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The eBook Backlash
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that people who read ebooks on tablets like the iPad are beginning to realize that while a book in print is straightforward and immersive, a tablet is more like a 21st-century cacophony than a traditional solitary activity offering a menu of distractions that can fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks. 'The tablet is like a temptress,' says James McQuivey. 'It's constantly saying, "You could be on YouTube now." Or it's sending constant alerts that pop up, saying you just got an e-mail. Reading itself is trying to compete.' There are also signs that publishers are cooling on tablets for e-reading. A recent survey by Forrester Research showed that 31 percent of publishers believed iPads and similar tablets were the ideal e-reading platform; one year ago, 46 percent thought so. Then there's Jonathan Franzen, regarded as one of America's greatest living novelists, who says consumers have been conned into thinking they need the latest technology and that e-books can never have the magic of the printed page. 'I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn't change.'"
Keep your tablets and Fire, thank you very much. I like the fact that a basic Kindle allows for NO distractions while you're reading. Even the ad-supported model will only show ads during menu screens, never while you're reading. The e-ink looks a lot crisper than anything on a conventional tablet too. And a single 3-hour charge can last for weeks. I imagine the basic Nook has a similar setup too.
The only advantage I can see with a tablet is for reading comic books or other books with lots of large, color-intensive graphics. Otherwise, you'd be a lot better off just spending the $80 for an actual dedicated e-reader. The text won't give you a headache, there are no distractions, and you won't be constantly recharging it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Self discipline is dead.
Maybe people are figuring out that ebooks are way too fucking expensive.
That's it.
Don't use iPad for reading.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
If _only_ tablets and eReaders came with more self control, I'd read more!
...into thinking that it is much easier to a nice selection of books with me in a tablet than it is to carry them any other way.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
I've got a Kobo Vox, good little e-reader. Has the whole wifi, email notification stuff... When it's time to read, I just turn on airplane mode. No more distractions and saves on the battery to boot!
Printed is still the form I enjoy the most. First off I never fear losing a physical book, the value is low enough I don't care. Get e-readers down in that value and I might think the same.
Then again probably not. For some reason I feel more relaxed with a paper book. For me there is still that put down, pickup, which just works better that way.
I do enjoy reading on the Kindle much more than the Fire! or iPad. Mostly because I can take it outside and still read it.
I would love to see publishers include a scratch off code or receipt activated code with books to get the ebook version. Kind of similar to how you can get the portable version of a movie.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
eBooks are meant for eReaders with eInk not iPads with nasty iCancer light emitting screens.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
Ctrl + F in a paperbook.
We use the Kindle Fire primarily for children's books for my child. There are lots of free ones out there, so she's never bored. The problem is that stupid bug where the books are blank after download (sometimes they don't go blank until a few days after install). I've spent hours with support on email and chat trying to figure it out, and it always ends up back with "factory reset" and redownload everything.
WHEN it works, it's great - especially the interactive books. I love it for the tech books - I can search and highlight. I like it for magazines - less waste. I like it for my text books at school.
For 'fun reading', I'm still stuck on plain old dead-tree versions of books.
There's a good use for the tablets for reading. There's a good use for the books, too. Don't be so hasty to disregard the tablets (well, once they work regularly, that is).
Pricing structure needs adaptation, too. There is no reason for the Kindle version to cost the same as the dead tree version.
Moving and/or interactive stuff: Use a tablet.
Reading books: Use a REAL e-book reader with an e-ink screen.
E-books are still the future, people new to them just have to learn to read them on a proper reader, like the Sony PRS-T1, Kindle, Nook etc.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
I have a tablet and a Kindle (e-ink) and they are very different devices when it comes to reading. I can read for hours on my Kindle, but on my Xoom, the backlight and glare gives me headaches after about 20 minutes or so.
In other news, kids are used to frequent task shifting and tuning into multiple things at the same time.
You might as well be reading on a TV.
It's great to be able to read anywhere on a whim (since the tablet gets tossed into my backpack most days). It's nice that it keeps my place across multiple devices, that I can search, etc. I love it for textbooks/reference books since I can search for what i need and highlight sections easily. I'm not even a student :-) I can see what they mean about distractions but that's a matter of self control...which some people seem to lack.
I have a young kid and regularly read while he falls asleep in my lap in the evening. Using a tablet means I don't need a light shining on my kid and impeding sleep.
It also means that I can use the device that I already have. As for headaches and eye strain, I've never had a problem. That said, I do look forward to the spread of high-resolution screens with the advent of the ipad3.
Personally, my biggest problem with ebooks on the tablet is that there isn't a great selection available from the public library. Our library has a really great selection of paper books, but for ebooks they're quite limited--mostly due to the publishers.
How i love terms like
serious readers
It is the reader, that has become faulty. Our good product is not appreciated and understood by him. He doesn't use it according to specs.
Wake up guys! This is still the customer we are talking about ;-).
I have not yet seen an electronic display that is as comfortable to read, in varying light conditions, as printing on paper, although the Kindle is considerably better than most. Books don't require chargers or power adapters, and they are quite durable. I have books that I got 40-50 years ago, including my high school yearbooks, that are in fine shape; I rather doubt your tablet will make its first decade. And, as exemplified by those yearbooks, people can interact with a book easily. I wouldn't write in most books, but do make small marginal notes in my reference books fairly often.
The printed page offers some authentication: yellowing of the page attests to age (or carbon dating for more precision), missing pages are readily apparent due to the running sequence counter, and alterations to the typography are difficult to forge. In essence, the printed page employs a redundancy of quadrillions times over -- quadrillions of molecules are involved to present one character of text to the reader. It is this redundancy that affords the secure authentication of the printed page.
EBooks have many drawbacks, but considering the authentication drawback in isolation, eBooks would have to come with a digital signature like an MDA, and a master catalog of MDA's would have to be maintained and well-distributed (to prevent someone from surreptitiously changing an MDA in just one authoritative place).
Seems absurd, the only reason I bought and the primary reason I ever use my tablet is for reading ebooks. I can download packs of thousands and store them all on there, and carry thousands around with my everywhere I go. Never noticed any distractions or anything either. My bookshelf is pretty much obsolete now; I can already tell it's only a matter of time until I get rid of/donate almost all the physical copies, and I genuinely resent the few times I can't get a digital copy of something.
I dunno. I've been using the hell out of my Nook Tablet since my wife got it for me for Christmas, and it's provided a nice middle ground for me. The web browser is good enough to check Facebook or read a few newspaper articles, but not good enough to provide a fully interactive experience beyond typing a couple of one sentence emails or hitting a "like" button. On the other hand, I've probably dropped two hundred bucks on ebooks in the last three months. Instant gratification has its merits. Instead of hoofing it to the book store (which most likely won't have what I'm looking for) or ordering something from Amazon (in which case I'll have to wait a couple of days), I can get buy something new right then and there. I spend more of my free time reading instead of idly browsing the web. Oddly enough, I'm still buying hard copies of stuff - like reference books, cook books, and substantive non-fiction and literature. The Nook is my platform of choice for the brain candy SF that I'd be embarrassed to display on the shelves in my living room.
hang brain.
Seriously, this guy sounds like hundreds of other e-book complainers. Meanwhile, every person I have given a Kindle to try out who said they would never give up paper books are converts within a week. eBooks are great because you can have tons of books always with you, they are light, and if you finish one you boook you instantly can get another one.
I've recently decided to rack up some certifications and have been scouting material I need to read and practice. I've tried several times dealing with e-Books and CBT content. But, it's the paper based material when I worked on it felt like the most productive sessions. I don't get distracted by emails, pop-up alerts, or temptation of visiting /. and the like. The paper written notes and doodles also go a long way in helping with absorbing the knowledge.
I'm just a paper based guy while being an IT nerd. Paper is still a long way from going out of fasion.
For over 10 years, I am reading electronic books on platforms including Palm, Windows Mobile, Maemo, Kindle, Android.
Except for "Battery out", I never saw any popup over the book I read. It is only a matter of configuration, and any computer user configures their device as they like it.
The only problem with e-books and e-readers is that they're clearly not made by readers.
Books, the good ones at least and most of the bad ones too, pay attention to typography. Paragraph-optimized justification, hyphenation, hanging punctuation, ligatures, etc. All these little things that you take for granted with a dead-tree book, but without them it's a significantly poorer experience.
You find books with left-aligned text, an ugly and jagged right edge carving out a large chunk of empty space on the right. Or worse, you get one that is justified. This is bottom-of-the-barrel justification, without hyphenation and very commonly leaving huge spaces between words.
I've owned a Nook since launch day. I've read a large number of books on it, and I love it. But there is still a lot of room for improvement. I shouldn't need to import my ebooks into Adobe InDesign to make a PDF with proper typography.
This article presents no sales figures, no trend graphs, and no statistics from actual book buyers. The only citation in the article that supports this assertion are the opinions of unspecified random publishers, an opinion survey - of publishers, and one random reader much perfers her tablet over paper books.
The entire article is yet another example of poorly supported screed from out-of-touch haters in the tree killing industry pining for the past where publishers, rather than e-book authors, controlled publishing.
I got no problem voting with my feet.
I have these distractions when I read anyway. The TV is on downstairs, the cats visit and want attention, the wife needs something, the phone rings, etc. This is all with a paper book! Tablets didn't invent this problem. They do, however, have airplane mode.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The odds of my physical books being stolen from my house or lost in a fire are fairly remote, and I don't have to ask permission to use them. Having an e-book removed from my e-device is rather higher, and what happens to said e-books 20 years from now when some e-retailer turns the lights off? While there are temptations to move to this format, until the draconian restrictions have been removed (I am aware of a few alternatives, but choice is limited) I'll keep my money on the brick and motor shops instead.
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I enjoy the immersible experience of recreational reading but you can't smell a f*cking eBook!
I love to plant my face right in the middle of a book and breath deeply and long. I like to fan out the pages of a book and then allow it to compress slowly, burping out its scented air. I know that I've enjoyed a particularly good reading session when I sport ink smudges on each side of my nose.
For work and reference tasks, however, eBooks have a couple strong advantages.
What a bunch of elitist nonsense. "Serious readers" indeed.
There are a lot of different reasons people read, and there are some things that tablets are great at, some an eReader is great at, and times when a dead tree book is preferred.
I'll still throw a dead tree novel in my backpack for casual reading, but it's not like it brings with it any sort of magic. It just isn't wise to pull out expensive electronics on the bus.
But this "serious readers" stuff is crap. I read Moby Dick on my Treo 650 a few years ago. It's not like the story magically became smaller or less interesting. I'm sure these are the same "serious readers" who will only read leather-bound first edition hardcovers. A paperback? Beh. No SERIOUS READER would consider reading those.
I like that I can have my entire library of reference materials on my droid tablet. It would just not be realistic to drag 100 fat programming manuals with me everywhere I go. I can search all that text by keyword. I can actually code on my android, so I can try out all those nifty HTML5/javascript/CSS tricks right there in the coffee shop. No "serious geek" would ever own an iPad. I know this for a fact because I have a different preference based on my particular needs, and I assume the entire world thinks exactly like I do, or else there must be something wrong with them.
Seriously if you're if you find it so hard to focus that you can't handle a popup once in a while put it in airplane mode. But I'm guessing you've got bigger problems than that.
For the douchenozzle novelist who think 'serious' readers need paper books, eff-off. Tablets, e-readers and smart phones give me the freedom to read whenever and wherever I like. Guys like this need to get over themselves and realize that everything moves forward. Sounds like the music industry 15 years ago. eBooks are allowing more people to publish and giving readers more opportunity. This is all good unless you're a snobby bitch who likes to look down their nose at everyone.
I would agree with this assessment. I too have found it really difficult to concentrate on reading a book on a computer. It takes a lot more effort than a print one. While some of this is likely due to light-emitting (rather than light reflecting) displays being tiring to read, it also likely has to do with the menu of available distractions.
I don't find the lack of permanence particularly disturbing. I've long considered the data on my hard-drive to have greater permanence than the data I have scattered around on DVDs or CDs or even books. But I do admit that I like showing of the many bookshelves of books I've read. :-) And the fact that so many ebooks come with DRM that could potentially deprive me of the work at any time due to the whims of the publisher or bookseller does give me a sense of disturbing ephemerality.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
...only it went like this:
"I really hate these new 1200-baud modems. 300 baud is just the right speed for me to follow along, read, and think about what I'm reading. At 1200, I'm always having to control-S to pause the stream, and when there are a few short lines, I can lose my place in the text."
Eventually, e-ink displays will be just as dynamic as today's tablets, maybe more so. Heck, eventually, paper will be that dynamic.
If there's a mismatch between the content being displayed and our cognitive needs, fix the content. "Translating it down through a lower-Zone protocol" shouldn't be necessary.
When I meet a temptress, she rarely says, "You could be on YouTube now."
This is no different from the music and movie industries, an industry desperately clinging to a business model which has become obsolete. It's all about entertainment and control - consumers who wish to be entertained, and those who wish to control how this happens and turn a profit. The consumers have taken to the electronic/digital world and found great entertainment, they will not change back, and anyone who thinks otherwise best go feed their horses and quit worrying about petrol prices. Unfortunately, the industries in question made so much money in the past they have enough to bleed a while longer before dying, and annoying everyone else in the process. John Q. Consumer doesn't need to buy a bit of plastic to enjoy his music, is quite content watching streaming content on a small screen rather than a huge one in a theatre, and generally enjoys carrying his library with him in a small device, rather than the massive pounds of paper formerly required. The first person to come up with the business model utilizing these to turn a profit wins. Oh wait, how much content did Apple sell last week?
I make the same experience that it is harder to finish a book on a ebook reader, also due to distraction by other books. There are different reasons to read although. A library of books at my fingertip to look up something and not have to carry around a library. Not only for books. I used to photocopy every article remotely interesting to me. Its nice to have all these sources on one place now. Also for articles, distraction can kick in. While I used to carry around some few articles with me for months absorbing them to the latest detail, this is harder now. The electronic file goes into the electronic library, often not to be touched again.
I have a basic Kindle and was really into it for a while, but really, buying an e-book for the same price as a print book still feels odd to me. I like the Kindle for reading public domain books and Web documents, but when it comes to books I really want to get into I always buy the print edition. Having a book in print, you can see the full book, and not just isolated pages. You can also take them with you when you don't want to be distracted by anything, and just want to get into a story.
What bothers me about e-readers is the impermanence of the content. If the service goes away, will the content go away? That's happened many times with on-line music. Remember Wal-Mart Music? PlaysForSure? MTV Urge? Zune? If the service goes down, can you move your content to a new device? This is really tough with devices that talk to nothing but the service. Can you back up your e-reader? Maybe, sort of, sometimes.
Even if the content is on the reader, will the service push an update that makes the reader dependent on the service? That's happened with games. There have been updates that made e-books go away.
And don't even think about leaving your books to your kids.
I love reading books on my iPad. I always have my iPad with me, so it's like having every book I could possibly want with me all the time.
I don't have my iPad set for incoming alerts for things like emails, etc. So there's no popups happening while I'm reading. And while I'm on a plane (I spend at least 100 hours a year on airplanes) there's no "temptation to youtube". Hell there's no temptation to youtube anyway.
I will never buy a device that just reads books. I predict in five years minimum, 10 years maximum the dedicated eBook reader will only be seen in museums.
One has to turn off distractions when reading. Isn't this obvious?
Who are these ADHD people they did this scientific survey with? I find reading on a tablet IDENTICAL to reading the book, except I cant lose my place and can search easily.
Honestly, I find reading on my iPad or my KindleDX far more enjoyable than a tiny paperback, so much so that I read a lot more now.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The only reason why I'd want an eBook reader (I don't have one yet btw), would be because with a waterproof cover it'd allow you to read while taking a bath without the danger of destroying your paper book if you'd accidently drop it. More efficient usage of your time!
In general, I understand what I read more better and much faster when reading from paper than from a screen.
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"...sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn't change."
This is the main reason I haven't purchased a kindle or a similar tablet. There is just something about having the book in front of you that makes the story that much better.
My only real issue with eBooks, period, is cost. Why the fuck does the ebook cost more than a paperback copy?!?!? Why does it usually cost as much as the damned hardcover?!?!
eBooks were supposed to bring about a revolution. More people published, high profits for everyone involved, all while still costing radically less for the consumer. Instead it's become a pure money grab.
I have a Sony eReader with no wifi access. It is simply a dedicated reader. I love it! No distractions, and it is the size of a paper-back. I have an iPad 2, and would never use it as an eReader. Except maybe for a local newspaper, and even then...
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
When I read "Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn't change." brought to mind the novel 1984 where the new is changed constantly to reflect the facts as the government wants them to be. I suppose digital versions of books make that easier. I already see it in online news where articles disappear.
This is really just an example of dedicated devices outperforming multifunction devices. An actual physical book is a highly dedicated reading device (no battery etc.) for a single text. The Kindle basic is a mostly dedicated reading device. The iPad on the other hand is a multifunction computer. I'm not surprised that the most dedicated devices perform the best. That doesn't mean ebooks are dead. It just means a device with one very specific goal, such as a physical book, might provide a better experience that a multifunction device such as the iPad. The Kindle basic has just the right amount of technology to improve the basic reading experience without being intrusive.
http://www.hanvon.com/en/products/ebook/products-C920.html
And.... sales of B&W e-ink readers plummet... Not suitable for first person shootemups.
I still prefer real paper and the prices for ebooks are still far too high but is handy to have a library at my fingertips to choose from.
You can't sell your read books on ebay or pass them on to friends. Big disadvantage.
Deleted
...e-ink really is a vastly better way to read lots of text. I can read much faster and more comfortably on my Kindle than on the iPad.
YES!
What I've been doing is creating my own ebooks from websites that have a lot of material that I need to read. I just can't read on a monitor if it's a large amount of text.
This is what I do:
either use a conversion website or Sigil. I should also mention that I have a 1st gen. Nook - ePub format - so I don't know how my system would work with the Kindle.
The only kink in my system is PDF. A lot of "ebooks" out there are on PDF and PDF is the shittiest format for electronic book readers. PDF is really for printers.Don't get me wrong, when I want a dead tree copy, PDF rocks, but I'm trying to get away from paper - it's too expensive.
Talley up the costs of printing a PDF - either at home or at an office supply store - it adds up fast!
Stealing a book in PDF format? Plah-ease! It's a hell of lot cheaper just to buy the printed book from Amazon if you need a hard copy.
Tell that to Samuel Clemens...
My experience is personal and anecdotal, but here goes:
I bought an iPad when the first model was released, with the intention of using it to read ebooks. I'm a very digital-oriented person, and I have loads of books but I don't especially like clutter. After a few months, I had gotten rid of my iPad because I didn't like it for reading. There were a myriad of reasons.
For one, as the summary says, I kept getting tempted to do other things. I had games on my iPad, a web browser, and music. I had email beeping at me on a regular basis. I would find myself watching Netflix when I had intended to sit down and read. I found the experience unpleasant and tense, which is generally the opposite of my experience reading.
Just recently, someone gave me an iPad 2, and I had been carrying around a big thick book, so I decided to give it another try. I didn't sync my music library to the device, and I turned off email notifications. I changed the theme to the "sepia" colors instead of the default bright-white theme, and set iBook to "full screen', which turns off the fake-book skin. For some reason, for me, those visual changes made it much more pleasant to read. Also, the iPad 2 is significantly faster and more responsive than my original iPad was. I now use the iPad almost exclusively for reading books and news articles, and I'm getting used to it.
So manly the advantages at this point is that I don't have to carry around books (the iPad is actually lighter than many books that I read), and I can readily buy and download books without going to the store. Also, importantly, I can get public domain books for free. Given my commute and my desire to avoid clutter in my apartment, these are significant advantages. It's also nice to have a web browser that I can take with me without bringing a full computer.
On the other hand, I do miss books. I like the smell of them and the tactile experience. The big problem that I have is that I will miss the ability to lend or gift books to people. Still, overall, I'm getting used to it. I agree to some extent with the idea that e-ink displays are better for reading, but the ability to have a real full-color web browser on the same device makes it worth the sacrifice. Still, my biggest complaint is theoretical-- the inability to lend/share books, and the fear that if I build a nice digital library, I may one day be denied access to that library because of DRM.
IMHO, the problem is less about distractions but being overwhelmed with choices.
With an iPad, for example, you have basically the entire Internet at your fingertips, along with music, video, ebooks, magazines.
There's so many choices that the distraction isn't interruptions from email, etc, but that you can't really decide what to do. With a paper book, you've made a much greater mental commitment because you have actually made a "final" choice, since the book only does one thing.
I've owned portable music players since the first Walkman, but the iPod sometimes makes me less interested in music because there are too many choices.
When I went walking with a cassette Walkman, it really wasn't practical to carry more than a couple of 'extra' cassette tapes, and sometimes none at all, so you listened to what you had. With my iPod and 40 GB of music, there are times where I skip around so much it seems like I don't really listen to anything.
Other problems include just wearing out songs I like because it's so easy to play them over and over, or never spending enough time listening to something to understand it's appeal -- if it doesn't provide immediate gratification, skip it.
Who is considering Franzen America's greatest living novelists? I am sure if you did a poll of Americans less than 1% of Americans would know who he is.
offering a menu of distractions that can fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks.
People try to make it news that users can't organize themselves? For years I have read e-books on my laptop just fine. Not even in the full-screen mode. On one side.
On the other side, IMO it is more about the fact that most of the books are at best mediocre. So when given a choice, and e-book+tablet gives that choice, brains say "I'd rather watch cat videos on the YouTube." When I'm reading an interesting book on my e-book reader (not tablet), with laptop being readily available at hand, I rarely have the impulse to do something else. Because the book is interesting.
It is an open competition between the entertainment forms for the free time (and money) of the user. Many books (just like many movies or games), sadly, lose to the cat videos in entertainment value. And that's nothing new.
But I can image that some have missed the fact that books became predominantly an entertainment form - and have much less cultural value than they had say few decades before. That is rather normal: book publishing become cheaper and many things which previously were not deemed before to be worth the paper, now are published. Especially with e-books, literally anything can be published cheaply. And thus everything gets published. But that, unlike some time ago, doesn't give automatically everything published the same value as the books of the masters.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Typography and ease of reading has been totally lost on the web content people as well.
It''s like the early 80's desktop publishers with 20 different fonts on a paper page.
The way they deal with it, though, is to replace text with images.
While it's nice to pine for the days of old when reading was a solitary escape, it's also important to acknowledge that things have fundamentally changed, and there is no going back. How many people really go as far as to hide their smartphones while reading a printed book? The fact of the matter is that we are immersed in a world that is inherently more connected and more distracting than ages past. There are downsides to this, but apparently they aren't considered sufficiently compelling for most people to forsake cell phones, email, blogs, social networking, streaming video, etc. Whether these things are accessible from the iPad a person uses to read a book or from the smartphone in their pocket or the laptop in front of them, makes very little difference.
I haven't seen any ebook reader or other computer that's actually more comfortable to read than a paperback. However, ebooks have one huge thing going for them: They can be copied, which means that you can get them for free. You can get paperbacks for free too, of course - I routinely give away novels as soon as I've finished them - but it's incredibly convenient to be able to download a torrent with the whole bibliography of some interesting author. For that reason alone, I now read at least as many novels as ebooks on my clumsy laptop as I do on paper.
Technical books that i don't read serially, or want to search, or cross reference, or flip between and go out of date really quickly go on the iPad. Xenophon? Well paper.
The iPad can disable notifications - there won't be any alerts in the middle of a Keynote presentation.
All it needs is to add a "don't disturb me" switch into the iBooks application.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The whole idea behind e-Readers is that there are a number of advantages over traditional print:
1: You can collect a much bigger library without needing storage or more bookshelves.
2: You can take your whole library with you when you travel.
3: You can read a lot more for a lot less.
The problem is that #1 and #2 are irrelevant in my opinion. When I'm traveling, I travel for a reason, and it's not to read. I'm visiting family, off to a festival with the family, etc.. Naturally, I like to bring something to read, but one or two books and maybe a couple magazines is the most I need. Usually, it's just one book. As for the bookshelf, I really like a physical book - we have over 1000 between myself, my wife, and our 2 kids. It's that sense of permanence mentioned in TFA. I don't need to keep a book charged in order to read it, and I don't have to freak out if I spill a drop of whatever I'm drinking on it.
As for #3, this would be enough for me to at least buy more of my books in electronic format, but that argument is a load of bollocks - and the biggest disappointment in the entire eBook scene. I often find that the paperback print is the same or cheaper than the eBook. For instance, the Game of Thrones paperback bookshelf is currently $21.03 at Barnes and Noble. The eBook for the same collection of 4 stories is $29.99. Both prices are exactly the same at Amazon. Why would I want the eBook?
Granted, there are specials where the opposite is true, and others where I've grabbed eBooks for under $5, or even as low as a dollar, but these are books I would never even bother with a hard copy on - and often I'm glad I didn't waste time going to find it at the bookstore. I'm really trying to justify buying the Nook Color with books, but so far, I'm using it to let my kid watch Phineas and Ferb through Netflix a lot more than I'm reading books on it. As far as that goes, I don't even bother watching Netflix streaming videos on it, because the quality really is poor, and I can do better through the Wii or my laptop.
I have a Kindle Keyboard (eInk-based) e-reader and a Kindle Fire (LCD-based) e-reader / tablet. I do notice that the KF is more distracting to use, though easier to navigate with. And both of these are designed to be content delivery devices and are products from the same company. I would imagine that a more general-purpose tablet (or worse yet, a netbook with an eReader app) would be more distracting yet.
never heard of him...
I read ebooks since about 2000, on various devices that weren't even built for "the experience": from monochrome Palms to Win mobile PDAs, to e-ink readers and tablets.
Guess what? If the book is good, you get used to any type of e-reader. It's as "immersive" as it can be, the physical support is just that, an intermediary between yourself and the world described by the book. I spent many nights reading on my Palm IIIxe using its slightly humming green backlight that drained the batteries until morning. And it was as wonderful as reading a paper book.
Distractions? If you don't like to read you'll find them anyway. TVs, smartphones, idle chat and daydreaming are always there when you're bored or uninterested in reading.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K84ntztw0g8
The ONLY temptress that can distract me from a good ebook is a furry temptress.
And while everybody is arguing about which solution is best for solving a non-existent problem, I'm still reading normal books. No ads. No outrageous financial outlay. No batteries. No environmental impact. No compatibility issues. No licensing issues. No worries. Adding complexity and expense in order to solve a problem that doesn't exist seems to be the height of folly.
I don't respond to AC's.
An eBook cannot be HIDDEN. History teaches us any book not hidden will, at some point, BE TAKEN FROM YOU.
Libraries were made to make it easier to distribute books and knowledge. ebooks do everything they can to restrict who can read a book. I am surprised there has not been more of a backlash for that alone.
Because this whole "distraction" thing is complete and utter nonsense. If I want to read, I read. If I want to do something else, I do it. Nothing "distracts" me. The tablet is not a "temptress", lol. It's a machine, and it does what *I* tell it to, not the other way around.
And then there's that poignant call: "a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience" As an owner of thousands of books, let me tell you what that "permanence" is... it's a spine that will crack when you open the book years later. It's the incredibly lousy, acid infused paper that has yellowed, and smelled-up, and eventually caused to crumble, the pages of many of my otherwise treasured reads. It's being unable to find the title because someone has put it back funny, or not put it back at all. Or folded the pages. Or spilled spaghetti sauce on it. Or their lovely child has ripped out the conclusion to chapter three. Or ask a college kid or graduate about the "sense of permanence" that is the reality of a backpack filled with heavy texts. Not exactly a pleasant experience, or a lovely fashion accessory. And it cuts down the amount of actual cool stuff you can carry.
Whereas the e-book experience... the litany is long and distinguished: You don't lose 'em; you don't misplace them; they don't age; you can read them in the dark (well, unless you went with e-ink, but then you can read in the sun if you're so inclined... me, I think reading in the sun is insane, but that's just me.) There are hot dictionaries, hot notes, hot highlights, sharing of same so you can see if what you think is interesting is what everyone else thinks is interesting. There is linkage to summary and statistical info on the book; YOU control the font size, and trust me, as an older guy compared to most of the rest of you puppies, that's a big deal; you can dim the thing and read late at night without disturbing your SO (you'll get girlfriends... really, you will. Patience.) You can read silently, page turns are noiseless. You can read with music, if that's pleasing to you. You can't lose your place -- an e-reader keeps track of what page you were on for every book you're reading, no matter how many that might be. As of recently, they've come up with a way to lend the book and you can't lose it, it simply "snaps" back into your library after the lend is up... you can self-publish without having to have an agent (that's me!), an editor, a publishing house, a marketing plan, and years of fruitless trying; you can carry your whole library with you, and I'm talking a LOT of books, so not only is all your fun reading with you, now you can always have your programming references and textbooks and so forth with you too... that part is just getting off the ground, but it was of direct help to me when I began to learn infrared photography and Apple's Cocoa so I'm personally sensitized to how great it is; and now, with the whole "its backed up in the cloud", you can't even lose your books if you drop your reader down the face of the Hoover dam. From the space shuttle. And the actual reality of that "distraction" is that your reader, if you so choose, can do a myriad of other useful and fun things for you.
But that was a funny article from a luddite. :)
Again speaking as someone involved with the publishing industry (I own a literary agency and I'm a published author, also the offspring of same), let me tell you why the publishers aren't so hot on e-books. The writer has ideas and stories, but surprisingly often, isn't all that great at telling them. The agency has agents on staff who can help -- a lot -- with that, and also (historically speaking) know which publishers are looking, and what they are looking for. An old boys network in the classic sense. Publishers can get the writer into print. And, if the writer is a GREAT writer, they might even throw in a little publicity work. But great writers don't really need publicity. If there's a new Ursula Le Guin or Michael Moorcock or Alan Dean Foster novel and you li
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Who cares what publishers (or many authors for that matter) think about what's good for reading? Publishers have shown time and time again that the little they know about e-publishing terrifies them. They just want to stick their head in the sand and go back to paper, they latch on to any tidbit of evidence that people might not like e-books or e-reading. They do all they can to minimize e-book sales to protect their paper business.
If publishers were smart, they could get way more people reading way more books, and make a lot more money off it. They need to get over their fears about e-publishing and move fast before piracy becomes the norm in the book world, just like it did in the music and video world.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
Am I the only one thinking 'turn off the wi-fi?' if you don't want to be interrupted by email?
Commercials too? I can lend a paper book to a neighbor or a friend or a sister any damn time I please without paying for it again. screw e-books. just another toll booth.
Popups? Ads? While reading? Seriously?
My iPad1 is setup never to notify me of anything while reading.
I hate reading with glasses. . . and have no problems reading Nook, Kindle, PDF, or ePub docs on the iPad without glasses.
(Yes, I do not use the iPad in direct sunlight nor do I take it to the beach. Sue me. I didn't say it was perfect.)
For me, the iPad has been a return to enjoying book-length reading.
This "backlash" sounds more like a tiny amount of concern by a smallish subset of readers.
We still have analog clocks decades after the invention of the digital version. But I'll bet that 99.9% of displays on cell phones, tablets, and PCs are digital. The march toward converting to eBooks will be not be different.
When today's kindergarteners graduate from college knowing only eTexbooks and having read 99% of all assignments on electronic devices, such conversation will probably be looked on as amusing, anachronistic, and short-sighted.
While I like the convenience, ease of distribution and reduction of clutter provided by digital publications, I don't think they are worth the current cost with the extremely limited DRM.
With a real book or magazine, for almost the same price as an electronic publication, i can legally share with my family and friends and even donate to a library or sell to a used bookstore when done.
None of these are allowed on the curent restricted electronic publishing systems. Instead, content distributers have cut out the manufacturing and distribution, and pocketed all the past costs as new profit, while selling a product with substantially less use.
Frankly, the costs and restrictions placed on library lending of electronic media are excessive and we risk loosing the value that free information shared in libraries has provided to our cultural growth. When restricted e-publications become substantially cheaper than real books and are provided with the ability to transfer ownership, or provide limited lending, then I may consider them.
For now, there are plenty of excellent classic books in the public domain that are available to read for free. Unfortunately, the publishing industry and governments of the world are waging war on the public domain.
The only true theft and piracy of intelectual property is that committed when works are prevented from entering the public domain. All money earned through extended IP terms is theft and involves the transfer and reductions of physical wealth from the public. As much as the industry proclaims otherwise there is no transfer of wealth when consuming freely copied media since the intrinsic value of an additional copy is zero.
Limited terms to intelectual property rights are an essential part of the growth and development of technology, the arts and our society. We must stand up to the publishing industry and its attempts to make intelectual property rights practically indefinite through continued extensions.
While I own a tablet (from the a company that's named after a fruit) I also own a kindle, for exactly this reason. In fact I owned the kindle first because I knew, if I had an tablet and not an ereader, I'd play angry birds, not read books.
Now, when it comes to reading comics... the tablet is fucking awesome.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Yes, let's ask the buggy whip makers if cars are a good idea. And I'll bet the candle guys have an opinion on electric lights, too. Meanwhile, here in the 21st century, I like having ALL of my tech books from O'Reilly, Pragmatic Programmers, etc. on my iPad for easy reference (and searching).
I have one of the original Kindles, the early ones with only 3G and a keyboard, no color, no smooth corners, nothing. It's pretty much like reading a book. Once I developed the habit of hitting 'Next' instead of reaching for the page corner, I can easily find myself as immersed (or more so) as I do when I read a regular print book.
There is a certain suspense - a "what happens next?" feeling - with finishing a page. I find the Kindle (the original one, not the colored tablet PC thing) makes that transition smoother and faster than fumbling with a page turn or accidentally grabbing too many pages and winding up too far ahead. The battery life on the original is also phenomenal. I go entire months without recharging mine sometimes. Having the option to put an MP3 on or check something on Google isn't bad, but I don't need to play Angry Birds on my book.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
There are a lot of crappy e-books out there, mostly because the authors are any old Joe Schmoe with a keyboard and a 5th grade English education.
If they can't be arsed to spring for a proofreader and editor, what makes you think they'll even recognize typography as an issue?
John
I think the continued dominance of iPad in the tablet market is what's cooling publishers. They probably don't like the thought of being sucked into the Apple-verse the way the music industry has been. I can't imagine they want to be joined at the hip with a single company.
I love reading on my Motorola Xoom. The trees like it too.
Distractions? If you don't like to read you'll find them anyway. TVs, smartphones, idle chat and daydreaming are always there when you're bored or uninterested in reading.
Even the Amish get interrupted while reading by a neighbor knocking at the door. They could realize some butter needs churning, a horse needs brushing or do some other chore that is nagging and put the book down. It seems you don't even need technology to be distracted.
This article just seems to be more lamenting about media products that aren't purchased in a tangible form. But rather than come out and say they're a bunch of "get off my lawn!" old codgers, who in their day walked uphill both ways in the snow to buy books, vinyl LPs and VHS tapes, they rant about how these newfangled e-readin' gadgets are too flashy and distractin'.
Plenty of people manage to watch on-demand movies with the lure of 100s of other channels they could be flipping to. Plenty of people manage to do their work on computers without watching YouTube all day. Likewise, it is possible to turn off WiFi and 3G on your tablet and just read your damn book. At least until your neighbor comes over and asks if they can borrow some butter...
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
OK so I don't own any ebooks but I wonder what if some of these require online connection? Or will they eventually require online connection so it constantly polls to be sure you are not packing a pirated copy? A terrible situation is only way to read that ebook is it has to have online connection. I'm not talking about reading articles on the internet, I'm talking about something you either purchase or get from a friend and you own. If you can't open it, then you don't own it.
mfwright@batnet.com
So, let me get this straight - reading on a tablet is less immersive than reading a book because - you could CHOOSE to ditch the story and go do something else with your tablet?
First off, I read books on my iPad all the time. I'm currently about 1/2 way through _The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest_ and I can't put it down! When you're reading on a tablet, most of the apps I've seen fill the entire screen - barring notifications you have configured to appear over it.
Have we really devolved SO much that we have no self control at all? Are we really such attention deficit victims that we can't simply choose NOT to do something else long enough to enjoy something?
No one else in the world gets distracted by their tablet functionality because you don't? That's not a good perspective to have.
And the article here says eBooks are bad because tablets are distracting, which obviously makes no sense. You are arguing that eBooks are good, but your only argument that addresses the article's premise is that it doesn't happen to you. And plenty of people would rather have a physical item to hold, mark up, dog-ear a page or two, or swap between two far apart pages for reference, which is harder on most e-readers of any type.
So basically, you're different, and that's good.
1. I can drop a paper book off of the roof of a building into a deep puddle. I can still do data retrieval and even enter new data ( with a pen, if I have one ). Try that with a kindle.
2. I can buy a paper book, with cash and not have Amazon, the government and everyone else in the world know about it.
3. Paper can be made out of almost anything, even fallen leaves. It is renewable, recyclable and can be produced mostly without any toxins. Kindles, tablet PCs, etc get sent to the 3rd world where the toxic parts are pulled apart by poor children struggling to eat. That is after their environments were polluted by mining for the minerals to make the kindles, tablets etc.
4. I can lend a paper book to a friend, many times and reread the book many times and there is no way for Amazon or anyone else to charge me.
It's a flaw of the user. Or perhaps of the specific ebook itself.
It is very, VERY difficult for me to get distracted while I'm reading a good book, whether it's on the printed page, on my laptop screen, or on my iPad. The key is, the book has to be good. If it's not, then it doesn't matter how I'm reading it. I'll eventually get distracted by something more interesting, whether I was reading a physical novel or just text on a screen.
While I love having a good novel in my hands, I can't argue against the convenience of a tablet or e-reader. I can carry a library in my iPad.
who has read novels on a 15 '' CRT (and then on decent Widescreen LCDs and tablets) this looks like the same argument as being unable to read in a room with a TV.
If you're not immersed and get easily distracted that's more likely to mean (imho) that you lack focus or that the book simply doesn't appeal to you.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
Some people are so convinced that they can multitask. I came to the realization a while ago that multitasking is probably one of the worst things you can do for learning or doing any single task well. The first thing I do when getting an electronic device is to turn off the email alerts, and any other alerts other than the basics: texts, reminders and calendar alerts. I spend hours on the ereaders and get just as immersed in the story or subject material as I would a regular paper book. Trust me, you'll eventually feel that pull to read your email or facebook. You don't need to help it along with a lot of unnecessary alerts. If someone needs to get hold of me that badly, they can text or phone.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
I have an HP tablet, and am using pReader. It allows you to hide everything including the notifications bar at the top etc, e.g. true full screen. This means no distractions, and some great relaxing reading.
Having said that, it is a bit heavier than a Kindle, and to combat the pain of reading on the screen I have to have the text large. I'll have a Kindle by the end of the year, unless I hear of a dual LED/eInk screen device, which I would be willing to pay quite a bit for.
Look, if you get distracted, that's a not a problem with the tablet: That's a problem with you. Notifications bothering you? Turn off the wifi, cellular... in the case of the iPad, just flip it into "airplane" mode. Can't stay off Facebook? Not an iPad problem. A "you" problem. Have to see tweets? That's 140 characters of you-fail. Don't go blaming technology because you fail to use it well. And don't clamor for it to change because you suck at coping. You change. Then you can benefit from judicious use of technology instead of letting it knock you around.
Hmmmm... this reminds of the old canard "There are no atheists in foxholes." That's not a flaw in atheism. That just demonstrates that foxholes are really fucked up. You dig? lol...
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Whether I'm reading an ebook or a paper book, I'm likely to have trouble with distractions. It has nothing to do with the medium and everything to do with just not having enough free time. OTOH, when I DO have a block of free time, and the book is good, I can and do focus on it, even if it's on my iPad.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
What is the problem here? Even if your tablet doesn't have the distractions your phone does or the computer you are using. Or the guy next to you. If you are that easily distracted then you probably aren't really focused or it is a bad read. It isn't the tablet's fault. This is another one of those I don't like tablets kvetches.
I read old school paper books and I read using the Kindle or Nook apps. IMHO, there are advantages and disadvantages to both; therefore, choices are *GOOD*. People, like the author of TFA, saying that one format is inherently better than the other are sensationalist.
I have found that most (but not all) of my reading for pleasure tends to be in real, paper books, since I typically read for fun at home. Consequently, having physical books in a bookshelf at home is adequate for those volumes. Furthermore, some of the books I read for pleasure don't lend themselves well to the eBook format. For example, my wife bought "Planet Earth's Greatest Motorcycle Adventure Tours" for me for Christmas. It's physically a rather large book, and filled with beautiful photographs from trips the author (Collette Coleman) had taken. I can't imagine trying to read that on my smartphone -- the text would be fine, but the photography would be completely wasted on that form factor.
On the other hand, most of my reading for information tends to be eBooks. It's handy to have a reference with you any time you have your phone/tablet/Ebook-reader-of-choice with you, and this type of writing lends itself well to the eBook format. In other words, for informative books, portability trumps form factor.
Ultimately, you pick the right tool for the job. I wouldn't buy a coffee table book in an electronic format, but there are some definite advantages to eBooks. IMHO, anyone writing off electronic media simply because it isn't bound in paper is simply limiting their options unnecessarily.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Too many distractions at home while watching a television movie.
The NY Times saying tablets are bad for books is kind of like a T-Rex telling an Stegosaurus, "those silly mammals will never succeed."
A modern-day dinosaur whistling past the graveyard...
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
While I could certainly follow your path for obtaining books (and have been known to do so on occasion), I prefer to go the legitimate route. I already pay to support my public library, so I figure it makes sense to use their services where available.
The one publisher that is particularly tricky is Baen. They don't do DRM, which means that libraries can't enforce the return period, which means I can't get their ebooks through the library. This is a problem because I *like* a lot of Baen's stuff.
What's the problem with using a tablet in multiple ways and even mostly not for reading? Are these people in trouble for not reading enough on their tablets? I doubt it!
An e-ink device is marvelous for people who do a lot of reading in digitized texts but few are set-up for real multipurpose use. A tablet can be easily used for a lot of different functions: reading may be advertised as a primary role for some of these such as the Kindle Fire, but it's hardly the only or even the best role. So why are people surprised that others are using tablets as multifunctional devices? It's rather like being surprised that you'll code, surf, compose and goof-off on the same personal computer.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go pick up my ereader and get back to some real work. . . .
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
Preferably with e-ink screens and a weeks worth of battery life, an SDHC slot and support for multiple formats!
Just for reading, no "extras".
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
I am 45 and my wife is 41. We have 4 kids who are 22, 21, 18 and 17. NONE of the kids will read a book on a Kindle, iPhone or on the computer. They think the Kindle is a ho-hum "whatever" device.
My wife loves her Kindle (looks like paper) but has always abhorred reading books on her computer (hates the backlit display). Whereas myself. I love reading it however I can get it. Palm-Pilot, Computer, Kindle. I will probably purchase a Kindle Fire by Christmas time this year.
I wonder if it is a generational thing. With my generation being told we were growing up in the computer age as this stuff started appearing when we were 8 or 9 years old. We just cant get enough of anything "high-tech". Whereas my kids, have had computers around them from the time they got out of a crib. This is all no big deal for them. They pick and choose what works for them. It seems there judgement is that only people over 35 want to read books on a computer or handheld device. Maybe people over 35 are starting to realized what the kids already knew.
On the other hand, you will have to pry my kindle and 2000 book library out of me cold, dead fingers.
vi +
When i read on the bus on my way to work,,,,I READ,,,not sure what can make you stop reading except a boring book.
My tablet does not create needs to go and look at other APPS,,,Oh wait,,,most Tablet arent 3G or 4G,,,,so there is no internet/youtube/what the fuck you might think.
If you cant spend 30 minutes reading straight, please don't blame the tablet for being able to provide more than just a book, blame yourself.
i have it on good authority that nobody reads anymore. "reading" is a lie you tell other people to make yourself sound smart or evidence you point to when you need to backup that other crazy lie you just made up. "i read it somewhere, honest!" ebooks simply provide the convenience of not owning a physical book to take valuable space away from your video game/movie collection (which is enormous because you know you have to make physical backups of all that pirated crap or you'll lose it all someday). you don't really read, you play ps3 and world of warcraft and you watch movie after movie after tv show after tv show. you think if you saw A Prayer For Owen Meany that you can say you read it. john irving? was he the director? "reading" means turning subtitles on in Heavy Rain. in reality, everything is TL;DR. in fact, if you claim to have read any article on slashdot you're just a pedant looking down your nose at another "reader" who barely recognized a few familiar word-shapes in the summary. "i read it somewhere -- in TFA -- honest!"
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
I find that my iPad has gotten me reading again. I have done things like curl up all day with it reading a hefty book. Its single-tasking nature means it's only a distraction if the book is boring, in which case why am I reading it anyway? The web feels a lot closer when it's only a window away than when it's a few swipes away, to me.
I used to have an immense library; then I moved back home to New Orleans three days before Katrina and lost pretty much all of it. My current library is the stuff that had never made it out to me from my parent's home, and a few things I bought since - both new stuff and old favorites I just had to have. And it underwent a couple of ruthless cullings, too.
It's still a pleasure to sit down in the couch next to my bookshelves and read a physical book, but honestly, it's just as much a pleasure to read one on my iPad. I will be delighted when people start paying attention to the typography and layout of digital editions like they once did to real books; that's really the only thing I find lacking.
I don't WANT more physical books in my house. Unless they're something like the broadsheet-sized reproductions I have of "Little Nemo In Slumberland". Fiction is perfectly cool with being virtual, in my opinion. I'd basically stopped going to the bookstore, and thus stopped keeping up on new fiction, but having the Kindle software available on my pad and my phone means that I can easily acquire books anywhere.
egypt urnash minimal art.
Best part of reading on the iPad is I don't have to look like a huge dork carrying around the Icewind Dale books and reading them on the subway ;)
Bark less. Wag more.
if this is true, iPads will be the 8-track of the 21st century--and Apple is laughing it's way to the bank with all the ipads it sells.
When I read a traditional book, or one on my original Kindle, it's not like I don't have an iPhone right there in my pocket capable of distracting me. In fact most a fair amount of the time I have a laptop ready and waiting for me to interact with it. Is the physical immediacy of having the distractions built into the same device, as opposed to another device that's only a foot or so away, really that big of a factor? Absent some actual, you know, data, as opposed to a collection of anecdotes (if there was any sort of study cited in the article I must have missed it), I'm extremely skeptical.
Eventually they probably don't need publicity. But look at Kafka, no doubt a great writer. And he died dog poor.
um, just turn off wi-fi or any other network connections while reading. if human-kind no longer possesses the will-power to do this very simple thing, we have very serious problems ahead.
Trying to make a news story out of nothing...
I've read FAR more books per year in the last couple years on my kindle and iPhone than physical books in the years before.
I have also played more computer games too.
Although there are distractions, there is much more "computer" time available as I carry my devices with me. I wasn't able to carry physical books and magazines to the same extent ever in my life.
I have bought physical books, and then went and torrented a digital copy because the ebook format is so much better. It's not definitively bound by page, you can scroll up half a page, it's lighter, i don't have to fight to hold it open, you can read it in the dark, personally i find the night setting much easier on my eyes in general.
What world do people live in that they don't have distractions around them when trying to read? OH NOES i got an email... Can't read any more now.
on my spouse's iPad. I subscribe to the Sunday tree version, so get a complimentary digital subscription.
Reading it on the iPad means no jumps in the middle of an article, and no blackened fingers...
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
Others did not mention the biggie, which is
ENCRYPT THE BOOK, THEN HIDE IT IN AN AUDIO FILE AS RANDOM NOISE. DECRYPT ON DEMAND WITH A PASSPHRASE, automated to a single keystroke or click. Not only better, more convenient too. Betcha didn't think this one through
Beat that, paper book.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
...contrary to popular belief that it extends your chi 3-fold. Seriously, who EVER thought reading on an LCD was a good idea? Maybe, MAYBE on a monochrome 1-bit one cause the contrast would be through the roof, but there's a reason e-readers use e-ink.
1. We're afraid that ebooks, and the ease with which people can distribute pirate copies, are affecting our profits.
2. People are beginning to realise that the books are not good enough to hold the reader's attention when there are better/more interesting things to take their attention away.
Those stupid paper books were just as bad. If I was reading in the lounge, I could just turn on the TV or the radio instead. In the car I could look out the windows and play I-spy.
What a stupid argument against eBooks :(
I'd say it depends on the person using the reader device - be it a PDA, mobile phone, smartphone, tablet or dedicated e-reader - as to whether s/he will be distracted by the other features made available by their device. I've been using some form of electronic reader ever since I got a phone capable of putting enough text on the screen (it happened to be a Nokia 'Taco' N-Gage but it could have been anything else) and have not felt distracted by the device - the opposite was true. Turn pages with one hand? Read whenever you want and wherever you are? In the dark? For a few minutes? Not so easily done using traditional print, but no problems for the electronic reader. From that N-Gage to the current Android what changed is that the screen got bigger and the resolution (as in 'dpi') higher, allowing me to cram even more text on a single page. Otherwise, the advantages remain. Does it matter that the device is capable of all those things the article talks about? No, of course not. Were I reading a traditional print book instead, distraction would be only the blink of an eye away.
To be distracted or not depends much more on the subject than on the object used by said subject.
--frank[at]unternet.org
Seems like distractions would be bad no matter what you're doing, whether that's reading a book or something else (e.g. writing code, driving a car, figuring out whom to vote for). They're also bad whether the personal computer used by the application happens to be a handheld or a desktop.
I can see both sides of calling this a dumb-human problem and a bad-UI problem. On one hand, UI designers know that people are easily distracted, so having an icon blink or bounce when something trivial has happened, is probably bad. OTOH, humans know their computer UIs suck, so they ought to have trained themselves to adapt to the computer's shitty UI and ignore the bouncing ico-- oh geez, see where I'm going with that sentence? This actually is a bad UI problem, 100%. It's just that some people have whatever it takes to adapt to crappy UIs (as just happens to be the case with every other crappy UI and application that we have seen up to now) so they don't see the problem.
What it's not, though, is a tablet problem (desktops have same kind of crap going on), a book problem (reading books are only one of hundreds of things disrupted by distractions, or a multitasking problem (there's no reason multitasking should force UIs to be distracting).
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.