Re:The Abomination of Ebooks: They Price People Out of Reading
by aaronem on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @12:06PM
(#6483288)
You can read ebooks on even a quite low-end smartphone; all you really need is a display large enough to present readable text. There are lots of cheap Android phones out there; you can get them subsidized on a cell contract and not pay anything out of pocket, or go prepaid instead and spend around $50 for a device capable of running Kindle for Android.
Sure, there's a small initial barrier to entry, in the sense that you have to have some device, where a paperback novel has no such constraint. On the other hand, how many paperbacks does $50 get you these days?
Re:The Abomination of Ebooks: They Price People Out of Reading
by untog on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @12:08PM
(#6483302)
how many paperbacks does $50 get you these days?
In a used bookshop? At least fifty.
Re:The Abomination of Ebooks: They Price People Out of Reading
by minikites on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @12:34PM
(#6483505)
I went to an annual end-of-year book sale where paperbacks are 10 cents, so $50 would get you 500 books.
The inability to re-sell ebooks destroys this secondary market.
Re:The Abomination of Ebooks: They Price People Out of Reading
by aaronem on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @12:11PM
(#6483335)
Excuse my imprecision; I should've said "how many new mass-market paperbacks does $50 get you these days?" Most of what you find in a used book store isn't available in ebook format at any price, at least in my experience of used book stores.
Re:The Abomination of Ebooks: They Price People Out of Reading
by untog on Wednesday October 02, 2013 @01:20PM
(#6483831)
Most of what you find in a used book store isn't available in ebook format at any price
Which is precisely the problem. eBooks destroy the very valuable (particularly in a societal sense) used books market.
True, but that doesn't tackle the issue of price entirely. If we lived in an e-book only world you would have to spend nearly a hundred dollars before you could read a single book. That's not great. If the books were considerably cheaper it might be justifiable, but they aren't.