s talk, I'd like to go over the ways that ebooks are
more like paper books than you'd expect. One of the truisms of
retail theory is that purchasers need to come into contact with a
good several times before they buy -- seven contacts is tossed
around as the magic number. That means that my readers have to
hear the title, see the cover, pick up the book, read a review,
and so forth, seven times, on average, before they're ready to
buy.

There's a temptation to view downloading a book as comparable to
bringing it home from the store, but that's the wrong metaphor.
Some of the time, maybe most of the time, downloading the text of
the book is like taking it off the shelf at the store and looking
at the cover and reading the blurbs (with the advantage of not
having to come into contact with the residual DNA and burger king
left behind by everyone else who browsed the book before you).
Some writers are horrified at the idea that three hundred
thousand copies of my first novel were downloaded and "only" ten
thousand or so were sold so far. If it were the case that for
ever copy sold, thirty were taken home from the store, that would
be a horrifying outcome, for sure. But look at it another way: if
one out of every thirty people who glanced at the cover of my
book bought it, I'd be a happy author. And I am. Those downloads
cost me no more than glances at the cover in a bookstore, and the
sales are healthy.

We also like to think of physical books as being inherently
*countable* in a way that digital books aren't (an irony, since
computers are damned good at counting things!). This is
important, because writers get paid on the basis of the number of
copies of their books that sell, so having a good count makes a
difference. And indeed, my royalty statements contain precise
numbers for copies printed, shipped, returned and sold.

But that's a false precision. When the printer does a run of a
book, it always runs a few extra at the start and finish of the
run to make sure that the setup is right and to account for the
occasional rip, drop, or spill. The actual total number of books
printed is approximately the number of books ordered, but never
exactly -- if you've ever ordered 500 wedding invitations,
chances are you received 500-and-a-few back from the printer and
that's why.

And the numbers just get fuzzier from there. Copies are stolen.
Copies are dropped. Shipping people get the count wrong. Some
copies end up in th