Digital doesn't wear out
It was with palpable pain that I noticed that my copy of the third Riverworld novel was splitting along a bend in the spine. I put it down that night, and even though I was a couple chapters in, I haven't picked it up since. In part, this is just because, as mentioned earlier, I am ludicrously kind to books, and for some reason anal-retentive about their condition. In part, it's because I can't remember the last time I saw Riverworld on bookstore shelves, which means the already-annoying cost of replacement might be higher. In part, it's that I inherited the thing from my father, and somehow, despite that being true of two wallfulls of books, it's still slightly meaningful. In part, it's that if I replace one of those books, I'll feel the need to replace all of them, because it would look weird to have some modern paperback in the middle of all those old ones.
However, between that experience, and another comment about the "real value" of a ticket for a live performance (versus some controlled paperless system, to fight scalpers), I think I get why everything digital has to cost more than seems to make sense, or be so loaded with DRM as to be repugnant and painful. It's because most people aren't insane like me, making $0.95 paperbacks last 50 years! A fan might never need to replace their digital purchases, but the average fan would have to replace physical products as they wore out from use. Yeah, I know, not rocket science, but it's new to me.
So, a new novel on Kindle costs just a buck or two less than the paperback, even though you can't lend it individually, can't read it through a long power outage, and have to invest a couple hundred bucks in the only device that can access it, which is more fragile than the paperback in general. Because the Kindle might need to be replaced at some point, but unless Amazon folds, the book won't. Hell, sell the file in a nonproprietary fashion, and even the death of Amazon won't make me buy another copy, my storage would have to crash irretrievably. So the other side, the value I'd never realized because I am crazy about such things, is that I don't lose that ebook if I spill coffee on it, or read it a thousand times, or a crazy ex-girlfriend sets fire to my library...
So, I guess, if part of the model is that I'm eventually supposed to ruin a certain number of (book/CD/DVD/etc) copies over my life, and have to buy another, that could explain a lot that I consider questionable when people try to sell me what I consider a less useful product, produced for less money, but with a not-much-less-money sale price.
Which is actually the opposite of what I set out to write when I opened this blog page, but, shhhhhh, no one has to know my epiphany occurred mid-rant.
However, between that experience, and another comment about the "real value" of a ticket for a live performance (versus some controlled paperless system, to fight scalpers), I think I get why everything digital has to cost more than seems to make sense, or be so loaded with DRM as to be repugnant and painful. It's because most people aren't insane like me, making $0.95 paperbacks last 50 years! A fan might never need to replace their digital purchases, but the average fan would have to replace physical products as they wore out from use. Yeah, I know, not rocket science, but it's new to me.
So, a new novel on Kindle costs just a buck or two less than the paperback, even though you can't lend it individually, can't read it through a long power outage, and have to invest a couple hundred bucks in the only device that can access it, which is more fragile than the paperback in general. Because the Kindle might need to be replaced at some point, but unless Amazon folds, the book won't. Hell, sell the file in a nonproprietary fashion, and even the death of Amazon won't make me buy another copy, my storage would have to crash irretrievably. So the other side, the value I'd never realized because I am crazy about such things, is that I don't lose that ebook if I spill coffee on it, or read it a thousand times, or a crazy ex-girlfriend sets fire to my library...
So, I guess, if part of the model is that I'm eventually supposed to ruin a certain number of (book/CD/DVD/etc) copies over my life, and have to buy another, that could explain a lot that I consider questionable when people try to sell me what I consider a less useful product, produced for less money, but with a not-much-less-money sale price.
Which is actually the opposite of what I set out to write when I opened this blog page, but, shhhhhh, no one has to know my epiphany occurred mid-rant.