Will,

So what do you think the fair price of an e-book is? I'm considering developing several for the classes that I teach. It would be the class material, in book format, as well as supporting spreadsheets, etc. This would be geared towards people who cannot take the classes in person. I have a price in mind but am curious what you think a fair price would be.

Thanks for your input.
pf101

The issue here is that, for most mass-market books or music, the bulk of the cost is not manufacturing and distribution. It's paying all of the people that deal with the product between the author/musician and the consumer. This is, I think one of the major barriers to electronic distribution of most any media. People expect that if they're going to pay full price for something (or anything close to it) they should get a physical object in return.

I'm a minimalist of sorts. I used to have over 10000 songs and many CDs. Fortunately, the iPod was around so I could consolidate everything onto it. Now that most of those CDs are gone (eBay and garage sales) I have much more space.

When it comes to books I'm starting to feel the same way. I love the paper feel however I don't like owning too many books plus I'm somewhat of a environmentalist. I'd rather they be trees and take space instead of being my bookshelf and book taking up my space. I've been looking at the Sony Reader but have convinced myself to wait for Apple to come out with one, if they do. The reader supposedly makes it look like you're reading paper, plus it'd be a good tool for sites like [url]manybooks.net[/url].

That is not an affiliate link I just like telling everyone about free stuff.

They tried to do that initially, but got into fisticuffs with the record labels.

I'm a paper person, myself. My job has me looking at a computer screen long enough each day. And reading just isn't as fun if you can't feel the paper in your hands and smell the book. Especially if it's an old one.

I prefer paper books and magazines, but now that I'm about to make a trans-atlantic move, I have mixed feelings about this. I already trashed some books that I'm sure nobody would want ("Guiness 1998 Book of Records", anyone?), but I really have problems doing this with books I like.
A perfect solution would be a "blank book" with digital paper, onto which you can upload any content you like. Some years ago, I read something about "ePaper", I wonder if they're making progress...

Note: This is an advertisement for a website run by the poster. (It's also chock full of 'GetRichQuick' tripe)

Oh, nice. Can we get a moderator in here to clean this up a bit? I'm pretty sure that blatant self-promotion of that sort isn't allowed.

deleted a spam post

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I love printed books. Collecting books is one of my few hobbies and e-books could never replace it. I also find reading a book on the computer just wrong somehow.

Then again I have been eyeing that new Sony reader for quite sometime. I highly doubt I could bring myself to spend $200 on something I'm unsure of using but it would be great if someone bought it as a gift.

I love traditional books but since developing wrist problems that make holding a book painful e-books have been the best choice for me. Most of my recent paper book purchases have been where e-books fall down, the kind with the big lovely pictures.

I have a related question. Many people who reject e-books give the reason that format hasn't standardized or things are changing. Yet I know these same people have rebuilt music and movie collections multiple times as technology advanced. Why do you think this is a barrier in books but not in other forms of entertainment?

@Jonathan
The idea that printed material is depleting natural forests has been debunked for a while now. The paper manufacturers are required to use their own planted trees to produce paper. It would be too expensive to use old growth forests. Instead they use relatively fast growing trees more suited to the purpose. Still the production of paper (bleaching etc..) does have environmental implications like soil erosion and the sort.



Yes, people are making significant progress. See here It's going to be a while before it hits the mass markets though apparently.



Agreed, but do you think people are moving further away from this idea when considering the wide adoption of iPod tunes, netflix, and even computer software? In the not so distant past, people used to value things based on solidity, weight, durable construction. In the present day, the trend seems to be more towards minimal, less intrusive, and disposable (i.e. cell phones) technology.


+1



Several possibilities spring to mind.

With other mediums like music and movies there were always quality improvements that accompanied the new mediums in combination with smaller form factors. Also, there were ease of distribution and manufacturing changes that sometimes resulted in lower prices though early adopters of new technology like DVD, CD, and even magnetic media like VHS and audio cassettes paid through the nose for their first devices. Considering this, there always seemed to be a 'cool'ness factor with owning a DVD player or laserdisc or now a flat screen 60" HDTV. I think avid book readers are less susceptible, though of course not immune, to the advertising plague that advocates adopting new expensive technology and gadgetry baubles for the sake of conspicuous consumption. That's probably my personal feelings talking more than society at large though.

I've only recently been getting into e-books, but I've been able to quickly amass quite a collection thanks to torrenting massive archives of selected material. I absolutely love it so far and it actually allows me to share copies with friends more easily by just sending them a pdf file instead of handing them a book.

Given a preference, I'd rather have a physical copy of the book to hold and then I'd just burn it when I'm done or hand it to someone if I felt it warranted additional human consumption. It's no severe hardship to read it from a monitor, and this is coming from a person who probably spends an average of 10 hours a day staring at a computer.

Price or e-books isn't a concern since I don't/won't pay for movies, music, or books. If I weren't torrenting these books, I'd be renting them from the libraries. This is just less hassle all around. Perfect example was the book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. I had been wait listed by the local library for several weeks and I was dying to read a copy. I finally got fed up and decided to look online for a copy. Within a few hours, I had found one and it had already completed downloading. By the time the library notice came in saying the book was available, I had already finished reading it. Amazing book, btw.

I prefer to buy ebook which can let me read the book once I pay for it. The other feature is in ebook, I can easily search for the information I want using the build in search engine. Besides that ebook also easy to store and manage which I usually burn them into my DVD collection.

However, ebook has the problem that I must always bring my laptop everyway in order to read it. Although I can easily transfer the ebook into my PDA for reading, but some how I still prefer to read the book in a bigger screen.

Anyway, I still prefer ebook which can let me to have more options and choices.