With the trend towards Ebooks will the value of regular books go up or down?

[K. Riehl]

This is a question I have asked many other book collectors. The general consensus is that the stand out books will go up in value(Tarzan, War of the Worlds etc..) and the others titles will go down.

I have seen the value of E.R. Burroughs 1st editions go down except for Tarzan and the Princess of Mars. I attribute this to the people who collected the books to remember their childhood passing on and the collections becoming available. The current generation of collectors who now have the money to spend are collecting stories from their childhood and are driving up the prices for Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke.
The next generation is now collecting Dick, Card, Gibson etc..

To me there is a certain tangible feeling to owning the book that outweighs the advantage of a portable ereader. Will the trend to ebooks eventually end regular books or will it morph into a specialty niche where bound books become more like owning art?

 

[nixie]

I have an ereader and I do use it but for me it can't replace the look and feel of regular books. I can't see electronic media ever fully replacing regular books. I do think some books will increase in value due to the rise of ebooks.

My fear is that regular books will gradually get more expensive as publishers may say digital format is cheaper to produce.

 

[Alexa]

I usually buy ebooks whenever I have no patience to receive the paper one.

I do enjoy the feeling of having a regular book in my hands. If I want to re-read that book, I'll keep it in my library. If it was only ok or I didn't like it, I give it away.

Regular books are very expensive in Québec, usually more than 35 $. For a French translation, the price goes even higher.

 

[mosaix]

I usually buy ebooks whenever I have no patience to receive the paper one.

I do enjoy the feeling of having a regular book in my hands. If I want to re-read that book, I'll keep it in my library. If it was only ok or I didn't like it, I give it away.

Regular books are very expensive in Québec, usually more than 35 $. For a French translation, the price goes even higher.

Why so expensive, Alexa?

 

[Alexa]

No idea. Maybe because of the market size, import price from publishing houses and taxes, translation price, etc.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I think there are two markets here - the collectible market and the mass market. Mass market I see as going down at the bestseller end and up at the mid listers. Collectible - I see it as staying pretty static. There was always only a small pool of interest.

 

[J Riff]

Well... the internet brought thousands of rare books out of the attics, not so different than the comic and gumcard craze. This made prices drop, generally. Anything genuinely rare, with any cultural signifigance whatsoever... should be able to hang on to its value. Like this copy of Thrill Girl... try and find one in mint shape, go ahead just try.

 

[RX-79G]

MP3s haven't changed the price of CDs much, so I wouldn't expect much of a change in other physical media like books.

Ebooks and MP3s are a poor value when you consider their almost zero distribution and production cost.

 

[Stable]

Do you think the trend is still heading towards ebooks? Didn't it stall pretty heavily after the initial rush?

 

[hopewrites]

My paperbacks will go down in market value; I underline phrases that stick out to me, and scribble insights into the margins. I hope that their sentimental value will increase with more than myself on this account, but refuse to hold my breath over it.


The only ereader I've used is my phone, and have since had gifted to me one or two of the books I've eread. I switched back to physical books as it was too hard to read on my tiny phone, and just as easy to wait for the physical release of something I wanted since I have to scrounge up my book fair from spare laundry and grocery monies anyway.

Safer to take a physical book into the bath, if you drop it it's annoying but not very deadly.

 

[merritt]

I recently put 4 first editions w/dustjackets on ebay for $25.00. No Bids.
[GALLERY=media, 2092]4 firsts by merritt posted Jan 30, 2017 at 7:48 PM[/GALLERY]

 

[Theophania Elliott]

Do you think the trend is still heading towards ebooks? Didn't it stall pretty heavily after the initial rush?

There was an initial rush: all those people who'd been wanting to buy ebooks and ereaders but couldn't because they hadn't been invented yet. Once the initial stampede is over, you get things settling down - just as you do in every new industry where the adoption cost is within most people's means. Now we're looking at what's going to become 'business as usual'.

The numbers say that adult fiction is steadily moving towards ebooks: in the US market (which is a few years ahead of everyone else because Amazon launched the Kindle in the US first), apparently, nearly 70% of adult fiction sales are now ebooks. Kids' books and adult non-fiction are somewhat behind, unsurprisingly.

Indie books are contributing heavily to the ebook sales - and since most indie ebooks don't have ISBNs, they don't get caught by the traditional publishing industry's numbers - hence the stories about 'ebooks are dying'.

I heard on the grapevine somewhere that the mass market paperback is on the way out: trade paperback (slightly bigger, with nicer paper) is taking up the slack.

My prediction hasn't changed from what I've been saying since 2008, when I bought my first (hideously expensive) ereader (an Irex Iliad, if anyone's interested):

• Mass market paperbacks will disappear first.
• Trade paperbacks will disappear second.
• Trade paperbacks will go print-on-demand - even for the big publishing houses (I heard that the smaller presses are now using PoD).
• Nonfiction and children's books will move towards ebooks, but more slowly than adult fiction, but the same pattern will occur (paperbacks disappear first).
• Hardbacks - presentation copies, gifts, pose-value - will remain for a considerable time yet, probably decades (like vinyl records).
• Eventually, hardbacks will go print-on-demand too.
• Pie in the sky: once all paper editions are print-on-demand, I can imagine that the technology might be available for the purchaser to specify special conditions - large print, fancy bindings, special dedication, etc. Paper books will become more like objets-d'art; they will be for looking at, but ebooks will be for reading.

As for value, I think it's unlikely that most paperbacks will ever become valuable, particularly not mass market editions: there are/were too many of them, and they're designed for a short, exciting life in the fast line. Apparently, they only last a few decades before falling apart so they're not a good investment.

Hardbacks are more likely to hold their value, especially if they're in good condition. It's hard to say whether they'll go up or down in value - I think a lot depends on what people do with their old books as they move over to digital. Price is controlled by a combination of supply and demand, so if the supply remains large, while demand shrinks (because the people who want hardbacks will be collectors - including people who like paper books the way people like vinyl records), then prices will fall/stay low as supply will always exceed demand. If most of the people send their old books to recycling, and print runs become smaller, then prices might rise, if demand exceeds supply.

 

[Theophania Elliott]

I recently put 4 first editions w/dustjackets on ebay for $25.00. No Bids.

When I was first getting rid of most of my print novels, I gave up on putting them up for sale: the price I was getting wasn't worth the trouble, once P&P was factored in. I ended up giving most of them to charity shops - and even many charity shops don't want books now.

Apparently, Swansea Oxfam had so many copies of Fifty Shades of Grey donated that they built a fort out of them....

 

[Stable]

That's an interesting analysis Theophania! I agree with a lot of it, especially it makes sense for mass-market paperbacks to take a big hit, because if you're buying the lowest quality option you probably don't care too much about the form. On the other hand, they do have a useful place as impulse buys (I do this in airports fairly regularly), so they may survive for a while yet.

Incidentally I'm still on my first ereader, one of the early Kindles. It's still going strong!

 

[hopewrites]

My paperbacks have done rather well. Only replaced 3 do to wear and tear in the last 25 odd years. (Two suffered repeated drops in the bath, the third I read roughly every 3-8 months.) The annual reads do tend to need more tape than the ones I reread with less frequency.