I am afraid of being locked into a vendor or technology. I currently buy almost all my books from Amazon.com with very little comparison shopping because I know that Amazon faces a pretty elastic demand curve. If I buy a Kindle, I will have only one source for in-copyright books, and Amazon may not always have an incentive to keep prices low. If I invest in a Kindle library, then I will always have to have a Kindle, even if some superior e-book reader comes along.
Digital rights management is such a pain. My current book-reading habits include “borrowing” books from parental libraries. Non-transferability is the reason that e-books are so cheap relative to regular books, but I think I would rather pay full book price for an e-book if it included full rights of resale and transfer. The hypothetical used e-book market would of course be more efficient and liquid than the used paper book market, due to lower transaction costs.
Of course, even if I bought a Kindle, nothing would stop me from raiding parental paper book libraries.
From what I understand, Amazon has not yet perfected the within-household e-book syncing paradigm. Suppose I have an iPhone with the Kindle app on it, and both I and my wife have Kindles. Amazon offers an optional service that syncs the last page you were on across devices, so I can start a book on my Kindle and pick up in the same place on my iPhone if I am standing in line somewhere. As it stands (correct me if I am wrong), I cannot sync just my iPhone and my Kindle without syncing my wife’s Kindle also. This is troubling since there are several books in my house with both His and Hers bookmarks in them.
The existence of e-books makes me wish even more that copyright terms were shorter, say, 20 years. Every book published before 1990 would be a free download, and I doubt that the incentive to write books would be too adversely impacted.
There ought to be a way to upgrade my paper book library into a digital library. I mail a book back to the publisher and they give me a free e-book of the same title. Provided I pay the shipping costs and a small fee for processing, why should they be unwilling to do this? Taking a used book out of circulation means more new book sales.
Think about e-books, the real estate market, and Caplan’s Jock/Nerd theory of history. Crudely, assume every nerd has a room in his house devoted to books, and every jock does not read or own books. Other things equal, nerds will need larger houses. Now e-books come along, and nerds can fit that entire room into one or two e-book readers. This is a change that benefits nerds to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in real estate costs alone. To the extent that nerds demand less housing, it could result in lower housing prices for jocks as well, but this effect would be modest compared to the effect on nerd welfare. The invention of e-books is the revenge of the nerds.
My friend actually just pirates all of his books for his Kindle from some torrent site that converts the stuff to the right format. Don’t know how you feel about the ethics of that, but if you ever did get one and were interested in how he did it, I could put you in touch with him.
Totally agree about the copyright term. Talk about rent-seeking gone completely out of control.
When I recently moved out of my parents home, I began to appreciate the whole e-books concept a lot more. Having a lot of books is really great, not just if you have a big enough house for it, but if you don’t move around a lot. If you move on anything like a regular basis–say every two or three years–having a lot of physical books downright sucks.
Adam, I don’t even have to get to the ethical question because that sounds like such a pain. Plus, not sure those books would sync with my iPhone.
Combining your first two points, however, makes me wonder if any e-pirates out there would be willing to take the principled stand of pirating all content older than 20 years and not pirating newer content.
With regard to moving books: one more way in which e-books are the revenge of the nerds. Nerds no longer have to pay jocks as much to move their stuff.
He seems to have found it easy (he’s downloaded many thousands more titles than he’ll probably ever read) but yeah, I doubt you’d be able to sync it with your iPhone or computer.
Couple thoughts:
1) I believe it is possible to not sync location on a Kindle. So you could sync bookmarks with your Kindle and iPhone – but your wife would not get that capability. A minor loss of functionality – but not terrible.
2) There are some e-pirates that will only ‘share’ TV programs that have not aired for 4 years or more. Similar to your ‘virtuous’ e-book pirates.
My Kindle 2 is arriving tomorrow, I think. I had some reservations, but ended up deciding it was right for me, all things considered (or if it’s not great, I’ll return it and get a Nook). I agree that ereaders do not yet present a good way of consolidating libraries into one device (because of having to re-buy books mostly). But I view ebooks not really as substitutes for physical books (e.g., bc of borrowing issues), but as something kind of different altogether. I own very few books, and make heavy use of my university’s library. The advantage of this is that it’s free, the disadvantages are that books are heavy to carry around and sometimes they get recalled by another user. To me, ebooks/the Kindle are a good way of carrying around a few works I’m reading at any given time, mostly on the bus or traveling. Since the Kindle is not wildly expensive, and ebooks are often only $10-15 (plus many of the classics I want to read are free), this is not a bad deal. If the price of ebooks climbs higher than is worth it to me for portability/convenience, then I will quit buying them and put the Kindle on my shelf in place of the couple hundred bricks I would have otherwise had to move around. I’m not holding out much hope of ever having a fully consolidated elibrary, but if this looks like it’s becoming possible, I suppose I will abandon the Kindle and just end up rebuying the most important books. But that’s really no worse than selling or giving away a box or two of books when you’re moving or something. And anyway, my primary purpose here is to do more reading, not to own more books. If the Kindle’s portability facilitates that, then I’ll be a happy camper.
My friend actually just pirates all of his books for his Kindle from some torrent site that converts the stuff to the right format. Don’t know how you feel about the ethics of that, but if you ever did get one and were interested in how he did it, I could put you in touch with him.
Totally agree about the copyright term. Talk about rent-seeking gone completely out of control.
When I recently moved out of my parents home, I began to appreciate the whole e-books concept a lot more. Having a lot of books is really great, not just if you have a big enough house for it, but if you don’t move around a lot. If you move on anything like a regular basis–say every two or three years–having a lot of physical books downright sucks.
Adam, I don’t even have to get to the ethical question because that sounds like such a pain. Plus, not sure those books would sync with my iPhone.
Combining your first two points, however, makes me wonder if any e-pirates out there would be willing to take the principled stand of pirating all content older than 20 years and not pirating newer content.
With regard to moving books: one more way in which e-books are the revenge of the nerds. Nerds no longer have to pay jocks as much to move their stuff.
He seems to have found it easy (he’s downloaded many thousands more titles than he’ll probably ever read) but yeah, I doubt you’d be able to sync it with your iPhone or computer.
Couple thoughts:
1) I believe it is possible to not sync location on a Kindle. So you could sync bookmarks with your Kindle and iPhone – but your wife would not get that capability. A minor loss of functionality – but not terrible.
2) There are some e-pirates that will only ‘share’ TV programs that have not aired for 4 years or more. Similar to your ‘virtuous’ e-book pirates.
Thanks for the info, Chris. That’s helpful because wife is unlikely to read on a phone. Still not ideal, as you say.
My Kindle 2 is arriving tomorrow, I think. I had some reservations, but ended up deciding it was right for me, all things considered (or if it’s not great, I’ll return it and get a Nook). I agree that ereaders do not yet present a good way of consolidating libraries into one device (because of having to re-buy books mostly). But I view ebooks not really as substitutes for physical books (e.g., bc of borrowing issues), but as something kind of different altogether. I own very few books, and make heavy use of my university’s library. The advantage of this is that it’s free, the disadvantages are that books are heavy to carry around and sometimes they get recalled by another user. To me, ebooks/the Kindle are a good way of carrying around a few works I’m reading at any given time, mostly on the bus or traveling. Since the Kindle is not wildly expensive, and ebooks are often only $10-15 (plus many of the classics I want to read are free), this is not a bad deal. If the price of ebooks climbs higher than is worth it to me for portability/convenience, then I will quit buying them and put the Kindle on my shelf in place of the couple hundred bricks I would have otherwise had to move around. I’m not holding out much hope of ever having a fully consolidated elibrary, but if this looks like it’s becoming possible, I suppose I will abandon the Kindle and just end up rebuying the most important books. But that’s really no worse than selling or giving away a box or two of books when you’re moving or something. And anyway, my primary purpose here is to do more reading, not to own more books. If the Kindle’s portability facilitates that, then I’ll be a happy camper.