Another factor to consider in the price of a physical book is space. The median home price is roughly $200,000 and the median home size is just above 2000 square feet. This gives a cost of ~ $100 per sq. ft.
I just measured some books I had and 10 books per foot by 4 shelves high yields a minimum cost of $2.50 per book to store. This does not factor in moving costs of the lifetime of the book nor energy costs to heat/cool the books.
Actually, books should lower the cost of heating/cooling a house. They'll act to keep the temperature level in the house at a static level, though they would cost more if you often cycled your house between warm and cold.
It's like keeping jugs of water in the refrigerator: the system works by cooling the air, which falls out when you open the door. The space taken up by the water means there's less air to fall out.
In any case, your analysis of square footage is clever, I hadn't thought to consider that cost.
The California Handbook for Solar Energy is the only government publication we have been able to find which takes into account the thermal mass of the concrete when measuring heat loss. Simply stated, the concrete acts as a heat sink which slows the passage of heat back and forth through the wall or roof assembly.
This shouldn't be over looked. My wife and I have moved twice and both times we had to cull our "library" in an attempt to save space and weight.
Figuring an average moving cost of 60 cents per pound and 1 pound per book, moving costs for books can add up very quickly. And forget about it if your moving across an ocean. With e-books this cost is negligible.
I remember reading a book about de-cluttering once and the author made a really interesting point. She said "if 20% of your apartment or house is clutter, you're paying 20% of your rent or mortgage towards storing it."
I could argue that some of my books are definitely not clutter even though I don't physically open them very often. Sentimental value or 'I paid $40 for it' maybe.
This assumes that I don't enjoy the physical objects themselves and being able to wander around and pick a book off a shelf. I do. I'm willing to pay for the pleasure.
Dividing medians by medians is not safe; you get weird interactions between differences by region and differences within each region. (Houses in Manhattan are smaller than houses in Cheyenne, and also cost more, because the cost per square foot is higher; but in both Cheyenne and Manhattan, bigger houses cost more. Except when you get into the ghetto/non-ghetto distinction, etc.)
Also I don't think the medians you cite are anywhere close to correct. Maybe they're correct as medians only within the US? I remind you that the US is less than 5% of the population.
Otherwise your figures look good to me.
Maybe the right answer here is to pay attention to your current region. I'm paying about US$350 per month (before taxes) for 60m², about 600ft². For me 40 books per square foot means each book costs about ⅝¢ per month to store. I think that's about US$0.68.
Considering most people mortgage their home over 30 years, it is not unfair to use this fact and build onto your math a bit:
2.50 / 30 years = about 8.33 cents per year in 'storage rent'.
Seems pretty cheap to me, when you compare relative costs of storage.
Of course, I'm typing this with some sarcasm, because the whole metric is bad. Your analysis assumes that: A - somehow you have unlimited items to store in all the empty places in your house, B - ignores the absolute cost of having empty space (you've already spent on the house, but if you leave that space empty, you have opportunity cost becuase you COULD be storing books), and C - ignores any utilitarian value you get from having the books around. :)
Here's a hint: C is most important. And it references back to the point the article is trying to make.
Pre-crash, median home price is about $240K (not sure if it has fallen and by how much). Median condo price was actually higher (~$250K) because condos were generally only in more expensive metros.
Are you kidding?! $200k in Boston would be a freaking steal. People would almost literally kill for that. I'm in cambridge and all the 2 bedroom condos on the blocks around me are $450k and up. And that's a CONDO with shared walls.
> I wouldn’t even use one if you offered it to me for free.
So if I offered you a Kindle for free, you wouldn't even use it to read non-DRM-protected books in open formats?
You used to hear the same argument about the iPod -- that because the iTunes Store sold DRM-protected music, the device was somehow intrinsically flawed, even though it's also perfectly happy playing non-DRM-protected music. It's a weird argument. If you don't want to pay for DRM-protected content, don't pay for it. The device itself might still be useful, especially if you're offered one for free.
exactly what non-DRM protected books in open format are you suggesting? The ones in the public ___domain? I honestly wouldn't. I can think of maybe one I've wanted to read in the past 10 years. As for your iPod argument, it's flawed too because none of the books i have legally purchased can be put on a kindle. Well, maybe 2 could, but they're PDF and formatted for a different paper size than the kindle and would thus look like crap on it. So, what non-drm protected content exactly are you suggesting that I would have to put on this hypothetically free Kindle that would make it worth bothering with?
Good PDF books store their stuff as text. That's a part of the PDF format. If I download a book as a PDF, when I move it onto the Kindle using their free conversion that costs me nothing and takes less than a minute, it appears as beautiful formatted text, like magic. Almost like the PDF format is designed to be flexible enough to adjust to other mediums.
First off, never underestimate the public ___domain. The funniest and greatest books ever written are all public ___domain. Hell, it's worth it to get the complete Shakespeare in accessible format alone. Meanwhile, most .lit sales come with no DRM whatsoever. Opening my Kindle right now, the following files are on the front page: A Confederacy of Dunces, one of the funniest books ever written; My Man Jeeves, ditto; Infinite Jest, one of the great novels of the 90s; The Woman Who Rides Like A Man, a young adult novel from an author I'm nostalgic for; Ulysses, the greatest novel of all time; 2BRO2B, by Vonnegut; the complete Shakespeare; Neuromancer, The Bible, and It's Not News, It's Fark.
Over half of those books were completely free.
Only one of those books has DRM, and - as I stated elsewhere - that DRM is already crackable. I could email you that book this afternoon and you could read it on your Kindle, if you really felt like reading the Fark book. The other ones are entirely open. I have something that's the size of a paperback book that has more literature on it than the rest of my sizable portable library.
I've defended the Kindle again and again from uninformed commenters here - with all respect to you, you're falling into this category and worse, because you're so over-the-top about it in your blog. I will quickly summarize why the Kindle is more valuable to me than my iPod is. If I want to go to New York City for a day, it's a 4-hour transit round trip. I read extremely quickly. I could carry three books with me, or I could carry my Kindle and have, as was stated, a full library. Furthermore, I can browse the Internet. Check my email. Download books on-the-go. Download samples of books. If I download a sample of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, that includes two books' worth of samples, for free, in 30 seconds, wherever I am, with easily-unlocked DRM.
The free books alone are worth it. I'm going to be elitist here and say that if you don't think getting, completely free, access to the works of Joyce and Yeats and Elliot and Orwell and Melville and Homer and the complete Greek and Egyptian and Norse mythos, is worth the price of 40 paperback books, you are insane. This device has saved me an incredible amount of money and it's given me access to literature I wouldn't have had access to in any other form. I got old books that I'd read decaying at my library onto my Kindle in much more pristine condition. I got a collection of rare Asimov books that are out of print.
You very obviously haven't used a Kindle, and you even more obviously haven't put thought into just what makes the Kindle good - that or, worse, you're ignoring those points just to be a shill to those people who will mindlessly attack anything with DRM. I don't want to offend, because it's really not worth a fight over, but this was a senseless, sensationalized article that attacks something that's brought a lot of joy into my life, and I think that your implications are both personally offensive and entirely irrelevant to this web site, and I'm flagging your article.
> I don't want to offend, because it's really not worth a fight over, but this was a senseless, sensationalized article that attacks something that's brought a lot of joy into my life, and I think that your implications are both personally offensive and entirely irrelevant to this web site, and I'm flagging your article.
Ick. I was with you until you took things personally and said this. Flagging articles are about removing abuses or spam articles, not removing things you disagree with. If nothing else, your lengthy and otherwise thought out response won't be read by others if this submission is removed from this site.
I flag articles that I don't think are up to HN standards. I seem to recall there was a discussion that said that was an acceptable use of flagging: in any case, that's how I've always used it, as a sort of "I don't think this should be here" button.
This article in particular, because it was sensational rather than debate-worthy. "This is why I wouldn't buy a Kindle" versus "I wouldn't touch the filthy, rotten awful thing even if you gave it to me for totally free." I thought it was worth a flag.
I just ordered a Kindle. But now I need to learn where to find all those free books (I love classics, but where can I find all of Plato's dialogues? King James Bible? Also, I want to buy an ebook (Michener's The Source) which is not available for Kindle but can be purchased as an ebook. How will I get these on my Kindle. I need specific help and would be most grateful for any. I've been reading these discusions for several days and ordered the kindle on faith. Now I"m looking for books I really want and don't know where to find. THANKS!
a few things. First, you do make good points about the free books but as I've said before the vast majority of the free books out there, including public ___domain, simply do not interest me. Yes, Shakespeare would be nice, but I've already got the complete works sitting on my bookshelf. Project Gutenberg has made tons of books available for years now and so far I've availed myself of exactly one of them.
I have no interest in cracking someone else's drm to get a book on a Kindle, and the vast majority of the books i read simply can't be purchased in PDF format so even if PDFs do convert beautifully it is an irrelevant fact.
You say I "obviously haven't used a kindle" but I actually have. I haven't owned a kindle, but considering the title that should have been fairly obvious. I have put a lot of thought into what makes a kindle good. I've been jonesing for an e-book reader since I first read about the invention of e-ink years ago. I really want to like it. But, even ignoring the DRM, the kindle 1 had a number of physical & software flaws that would have prevented me from buying it. I'm not sure how well those have been addressed in the 2 but the DRM and economic issues precludes me from particularly caring.
But, you are very mistaken if you think I am "a shill to those people who will mindlessly attack anything with DRM". I have no problem with the iPod even though it supports DRM because I can buy the music I want and put it on one without purchasing DRMd copies of it. I would not, however, buy anything from iTunes in their Pre DRM days, and to suggest that what attacks I do levy against DRM are mindless only implies your ignorance of the problems with DRM. Apple charged people a second time to un-DRM music they'd already bought. Microsoft sold millions of DRM'd songs in a format they then abandoned and will never be supported on a new device. However, there are uses of DRM that I don't mind in the least. For example netflix streaming movies are DRMd. I am not purchasing them. I am only being granted very temporary rights to watch them. Because I don't own it, I feel I have no right to expect to be able to back it up, or even to view it in the first place, so I will let them drm it all they want. If it goes away or is never playable again I've lost nothing.
If I could purchase the books I want to read and put them on the kindle without DRM (like i can songs on the iPod) I would have zero issues with it. BUT the book marketplace is such that there is no reliable way for me to do so. I don't know how many of the .lit books you mention are actually non-drm but I suspect that a small percentage of the ones I would buy. What's worse is that there's frequently no mention of if one has DRM on it or not. Take [this book](http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?item=14295...) for example. Is it DRMd? Who can say? I can't, and thus I won't buy it.
As for it being a "sensationalized article". It was a post about why I personally won't buy a kindle, and why I think it's a bad idea on a personal blog. If I had of wanted to be sensationalist I could have done a much better job and would have insinuated that Amazon was evil and that we should boycott them and so on and so forth. Instead I gave reasons why I won't buy their product that they will hopefully take to heart when considering the Kindle 3. Also, I happily give them thousands of dollars a year without hesitation even though they make a product I don't happen to like that utilizes a technology I am opposed to.
As for flagging the article I think it's totally out of line for three reasons
1) you started reading it knowing full well what the opinion contained within it would be because it was obvious from the title. If you were offended by that opinion you have no-one to blame but yourself. It's like suggesting you're offended by Muslims and proceeding to read the Koran. Remember the old joke? "Doctor. It hurts when I do this." to which the doctor replies "Well don't do that." It's actually good advice.
2) I'm not the one that posted the article here, so while you may have been offended by my words your actions in flagging the article will have no effect on your perceived offender. Also, I never suggested that my opinion on the kindle was relevant to this site, although the impact that DRM has on purchasing decisions like mine most certainly is, and this article provides a good example of that impact.
3) the fact that you found it "personally offensive" is again entirely your own fault. There was no personal attack against you or against any individual in that article. Nor, were there any implications that any person was bad for purchasing it. I even updated the article early in the day to reiterate a good point one of the commenters left about it being a good economic idea for computer books that would obsolete themselves long before the DRM became an issue. If you are offended by the fact that someone has negative opinions about a device you happen to like you are in for a lifetime of pain, because it's relatively safe to say there's at least one person in the world who will take issue with some aspect of essentially every object you own.
I try to read everything on HN, especially Kindle criticism, because the popular opinion is negative on this site and I like to play devil's advocate.
As for flagging: it's really not my trying to get back at you. As you say: you didn't submit this and you're allowed to write anything you want. I still don't think it's HN-worthy, though, hence the flagging. It's not "Let's piss masukomi off," it's "hey, maybe other people were similar-minded and flagged this, in which case the story gets killed in exchange for a more relevant one."
As for 3): I take everything personally kind of as matter of routine. I'm very, erm, passionate about stuff like this. Again, I hope you're not offended by my taking offense, because it's nothing personal towards you.
Try sources like the Baen Free Library (http://www.baen.com/library/). There are plenty of current titles available legally and for free there and elsewhere if Gutenberg doesn't suit your tastes.
Actually I never heard that argument against the iPod. I heard the DRM argument against iTunes often enough but I've never heard anyone complain about the iPod being a DRM-laden monster.
That's because it's not a DRM laden monster and the distribution of music is such that there are many alternative ways to get songs you've purchased onto one without involving DRM. Unfortunately the same can not be said for books even though essentially all of the electronic books will let you put non-drm'd material on them.
A few high school friends of mine got more obscure music players because they didn't want to be forced into using iTunes. One or two thought iTunes added DRM to tracks that wouldn't have DRM otherwise.
This won't be a problem for most people, since they read stuff written by Dan Brown that really doesn't require a rereading 20 years down the line. But I understand the sentiment.
Nonetheless my understanding is you can fairly easily get any pdf onto the Kindle, meaning if you get a non-DRMed version of the books you're fine. Is that not correct? I own a number of digital music player's that support one DRM scheme or another, and use them frequently, yet have never actually purchased a DRM'ed file.
> This won't be a problem for most people, since they read stuff written by Dan Brown that really doesn't require a rereading 20 years down the line. But I understand the sentiment.
Hmmm... I have never read anything by Dan Brown but I do re-read Ian Fleming, Alistair Maclean and James Clavell.
I got DaVinci Code just to see why everyone in the airports was reading it, and wow. I mean, just wow. If you ever find yourself routinely overestimating the intelligence of the average American, read that book, then Google around to find out how many copies it sold.
Dan Brown is the author I love to hate. His Digital Fortress and Deception Point are hilariously bad. But don't bother spending any money on them; just borrow them from the library.
You know, at least I got through DaVinci code (though maybe only because it was an audiobook and I had a very long drive). Try reading anything by Robert Ludlum. I liked the Bourne movies, but I couldn't get 50 pages into that. It was like reading third grade fiction projects. I can't believe writing that bad could be published.
Thanks for the warning about Ludlum. The sad fact is, Dan Brown's junk is better than a lot of other stuff I borrow from the "New" rack at the library. At least Brown I can laugh at. Bad is bad, but laughably bad is better.
I haven't read any of Fleming's adult fare. But his fudge recipe in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is fabulous. Read Chitty. Make fudge. Yum. And I dare you to spill boiling chocolate on a Kindle!
Do you love reading or do you love owning books?
If you love reading, the kindle is great.
If you to to own books, the kindle is horrible.
If you love both, well you have a real tough decision to make.
Online integration with the amazon store isn't just another feature point though, it's the company's primary direction with the product.
The content acquisition problem is just as important, or even more so, then the hardware problems for any electronic media device. Someone using a competing e-reader has to navigate a number of competing e-book stores, download and keep track of their copies on their own storage media, and then sync books over to their device via USB or storage device; that's a lot of work when you just want to read a book.
I remember reading about someone who described how he'd walk into airport book stores, lazily browse through their books, and then remotely download his favorites onto his kindle; that's powerful.
That's still slower than, if my grandfather mentions a book he thinks I'll like, my going online, finding the book in 20 seconds, downloading a sample chapter within a minute, and potentially buying the book to read if I like that chapter. Furthermore, speaking as somebody who loves stuffing himself on torrents: it's very hard to find specific books on ThePirateBay, depending on your tastes. You can't download, say, Finnegans Wake, which I just searched for. All they have is the audiobook.
> I remember reading about someone who described how he'd walk into airport book stores, lazily browse through their books, and then remotely download his favorites onto his kindle; that's powerful.
Instant gratification works both ways. If I really need a book on something, I will go the local book superstore, browse through them and read the reviews on Amazon.com while there and buy (price insensitive) the one that seems the best. Pre-iPhone, I would read the reviews on Amazon.com and then call around to hold it.
Honest question: Can you give some examples? I'm not familiar with the market and being a Canadian the Kindle isn't an option anyway, but I'm curious as to what nice options are available with a proper e-ink screen.
Why I won't touch the Kindle 2 with a ten foot pole:
Because I don't have a ten foot pole OR a Kindle 2, and even in I did, doing so would be utterly pointless.
I want a netbook with e-ink. (of course we'll need higher res, color, faster response time e-ink, plus a built in reading light since they aren't backlit)
But this to me would be the ultimate portable computing device. add a headset with VoiP service and set up some way of getting calls without constantly draining the computers battery and you have a killer device.
The color you would get on an E-ink display would be pretty crappy. Because of the limitations of technology, you wouldn't be able to get any better color images than what a newspaper has. E-ink displays are also pretty slow to refresh. They would have do something that doesn't use rasterization.
maybe for him but i know people that exclusively read hardcover bestsellers when they travel. these are a huge pain to carry around. plus you hardly ever to re-read them so it doesn't matter if the kindle breaks or goes out of business.
I avoid the hardcovers except for those of very few authors because, they're physically awkward and heavier, however, I have reread every hardcover novel I've purchased at least once. In fact I've reread almost every novel I own at least once and within the next 20 years I suspect I will have reread my current shelves at least 3 times on average. For me it's equivalent to rewatching a movie, which people do all the time.
If you never reread books the kindle makes much more sense, but I do, and I lend them out a lot too.
Can you please cite the source for this? I have not read that the AZW format has been broken. People, however, have figured out how to read mobipocket protected formats on the kindle. That's a big difference.
A hacked AZW format would allow me to convert it to non-DRM format and even share it with other kindles.
If you open an AZW it's essentially modified HTML. I don't know if a converter is public or not - I frankly don't mind DRM very much - but getting information out of AZW and into other formats isn't particularly difficult if you really care to.
Many of the abuses in Stallman's tale have been brought to life by textbook publishers.
I have taken a number of classes which used books having an online time-limited, non-transferrable homework supplement.
Anyone who is counting on "the invisible hand of the market" to kill DRM will be in for a rude surprise when they find themselves among one of the captive audiences where it flourishes.
I could write a long list of stupid design decisions they made with the Kindle (it leaves nasty marks in my hand when I hold it in my preferred way), but... the utility of it is amazing.
And I live in Europe so I can't even download stuff over the wireless. I have to buy it on Amazon.com and then copy via USB. (Which is painless, even tho.)
I use it to get American / English books near instantly, at 1/5th the cost of having them shipped from Amazon DE.
I use it to travel -- which I do a lot. I can read upwards of a book a day, since I read about 80-100 pages an hour, even non-fiction.
Do I still buy paper books? Yes, I love them.
Does the Kindle free me to buy books I wouldn't otherwise, because of the weight, size, expense and time involved? Absolutely.
I bought the Kindle 1 in November and I already preordered the Kindle 2. There's no turning back for me.
As for the DRM, I don't really care. Say I can pay $8 for a novel or $12 to see a movie in a theater.
The novel is cheaper, even if I couldn't read it over and over and over again -- which I can. After seeing the movie in the theater, I can't watch it again without paying again.
I look at the Kindle as a kind of movie theater convenience for books, with the built-in ability to read anything I want again, as long as I want. Works for me.
I just measured some books I had and 10 books per foot by 4 shelves high yields a minimum cost of $2.50 per book to store. This does not factor in moving costs of the lifetime of the book nor energy costs to heat/cool the books.
It is surprisingly expensive to keep 'stuff'.