The economics of e-reading vs p-reading

[ficbot]

Now that I have a device which can read eReader format again (my preferred format for 'new' books as it is not, like mobipocket, tied to a specific device or number of devices, but is reasonably eternal) I have been buying new e-books again. I love it, and find it makes real economic sense for me. In the absence of this option, what I was doing was buying used books from the used bookstore, reading them and then selling them back for maybe a dollar or two because I simply don't have the space to keep them all. Sometimes, I would come to regret purging a certain book---I recently started re-reading a series I have, and some of the books were missing I do read a lot from the library. But if it is something like a mass-market paperback, or if it is a book I may want to read again, I like to own it. And Fictionwise has some good deals wit the micropay rebates where you can get free books!

Anyway, just for fun, I plugged into Google Docs a tally of all the money I have spent so far on both devices (not counting multifunction ones like my PC and iPod Touch, but counting the ones I specifically bought to read on) AND my Fictionwise spending to date. I added up this sum and divided it by the number of books (free and otherwise) I have read so far to get an approximate 'cost per book.' And my result?

It was $6.25 until the micropay sale I just binged on. It is now $7.42 which is STILL cheaper than if I had bought all those books (which I would not have been able to keep) in P. And if I actually finish every single book currently loaded onto my ipod (assuming I spend no more money in the interim) it will go down to $2 a book. I know the internet freebies lower the average But I am counting everything I spend and every book I read.

Not bad!

[DDHarriman]

Hi!

Outstanding contribution! I myself think more people should do this type of arithmetic’s.
It’s clear that eBooks are cheaper in all the flow of the book industry, and to know that it’s cheaper too for the normal consumer - even with today devices prices - is a really important step.

People still think they are paying too much just for reading eBooks… it’s not so! - I have stated several times that my Cybook has paid itself more then once in just 8 months of use, in direct costs and “indirect” incomes.

Thanks for sharing.

[Greg Anos]

I agree. If you are a heavy reader, (and whose else is posting here...) E is long term cheaper than P.

Many people complain about the cost of the readers. (Pulls out soapbox, dusts it off, and climbs up on it.) The cost of the reader is fixed, and the more cheap and/or free (P.G., the gang of PD bookbuilders here, ect.) you acquire, the cheaper per book it becomes. A $300 reader holding 300 books works out to a dollar a book for the reader. At 600 books, it's .50 cents. Sure, the gadget will eventually croak, or you'll succumb to gadget envy and buy a new one, but if you stick to non-Drm'ed books, you'll stiil be able to amortized your habit over a large number of books. (And backup! you can take a copy of your flash chip and stick in a safety deposit box and not have to worry about fire or theft or forgetful loss...) My pile of books on my CYBook gen 1 is over 1000 now....

[Wordcrasher]

Ficbot, thanks for sharing your analysis. I will try to do the same.
BTW at this moment I have no ebook reader cost to add, as I already owned my Sony PSP

[Format C:]

From my experience, E is cheaper than P only if I'd get books from the dark (and it's the only way to have them in italian, btw).

P: I buy used a typical paperback (6-8€ in english, 4-6€ in italian), i read it, and I sell it the next week for almost the same price (4€ english, 2.50€ italian). New books I buy just when discounted 50% at least (*).
Average is under 2€/book.

E: 600€ iLiad v2, 70€ spent on BoB, Mobipocket, FW, etc, 35 to 40 books read. Average is almost 10 times more.

To be honest, I just give away some of my books for free, and a very few of them I keep (e.g.: the Divine Comedy, in a special editions. I paid 165€ for it, so I keep it out of the picture).


(*) Last year I bought 4 Penguin Thrillers in a "2 for 1" offer. I sold them separately for half of the cover price...

[wallcraft]

The relative cost does depend on whether you keep p-books or not. I always keep mine, so that fact that ebooks are not resellable isn't an issue for me. Until recently reselling paperback books did not save much money for the effort involved, but that has probably changed now because of Internet selling.

I never buy hardback books, because they take up too much room. So before switching to ebooks, I never bought new releases until they came out in paperback. I now do buy recent releases as ebooks, although I still sometimes baulk at the cost.

By the way, the only exception to my never buy hardback rule was: "The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith". Much of Cordwainer Smith's work is now available as ebooks from Baen's webscription.net.

[DDHarriman]

Do not forget one thing: how much cost one hour of your time?

I know how much costs an hour of my expert time… when I told that to my friends… they stopped trying to get me into… “can you help me salvage my computer from the stupid things I have made with it online?...”

Meaning: you are selling a pBook, that takes times and personal involvement… so… that costs money… do not forget to insert that into your accounts.

[Xenophon]

Including the cost of my Sony reader (but not the cost of my wife's Sony reader), I'm at $2.80 per book for 656 eBooks "purchased" since sometime in early 2000. The vast majority of my purchased books come from Baen (by way of Webscriptions.net), a few from Fictionwise, none from Sony or Amazon. Lots of freebies from Tor, Baen, PG, Mobileread, etc.

I should note that these books are 100% legal copies. None come from the Darknet; all either provided royalties to authors or were legitimately free.

I LIKE the economics of eBooks -- at least at Baen's pricing.

Xenophon

[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.

[bbusybookworm]

I have to say that for those of us in the UK or Europe, The economies often work out better, if we're willing to buy from US Based stores.

Being a student, I have a Hard Limit on my Budget as to how much I'm willing to and able to spend on Books. (Also Being a Gadget Geek, I need to put away money for that as well).

Anyway I usually budget between £50-70 ($75-110) a month. Books here in the UK tend to be Expensive, with Paperbacks starting at £6+ and Hardbacks around £15-20.
While there are discounts, it does pile up.

Buying eBooks has been a boon in that. I can usually buy eBooks at 50% to 60% of the paper price and in many cases even cheaper.

Just an example I Bought Nation By Terry Pratchett from Fictionwise for $11.86 which is about £6.7. The book is only out in Hardback right now, with a list price of £15 and average discounted price of £10-12. I Also got a Micropay rebate of $6 so It actually only ended up costing me about $6.

While I will probably be buying this particular book when the Hardback goes further down in price, for the majority of books, I don't need or want a physical book, especially in the case of Thick and Heavy books like Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything.

For Such books, the convenience of eBook's is hard to beat. Also, when ravelling, its really nice to eba ble to carry a large library with me, without having worry about whether I have enough space, or will I be able to buy the book's I want where I'm going. (try finding a decent selection of English Language books in Lebanon or Egypt, its not easy)

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Including the cost of my Sony reader (but not the cost of my wife's Sony reader), I'm at $2.80 per book for 656 eBooks "purchased" since sometime in early 2000. The vast majority of my purchased books come from Baen (by way of Webscriptions.net), a few from Fictionwise, none from Sony or Amazon. Lots of freebies from Tor, Baen, PG, Mobileread, etc.

So are you/we calculating cost per book "read" or cost per book "downloaded"... because I think the former is the more important number.

Also, do I include the cost of a reader that was a gift? What if that gift was purchased with my money (gift from Wife)? Also, how about download cost... or do you figure that washes with travel to book store or book shipping costs?

I did a quick calc, two readers with 19 ebooks read (most free) I'm at 34.68 per book right there. It's probably a bit higher because 5 of the books were bought from scifi-az.com and one from Fictionwise... so say $3 a book I am at... $35.63 per book.

BOb

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

So are you/we calculating cost per book "read" or cost per book "downloaded"... because I think the former is the more important number.

Also, do I include the cost of a reader that was a gift? What if that gift was purchased with my money (gift from Wife)? Also, how about download cost... or do you figure that washes with travel to book store or book shipping costs?

I did a quick calc, two readers with 19 ebooks read (most free) I'm at 34.68 per book right there. It's probably a bit higher because 5 of the books were bought from scifi-az.com and one from Fictionwise... so say $3 a book I am at... $35.63 per book.

BOb

BOb, the economics aren't there for a small number of books. For example, I just spent $300 over at Fictionwise. That bought me 51 books, (I filled out my Louis L'Amour collection, and got the complete Farfhed and the Grey Mouser series by Fritz Leiber.) plus enough micropay credits for another 20-25 books. I won't get all of them read, (mixed in with all my other reading), for a couple of years. 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. I'd have the same problem if I went to yard sale and bought a box of 50 used paperbacks (thought I'd probably pay less - but have my selection to what's in the box.)

Anyway, 51 + say 24 free books = 75. $300 (for the reader) + $300 for 75 books = $600 /75 = $8 a book. Throw in another 75 free books (From P.D. sources) and the number changes. $600 /150 = $4 a book. The more books, the more the cost of the reader get amortized. Personally, I've read at least 250 books on my CYbook Gen 1 in the last 2 years....

[ficbot]

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.

Yes, exactly!

The reality is that I just cannot 'afford' to keep every p-book I read, and the library is great for fairly disposable best-sellers, but if it's something like a series or if it's a great book I will want to re-read, I do like to own it. And as I have shown with my calculations, it does not cost that much to do it Certainly it is a better value to buy it in e and keep it than to buy it in P and have to get rid of it

For the curious, the devices I am counting in the tally:
eBookwise (about $150)
Dana ($50 on ebay)
2 Palm m125's (screen was faulty on first one) ($50 each)
So, $300 for devices

And books...

1) Free Reads
http://delicious.com/ficbot/E-BOOK

2) Fictionwise
http://delicious.com/ficbot/Fictionwise

Plus a few others (Tor freebies etc) which did not have internet links. The freebie count might also be slightly higher as I did not start tracking until I was shelling out money at Fictionwise and became curious about the economics. I had to reconstruct from memory my Project Gutenberg reads and I may have missed a few.

Edited to add: FormatC, yes, there are other benefits too for us non-Americans When Fictionwise offers a lower list price than Amazon.com (which is already a lower list price than Canadian retail price, AND you don't have to pay to ship it) the savings can be extraordinary!

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

So are you/we calculating cost per book "read" or cost per book "downloaded"... because I think the former is the more important number.

<<SNIP>>

BOb

Since I've read (nearly) all the books I've "purchased," that would be cost per book read for me. Your mileage may vary. Picture on cover represents a possible serving choice only.

[bill_mchale]

Well there is a second economics of reading that I think we should consider here. We have been looking at the micro-economics of ereading here.. but there is a whole set of macro-economics that I think will in the long term serve to bolster eBooks far more than those currently in the Publishing/Book Selling industry realize.

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.

2. The costs are also lower for the publisher. The publisher no longer has to worry about returned books. The book seller just pays you for the books they sell. When 100,000 books get sold, you know they are sold, not just sitting on a shelf in a book store somewhere until they are returned (or destroyed in the case of paperbacks).

3. eReaders I think are far more likely to buy books on impulse... something Amazon has clued into with their Kindle. More impulse buys means more sales.

4. Environmentally an ebook is far friendlier. I think it is pretty easy to see that the environmental cost of reading an ebook, even on a relatively power hungry PDA, is far lower than the ecological footprint of making a book, shipping it to a store.. maybe getting it back from the store, filling landfills with destroyed books...

Ultimately, not only on a personal level, but on every level, I think it is clear to see that ebooks make a lot of sense.

--
Bill