Got an e-reader? Me too. And it's OK! I like having books in one place with the ability to browse them willy-nilly (There! I finally used "willy-nilly" in a blog post!). On the other hand, ever since I got my e-reader, I've started noticing something: real books—that is, print editions—are a whole lot cheaper than digital editions of books.In fact, as a result of the digital explosion, books in print are showing up freely all over the place. Or at least I assume the rise of digital books is why, in the course of the last year, I have found in free boxes on my neighborhood streets copies of The Instructions, Olive Kitteridge, and The Trial of Socrates, to name just three of the books I'm looking forward to reading for free. And then I also noticed the pickings were better than usual at the annual used book fundraiser for my son's school. I count the quality of the pickings by the number of available Iris Murdoch and Graham Greene novels available. I picked up some. Two bucks each.
What's the point? The point is that the e-reader is in a very strange period right now. The potential is enormous, but let's face it, when it runs $11.99 to add The Sun Also Rises to my reader, I'm going to just pull my old print copy from the shelves instead. That $11.99 looks like a lost opportunity to the publisher. People like me would re-buy the book for the convenience of adding it to the old digital shelf for a buck or two, but shelling out $12 a pop for older but not-quite-public-domain titles gets far too expensive far too quickly.
As a result my e-reader is public-domain heavy right now. That and books I have made myself. I am not very motivated to casually acquire digital copies in the same way that I have accumulated print copies over the years.
And that is why we offer XPat Fiction books for one dollar at our own e-book store. Perfect for holiday gift-giving because after you've gone and bought all those gifts, you're going to need to save a little money buying digital editions for your e-reader.
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