Paper Book vs Digital Book Sales

Paper Book sales versus Digital Book Sales

Sam Larson

Books, boring, but a heavy part of our economy. Books are everywhere! But, the Ebook is taking over the paper book. Looking at the opportunity cost between Ebooks and paperback books, is that Ebooks are much less expensive. The average price for an Ebook is about $8.00, compared to a paperback book falls ahead by $13.95-$17.35. There’s a lot of opportunity cost there.

Think about how many people buy books a year, whether it be for fun or for school. Then think about the people help to make the books. At The New York Times company, they employ 3,710 people. This is just one company, there are hundreds more out there, and lots of job positions. About 133,130 people are employed in the publishing industry (not including labor workers). If we were to lose the paper book industry, it would significantly hurt our economy. Not only are there just paperback books there is also hardback books, and a major money maker, textbooks. One of the largest textbook companies is McGraw-Hill Education, this a US based company. However, in the world, they are not in the top five, instead are number nine. The revenue they bring in is about $2.190 million as of 2015. While this isn’t a large number, there are many other publishing companies in the US, each making less than the other, however. But colleges somehow manage to charge people about $68 for a textbook, however, some textbooks cost about $200.

Now, let’s look at Ebooks. Ebooks are not on the rise, based on a publisher’s survey. The Ebook has sold 424 million books, while paperback books sells 1.18 billion books. However, they only make 6.74 billion as of 2016. Compared to how each item is created, the paperback book has more components of being put together. For example, the Ebook only requires the publishing company. There are no labor workers to help build the books, because it’s only digital, unlike paperback books. Therefore, they are able to bring in more money from the books and charge less, because there isn’t as many people involved of the publishing of the book. Overall, books bring in a lot of revenue for the economy.

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