I like a nice paperback, the size that’s around 15cm x 23cm (6ins x 9ins, trade paperback as it’s usually called), it’s not made of anything that makes me feel terrible if it gets tea spilled on it, and books printed in that format are usually readily available, so if one get’s busted up I can get another on Amazon, but without the eyestrain inherent in e-books (for thems of us as spend a lot of time looking at a screen).
But I’m not a collector and honestly probably not your target market for this anyway.
Still, a book like that is the one most likely to find its way onto my bookcase and into my life.
A free e-book with audio download for pronunciation that buyers get if they sign up for a book-specific mailing list might be a nice touch, and a way to acquire people who buy resold books into your mailing list? Also the pronunication thing might be bloody useful, it comes up all the time on here and thankfully we have videos, but a lot of authors don’t.
You could even have mantras and stuff people can download and play in the background to attune to the currents, and to sanctify their space etc. Recording an MP3 (not a video) can’t be overly taxing, and would add value and engagement to the book.
All JMO!
Also, hard copy isn’t that specific, because you have the high-end stuff like BALG do with fancy leather and all kinds of refinements, which is one market, then you have standard hardback like every established author (fiction or non) gets published in, which certainly lasts better for the reader than paperbacks, then you have the various sizes of paperback, which I like but (as anyone who owns NAP can tell you) the spines tend to either dry out disintegrate, leaving you with loose pages - some of my dad’s old Pan horrors are in that condition now, and almost unreadable.
So what kind of heritage you want to leave is also a factor in what you choose, and e-books don’t go near that because they usually rely on proprietary software that may rapidly become incompatible with modern OS’s.
PDF is okay for now, but we’re talking less than 30 years in use and something could come along that blows it out of the water, plus it’s harder to take a PDF into the woods or whatever.
Just some brainstormed ideas anyway, I’m more familiar with marketing than choosing what TO market.