How would you buy the reprints?

[itw2009]

for a half-second, i was convinced advertising might be an issue, myself.

.....but you know, it was word of mouth and the monthly scholastic papermag they'd hand out in class that hooked me, originally. both of those work for physical and electronic books. outside of that, i don't see children's books advertised anywhere. it'll be limited to ads/banners on children-focused websites.

in any case, i'll beg ignorance on this one. i'm not a marketing major. i see more ads for kindles than any specific book, but that's all i can say. either way, if scholastic does, in fact, invest in advertising, they must be expecting a nice return for their efforts.


but, really... i just don't see it! i tried to get both of my siblings into the series, but neither of them really.... GOT it. i don't know what it was, to be honest, but if it's a generational priorities/interests gap... (but it's only arrogance to assume that something like that exists in the first place...) D:

WELL. i guess i must care about the success of this reprint. silly me. =___='' /ramble

[itw2009]

i'm both unwilling and unable to jump to the conclusion that the up-and-coming don't read books. perhaps it's the culture of where i live or the circles through which i travel, but i know quite a few people younger than i who are enthusiastic readers. and then, 14 years ago, my peers played plenty of video games but ALSO read their brains out.

i hope that anyone who would like to generalize today's preteens knows- on a personal level- a LOT of them him-/herself or can reference research done by (the hundreds of) those who make a living of stereotyping generations.

my apologies if that sounded heavy-handed; i was just reminded strongly of my grandmother... and not of one of her better sides.

[Stephquiem]

Being a media person, and knowing people whose job it is to deal with mass communications and to study the trends... I really don't see regular books disappearing any time soon. The sales don't show the sort of dramatic change that has been happening in newspapers and things like that.

That being said... I wouldn't buy the reprints as e-books. I would buy them as regular paperbacks. (Though God only knows where I'll put them...)

[esplin]

i would only ever purchase book versions

[Kyle]

You know, I think one way to help market ebooks would be to include digital comics. Both as regular static images, and maybe even motion comics. you know, comics with cheap animation and voice acting. while I'm not a fan of motion comics, I would like to see how an official animorphs comic would look like. that's not an area that's been explored yet has it? to push this idea even further, with the ipad especially, would be to release an "animorph yourself" app for the ipad and iphone where you take a picture of yourface, and animal of your choice to see yourself morph into it.

all these are things they could look into as cheap ways to sell the re release to current generation of kids. the comics and apps could suck them in, and they'll naturally read the books to find out what happens. maybe they'll start with the paper versions, then move on to ebook exclusive ones. (since it doesnt sound like a reprint of the whole series is an option)

[SuperBlue]

you can't curl up with an ebook in bed. (well, maybe with a laptop )

Which I have done before

If the new books come out once every month than you can expect me to buy one every month

[blackholeinacan]

I don't really think that e-books are going to replace regular books anytime soon. I love physical books and as someone noted, they are easier to curl up with in bed than a laptop.

That being said, I wouldn't mind paying a little bit extra (a dollar or two might be reasonable) to have a digital copy of a book that I already own the physical copy of, much like some companies have been doing with DVD's and digital copies of movies. It makes more sense to read off of a laptop or phone you're already bringing on a long trip than to try and jam some extra books in your already overflowing bag.

[Serraph105]

making ebooks add up to the electricity bill from running your computer 

yes, but they cut down on logging (And Cassie hates logging) and gasoline usage

[Serraph105]

ok (assuming your right about the amount of sheets per tree) about the math adds up to about 4621 tree's using an average of 124 pages per book. However if we are just talking about all books and not just the Animorphs let's get a little perspective by looking at how many trees Harry Potter #5 sold 210 million copies which adds up to about 2,269,565 trees (although that number is thrown off a bit because it uses less paper in the UK for some reason). Considering that is just one book out of who knows how many it's safe to say that there would be considerable more tree's in the world if we decided to switch to e-books.

I just googled how many sheets of paper are made per tree and wikianswers says it's actually 9000 sheets per tree. So that means the animorphs as a whole took up 413,333 tree's and Harry Potter #5 alone took up 20,300,000. I hope your math is the one that is right with numbers like that.

Now all of that doesn't factor in the amount of gasoline it takes to drive the books around from store to store nor store to home or even flying from country to country. Also I don't know the math for for how much coal is being used on e-books or electricity in general, but with recently renewed interest in nuclear power I'd say the world (or at least the states) will be using much cleaner energy within the next few years.

[Serraph105]

look I gave you the math using your numbers and the numbers I found at the two sites below (they are close in number and I went with the first one). You said let's do the math and I did because you didn't. It's like when somebody tries to sell you their idea without taking a look at everything first and instead they just say to you, "Look at this and this, now come on how can that be bad?"

Instead of just going with it I ran the numbers and it's really quite a large amount. I also didn't say that you are currently wrong about the amount of coal we would use on e-books because frankly I don't know the math for that so I left it alone.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_sheets_of_paper_are_made_from_a_tree

http://www.cafescribe.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=210&Itemid=127

[esplin]

I dont think eco-friendly is a good enough reason for ebooks.  Honestly nothing is better then a real book, its not like we dont waste trees on crap thats worth abosuletly nothing.

[morfowt]

I personally think a bowl of noodles is better than a real book...

[delta]

I would personally buy e-books just because I can put it onto any portable media player (smartphones, book readers, laptops, netbooks, etc)

Now, pricing-wise, I would pay around $2 for each book max. Books are already so cheap (around $5 for a paperback), so I think that if it were any more expensive than $2, most people wouldn't purchase it.

Also, I think that there should be some sort of trial period for reading a book (a few hours, maybe for browsing through the entire book) before you're required to purchase it.

[HiImshort]

i would bye a book from the store.

[Aluminator (Kit)]

Haha... this thread makes me feel so old. I'm in the same generation as lots of people who like real books because of the "feel" or whatever. The world is moving towards digital, and no amount of comfort or familiarity is going to change that. Newspapers are dying. Magazines are dying. Books will die. They'll have a market for decades to come, simply because those of us who prefer reading books will still be around, but once the digital generation starts to have widespread access to ebooks, you know sales of those archaic paper monstrosities are going to drop as well. It would benefit authors and publishers alike to take advantage of this, rather than fighting it.

Now, for monthly series released on ebooks (any series, since I'm fairly certain Katherine and Michael were not asking about Animorphs specifically)... I'd buy them, but I think at least a small amount of advertising would be necessary. I can't buy something if I don't know it exists, and I won't if I'm not intrigued. I probably wouldn't pay more than a couple of dollars apiece for a series of short books similar to Animorphs or whatever... maybe $3? Monthly series hold the advantage, however, of being able to sell subscriptions- you could even keep the same price per book and just throw in extras for monthly subscribers. It might actually be advantageous to stretch the wait time between volumes- it almost seems like a bi-monthly series would feel more substantial. Of course, then you risk your audience losing interest or growing out of the series... Haha, okay, forget I said anything. For one-off novels in ebook form... I probably wouldn't be willing to pay more than like... $7? Give or take? Depending on how interested I was, of course. Set the prices too high and you risk losing more customers to piracy. And I know I still much prefer reading on paper, so until simulated paper technology becomes more widespread, I think the prices for ebooks have to be kept nice and low.

I totally agree with delta that there should be some sort of trial period... or (in a cruel but probably very effective plot) maybe the first few chapters could be made available for free. Something similar to the way you can cruise a few pages of books in the bookstore before purchasing. For a monthly series... I'm not sure I'd release it alongside paperbacks, honestly. Exclusively ebook series make much more sense than paperback monthly series in today's world. Shorter series and standalone novels need to start being released in electronic incarnations alongside their physical versions in order to propagate the ebook trend.