The typical Kindle buyer winds up buying 60% more books in Kindle format than he or she used to buy in physical form through Amazon, yet those same folks continue to buy physical books as well, at pre-Kindle rates.

Before I started buying e-books, my ‘to-be-read’ pile would hover around 10 books at any one time. I’m embarrassed to say that it’s closer to 50 now, purely because of the ease of buying e-books, and the thrill of getting a ‘bargain.’

I know people whose TBR piles are much bigger than mine, but 50 is still a lot for me.

You purchase at the very moment you are going to read it. There is no reason to purchase it sooner, because it is always available: there, in the Cloud, living 24/7 on Amazon’s servers.

Esposito contends that readers will own fewer unread books and thus fewer books overall will be sold. This reasoning is interesting but incomplete I think.

The anecdotal evidence from the commentators above suggests that readers will still stockpile unread e-books, but it is natural to wonder what situations would encourage advance purchases. Here are some ideas:

Sales: If a book is on sale then its availability at a given price point is limited, and there is an incentive to buy immediately and stockpile the e-book for later reading – a date that may never arrive.

Bundling: The books in a trilogy or series might be bundled together at a favorable price. The purchaser might stockpile the titles near the end of the series for later reading.

Fear of discontinuation: Contractual relations are complicated. An author, publisher or e-book store might suddenly remove an e-book from the market. Some buyers are aware of this irritating transience of availability and therefore buy in advance.

Subscriptions: A subscription plan like Audible has for audiobooks can lead to stockpiling because it requires the acquisition of a fixed number of titles in a limited period of time. A provision is given for “rollover” but advance purchases are still encouraged.

Skimming and indexing: If e-books are very inexpensive then some buyers will acquire titles simply to skim them or read excerpts and chapters. In the future people might put every book they have into a database that builds a complete index of the words and phrases (like an eidetic memory). A buyer might buy a book to put it into their database.

Bests to all,

–tr (whose backlog in both e and print is damned embarrassing)

In terms of the consumer I too would end up buying more than I need to read on my EReader. Plus how hard would it be for Publishers to sneak in links or encouragements for impulse buys within the book you just bought “Need another click here.” “Never read the books that inspired this novel, read these.”

Also, in terms of a book store. Book Stores buy more copies than they need, because it’s all an estimate of what they think they can sell. I can’t tell you how many books get returned to the Publisher and the publisher has to eat that money and pulp the book. The EReader (Open Standards and Wireless Purchasing-Most important) makes a much tighter and more profitable Publishing business model.

And as for pirating books. Sure that will happen, but Publishers need to take a cue from the Music industry. Ignore the pirating and make a product people want to buy, want to own. People will buy it, without fail, and focus on those who will buy it and you will make sales.

Up-to-date return-less royalty statements can suddenly be seen as a bad thing for writers? Incredible.

As a publisher, I guess I’m okay with people ordering my books and not actually reading them. As an author, I like the money, but I really want people to read them, not just use them for house decor.

Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com

I would buy more ebooks if pricing were better. I find it hard to justify spending as much as is often asked because of the DRM issues, so I usually wait to buy ebooks when I have a coupon. Hardcover books are not a price problem because (a) I buy only at Barnes and Noble and so have the member’s card and (b) I can actually “review” the book before buying.

But one change I have noted. If a book I see at B&N interests me, I look to see if the publisher has indicated in the book or on the dustjacket if it is also available as an ebook. If it is, then I buy the ebook version unless I want to add it to my physical library. And FWIW, I also look at book ads in, for example, the New York Review of Books and Smithsonian, to see if a book that interests me is available as an ebook.