I don't understand this. (See picture) I like books, I like the physical feeling of a book, the way the light falls across the cover and pages of a book. It's always been that no matter if the book was paperback, hardback, trade-paperback, printed on a home computer, or read digitally, that you were getting pretty much the same thing: The compilation of words to convey an idea. It's the same in ANY of those formats. The advantage to Hardback is you can read it before it's less expensive brother, paperback comes out. The advantage to digital is that it's not filling up a bookshelf somewhere.But look at this picture. I was told that it costs anywhere from 6-10 dollars to make a hardback book. The rest of the 18-30+ dollars was for paying people who worked on the book. Paperback is obviously less expensive to make (probably less than a buck) and so can be sold for a lot less. (Especially if the hardback did really well) The thing that baffles ME the most is the crazy high price (comparatively) of the Kindle editions of books. (Hit up Amazon.com and look around) In this instance I can buy a used copy of the book (hardcover) for $3.94. The kindle edition costs 7.79 for something that costs NOTHING to reproduce. (copy AND paste) And if I like the book I just can't hand it to a friend and say "I enjoyed this, you would like it as well." I can't turn around and resell it either. With the hardcover book I could relist it on Amazon.com for 4 bucks and make the cost back I spent. I could go by Half-price books and sell it there and make back some of the money I spent.
I think, while the Kindle is very cool and a great idea, that it really needs to look at competing against the paper version. (Hey, to read the paper version I also don't have to spend 130-500 dollars to read it in the first place!) That said if I ever write a book you can be sure that the digital copies will never be more than 5 bucks. (more like 2 bucks probably) It just makes more sense to me.
Excuse the rant, I had to get it out.
~B.