Why Nobody Likes E-Books

CybrGuyRSB writes: "In today's Chicago Tribune, there is an interesting article about the total unpopularity of e-books. It seems to partly tie their failure into their copyright protection and briefly discusses the Skylarov case."

Comments

Re:well duh

[JeffL]

the weight of a good book in their hand, and honestly have some kind of tactile fixation with page turning.

I consider myself someone who reads lots of books, and I completely disagree with this statement. I think the people who say they like the feel of a book in there hand have never tried any type of e-reader. They weight of enough books to last me for a two week trip is not pleasant. I would much rather put a few books on my Palmpilot, which I have with anyways, than carry around an extra few pounds of paper.

I have been reading books on my Palmpilot for several years now, and I am completely addicted to it. I even have a Palm III with the old low contrast screen, so I would probably like it more if I moved to a V or 500 with a proper display.

I think people who don't like reading e-books have never tried it. (This is making the assumption that the books these people want to read are available in an usable format. I can completely understand people not wanting to read e-books because they have no interest in 100+ year old stuff from the Gutenberg project or whatever annoying thing the publishers have decided to make available.)

EBooks are extremely handy, but...

[SandSpider]

I've been reading eBooks since I owned a Newton 100 (The Hacker Crackdown was my first). It's extremely handy, for several reasons:

1) I can carry around many books in the space of a PDA (currently a Palm);

2) You can read the book with one hand (get your mind out of the gutter) - I can hold the palm in one hand and turn the pages with my thumb on the scroll button. Sure, it's not much, but that's just that little bit of convenience that paperbacks don't have;

3) Low light conditions - I can just turn on the backlight, and I have an instant built-in reading light;

4) It goes where I do - since I keep the Palm with me, it's always right there if I happen to have a few minutes or more free and I didn't think (or feel like) bringing my book.

However, I have no need of a specialized eBook reader nor Adobe's format. I buy my books and magazines from Palm Digital Media (used to be Peanut Press) at http://www.peanutpress.com/ They have a decent if not overwhelmingly complete selection, they don't overcharge, and everything's quick and easy. I'm not going to give up on paper books any time soon, if ever, but I have easily integrated eBooks into my life.

=Brian

Re:well duh

[friscolr]

Add to that this: the "book" as we know it has been around for over 500 years.

Storytelling via word of mouth has been around much longer. When i want to leave work and stop staring at a computer screen then i'll be biking up and down liberty/state/main/s. university street, maybe stopping in Ashley's or Leopold's for a quick pint, seeing who's there, finding out what's new, listening to tales of happenings past and present, meeting new folks and learning from their stories.

I agree that most people's negative reactions to ebooks are due to their newness - your own examples particularly bring this to light, as well as other's "if they were as convenient" statements. When books first came out you'd have to wait a while for a monk to make a copy for you, or wait for Gutenberg's invention. Give ebooks some time and the rough edges will hopefully get smoothed out appropriately.

Personally, i wish i had an electronic copy of every book i've ever read (yes, i read too - i'll stop in Old Towne for to sit and read with a pint on occasion) so that i could easily grep out a certain phrase or name or example from the text.

But i'd also like an electronic copy of every bit of data that passes through me, so the next time i'm at the Fleetwood and someone's telling me about their Seattle WTO experience i could quickly reference it against the newspaper articles and tv news i heard and read. Sure my notebooks handle this functionality too and i wouldn't give up making them for anything, but as i open up my notebook i can't help but think 'grep -i seattle' and wish i could have written down full transcripts of what i heard.