ebooks now outselling paperbacks!

I've never bought (or read) an e-book. I suspect that I never will. I have however been persuaded to read audiobooks, and the couple that I've read I enjoyed enormously. Great for when I'm out walking and there are no interesting podcasts/live sports to listen to.

So far I've listened to

Michael Horden's collected M R James' recordings

Christopher Lee's collected M R James' recordings

Cold Case Reopened by Mark Garber (pseudonym) and ex policeman investigating the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower and deducting the most likely suspects. A fantastic short (3 hour) audiobook which I urge anyone interested in the topic to listen to.
 
I bought one of the first Kindles, the kind with a physical rather than an electronic keyboard. I love it. However I still buy more paperbacks than ebooks. My problem is that I am a hoarder. The house is stuffed to overflowing and I don’t have room for any more books, or anything else, so whenever I buy something new I have to get rid of something old to make space for it. My Kindle relieves that problem to a certain extent; I can try out new authors without giving myself a lot of heartache about what to get rid of. It is also might be a bit more environmentally responsible, i.e. no trees hacked down or rivers poisoned in its production, but only if you don’t worry about how the electricity was generated or the electronics produced.

All of which leaves me wondering: is book-reading fundamentally inimicable to life on Earth?
 
Provincial said:
It is also might be a bit more environmentally responsible, i.e. no trees hacked down or rivers poisoned in its production, but only if you don’t worry about how the electricity was generated or the electronics produced.

All of which leaves me wondering: is book-reading fundamentally inimicable to life on Earth?
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Yes perhaps, but...(i.e. I don't have the facts and figures at hand) electronic devices use rare elements that cause land grabs and violence as people try to control the few sources that produce them.

Then you have to take into account the total network that serves your kindles, smartphones and PCs - the servers and storage that takes up masses of energy just to cool, never mind work (and assuming you want to make it work 24/7). I'm not sure that overall that energy balance of an electronic "book system" is better than having it just in paper.

And then, making new books will require new trees to make paper that suck carbon out of the atmosphere. But, having more electronic books require more energy....probably from non-renewal sources at the moment. Not good for global warming.

On the other hand we've been harvesting wood and timber for (probably) hundreds of thousands of years and, actually, we can more-or-less conserve woodland, as we've been doing for, on the record, for thousands for years. Rivers tend to get poisoned by industry. The industries that make stuff for electronic devices for example.

(The main problem with deforestation is in places like Brazil, where they are trying to convert vast areas of lands from jungle to farmland - a very bad idea!)
 
The choice was simple for me. Buy an ereader or buy a bigger house. I still buy the odd book now and then but simply don't have the space anymore to store them (I've even resorted to putting a bookcase in a storage cupboard). I don't like getting rid of a book because, one day, I might want to read it again so I guess I'm also a bit of a hoarder. The massive advantage ebooks have over paper is in specialised subject matter. An example being an ebook I bought on the history of the Imperial Japanese Navy for £5. To get it in bookform would have cost me £30.

Over the years, I've fallen in love with ebooks but there will always be a place in my heart for the real thing:)
 
I got an ereader (Kobo) from my in-laws about eight years years ago and was so outraged I didn't use it for a year. Now it's the only way I read, although if I'm reading something special I buy the hard cover version for my collection.

Since I became an author, more than 95% of my sales world wide have been ebooks, so I'm certainly a big fan of them now!
 
Venusian Broon said:
Yes perhaps, but...(i.e. I don't have the facts and figures at hand) electronic devices use rare elements that cause land grabs and violence as people try to control the few sources that produce them.

Then you have to take into account the total network that serves your kindles, smartphones and PCs - the servers and storage that takes up masses of energy just to cool, never mind work (and assuming you want to make it work 24/7). I'm not sure that overall that energy balance of an electronic "book system" is better than having it just in paper.

And then, making new books will require new trees to make paper that suck carbon out of the atmosphere. But, having more electronic books require more energy....probably from non-renewal sources at the moment. Not good for global warming.

On the other hand we've been harvesting wood and timber for (probably) hundreds of thousands of years and, actually, we can more-or-less conserve woodland, as we've been doing for, on the record, for thousands for years. Rivers tend to get poisoned by industry. The industries that make stuff for electronic devices for example.

(The main problem with deforestation is in places like Brazil, where they are trying to convert vast areas of lands from jungle to farmland - a very bad idea!)
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In fairness, and I confess I don't know the actual answer, you must also consider the printing industry and its energy needs surrounding the production of paper books; those presses use a lot of energy along with a lot of supporting industry like distribution. As I said I don't know the figures so I can't make a direct comparison. Also the production of paper does involve a lot of pollution particularly from the bleaching of the pulp. Again I don't know the figures to make an accurate comparison. But, certainly, these things tend to be much more complex than a first glance might suggest!
 
Vertigo said:
In fairness, and I confess I don't know the actual answer, you must also consider the printing industry and its energy needs surrounding the production of paper books; those presses use a lot of energy along with a lot of supporting industry like distribution. As I said I don't know the figures so I can't make a direct comparison. Also the production of paper does involve a lot of pollution particularly from the bleaching of the pulp. Again I don't know the figures to make an accurate comparison. But, certainly, these things tend to be much more complex than a first glance might suggest!
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Sure, I'm not whitewashing trad paper, but anything that involves the internet and network involves lots of rare metals and continuous energy input
 
I think there's probably not any form of industry that does not have an adverse affect on the environment and I think the best we can do is try and go with the forms that have (or at least appear to have) the least adverse affect. I always find it ironic that much of the organisation of today's environmental activism is based around social media, specifically via mobile phones, but mining the rare metals involved and their manufacture are quite damaging to the environment that those people are trying to save.

But we digress into territory where there be dragons:)
 
Fried Egg said:
Amazon's ebook sales eclipse paperbacks for the first time

This is somewhat worrying for me I must admit. I have never read a e-book on an reader, and from what I can tell they do look pretty good. However there's something about having a book in your hand that I love which a book reader could never replace. Not to mention the pleasure of wandering around a bookshop.

I would hate it if it ever became the case that only the likely best-sellers were released with hard copies. The other day for the first time I was thwarted from a potential book purchase when I was confronted with the fact that the book was only available in e-book format.

Which brings me to a curious point. The above quote makes no mention of the fact that more and more books are now available only in e-book format. Are they trying to big-up the figures? Do they want most people to buy their books in electronic format?
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I have some e-books , 16 to be precise: not a single one of them is a novel.
My reading rate on e-books is awful, I have only read 2 out of 16.
E-books are convenient because of instant delivery, the problem, I think is the electronic device is used for many other purposes (composing music, browsing the internet, watching movies) so I either distract or completely forget I have some books to read,on the other hand, the book has a single purpose: read.
 
CultureCitizen said:
I have some e-books , 16 to be precise: not a single one of them is a novel.
My reading rate on e-books is awful, I have only read 2 out of 16.
E-books are convenient because of instant delivery, the problem, I think is the electronic device is used for many other purposes (composing music, browsing the internet, watching movies) so I either distract or completely forget I have some books to read,on the other hand, the book has a single purpose: read.
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Maybe what you need is an eReader rather than tablet/computer/phone. Also an eReader generally has a screen that is much easier on the eye. I have read over a thousand book on my eReader now and only read paper books when there is no choice. A number of reasons:
I travel a fair bit and don't want the weight of carrying loads of books with me.
I'm getting older and setting a larger font size makes reading less tiring for my eyes.
My eReader is a lot lighter to hold than most paper books and less hassle to 'hold open'.
I've largely run out of bookshelf space in my home
 
Vertigo said:
Maybe what you need is an eReader rather than tablet/computer/phone. Also an eReader generally has a screen that is much easier on the eye. I have read over a thousand book on my eReader now and only read paper books when there is no choice. A number of reasons:
I travel a fair bit and don't want the weight of carrying loads of books with me.
I'm getting older and setting a larger font size makes reading less tiring for my eyes.
My eReader is a lot lighter to hold than most paper books and less hassle to 'hold open'.
I've largely run out of bookshelf space in my home
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Times two!
 
According to some reports, libraries pay far more for eBooks than consumers do. Typical physical books cost $15 for a library. The same book in eBook format cost libraries are 4 or 5 times that. The physical book stays on the book shelf until it wears out or people are no longer interested in it, at which point it can be put in a central location where it can obtained by request or the book is sold. Besides costing 4 or 5 times a physical book, the eBook has to be rebought every year. Apparently there is some kind of copyright issue that allows this practice to be legal.

The problem is most libraries have limited budgets. The online market for borrowing is also increasing for a number of reasons forcing libraries to offer a larger selection. Libraries get funding from governments. It appears that state governments are pushing back against this practice. Eight states have tried to introduce or pass legislation that will give libraries some kind of break. None of the attempts have succeeded yet.

Private libraries and public book loaning services are easy to create on the internet. There is as much nonfiction as there is fiction delivered in books. The publishing industry could see free eBooks and low cost eBook rentals as a threat to their future income the same way libraries feel about their future funding. Its a familiar story, the internet monkey wrench at work.
 
I was recently reading an article that claimed that globally paper books were still outselling e-books at a rate of 4 to 1.
I wonder where amazon's statistics came from although the same article says that even now amazon has over 70% of the ebook sales so that might account for those old statistics.

Anyway, it appears that the rest of the booksellers of the world have not yet caught up with amazon in ebook sales.

Print Book Vs E-book Sales Statistics – WordsRated

wordsrated.com wordsrated.com
www.statista.com

Infographic: E-Books Still No Match for Printed Books

This chart shows the estimated share of the population in selected countries that purchased an e-book / a printed book in 2021.
www.statista.com www.statista.com

Ebooks vs Print Books Statistics [Fresh Research] • Gitnux

In the competition between e-books and print books, each format has its followers. Pew Research Center found 67% of Americans read print and 26% read e-books.
gitnux.org gitnux.org
 
My new novel has sold about 20 paper copies and 1 :eek: eBook. Mostly to my local 'fan base'. (I haven't advertised it at all yet, apart from a post on here.)
I noticed that the paperback sample on amazon is consideraby shorter than the eBook 7 pages against 38 pages for the eBook.
I'm not sure what their tactic is?
 
My eBook and paperback have the same size sample. Its been out there 6 years, perhaps Amazon has a new strategy in place. They put less effort into advertising the paperback which results in less sales, that way they save on physical labor and expenditure of energy. They used to add more pages to the preview if you asked them to, maybe they still do.
 
Another bump here for audiobooks. Something I'm finding preferable to paper books much of thectime, especially when read by the author.

Currently listening to Adrian Edmondson's autobiography 'Berserker', and it's fascinating; like listening to someone telling you their life's story. I simply can't imagine the written word capturing all the nuances and intonations that are present when the author is relating them verbally.
 
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