were cheap In 1970 I bought a new Datsun sports car for 2K. Today, a similar Nissan would be 27K+

[Apache]

Originally Posted by theducks

I got some 35 cent ones from the 60's. and a huge part of my collection is under $2. Then prices went crazy (and I am allowing tat word count doubled for today's offerings)

back in 55 a RCA 19" (round tube) color TV was ~$700 (you had to watch Bonnaza in a darkened room as the Red's were weak). Today Walmart will sell you a 65" flat panel for that amount. OTOH Cars were cheap In 1970 I bought a new Datsun sports car for 2K. Today, a similar Nissan would be 27K+

But cars are better built now days. Most vehicles sold in the "60s and '70s would barely make 100K miles without an engine rebuild. Now they can easily make 200K or 300K with preventive maintenance like oil changes. I bought a 1973 Nova, brand new, for $2,800.00, the list was $3,800.00. I rebuilt the engine at 130,000 miles and sold it in 1989.
Apache

[darryl]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Author Earnings is another area where you and I disagree. I've never really considered someone's wild ass guess, no matter how much hand waving and equations one uses, as the basis of a broad based analysis, especially given that authors have come out and said that the information in there for them was off by orders of magnitudes. If the people who are in a position to know tell me it's wrong, then I'm going to be very skeptical of it's accuracy.

You may consider books commodities, but book sales tend to be driven strongly by best selling authors. It's no different than movies in that respect. Race to the bottom doesn't imply Indies, or at least not all Indies. The ultimate race to the bottom is free fanfic, or PD books. Some people like it. More power to them. I've noticed that many of the Indies that I end up reading seem to settle for a price point quite a bit higher than the commodity Indies go for. For example, Glynn Stewart sells most of his books in the $4 to $5 range. Many of David Weber's books are in the $7 range. Not much of a difference. Personally, I don't find it terribly surprising that the Indie market has split up into a number of different price points, many of which are just a bit lower than the traditional publishers.

My attitude is indeed different to Author Earnings, and we have discussed this in the past. It wasn't completely accurate, nor did it pretend to be. But it was far from a "wild ass guess". It used actual data from various sources, including Amazon, and was absolutely transparent in its methodology which was greatly improved over time because of this. That it was not accurate in relation to Scalzi or even a small number of other authors who release their figures, even by "orders of magnitude", does not mean it was off by orders of magnitude overall. It simply highlights a weakness in data or algorithms which warranted investigation and may or may not have had a significant effect overall. Certainly more traditional sources were far less accurate because they chose to simply ignore the Indie market. Now the Author Earnings methodology has sadly been taken commercial, perhaps we can infer something from the fact that Publishers and others are paying significant amounts for this "wild ass guess".

So far as PD books are concerned, they are not generally part of your so-called race to the bottom. Mostly they have finally reached the Public Domain after the expiry of some mostly very lengthy copyright terms. Fan fiction is just that. I myself am not a reader of it, though I hear that there are some stories of very high quality, though these are apparently more the exception. I would have thought such stories are not in competition with either Indie or Tradpub books. In fact quite the opposite. I imagine that fan fiction is a great promotional tool which satiates the voracious appetite for fanatical fans, who mostly buy new "official" books at top price as soon as they become available.

As you have pointed out on many occasions, the print book model was always to extract the maximum revenue, first with a "premium" hard cover release to be followed over time by releases at successively lower price points, usually ending a year or so after release with a mass market paperback. I think the same principle is being applied now to ebooks, with those wanting to buy at lower prices eventually being able to do so. No money is being left on the table. Some sales are of course being lost, but it seems not enough to make this strategy nonviable. It is rational and well thought out, protecting the print book business at the higher prices, extracting more from those wanting an ebook and not prepared to wait, and then picking up the remaining revenue available only at lower prices. It is only these lower priced Big 5 ebooks which compete on price with the higher priced Indies.

[Timboli]

As an interesting aside, while visiting my mum today, I watched a chat show with her on the ABC called The Drum, and I feel one part of it has some bearing on our conversation here. They discussed several things, but one was about a significant difference between Americans and Aussies.

Americans as most would know, value Freedom very high on the scale of things ... perhaps their highest value. Be that Freedom of Speech, Freedom from Slavery, Freedom to Carry Guns, Freedom of Choice ... and so on.

Aussies on the other hand, rate Fairness as perhaps our highest consideration, and I am sure many of you know the Aussie saying of A Fair Go Mate. That translates to Equality and Equal Opportunity, Equal Rights and so on.

That difference does bear some thinking about, especially in our interactions. We are very similar in many ways, but very dissimilar in others.

Values, can't live with them, can't live without them.

P.S. That's not to say, that many of don't also believe in some of those same values as well ... or perhaps even instead of.

[Timboli]

Originally Posted by Squirsier

So what I did is this : I have a 100+ ebook wishlist in iBooks (I use iBooks simply because it's very easy to see most of your books at once with their prices) and I check once a day for lowered price.

I have a program I have been using for many years now, that I use to check my Kindle Wishlist with, at least once a day, sometimes twice. It checks the prices and keeps a history record of changes. It has allowed me to study behavior and patterns over that longish period, and things are not the same as when I first started using the program ... behavior has changed and discounts are less often ... at least for the ebooks I am interested in.

I have 187 ebooks on my wishlist, 37 of those marked as favorites, 5 as pre-orders. Those two categories are always checked, and sometimes (far less often) I check the rest ... the rest not being high priority, but I might buy if very cheap.

That program has also allowed me at times, to see when an ebook goes on sale for just a few hours ... then it goes back to its original price or a bit less or even at times a higher price than original.

I also am a fan of Tor, so I bookmarked their listing on Kobo and check daily for new 2.99 books (sales).

I've started paying a bit more attention to Tor lately, and I feel both positives and negatives about them. One of the negatives, is the free books they give out now and then. Because I come from AUS and not USA, I am not allowed to get them. I hate that territorial stuff ... idiotic.

But yeah, I'll never read everything either... I hope my girls develop a taste for the same subjects as their old dad

Likewise with my kids.

P.S. Every ebook I buy from Amazon goes into my program, even if I buy it immediately (i.e. all those free Indie ones). So I have a record of when I bought and what I paid as well. Some data from that gets transferred to other programs I use in Excel.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

My attitude is indeed different to Author Earnings, and we have discussed this in the past. It wasn't completely accurate, nor did it pretend to be. But it was far from a "wild ass guess". It used actual data from various sources, including Amazon, and was absolutely transparent in its methodology which was greatly improved over time because of this. That it was not accurate in relation to Scalzi or even a small number of other authors who release their figures, even by "orders of magnitude", does not mean it was off by orders of magnitude overall. It simply highlights a weakness in data or algorithms which warranted investigation and may or may not have had a significant effect overall. Certainly more traditional sources were far less accurate because they chose to simply ignore the Indie market. Now the Author Earnings methodology has sadly been taken commercial, perhaps we can infer something from the fact that Publishers and others are paying significant amounts for this "wild ass guess".

So far as PD books are concerned, they are not generally part of your so-called race to the bottom. Mostly they have finally reached the Public Domain after the expiry of some mostly very lengthy copyright terms. Fan fiction is just that. I myself am not a reader of it, though I hear that there are some stories of very high quality, though these are apparently more the exception. I would have thought such stories are not in competition with either Indie or Tradpub books. In fact quite the opposite. I imagine that fan fiction is a great promotional tool which satiates the voracious appetite for fanatical fans, who mostly buy new "official" books at top price as soon as they become available.

As you have pointed out on many occasions, the print book model was always to extract the maximum revenue, first with a "premium" hard cover release to be followed over time by releases at successively lower price points, usually ending a year or so after release with a mass market paperback. I think the same principle is being applied now to ebooks, with those wanting to buy at lower prices eventually being able to do so. No money is being left on the table. Some sales are of course being lost, but it seems not enough to make this strategy nonviable. It is rational and well thought out, protecting the print book business at the higher prices, extracting more from those wanting an ebook and not prepared to wait, and then picking up the remaining revenue available only at lower prices. It is only these lower priced Big 5 ebooks which compete on price with the higher priced Indies.

The fallacy of saying that just because some author (who wasn't Scalzi btw) says it's not accurate for him doesn't mean that it's all wrong, is that the bottom line is there is no way to validate Author Earnings because very few authors and no publishers release that data. All the hand waving and detailed explanations of methodology doesn't change that. It doesn't matter what your methodology is if you don't have good data, and Author Earnings doesn't have accurate data since accurate data isn't available. The fact that a particular book is 253rd on the Amazon SF/Space Opera list doesn't really imply anything other than it sold more at Amazon than the 254th book and less than the 252nd book.

The idea that it's gone commercial implies that it's accurate is a fallacy. The fact that it's gone commercial doesn't imply anything other than they think they can get someone to buy their product. It's not surprising. Nature abhors a vacuum and all sorts of people in the industry (authors, reporters, etc) are looking for some data, any data that people are going to buy it. We see that here.

It's pretty hard to characterize Indies as a group. It's a very divergent group. Some do a lot of research and experimentation, and others just follow the crowd. Some are just trying to make a quick buck by gaming the system, others are sure they are the next great writer and luck to sell 20 copies of any of their books, other are successful writers, but not great business people and a few a both good writers and successful on the business side, some have their own publishing companies and offer both ebooks and paper books.

As far as I can tell, the two major models are pump out as many books as you can and use lower prices (Christopher Nutall is an example) and put the books two or three books a year for prices closer to traditional publishers.

[Timboli]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

You can have more than one device registered to your Amazon account. I imagine other sources can as well, like Kobo. I have 4 family members using my account for Kindle books. Adding for clarity's sake...I don't hand out copies of Kindle books to anyone. Only those family members who have devices registered to my account have access to my books.

Really?
Does that mean that each of them also have 4 devices to also share?
The mind boggles.
It also wonders about purchasing from a device and how affluent you sound.

Very nice of you to share, but at what cost I wonder? Seems quite significant to me, and no way the standard lot or possibility for most people.

Seriously? I use the font control daily, and the line spacing control when my eyes are acting up, as well as the dictionary, instant delivery, easy access to multiple books. I switch between books almost daily as well, which is very easy when they are at my fingertips.

Adding...my elderly mother needs a larger font than my 35 year old DIL. My husband is able to use a small font. So we all adjust font size, and sometimes style as well.

Well I am not discounting you do, only that most would want or even do such. What you do is a very personal thing, and you should not presume that is what we all want. Most just want to read a book, as is ... in my experience.

Perhaps we live in very different worlds?

It is very rare for me to use a dictionary, I rarely find I need it, usually getting enough context from what I am reading ... just like the good old days of physical books. And for me it is all about what you are reading, and when reading fiction I do everything to maintain the flow ... interruptions are anathema in most cases ... my goal being to stay in the zone. Non-fiction of course is an entirely different matter.

Anyway, as I said, that is all about the features of the device and not really the ebook as such. For you and no doubt some others, it is clearly a benefit, for me and I am sure, a good number of others, it is just a mostly unused bonus.

[Deskisamess]

Really?
Does that mean that each of them also have 4 devices to also share?
The mind boggles.
It also wonders about purchasing from a device and how affluent you sound.

Very nice of you to share, but at what cost I wonder? Seems quite significant to me, and no way the standard lot or possibility for most people.

No, each person mentioned uses one device. My mom uses a Paperwhite I handed down to her, my husband has his own Paperwhite, and my DIL reads on her phone. Why would you think each has 4 devices? There are no device limits on an Amazon account...books generally have a 6 simultaneous device license, some fewer, some unlimited.

My mom could purchase from the Paperwhite, but she doesn't understand much aside basic use for reading. My DIL could buy I suppose, but she doesn't. My husband can buy what he wants, although he usually leaves the actual buying to me.

It seems to me, for all your long winded posts, that you actually know very little about e-books.

I read many books that stretch my knowledge. I can't imagine never needing a dictionary. I suppose if light fiction were all I read, I could get along without one. I never went to collage...I married at 18 and raised 4 kids as a stay-at-home mom. Reading has been the base of most of my book learnin'.

[Timboli]

Originally Posted by darryl

The Big 5 not only have an idea, but they have a strategy. They certainly do have a clue. I don't like their strategy nor do I agree with it.

I totally agree they have ideas and a strategy or three.
What I certainly don't agree with, without further data to that effect, that they have a clue. I just think they have an agenda, whether it is sound or not.

I think at times they have behaved stupidly, getting involved in the ebook conspiracy perhaps the most conspicuous of them. After taking control of prices through agency, they did experience some problems, and still seem to be experimenting with prices. However, they have extensive backlists which they can now monetise thanks to ebooks and POD.

I will agree with the stupidity, and while I have a passing familiarity with the conspiracy, I personally ignored them as spouting nonsense, so did not pay too much attention for very long. That's my bias showing.

It's taken a while, but they have made great progress in making these titles available again as ebooks. They do indeed seem to charge high prices on some backlist titles, but then they do seem to be experimenting with these prices.

I think it is a bad mistake to think there is only one type of bad publisher out there. You have those milking the new ebook regime for all they can get, and those trying to keep physical ebooks on top of the pile ... and no doubt a bunch having a bet each way.

With that in mind, and the filthy profits being made for over-pricing ebooks, is it any wonder that some of them are releasing as many more as they can, with even greater margins of profit ... these are books that have been paid for may times over already. Talking older books here.

[QUOTE]I haven't looked personally but I would not be surprised to see a repeat of their strategy with new releases, where a just re-published backlist book is priced high initially, with later reductions. It is fair to say that some Big 5 pricing is actually competing with Indie pricing, but not when a book is newly released or re-released. Competitive prices come after a time or during sales. Certainly Harry's example of Dick Francis books for about $US5 are competing directly with Indie titles, and there are many more.[QUOTE]
Over the time I have been using the program I mentioned earlier, I have seen some of what you say. There was a good period there (and it still happens with some), where reductions occurred over time, especially with a new release by the same author. So if you waited long enough, in many cases you would eventually get the ebook at a fairish price. If you are as behind with your reading as I am, waiting a year or two etc, is not that long to hang out before buying at a fair price.

But I don't see that as much now, and seemingly odd things are going on as well. I will talk about some examples later.

It seems to me that for the Big 5 to compete fully with Indies they would have to price comparably without regard to print sales. A print book at $US13 or $US14 with the ebook version at $US5 is likely to lead to increased sales of ebooks and ereaders and increased use of reading applications on phones and tablets. This has the potential to emasculate or at least cause significant damage to their still very profitable print book business over which they exercise significant control. Yes, they are losing initial ebook sales, but may well be recouping many of them later when the ebook prices come down.

I don't disagree, that if physical books stay the same price and ebooks are cheaper, that once people who read a fair amount do the sums, they will save the money and eventually buy an ereader or factor in the other benefits of a Tablet. That's pretty obvious, and I will admit that physical books to some degree will slowly go the way of the dinosaur ... that's progress.

Here I refer to the example I gave Barry earlier about profits. No-one as far as I know, is saying that publishers need to avoid getting some recompense for the shortfall during the long changeover period. If they are making $5 extra profit with an ebook, cannot that be just $1 for instance ... or a $1.50 etc. What I and many others are against, is the huge profit being made at our expense.

As has always been the case, many publishers are not exactly great when it comes to financial matters. So many like myself resent when they expect us to prop up their mistakes and foolishness or subsidize physical books unethically.

Really it would be wiser for them to cut out a lot of their costs, by embracing ebooks as fully as possible. Everyone can be winners here, with a bit of smart thinking.

Their real risk would seem to be rampant piracy whilst their prices remain high. However, whilst such piracy does occur, it seems that the vast majority of readers are prepared to wait, and their business model remains viable.

I doubt we will ever see a successful prevention of piracy any time soon, and like I have said elsewhere and for other types of media too - what the few bad eggs do should not dictate how the majority are treated or the distrust that is currently occurring. Have some faith and believe, that if you do the right thing, so will the majority.

I'm not saying the following to promote Piracy, but I know full well, that people who would not normally engage in getting free stuff illegally, now do so because they are fed up of being ripped off and cheated and treated so poorly ... especially by those they consider crooks of some kind anyhow.

There are many factors that I won't discuss here, but I do believe that the print book business will decline over time, though it will remain significant for the foreseeable future and will likely never completely die. I once thought differently, but having looked more deeply at the whole picture, I think the Big 5 is taking a rational and practical, if somewhat cynical in some aspects, approach to its pricing. And a continually evolving one.

I both agree and disagree.
A lot of what they do, I am sure, is theoretical and for sure agenda based. If they had a good track record I might have more sympathy and be more of a believer. In many ways, they only have themselves to blame for how many feel about them. Most politicians and big business are going through a similar crisis.

Once again, thanks for your thoughts.

[Timboli]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

No, each person mentioned uses one device. My mom uses a Paperwhite I handed down to her, my husband has his own Paperwhite, and my DIL reads on her phone. Why would you think each has 4 devices? There are no device limits on an Amazon account...books generally have a 6 simultaneous device license, some fewer, some unlimited.

My mom could purchase from the Paperwhite, but she doesn't understand much aside basic use for reading. My DIL could buy I suppose, but she doesn't. My husband can buy what he wants, although he usually leaves the actual buying to me.

I know the limits, but what you are essentially saying, unless you are lucky with the Family option, is that all those devices belong to the same account? That each member of you family does not have their own account, or if they do, they have another device for it? Each device can only be linked to one account.

So in reality each person in your family can buy whatever ebooks via their device any time they want, and it all gets charged to the one account. That is not the norm and certainly would not work in many households and added complications if not under the same roof etc etc.

It seems to me, for all your long winded posts, that you actually know very little about e-books.

A silly assumption to make based on not giving enough information about your setup in the first place. Your situation from what I have come across, is far from the norm.

I read many books that stretch my knowledge. I can't imagine never needing a dictionary. I suppose if light fiction were all I read, I could get along without one. I never went to collage...I married at 18 and raised 4 kids as a stay-at-home mom. Reading has been the base of most of my book learnin'.

Good on ya.
I likewise agree I have learnt a lot from books ... many of them surprise surprise ... fiction stories.