She does it on her back, he on his  stomach. He’s an E, she’s a P.  Can this marriage be saved?

To marital tensions over sleeping with the window open vs. closed, watching a ball game vs. a political program, and going out to dinner vs. ordering in, you can now add who prefers to read a print book vs. who likes an e-book. You may not think it’s a big deal but some couples do, and marriages have broken up over far less.

In the New York Times Matt Richtel and Claire Cain Miller have reported P vs. E as a domestic issue fraught with potential conflict. One husband spoke of his wife’s reverence for paper with some disdain. “She talks about the smell of the paper and the feeling of holding it in your hands. She uses the word ‘real.’ ”

Real? Before the digital era we never questioned the reality of books, but e-books have introduced an element of doubt as we examine the philosophical question of What is real, the medium or the message, the vessel (print on paper bound between covers) or the intellectual content contained in it?

Regardless of the fact that the argument is at least as old as Plato (and Mrs. Plato), the smug certainty that your paper reading device is superior to your partner’s electronic one or vice-versa could lead to hard feelings.  They say you’re not supposed to go to sleep mad at your spouse, but it’s hard not to when one turns out the lamp and puts her book down on the night table while he continues reading by the glow of a backlit screen.  I know of at least one wife who banished her husband from the bedroom because the CLICK-Click, CLICK-Click, CLICK-Click of his page-turn feature was driving her mad.

For couples whose idea of togetherness is lying side by side reading old-fashioned book-books, a switch by one to e-book can feel like a betrayal, the literary equivalent of cheating on your spouse. Richtel and Miller cite one wife whose rude awakening came after the honeymoon. “We used to go to the beach and we’d both take out books, but he had an iPad, and it was almost distracting because it didn’t feel like he was reading with me.”

Clearly the key to marital concord is to include reading device preferences in the prenuptial agreement.  And don’t forget a provision for how you’re going to bring up your children. “The battle over reading tastes has skipped to a new generation,” the Times reporters tell us. “He reads Winnie the Pooh to the child on a screen. She reads it in old-fashioned paperback form.”

We’re not sure if it’s pre-nup-worthy but added to device preferences is reading positions. Are you a tummier, a sitter, a backer or a sider? An AbeBooks blog raised the question in a posting called Positions in Bed.  When reading in bed, the blogger lies “stretched out flat on my stomach, propped up on my elbows, with the book in front of me, between my hands.” A survey of co-workers disclosed several who read on their side, head propped up on one hand. Sitters pile pillows up against the headboard, while backers use them to prop up pinkie-bending hardcovers. Nobody surveyed said they read standing up, but it might be good to find that weird fact out before you tie the marital knot. Discovering your spouse likes to read standing up might be like finding a stash of porn under the bed.

If marital strains become overwhelming, contact a counselor, but when you make the appointment it might be a good idea to ask the therapist whether she reads paper or digital, and in what position.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting conducted by the New York Times.

We feel that a cogent comment made by Anne Marie Gilbert in response to our posting Why E-Sales Dipped in Q2 comes so close to capturing the mood of consumers that we are taking the liberty of reproducing it here in its entirety. Thank you Ms. Gilbert!

RC

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I am still downloading a lot of books, but definitely buying fewer of the overpriced e books, instead of buying 3-5 books a week, I’m buying 6-7 books a month. My book budget has not diminished but I just won’t buy some books I want to read but feel are over priced. My entire family read Jim Butcher’s Changes in a library copy rather than buy it at $12.99 for our Kindles. (We share an account with two of our grown sons, that way they can read my books but I don’t have to raid their homes to get them back.) We have all his other books on Kindle and would still download it to reread but not until the price comes down.

I’m not a $9.99 purist but for most new fiction it feels right. For back list works I would expect the price to be less than the paper version or I won’t buy it. My price points for scholarly and general non fiction works are much more flexible and I will and have paid a great deal more for those works. BUT I still will not pay more for the e version and expect to pay at least 20 per cent less than the print version of any book I buy. When the prices are low enough I am happily replacing my print books with their e versions. Less dust, less book case space needed, and easier on elderly eyes.

I am particularly unhappy with the Penguin price points as I read a lot of their authors and simply will not pay, (not can not but will not) what they are asking. $18 for Black Lamb and Grey Falcon to replace a many year old copy I already own in paper is greedy for them to ask and would be insane for me to spend. If books are priced well I’ll buy, if the price points set by some of the major publisher’s remain inflated, I’m going to be giving some serious thought to self scanning books I might otherwise just re-buy for kindle and spending my reading money on the sensibly priced books that are still out there and worth reading, not to mention downloading the public domain books that I could spend the rest of my life profitably reading and rereading.

Except for Art History books, Museum catalogs, graphic novels and military history that has a lot of maps, I don’t expect to be buying anymore paper books in the foreseeable future and once there is good color e ink those purchases will be made for Kindle as well. I love books, but it’s the content I’m interested in, using them as a decorating statement has long since gotten old. Yes some books are works of art in format as well as content and those books if one is lucky enough to own them are to be treasured but they are the exception not the rule.

I never thought I would come to this point but I’m done buying hard copies of books just done with it and the authors who will be profiting from my spending are the ones whose publishers do not leave me with the feeling that they are the pirates and I’m the one being ripped off. For the works I want from those publishers I’ll just use the very fine library to which I’m lucky enough to have access and feel bad for the author who will be losing a sale.

Anne Marie Gilbert

The following question is deceptively simple, and we urge you to take your time responding. How much time?  Three or four months. You’ll need that much.  A lot rides on your answer.

Here’s the question:

When you purchase a print book you should be able to get the e-book for…

• a) the full combined retail prices of print and e-book editions
• b) an additional 50% of the retail price of the print edition
• c) an additional 25% of the retail price of the print edition
• d) $1.00 more than the retail price of the print edition
• e) free

The subject of this little quiz is bundling, a common marketing tactic in which two or more products are packaged and sold at a single price. In this case the package is a printed book plus its e-book iteration.

As simple as it sounds, bundling is shaping up to be the battleground for clashing publishing philosophies, and the time will soon come when publishers will have to choose one of the above strategies and put it into effect. Misjudging consumer attitudes could prove to be a big mistake and possibly a ruinous one.

The essence of bundling is to offer customers a discount for selecting the combo instead of the individually priced components, so choice a) above is a non-starter.  But choices b), c) and d) reflect just how aggressive a discounter wants to be and the various thresholds at which consumer resistance is expected to melt.  A good argument can be made for each and as the bundling issue warms up you can expect to hear them all endlessly debated.

Yet even the cheapest package – a dollar or even less than a dollar over the cost of the print edition – may not suffice to capture the consumer’s fancy. Why? Because many people believe they’re entitled to get the e-book free with purchase of the print book. How large is public support for that position?  We need to take a poll to find out, but if anecdotal reports are any indication, they may be in the overwhelming majority and they are unquestionably the most vocal. You will certainly hear their outpouring of joy when one publisher steps up to offer a print and e-book combo for the price of the print edition alone.  Our own prediction? Free will become the standard, and even ten cents above free will be a competitive disadvantage.

Economic factors aside, consumer negativity toward double-charging is a contributor to piracy. Comments sent to us in response to postings about piracy strongly suggest that the public expects digital versions of books to be tossed in for nothing when a printed book is sold, and if it isn’t tossed in, many of those customers will feel no compunctions about downloading an unauthorized copy. They simply feel entitled to it. Libertarian spokespeople like Cory Doctorow have articulated this sense of entitlement, and though some feel that their arguments go too far, there is a solid core of realism in their position. We can condemn the immorality of consumer attitudes ’til the cows come home; and we can (quite reasonably) complain that if people were willing to wait for the paperback reprint they should be willing to wait for the e-book reprint. It makes no difference: the public’s sense of entitlement creates an environment susceptible to the allure of piracy.

With so many sound arguments in support of heavily discounted bundles, why have we seen so little of it in book marketing? The answer is that it is harder to assemble print/e-book packages than it looks.  Publishers that control both formats are in the best position to do it but the technology is not yet in place.  Customers purchasing the latest James Patterson or Nora Roberts novel in a bookstore have no simple way to download the e-book in the same transaction. The publisher might offer a discount coupon but that requires a number of steps  and clicks that discourage a quick and easy procedure.

What is wanted is a one-click experience: “Click here to order the print and e-book.” Such a deal might best be offered by a publisher on its website.  However, the price of that bundle might undercut the prices offered by retailers or e-tailers for the individual components, and for publishers to compete with their own retailers is to cut their own throats.

Amazon is in a good position to offer print/e-book bundles but hasn’t done so yet, probably because it recognizes the complexity of the issues.  Book pricing is already fraught with so much angst that adding bundling to the debate will undoubtedly induce cardiac infarction among book people already near apoplectic with worry.

For the record, we at E-Reads strongly support the position that the e-book version should be included free of charge with the purchase of one of our print editions and are working to overcome the technical obstacles to implementing our conviction.

We invite your comments and look forward to seeing the debate over bundling heat up on the next stretch of road to the future of books.

Richard Curtis

Her: I read a wonderful book the other day.
Him: On what?
Her: On relationships
Him: No, I mean on what device did you read it? Kindle? Nook? Sony? iPad?
Her: Kindle. Anyway, this book said some really important things about how couples communicate.
Him: Kindle? You could probably see an enhanced version with all kinds of extras on the iPad. Is it audio enabled?`
Her: I don’t know. Would you like to know what the author said about listening to the other person?
Him: Will I be able to see it on YouTube? Hey, why are you packing your suitcase?

This sad exchange might be cited by Deborah Tannen if she ever decided to update You Just Don’t Understand, her insightful book describing how difficult it is for men and women to communicate with each other.  The “Her” in the story was talking about what interested her (her relationship with Him) and the “Him” was talking about what interested him (cool stuff).

This divergence between content and form manifests itself more and more as the format crowds out content in media’s bid for our attention. Books are a salient example. As the publishing industry shifts from paper to screen, the qualities of the book itself just don’t seem as significant as the packaging and delivery technology. It’s begun to be reflected in editorial attitudes: ”Great concept, marvelous characters, super plot. But the author has no platform and a boring website. Sorry.”

Even reviewers have contracted the disease, especially those who cover the media online. Jason Kottke, posting a blog entitled The New Rules for Reviewing Media, observed “I’ve noticed an increasing tendency by reviewers on Amazon (and Apple’s iTunes and App Stores) to review things based on the packaging or format of the media with little regard shown to the actual content/plot.”

Unlike newspaper and magazine reviewers, says Kottke, their Internet cousins ask “whether a book would be good to read on a Kindle, if you should buy the audiobook version instead of the hardcover because John Hodgman has a delightful voice, if a magazine is good for reading on the toilet, if a movie is watchable on an iPhone or if you need to see it in 1080p on a big TV, if a hardcover is too heavy to read in the bath, whether the trailer is an accurate depiction of what the movie is about, or if the hardcover price is too expensive and you should get the Kindle version or wait for the paperback. Or, as the above reviewers hammer home, if the book is available to read on the Kindle/iPad/Nook or if it’s better to wait until the director’s cut comes out.”

Kottke has put his finger on a significant trend, but although he neither condones or condemns it, we’ve expressed growing concern (see Watching Books) that literature will be judged on the most superficial grounds: not how artistic it is, but what’s the best gadget to read it on.

“In the end,” writes Kottke, “people don’t buy content or plots, they buy physical or digital pieces of media for use on specific devices and within certain contexts.”

Troubling.

Richard Curtis

Stephen Windwalker, editor of The Kindle Nation, reports on Teleread that “Ebooks accounted for 29% of all first week sales of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest,” the third novel in the bestselling Stieg Larsson trilogy.

According to Michael Cader, posting on his Publishers Marketplace website, out of 425,000 units, 125,000 were e-books. That comes to an extraordinary 29.4%. If percentages like that hold up for future frontlist releases, it will be hard to argue that the paradigmatic e-book tipping point has not yet arrived.

RC

It’s an accepted truth that in matters digital the British are a backwards people.  Their Internet competency trails that of Americans by a decade. With each instance of their technological quaintness we shake our heads and smile indulgently.

A recent poll confirms the archaic mentality of our cousins on the other side of the Big Pond. “Nearly three-quarters of Britons say that they will never totally migrate to a digital-only film or music subscription service,” reports Emma Barnett, Technology and Digital Media Correspondent for Telegraph.co.uk.  And “Seventy-three per cent of the Britons polled in a survey of over 1,000 consumers aged between 16 and 60 said that they could never see a time when they would move over to a 100 per cent digital-only music or film subscription model.” Another example of their antediluvian mindset: Given a choice, 75% of those polled would rather boot up a DVD than watch a streamed movie.

Most egregious of all is that 95% of those responding to the poll said that they prefer paper books over e-books.  Well, that tears it! If there is a more benighted race on the face of 21st century Earth we don’t know about it.

We must try to understand the values underlying this British perversity if for no other reason than they might yield some sociological benefits.  But more importantly, once we understand them it will be easier to convert the British to modern American values and expand the export market for our Nooks, Kindles and iPads.  So, the question is, do the British know something about paper that we don’t know?

A clue may be gleaned in an observation imparted to the Telegraph reporter by Shaun Hobbs, Home Server manager for HP Personal Systems Group UK and Ireland: “In this technologically driven age,” says Hobbs, “it is easy to get carried away and think that everybody is embracing digital and leaving physical behind. Our survey shows that this isn’t the case. Britons are on an evolutionary journey with media still being bought on multiple formats and enjoyed using a variety of devices. We’re not yet ready to give up the old ways of purchasing media.”

In the spirit of openmindedness we’ll grant that there might be some value in the old media. Perhaps Hobbs has been following the research of social scientists like Sandra Aamodt, former editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, who wrote that “people read more slowly on screen, by as much as 20-30 percent… Distractions abound online — costing time and interfering with the concentration needed to think about what you read.”

Or maybe Hobbs had delved into observations by Maryanne Wolf, a professor of child development at Tufts and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, about the possibly negative impact of screen reading on children:  “No one really knows the ultimate effects of an immersion in a digital medium on the young developing brain… My greatest concern is that the young brain will never have the time (in milliseconds or in hours or in years) to learn to go deeper into the text after the first decoding, but rather will be pulled by the medium to ever more distracting information, sidebars, and now, perhaps, videos (in the new vooks).”

Or Hobbs might have read a comment by Professor Gloria Mark, a University of California professor who studies human-computer interaction: “I’d much rather curl up in an easy chair with a paper book. It’s not only an escape into a world of literature but it’s an escape from my digital devices.”

Okay, we’re ready to concede  that digital books may be less immersive than printed ones, that they are far more distracting, that they may compromise reading speed, concentration and retentiveness in children, and that they are less beautiful, tactile and comfortable than paper.   But surely those drawbacks are not too high a price to pay for opening the lucrative British market to Yankee reading devices and an American way of life that is unquestionably the quintessence of civilization. American manufacturers simply must work harder to bring truth and e-books to this primordial, childlike society.

Richard Curtis

Last September we raised a question about e-books that nobody else seemed to be asking: when comparing the impact of supposedly “green” e-books to tree-killing paper books, why isn’t anybody talking about the health and environmental price? (See Getting Rid of E-Trash? Dump it on Asia’s Poor.)

At last someone has picked up that ball.  Daniel Goleman, author of Ecological Intelligence, and Gregory Norris, who is developing a life-cycle assessment software system, have evaluated the comparable impact of e-readers to printed books in an op-ed article in the New York Times. “To find the answer,” they write, “we turned to life-cycle assessment, which evaluates the ecological impact of any product, at every stage of its existence, from the first tree cut down for paper to the day that hardcover decomposes in the dump. With this method, we can determine the greenest way to read.”

It may come as a surprise to digital evangelists that their tree-saving e-gadgets are doing more harm than the traditional reading device known as the book. By some criteria, far more harm.

Goleman and Norris used 6 factors to assess the comparable impacts and their conclusions can be summarized as follows:

• Materials “One e-reader requires the extraction of 33 pounds of minerals…[and requires] 79 gallons of water. A book made with recycled paper consumes about two-thirds of a pound of minerals…[and] just 2 gallons of water.”
• Manufacture An e-reader consumes 100 kilowatt hours of fossil fuels that throw off 66 pounds of carbon dioxide, compared to 2 kwh and less than 1 pound of greenhouse gases.
• Health “The adverse health impacts from making one e-reader are estimated to be 70 times greater than those from making a single book.”
• Transportation “You’d need to drive to a store 300 miles away to create the equivalent in toxic impacts on health of making one e-reader — but you might do that and more if you drive to the mall every time you buy a new book.”
• Reading “If you like to read a book in bed at night for an hour or two, the light bulb will use more energy than it takes to charge an e-reader, which has a highly energy-efficient screen. But if you read in daylight, the advantage tips to a book.”
• Disposal For very different reasons e-readers and printed books end up tied in this category.

The final (and shocking) tally? “With respect to fossil fuels, water use and mineral consumption, the impact of one e-reader payback equals roughly 40 to 50 books. When it comes to global warming, though, it’s 100 books; with human health consequences, it’s somewhere in between.”

For details read How Green Is My iPad?

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

If for no other reason, e-books are the perfect vehicle for immediately correcting errors in published books. And if the errors are serious enough to damage a person’s reputation or otherwise incur potential legal liability, a prompt correction and withdrawal of the offending text demonstrate the sincere determination of the those who messed up to set the record straight without delay.

Such might be the recourse of Charles Pellegrino and his publisher Henry Holt in expunging material in his otherwise highly acclaimed account of the atomic destruction of Hiroshima, The Last Train From Hiroshima.

According to William J. Broad in the New York Times, a section of the book cites recollections of someone who says he flew in an observation plane accompanying the bomber that released the a-bomb, the Enola Gay. But the man, Joseph Fuoco, “never flew on the bombing run, and he never substituted for James R. Corliss, the plane’s regular flight engineer,” says Corliss’s family. “They, along with angry ranks of scientists, historians and veterans, are denouncing the book and calling Mr. Fuoco an impostor,” writes Broad.

The author of the book “now concedes that he was probably duped” and plans to “rewrite sections of the book for paperback and foreign editions.”

If normal production timelines apply, that means that the paperback might not come out for a year after hardcover publication, or six or nine months if Holt accelerates release of the reprint. Foreign editions? Foreign publishers need to translate the book first, so don’t expect a correct edition to appear overseas for many months as well.

If there was ever a case for e-books, this is it. Pellegrino and his publisher could remove the controversial passages for an e-print and write an apology that might remove not just the insult of the offending passages but also the injury of making the Corliss’s family wait, brood – and, perhaps, call a lawyer. As of this writing, however, there is no e-book edition. It undoubtedly has been “windowed”, the term used by publishers to describe the holding back of an e-book edition until the hardcover has had its run. Though controversial (see Agent Nat Sobel Challenges Publishers to Hold Back E-Prints), windowing is sound strategy for many books and might have been fine for Last Train too had it not been for this alleged error, which if true is embarrassing at the very least but potentially damaging as well.

Holt should consider crash-releasing Last Train in e-book.

Here’s the Times article.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

We’ve projected a near-future in which kiosks located in supermarkets, coffee shops or public libraries will dispense print on demand books. Customers will be able to choose among hundreds of thousands of titles and watch their book being born while they have a cup of coffee or finish their shopping. Some clever Brits, however, have created a lower-tech kiosk – out of a phone booth, turning a village’s double loss – its public phone service and its mobile library – into a wonderful amenity.

The council of a small parish called Westbury-sub-Mendip took one of those familiar red boxes off the phone company’s hands for a token £1. Then the townspeople stocked the booth with books, CDs and DVDs. “Users simply stock it with a book they have read, swapping it for one they have not,” BBC explains. “‘It’s really taken off,’” said one of the town’s councillors. ‘”This facility has turned a piece of street furniture into a community service in constant use.’”

BT Group, Britain’s leading landline telecommunications provider, subsequently received almost 800 applications for parishes to “adopt a kiosk”, and about half of the applications have been fulfilled to date.

Obviously, in an age of cell phones, phone booths worldwide are just occupying real estate. And so are a lot of books, CDs and DVDs. Converting phone boxes to microlibraries solves both problems at a stroke. The only one it creates is long, long queues. C’mon, mate, make yer bloody selection!

Richard Curtis

We knew print was good for something, and Tina Brown, former editor of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair and now publisher of The Daily Beast, figured out what that is: it’s called making money.

Her website has launched a joint venture with mainstream publisher/distributor Perseus Books Group to spin paperback books off the online versions. The idea is to maximize the benefits of both formats: e-books to move quickly on fast-breaking stories, p-books to get them into the hands of those who prefer to hold a paper volume in their hands.

Creating the content first as e-books will also accelerate release of the paperbacks, cutting out a number of editorial and production steps that slow down traditional book-making procedures. Mokoto Rich, writing in the New York Times, says that “On a typical publishing schedule, a writer may take a year or more to deliver a manuscript, after which the publisher takes another nine months to a year to put finished books in stores. At Beast Books, writers would be expected to spend one to three months writing a book, and the publisher would take another month to produce an e-book edition.” The print edition would be ready to go as soon as feasible.

Tina Brown understands that speed is the name of the game: “There is a real window of interest when people want to know something, and that window slams shut pretty quickly in the media cycle.” Read details in Daily Beast Seeks to Publish Faster, and for some insights into the way that publishers customarily handle fast-breaking stories, check out How’s About a Quickie?

RC