The signal that I want to send to Amazon (and, as I understand it, to the publishing houses that desperately want to kill ebooks in general and are trying to do so by forcing Amazon to honor their price floors) is that the prices are just too high. Or starting some sort of collective that does this. I've even seriously considered building or purchasing a bulk book scanner and just ripping old mass market paperbacks for personal use. For the moment I'm willing to pay, but I'm inches away from opting out. I don't want to have to change the world first and then read the books I want to read. > but it doesn't do anything to improve the ebook market itself A book where the e-book is twice as expensive as the paperback ? What on earth is going on here. A literally out-of-print book selling for $13 is so outlandish that it makes my head spin. This a step I am reluctant to take but if point 1 keeps going in this direction, then I can't really convince myself that I can justify the cost. The objections that you give (1-4) are the ones that are fixable by hoisting the Jolly Roger. In balance, this means that I've switched almost entirely to ebooks. Browsing for books to read is terrible, but I can browse at my local B&N and then buy the ebooks on Amazon (which makes me terrible, but what can you do). Ebooks are lighter than their equivalent books, easy to use one-handed, fonts can be adjusted, you can carry as many as you want with no extra weight, you can search within a book, you have access with wifi to your entire library at any point in time without having to fill up a cramped apartment.
Illustrations or drawings are rendered terribly.ġ. Flipping through an ebook looking for something is impossible.ħ. visibility (as noted by angrygoat) and browseability is terrible.Ħ. Right now ebooks don't swing the balance towards them.Īll your points are dead on. If ebooks cost a fraction of what they cost today then I would totally consider them. In 10 years will I still be able to access my books? 20? Yes, because they're over there, on a shelf. Last week I gave a book to my daughter by just putting it on her desk. Again perhaps that's changed these days.Ĭan I do this stuff? Can't I? How do I do it? I don't want to have to think about that. Maybe this has changed since I last looked, but passing on the book to someone else and it now being "theirs" isn't possible. Maybe that's changed, but I don't want to have to think about that, I just want to lend the book to someone. Last I checked there were limits on lending with the kindle/amazon. You can't (or maybe you can) lend them freely. Not only that, you're generally paying for less than you get with a physical book in terms of rights and (IMO convenience)Ģ. I don't see that saving being passed on to me, the consumer. That costs money, and it costs effectively $0 to get an ebook to a user. Distributing a physical book means you have to print, handle, store, transport, store again, handle again and transport again (using a simplified model of the journey a book takes to the end user). Sometimes a bit less, sometimes the same, sometimes more. For some reason they cost a similar amount to print books
I don't buy ebooks, and this is just one reason.