The Reading Habit

Fred Wilson wrote an interesting piece a few days back, about the slowing adoption of e-books, v/s paperbacks.

“Many of the early adopters of ebooks and tablets .. have made their move. The diehards aren't going to make that move it seems, or they are going to take their time.”

One would then expect the obvious move by publishing houses to price the paperback product at a premium to the e-version to drive e-sales, but it has not materialized. Instead, the cost and ease of purchasing a paperback has steadily fallen (via e-retailers) while e-books prices have been lower than paperback, but not much lower, as seen from the table below (for a popular fiction title)

Title		Flipkart	Amazon
Inferno (Dan Brown)	Paperback	Rs 375 ($ 6.25)	Rs 390 ($ 6.50)
	e-Book	Rs 345 ($ 5.75)	Rs 337 ($ 5.60)

Investopedia explains very concisely why the above phenomenon occurs:

Large publishers have overheads like office space, utilities, salaries (editors and graphic designers) and marketing spends, which aren’t necessarily eliminated in the case of e-books. The savings are only in the form of physically printing the book and the physical distribution process (margins to bookstores and inventory cost). Thus, the pricing gap between e-books and paperbacks is small.

So, all of the above has only served to take the brick-and-mortar bookstores and libraries out of business.

Three simple questions come to mind here.

One. Do you think the real cost of producing the paperback is being priced in? Not in money terms, but the actual environmental impact, the number of trees axed, the amount of green cover lost to the world, to read a simple story over a couple of days (which then yellows on a bookshelf somewhere)

Two. Will we ever have the same emotional tug of physically progressing through a page-turner, from a tablet or a laptop? Horizontal on the living room sofa for hours on end, skipping meals and a good night’s sleep till the last page is done.

Three. Is piracy a factor in the above equation? It is obviously much easier to obtain a pirated copy of an e-book, while on the other hand, the reduced price of a paperback has effectively countered rampant piracy in the physical version (from my experience in Mumbai)

So, while we contemplate the fallout, i am heading back into the depths of ‘A Dance with Dragons’, the fifth volume of the amazing series ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ by George R.R. Martin. After meandering through the last one-and-a-half volumes it begun moving, and regained that un-put-down-able feeling which carried me through the first three. Will harp on this series a bit more in following posts. Meanwhile, Cheers! Feel free to leave your views in the comments section!

{ Fred Wilson is a VC and Principal at Union Square Ventures, an early stage VC firm based in NYC. Their biggest known investments so far have been Twitter (2007), Tumblr (2007), Zynga (2008) and Foursquare (2009). I have been a keen follower of his blog since 2009, for his views and insights on the different aspects of start-ups and technology, as well as his simple step-by-step explanations of  finance related concepts in the section 'MBA Mondays'. He has been a major inspiration to start my own blog }