The Value of Books

With the new Christmas Day record for e-book sales, a question will inevitably rise over the next few weeks:  what is the value of books, both printed and digital?  There’s been a discussion over the price of e-books for at least the last year, especially regarding whether they should be cheaper than their printed counterparts – so determining the innate value of books, more appropriately defined as the innate value of reading-based longform entertainment, is becoming important.

First, some basic facts and assumptions:

• assumption:  printed books are mass market paperbacks
• fact:  mass market paperbacks are commonly $7.99
• assumption:  mass market paperbacks average 450 pages
• fact:  average rate of reading is 250 words/minute
• assumption:  an average mass market paperback page has 300 words
• assumption:  an average e-book costs $10.99

Based on these numbers, reading a novel can be expected to take somewhere around nine hours to read, depending on the individual and the book’s difficulty.  This breaks down to $0.014/minute for a printed book, and $0.020/minute for an e-book – compared to $0.833/minute for a movie ticket (assuming a two-hour movie for $10) or $0.116 for a baseball game (assuming $35/ticket for a five-hour game).

Even if e-books are slightly more expensive, does this not seem like a great deal?  The reader receives hours of high quality entertainment for what amounts to just a penny or two a minute – an entire order of magnitude less than the cost of going to see the latest movie.  More importantly, reading is a higher form of entertainment than watching movies, television, or most other leisure/pleasure activities, since it’s an easy way to exercise the mind, expand vocabulary and knowledge, and travel to far-off places within the reader’s imagination.

While it makes sense, and seems to be an appropriate expectation by consumers, for e-books to be cheaper than their printed versions because of a lack of materials, shipping, and other real-world costs, lamenting the difference of a few dollars seems like an overreaction.  It is true that an additional two dollars per book can quickly accumulate for a voracious reader, but now is the time to embrace new technology and options of format, rather than bicker over price.  Technology is often more expensive in its early stages, and this transition to digital reading seems to be no exception – even if there are no valid justifications for such cost differential.

Printed books are not likely to “die out” any time in the next half-century, just as e-books are equally likely to become popular within the mainstream very soon – publishers should acknowledge this fact and take into account the mentality of their customers in order to focus on delivering the value that books so innately hold to those that cherish it.

To rework a phrase from The 5th Element:  cost not important, only value important.

actual phrase:  “time not important, only life important”

Kyle can be found on his blog, on Facebook, via email, or on Twitter.