A friend of mine (I’ll identify him if he so desires) sent me the following email:

Just a quick thought. With Amazon hyping up the new Kindle so much, and with so many quality e-book readers available, why are Kindle edition books more expensive than the dead tree versions? There is no production cost beyond digitizing the media ( no trees to cut, ink to buy, covers to design, etc.) except for hosting and distribution from the server. I don’t see e-books replacing dead trees until the price can be lowered enough to provide an incentive.

An example, I would gladly buy a Kindle (even though I love my library) if I knew that over time, I would break even on my investment. So, if the books were $1.50 cheaper in e-book edition, my break even point would be around 230 books. This can never happen with the prices being higher. Other than the obvious ecological benefits, there is no real incentive to go with e-books. Also, with licensing, there is a good chance that I can’t share my library with friends. Just a random thought. I figured you might have some insight on this and an interesting opinion. Any thoughts?

I think this is an excellent observation. My first thought on this is that the cost of maintaining the infrastructure for the e-content right now is rather high due to the immaturity of the space. I think it’s many times more expensive than it will be relative to the cost of publishing dead-tree versions.

In other words, dead-tree publishing is currently as cheap as it’ll ever be, and e-publishing is currently as expensive as it’ll ever be. And right now e-publishing is currently a bit higher.

Within a short time (perhaps a year or so) I expect this to equalize, and then within another 1-3 years I expect e-publishing to be far more economical.

So, as a short answer: the solution is currently an early-adopter solution, as it does cost more due to being a new model. But as things mature e-books will become far cheaper than dead-tree versions.

What do you guys think?

Image from Getty via WSJ

Here’s a clean little summary of Ayn Rand’s book, Atlas Shrugged, from this Wall Street Journal article:

Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

Sound familiar yet?

The point of the piece is that we’re walking right into precisely what she predicted, and that it could get much worse with Obama.

In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as “the looters and their laws.” Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the “Anti-Greed Act” to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel’s promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the “Equalization of Opportunity Act” to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the “Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act,” aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies.

These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act” and the “Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act.” Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.

I’ve worried for a long time that this was a problem; it’s why I was so behind Ron Paul. But I’ve come to believe that the danger on the other side (corruption and selfishness) is actually much worse, and that we need a correction of the general social breed.

Once we get that, to whatever degree, (or once it fails), it’ll be time to correct once again. It seems all we can do as an immature society is bounce back and forth between extremes, as people are most happy when they are pursuing something that they think will make them happier. ::

Gladwell’s new book, Outliers: The Story of Success is phenomenal. It covers something I’ve been thinking about for years: the algorithm for success. It’s a common and popular subject, and it usually ends up reducing to a nature vs. nurture debate.

I’d say the new Gladwell book scores big for nurture.

I’m only in the third chapter, but a couple of main themes stand out so far:

1. Small environmental advantages magnify themselves over time, and it’s easy to confuse talent/specialness with environmental advantage.
2. Practice is pivotal, and environment determines who has the luxury/luck of being able to do it.
3. Nature somehow seems to separate those with from those without. Gladwell calls it the Matthew effect, from the Bible:
   

For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

So basically, as you gain advantage your ability to gain advantage multiplies, and if you lack it, it just gets tougher. I agree strongly with this.

It’s not that individual traits don’t matter, like perseverance and dedication and such, it’s just that I think even those come from either your genetics or your upbringing and environment.

Either way it’s becoming a lot harder to be an intelligent, accomplished snob. Perhaps this is why Gates and Buffet have become so liberal in their mature years. They figured out that they are lucky, and that it’s their obligation to help make others lucky too. ::

Links

[ Outliers: The Story of Success | amazon.com ]

Two must-have book feeds:

1. Audible NYTimes Best Sellers
2. iTunes Audiobooks

A stellar introduction to the real science of intelligence. I read the whole thing today. Highly recommended for those who are having trouble figuring out what’s real and what’s not about the concept of mental ability, and our ability to measure it.

Links

[ INTELLIGENCE: A Very Short Introduction | amazon.com ]

Delicious Library is one of the coolest pieces of software I’ve seen in years. It allows you to categorize your books (and other media) using OS X. It has a crapload of features, but I only need to tell you about 1.

Yeah, you read it right. You use your iSight camera on your Mac to scan in your media using the barcode. Then it pulls all the book’s content from Amazon.

Truly sick.

I say “can’t”, but what I really mean is that it’d be hard to read them given my current priorities. So it’s my fault, really.

I really wish I could be an old college professor, with a bike with a horn on it. I’d teach at a small college with smart students who wanted to learn. Class would take little time and with the surplus I would read, write and travel.

Spending that life with the woman I love is my ideal existence.

Anyway, here’s the booklist. I’ve read probably 20%. So sad.

[ 100 Essential Books ]

My friend Steven Harms has just put up an excellent reference for those interested in philosophy. It attempts to chart the relationship context between the various books mentioned in my Episteme post from a while back. Steven writes:

Recently I read about a “Most Influential Books” list via Daniel Miessler’s post “Episteme”. I commented that it was a bit presumptuous to believe that the reader of the 100 list would be able to get anything out of some of the selections without other key concepts and items discussed in the previous authors’ work. For example, to make sense of Hume or Berkeley, you really need to know Aristotle’s Categories and Descartes’ Meditations. The former is not singled out and the latter didn’t make the list ( cogito ergo sum doesn’t rate? ). I gave some thought as to how I could give a rough sketch of Western intellectual development in a broad-strokes sense that worked visually. Enter FreeMind. FreeMind is a mind-mapping software ( Free! ) that exports to PDF. So I took an attempt at producing a PDF that gives context for these books.

Head over to Steven’s site to see the full post as well as the mind-map.

[ A Mind-Map to Western Philosophy ]

<

p style=”text-align: center”>

I am unable to convey how strongly I feel you should read this book. It changed the way in which I approach life within 20 minutes. This book quite simply contains the most wisdom on achieving fulfillment in life that I’ve ever seen.

It’s not a book about making more money, it’s not a self-help book, it’s not a productivity book. It’s all those things. It’s a book about life — specifically how to improve yours in the most revolutionary way possible.

That’s all I’m going to stay about it. Read this book. Immediately.