尽管许多人可能因为提供的便利而喜欢电子书（或者因为多愁善感而喜欢纸质书），但找出哪本书更便宜并不是那么简单。个人理财博客Get Rich Slow向我们展示了如何在购书时节省最多的钱。

彭瓦格纳摄。

抛开所有其他偏好不谈，电子书似乎比极新或极旧的书更便宜：

• E-books are great for new releases. For new books, the electronic version is almost always the cheapest way to go. At a friend's house the other day, I noticed he'd paid $29 for the latest John Grisham book. $29!!! That's insane. That John Grisham book costs $16 at Amazon, and the Kindle version costs $10. In fact, most e-books cost between $10 and $12. When the cost savings is combined with the space savings, e-books are the clear winner for new releases.
• E-books are okay for classics. Anything that's in the Public Domain (published before 1923) can generally be downloaded to your e-book reader for free. Sometimes the formatting is goofy, and there usually isn't any supplemental material (like essays and notes), but you do get the books at no cost. (Searching for free Kindle books? Here's Amazon's list of free eBook collecti***, and here's their best-sellers in the Kindle store, including free books on the right.) Of course, these books can usually be had for cheap (or free) in their dead tree versi***, so there's not a huge savings here.
• E-books suck for most titles published between 1923 and, say, 2008. Books from the past century are still priced between $5 and $10 in electronic editi***. This is ridiculous. You can borrow these for free from your public library. Or you can go to a used bookstore, a garage sale, or a thrift store to pick them up for less than they cost in digital format. Plus, t*** of popular books aren't evenvailable electronically. (A real-life, typical example: Cry, the Beloved Country costs $12 on the Kindle. A brand-new paperback copy from Amazon? $9. The mind boggles.)

这是一个相当有趣的模式，不过如果你不是特别喜欢其中一个而不是另一个，那就很好了。当然，如果你觉得电子书实在是太方便和即时了（或者出于感情、方便借阅或其他原因，你更喜欢实体书），你可以一直坚持你喜欢的媒体，我们不会对你大喊大叫。

需要注意的是，上面也没有考虑到购买电子阅读器的成本，电子阅读器只有在你读了很多书的情况下才会自己付费，所以除非你还是把它用在其他事情上，否则你也要记住这一点。点击链接阅读更多内容，如果你注意到类似的模式，请在下面的评论中分享你如何管理你的购书行为。

电子书是否具有成本效益？电子书的利弊[慢慢致富]