Why we want paper books

Charlie Stross has a very good theory on why allowing free downloads of novels increases their sales.

My theory is this: reading online sucks, but those of us who are readers do it anyway, up to the point at which it gets too painful to continue.

If we see a novel with an online sample that looks interesting, we may look at the sample. But if it's limited to, say, two chapters, we hit a brick wall: we have to put the book down unless and until we stumble across a copy of it in a bookshop and remember reading it. Whereas if we run across a complete online ebook we can begin reading it and, if we like it, we keep on going. Because reading online sucks, the pain slowly increases -- but we get more and more hooked. Some of us get so hooked that we finish the ebook, but in a large number of cases we get hooked enough to want to finish it badly, but pained enough to be motivated to buy the hardcopy. And in those cases, the motivation to go out and buy a copy and finish the story is a much stronger one than in the cases where the experience is artificially truncated at the end of chapter #2.

And that makes sense to me. I've been dipping in and out of Eastern Standard Tribe for a month now and I'm beggining to just want the paper book, just because it's nicer to read.