Conversation

I haven’t seen clear and convincing numbers for units. I think in traditional publishing, print copies outsell ebook copies even when the latter costs more (usually by 2x at least). This claims 2x unit sales. I think this is misleading
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The thing is ebook-onlies at low/free price points dominate the long-tail market and these numbers are not visible to traditional publishing. I don’t think Amazon releases details of kindle vs print unit sales (correct me if I’m wrong).
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I suspect ebooks definitely dominate number of titles published, and probably unit sales as well, but are dwarfed in revenue by print to free/cheap books. This is a self-publishing effect mainly driven by Kindle. In traditional publishing I suspect print wins on unit sales too.
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My own experience. For my 1 print+ebook, ebook slightly beats print on copies (2752 vs 2438), but print beats ebook by about 70% on revenue: 32k over 19k. More interestingly, my one print book is about 30% of ALL revenue vs all 10 of my ebooks. Several things going on here.
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First. This is a distorted market. Amazon gives you 70% royalty on Kindle between 2.99 and 9.99, and 35% outside that range unless you are a big publisher and can negotiate a better deal above 9.99.
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This is the reason so many ebooks are priced at one of the extremes. $9.99 is the local revenue max for a demand-driven book. $2.99 is the affordability max for a normal (non-Veblen) price curve. So a self-publisher will make ~$2-7.
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35% between 0.99-2.99 is not worth doing. Just make it free. 35% above 9.99 means you need to find a second local revenue max. Simple case: $7 = 1 copy at $10, ~2 copies at $11, 1 copy again at $20, 1/2 a copy at $40. Normal demand curve won’t do that. Veblen curve will.
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Print is not strictly comparable. I self-published print in a way that I make almost 70% there too, but typical is 10%. Assume you can structure for roughly 35% for convenience, and you can say a $9.99 ebook and a $20 print book make the same money.
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Amazon distorted the curve for a good reason — to create the market. But there are long-term anchoring effects. There is also the effect of e-ink technology. Much less eyestrain than LCD, but limited in quality of digital experience.
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Having factored out unit economics, distortion and tech effects, the rest of market behavior is cultural. Oddly enough it’s younger people (damn trad Millennials™ ) driving the weird continued dominance of print. Mix of domestic cozy, reactionary aesthetics, and good eyesight.
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There’s an identity signaling element too. All young nerds but only a fraction of older people use books for signaling (though Zoom backdrops may change that). My own bias: I VASTLY prefer ebooks. Like to an unbelievable degree — I won’t even read some books on paper.
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This is 100% ergonomics (weight, reading in bed with backlight, adjustable font size for comfort). I will only go print if I can’t find ebook OR there are lots of rich visuals that ebooks handle poorly, since I can’t read books on phone/iPad comfortably.
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There is a whole line of bullshit rationalization of paper books that I just don’t buy. Tactile feel, warm glow of ownership, supposed better retention of paper books, etc etc. It’s a whole reactionary bs cottage industry. So what’s really going on?
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Only legit reasons for print: DRM/SaaS means it can be yanked and not shared easily. Acceptable subjective reasons: aesthetics, sentiment, collectibility, experience design. Bullshit reasons: vague “better for cognition” rationalizations based on utterly shoddy research.
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Mic-drop reason for ebooks being better if you believe in climate change. No-brainer vastly better for the environment. Print is worse than Bitcoin 🤣
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5 big things that need to happen: 1. Tech: E-readers that combine the comfort of e-ink with the rich full-color graphics and layout of tablets. Will blow print out of the water. 2. Legal: Sort out DRM/shareability for print parity or better
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3. End of price distortion now that market has been made. 4. Jewelryfication of print (like wristwatches) for the remaining sentiment/aesthetics print market, with carbon priced in. 5. Emergence of truly rich media (think Diamond Age primer) to set evolutionary path.
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Once we hit these 5 milestones, we’ll enter endgame. Today’s book market: 1. Cheap paperbacks (bad for environment, needs to die) 2. Archival quality hardcover (bad but redeemable to good with right pricing) 3. Ebooks: best for environment, but technologically only 50% there
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Future, post-transition market: 1. Jeweryfied collectibles (think $50+ hardcovers on acid-free paper, stable version) 2. Basic ebooks 3. Rich ebooks descended from static websites, roam research, interactive widgets, Seymour Papert/Bret Victor type clever shit, etc.
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Can’t predict timing or details but that’s where things are headed. And when we’re there ebooks will dominate both revenue and unit sales. Think of the fraction of ALL clock technologies (including clock chips in every digital device) vs jewelry wristwatches.
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The ebook of the future may not even be distinguishable as such. Your top 3 clocks today are: phone, microwave, stove. But it won’t be generic atomized content online either. It will be a designed and published experience.
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For the future, I’m considering doing the following: - Quality ebooks + pricey ($30+) higher-quality print books with carbon priced in somehow - No cheap print. - Experiments with rich books (based on roam+gatsby content garden with paywall perhaps)
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I didn’t even discuss a big topic — affordances: highlights/search/notes vs free-form marginalia. It’s a subjective toss-up but ebook wins hands-down for me. Search and exportable highlights way more important than doodling in margins.
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And fwiw, doodling in margins is getting there. Try LiquidText with PDFs on iPad+pencil. Somebody will figure it out. It’s purely a compute problem. Capturing real-time handwritten annotations on vector files with low-enough latency and non-janky retrieval is just better silicon.
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Oh, and on the buying side, my book consumption is currently: 70% ebooks checked out from library 20% ebooks I buy 10% print and hate it except with larger format comic books and technical (with diagrams) Sold/gave away about half my collection in the last decade
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Of what I have left, I’d say it’s 25% sentiment and aesthetics, 75% special case books not available in ebook or not worth selling/rebuying. Also wife won’t jet me get rid of more. She’s Xennial.
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On writing — 90% on computer, 5% paper notebooks, 5% whiteboard. But stuff that I write on paper/whiteboard (and often photograph for archival) is hard to do even on better iPad-pencil apps like Notability. The UX is there, but file management/backup/review workflows are poor.
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