Lovebooks

I've been musing for a while about the cost of digital books. Typically, they're about 25% cheaper than paper. Although it's nice to see a cheaper alternative, that's a pretty outrageous price when you analyse it. In some cases, the Kindle versions are actually more expensive (the Kindle version of Game of Thrones costs $8.99, but the paperback is only $7.59, or $5.03 if you want the mass market paperback) and there's no justification for that pricing at all.

As a general rule, 35% of the cost of the book is for printing and paper. Then there's 5% to cover distribution (to the retailer, not the customer). The retailer takes about 30%, which pays for his staff and shelf space. None of those costs apply for a digital book, apart from a minuscule amount for listing it on a web site. So you could cut the cost of a book by 70% and make the same profit.

I've seen it argued in several places that you could reduce the cost of a digital book to a flat fee of $1.99 and you'd still have a viable business. Probably, from the publisher's (and author's) point of view, a more viable business, as people would buy more books at that price. What's more, since you don't have to worry about print runs, overstocks and remainders, you can publish more niche books and expand your inventory. You can't do that right now, because of the fees Amazon and the like charge, but let's assume for the next few minutes that it could be done.

Then what I'd like to see is this.

I pay $20 a month, and can download as many books as I want. Absolutely unlimited. But here's the catch. If I stop paying my membership, those books are no longer available to me. It works just like Netflix or Lovefilm. I can get whatever I want, whenever I want it, as long as I'm a member.

Practically, I can only read a book a day, and that's pushing it. More realistically, I might get through 15-20 books a month. So even if I download hundreds or thousands of books in one month (equivalent to loading my Netflix queue with hundreds of movies), I won't be able to read them all for $20. It'll take me all year. So I'm not paying for the actual downloads, I'm paying to read.

Sure, this isn't the same as owning them. If I stop paying my monthly sub, I "lose" all those books I've "bought". That's true, but frankly, I don't want to re-read 99% of the books I read. So maybe the system could allow me to keep any book I like for an extra $1. It's just like using a library (which I do, much more than buying books anyway), except that I can take out as much as I like, I don't have to go there, there are no late fees or due dates, I don't have to worry about whether they've got the book in stock or how many copies they have, and I pay for it directly instead of through my taxes.

In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that one day, I'll be able to get a single media subscription covering books, movies, games and music. Pay a flat monthly fee, and read, watch, play or listen to anything I like, when I like, where I like. I'd sign up for that in an instant. Wouldn't you?

Bye bye DVDs, hello Netflix streaming

I've always had a comparatively large collection of videos and DVDs, numbering well into the thousands. Even before I inherited my uncle's movie collection, I had a lot, but then it got ridiculous. However, when I came to the US, I left my entire collection behind apart from about a dozen I couldn't bear to be parted from. I was a little apprehensive about how I'd feel about that, but as it happens, it's worked rather well.

Recently, we've started using the Netflix streaming more and more, ever since we got a disk that allows us to stream video on demand through the PS3 directly onto our TV (as well as being able to watch on our computers). The quality's fine, with just the occasional hiccup, it's very affordable ($15 a month, which also gets us unlimited DVD rental), it's convenient, in that we can watch stuff wherever and whenever we want, and the range is staggering.

Right now, we have about 200 items queued up, including the following:

• The whole of Xena, Heroes, Jeremiah, Californication, Weeds, Star Trek: TOS and many other American TV series I never got round to watching or which didn't make it to the UK
• Classics like You Can't Take It With You, The Palm Beach Story
• A bunch of silent movies, including Fritz Lang's Destiny
• A huge selection of foreign language films, covering not just European movies, but Moroccan, Israeli, Korean, Japanese (live action & anime), Chinese and lots of Bollywood musicals
• British film & TV ranging from Merchant Ivory classics and BBC dramas like Pride & Prejudice to Mighty Boosh, Eddie Izzard, All Creatures Great and Small, Coupling, Little Britain, and Dr Who from Troughton to Tennant
• Weird indie & art-house movies I've never heard of but which look like they could be interesting, or which I loved and want to see again, like The World's Fastest Indian
• Documentaries galore, from Ken Burns to Walking with Dinosaurs
• A ton of kids' movies and kids' TV, from Golden Compass to Prince Caspian by way of The Storyteller and High School Musical.

There's more appearing every day, faster than we can possibly watch them, but it's quite manageable, because their recommendation system is quite astoundingly good. It really does seem to have a handle on what we like: it will suggest things like "period romantic movies with a strong female lead", and as often as not, it's pretty well spot on. We never have problems finding something to watch, although making a choice is sometimes hard! We don't have cable, and we don't miss it. Between this and music, we're pretty well covered for evenings in.

Obviously it doesn't have everything on here that I could possibly want to watch - it's noticeably short on recent blockbusters, but I can still get those from Netflix on DVD - but that's not the way to look at it. My DVD collection, extensive as it is, doesn't have everything either. However, Netflix' collection is growing a damn sight faster than mine, it has stuff on I wouldn't mind seeing but don't necessarily want to pay even $5 to own, and it has more than enough to provide me with entertainment whenever I feel like it. And, to be quite honest, I can find things a lot faster electronically than searching through shelves and shelves of boxes. It's also completely legal. No torrenting, and no overnight waits.

Since between all four of us we probably watch about five things a day on average, that works out at 10c per item. (That's 6p in English). Or, to put it another way, we watch about 150 movies for the price of owning one or two. When I look at it in those terms, I'd have to really, really like a movie to make it worthwhile buying it.

I've said for a while that eventually we'll get to a point where we can watch videos by paying a flat rate subscription to watch anything we want on demand. That's nearly there. I don't really see much future for DVDs, Blu-Ray or the like. The only real advantage of a DVD is that it has extras which I may (but usually don't) want to watch. This is cheaper, more convenient, more extensive, doesn't rely on a platform that may become obsolete (like the thousands of VHS videos that ended up in landfill) and doesn't fill up my house.