I tend to download the e-book for novels I purchase physical copies of because I vastly prefer e-readers to real books. My new hardcovers will probably never be opened.

All digital all the time please.

 

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That's just it, it's a preference thing. There's no denying that e-books will take a nice large bite out of physical copies and the storefronts will likely have to change their ways to cater to the digital market more. Still, the existence of e-books will not eliminate the demand for physical copies, it will just reduce it. There will always be those that prefer what they buy come in a physical form instead of a simple file.

 

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Barnes and Noble already provides WiFi in all of their stores. When I go shopping with my mother I look through the book in the store then pick up the ones I want on my Nook.

 

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Absolutely disagree, because a book requires a serious time commitment that isn't required by music or film. A movie you can watch in 2 hours and have the entire story completed. A song is over for the most part in 3 or 4 minutes. A novel or non-fiction book requires days, weeks, or months, depending on how much you read and how fast you read and comprehend.

A book is a completely different type of media animal than movies or music or TV or video games, and will not be impacted in the same way as these other types of media.

I'm not saying that there isn't room for digital book sales, but rather that I think books/novels/non-fiction writing will be impacted much more dramatically than other forms of media. This new generation is growing up in a world that is much more fast paced than any other generation before it, and I think that long-form writing will slowly die as each successive year becomes faster and faster and faster.

 

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I don't see how any of that means the book industry won't be positively impacted by digital media.

I believe your argument is a non sequitur; it is a matter of degrees. The music and movie industries felt a benefit relative to their existing production, the book industry will also feel a benefit relative to its existing production. You can argue that the book industry will enter a decline due to any number of factors but that is unrelated to how digital media will effect book sales.

The industry can decline while still receiving a boost through digital sales.

The idea that people are not interested in digital books in the same way they are interested in music and movies is disproved by the explosion of e-readers and the continual growth in that market. More and more companies would not be releasing e-readers and they wouldn't be going through multiple competitive revisions if digital book sales were not a huge market.

Market analysts are suggesting that 11 million e-readers will be sold in 2010 and research has shown that once people purchase e-readers their book purchases increase over 20%. That is the key point right there, that is why the music and video industry gained a boom from digital media- people are more likely to purchase more from their couch at home, especially when it is always readily available.

 

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I agree with the sentiment, but not the reasoning. I don't think how long it takes to complete any form of media has any difference at all on whether piracy will affect a particular market. What will make the difference is how many items are sold overall pre-digital media introduction. Music, games, and movies all far outstrip books in sales and thus a million illegal downloads won't have as large an impact as a large number of illegal downloads of a book which probably wouldn't have sold that many copies to begin with. It's a per capita deal.

book piracy isn't nearly as rampant as movie, music and game piracy though.

 

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A quick loot through a torrent site and you see that a new movie or song has tens (some times hundreds) of thousands of people stealing it, a new book has one or two dozen.

 

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You're looking at the wrong torrent sites for the numbers. Cao and I are on the same semi-private torrent site and she should know how many people torrent books. But as a whole, it's true that less people pirate books. I'll agree with that much. But if it ever upshifts it could cause trouble.

There are a few books that I'm seeing 25k, 30k, even 40k downloads and that's from one site (demonoid). If the numbers are just 1k-5k for the same book across all the public sites and even or higher on other private and semi-private sites the numbers could easily have reached 150k-200k for one book download. And that's just for torrents. For a movie or music media that wouldn't even make a scratch the surface, but even for a best selling book that's a huge dent in profit.

Have to look at total downloads, not how many seeds/leeches there are. After that you have the completely untracked direct download sites.

I'm using Demonoid as well. I guess pirating for pop-fiction crap is a lot higher than other genres.

Brandon Sanderson's new book was top 10 on the New York Times list and it only has 2-3k completions on Demonoid.

I've never seen a book torrent with more than 5,000 completions.

Granted, I don't pirate books and only go to download things I own physical copies of, but I haven't seen anything to indicate tens of thousands- at least in the genres I read.

 

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