[JulianMorrison]

I suspect that books are way undersaturated.

The reason is: paper. Dead tree books weigh a lot and waste space. Therefore owning a library is a cost. Costs to move, costs storage space, costs effort to collate and maintain and protect.

E-books do not have that cost. Having a hundred e-books in your purse is a normal thing. Having a thousand? Well, it might make sorting through your personal equivalent of a branch library a little more fussy, but it won't weigh more or waste space.

People may not have more time, but they can divert time to books, and they can divert re-reading time to new-book reading time.

[romaniv]

Therefore owning a library is a cost.

Owning a library has a higher value than owning a library of ebooks: social, decorative, nostalgic, works without power, easy share, can resell, etc. It more than evens out. But there is Steam effect - people will stockpile ebooks they don't read.

[moistgorilla]

> social, decorative, nostalgic

This is subjective and not monetary value. The only people that care about social, decorative, and nostalgic value of books are also the people who probably wont resell books.

> works without power

finding a place to charge your device is easy and ereaders last months without recharging

> easy to share, resell

Sure but the money you save by reselling a book is probably less than what you save by buying the ebook

Space and weight are real, expensive costs. Owning a library has negative monetary value. Owning a library of ebooks doesn't. It's stored on the internet and you can access it from anywhere.

Basically, if your books aren't furniture and you aren't sharing your books multiple times a month ebooks provide more value.

[kamakazizuru]

"Sure but the money you save by reselling a book is probably less than what you save by buying the ebook"

This is what I had hoped for when Kindle came around and Amazon started pushing Ebooks - but unfortunately it just isnt true. The difference between ebook and paperback is currently low enough that if you maintain your paperbacks well - you'll still end up spending less (net) on the book - in quite a few cases. (Heck you can even resell the paperbacks using Amazon ;))

[mcguire]

"Sure but the money you save by reselling a book is probably less than what you save by buying the ebook"

Not under the publisher's model.

[terrywilcox]

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” - Oscar Wilde

[XorNot]

Yet oddly enough Amazon seem to have gotten stingier with the flash memory on a Kindle. 2 GB? Just give me a damn microSD slot so I can bump that up to a level I'm happy with. A few biggish PDFs (e-Textbooks come to mind) will obliterate that space.

[DanBC]

Other ereader devices exist.

Kobo devices have microSD cards. You have to unscrew the case to get at it, but still, you'd probably only have to do it once.

[XorNot]

True. But the screen on the Paperwhite is really, really nice.