In the year 2000, Stephen King drew tons of media attention when he released Riding the Bullet exclusively as an eBook. In the first 24 hours, more than 400,000 copies were sold, at $2.50 per copy. That works out quite cleanly to revenue of $1-million in one day, with no cost for printing, binding, or shipping.

From that point on, the idea of eBooks has been imagined as a hidden source of unlimited revenue — a license to print money. The question is, if the eBook revolution began nearly eight years ago, why do people keep buying printed books?

How many eBooks do you have? Maybe you got suckered into some self-help book online, or the great strategy guide for how to pick up women, or a cheat sheet for your mid-term… but these are things you can’t easily find anywhere else. How many of those 400,000 people who bought Riding the Bullet actually read it?

I’m tempted to think that people were willing to spend $2.50 for the privilege of being on the cutting edge, or maybe just trying it out and seeing if they would like it. For that matter, there are probably a good number of people who proudly claim to have everything ever written by Stephen King, and they couldn’t continue to wear that identity if they didn’t get his eBook.

So is a revolution coming?
Gadget gurus and über-nerds have all played with (or maybe even purchased) a Sony Reader, for $299, and gotten on the bandwagon. And today, Amazon announced the launch of Kindle, their new eBook reader, for $399.

Wait a second. Did you read that right? Did I really say $299, and $399? Hmmm… well, as long as books are cheap, it could still work out in the long run, right? A quick Google search for Stephen King eBooks turned up eBookMall.com, who are asking $16.99 for Cell, a book that can be had at Amazon — in hardback, no less — for $9.99, and could probably be found on the shelf at chain stores like Target or Walmart for even less.

Okay, let me get this straight. I have to pay $299 for a device that reads a file which, in spite of its lack of printing, publishing, and shipping, still actually costs more than a paperback book? Hmmm, well, there must be some advantage to reading electronically, right? What might that be?

Buying the reader, of course, means you’re not stuck in front of your computer reading a PDF. Thank God, because there is little in life that is worse, in my opinion, than sitting in front of a computer and clicking through a PDF file. But I can carry a paperback with me, so portability is still no advantage for eBooks. And the advantages for printed books don’t stop there…

I don’t have to recharge my paperback book, nor buy batteries for it, before I can read it. It goes everywhere easily, and I don’t have to put it away when I’m on an airplane. If someone bumps into me and I drop my paperback on the ground, I just pick it up and keep reading. If I drop it into a puddle of water, I may have to pay $9.99 for a new copy.

Printed books also have hidden benefits. A shelf filled with books serves as a status symbol — a social indicator of intelligence. Books can be loaned, sold, or donated, without intellectual property hounds knocking on your door. And if you happen to find yourself in a blackout in the middle of winter, books burn nicely too.

Imagine you’re just getting to the part where the killer identifies himself as the hero’s brother, and as you excitedly read along wondering if his wife is really dead or if it was all just a trick, suddenly a red light comes on and a little beep starts telling you that your battery is low. Spoiled!

If you take your eBook reader on vacation with you, you also have to take along the charger and cords. You have to turn it off for 15 minutes while the stewardess tries to convince you that some black magic in your electronic device could mess up the computers in the cockpit. If you drop it, you don’t pick it up and keep reading… you instead spend 20 minutes inspecting every inch for cracks. And if you manage to damage it, you don’t get a new one for $9.99.

A license to print money
And most insulting is, of course, the fact that eBooks are priced so high. Do these people think we don’t know the difference? There is a major printing industry being fed by the marginal costs in paperbacks that we buy for $9.99 per copy, but there is no such industry involved in the manufacture of an eBook. The author could write it and publish it himself!

If good eBooks were available for $2, the avid reader of one or two books per week might see a financial incentive to switch, but it would still take him over a year to break even on the proposition and there would have to be enough desirable titles available at that price to make it worth it to him.

Of course this avid reader with real incentive to switch would be the one who other people see and whose opinion other people trust, so getting the avid reader would get you the casual readers, gradually over time.

But there is no way on earth that it will ever work in the other direction. Gadget gurus buy every gadget that comes along, while everyone else waits to see what pans out. The nerds get their cool points and geek status for having the coolest, newest toy, but the paperback reader will continue to read paperback books.

Tags: Amazon, eBooks, Kindle, Sony Reader