Slashdot Mirror
Death of Printed Books May Have Been Exaggerated
New submitter razor88x writes "Although just 16% of Americans have purchased an e-book to date, the growth rate in sales of digital books is already dropping sharply. At the same time, sales of dedicated e-readers actually shrank in 2012, as people bought tablets instead. Meanwhile, printed books continue to be preferred over e-books by a wide majority of U.S. book readers. In his blog post Will Gutenberg Laugh Last?, writer Nicholas Carr draws on these statistics and others to argue that, contrary to predictions, printed books may continue to be the book's dominant form. 'We may be discovering,' he writes, 'that e-books are well suited to some types of books (like genre fiction) but not well suited to other types (like nonfiction and literary fiction) and are well suited to certain reading situations (plane trips) but less well suited to others (lying on the couch at home). The e-book may turn out to be more a complement to the printed book, as audiobooks have long been, rather than an outright substitute.'"
there are still candle makers in existence.
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
I just can not become totally immersed in an e-book. It started when I was a little kid and I read every book I could get my hands on. E-books will never replace the feeling of nostalgia from my childhood. Unfortunatly I rarely read anymore unless it is a manual or some such.
If it's something unwieldy or I know I'll be flipping back and forth between pages, or need to see multiple pages simultaneously, like Practical Electronics for Inventors, I'll buy the paper book. If it's a novel, or casual reading, I can go with e-book format. That said, I donated to a local library a lot of my old books: I hadn't read them in years, and most anything I need to know, now-a-days, I just Google for. For technical information, it's quicker to Google it than look it up in a book.
They don't need batteries
You can buy them used without DRM
They smell interesting
Old books have their own story aside from what is printed in them
Each book feels different
Do not require infrastructure to maintain
I don't have to buy something to reads my book- I just buy the book, the "reader" is free.
While an e-book is technically the same thing, content wise, the *experience* of reading a book is something that cannot be duplicated. A large, LARGE portion of the population apparently agrees.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
I read ebooks on my computer. When I'm sitting in front of my desktop computer, I use that. When I'm sitting in front of my netbook, I log into my desktop from there and read on that. That way the page that I left off at is always synchronized.
The computer holds the book for me so all I have to do is sit back and read -- hit the space bar once in a while to turn the page.
If I find a reference that I want to follow up on (what in the world is a medieval chatelaine?) I can immediately look it up and research that as much as I wish to.
What's not to like?
I can't remember the last time I read a book on paper. It's been at least a few years...
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
I prefer reading e-books. I haven't read a paper book in years. That said I've given serious thought to moving away from ebooks simply because of the prices and DRM. I can loan a book once to my wife via kindle or I can just buy the paper book and give it to her or anyone else when done.
What I've been doing lately is stripping the DRM via Calibre and giving the books I buy away to my mom, wife and mother in-law. I have no moral issue with this since I could do it with a paper book too. But if DRM changes and prices keep going up like they have, then I'm going to say fuck it and go back to paper books.
It comes as no surprise that this market is a flop. It's like lots of markets. There probably is a demand. There just isn't that much demand in the long hault. People buy these devices as toys. They are like organizers of the past (while many of us did use them they weren't critical and many others bought them who didn't need them at all). The same can be said for netbooks, tablets, and the i******.
Is there any data on e-reader habits based on age? As with most technological sea changes, there's resistance in the older generations that gradually evaporates. With e-readers, I'd very much expect a bit of a downswing in sales right after the initial surge. The less tech-friendly are convinced that easy-to-use e-readers are worth having by those young folk who know what they're talking about, but then decide that maybe they're not so keen on it after all. Meanwhile, the younger generations are adopting it at a steady pace that's only visible when you look at sales in specific demographics. I don't know if my hypothesis holds water or not, but from personal experience, this is not a new phenomenon.
I don't see how ebook readers, tablets or other technology won't replace traditional books. Traditional books are way more resource hungry, less usefull and less covnenient. People are always slow to adapt new technologies and the fact that big publishers are refusing to release a lot of books for ebooks because the profit margin might be smaller doesn't help either.
tl;dr This is merely a setback
The ebook lacks the short battery life and sun glare of computer screens, it also is weightless. It was meant to let us carry all of our texts along, but...
While casual fiction readers tend to be tech unsavy, those of us that are want to carry around complex texts to study from. Sadly there's no right way to get a simple web page into most ebooks without formatting issues. And PDF is the final insult, where words are split without any rules, paragraphs get slaughtered and images disappear into the void.
Tablets are much better at displaying anything that's not just plain text, but they're cumbersome, more fragile and seldom last for more than a few hours on a charge.
Ebooks should've come in more than paperback size (I know there are bigger ones, but they cost as much as a midrange tablet) and with enough horsepower to overcome the slow screen when zooming and panning, not to add even more wait time to it.
Seems to me that the usefulness of an e-reader/book was spoiled by the industry - both hardware and content. Locking, removing content remotely, DRM books, price of e-books (!!?)....add to that that most readers suck at displaying technical info (most, not all).
As as consumer I just know how I fell about all those recent "revolutions" - the smart phone, the tablet and the e-reader. They suck, big time, even though the idea is brilliant. I never expected that the phone and the tablet would not be just small computer, fully compatible with your PC. Never expected the price of an e-book to be the same as a paper one. Never expected .the Spanish inquisition..... Our socioeconomic model sucks, people! Even when we have fantastic technologies we make crappy, annoying products that do not expand our horizon but rather lock us in a box and hinder us. No second hand selling, no lending of e-books, cameras from the TV watching if you are not "breaking" the license....just read any random page of news on /. and you will come with at least one example of industry idiocy labeled "for your convenience and enhanced consumer experience" ....
So, give me back my paper book that I can buy without telling what I had for breakfast and how did my mother's milk taste like. It cost the same as e-book, I can browse through it faster, it is more robust (do you think your files will survive 50-100 years and if they did that there will be compatible device to read them on?), I can give to anyone I like, does not have tracking device that calls home and says what and when I read....thank you!
It mentions folks are buying tablets instead. Which you can read on, but also play Angry Birds... oo, or watch Netflix! Reading is boring.
No sig for you!!
If I buy a copy of a paper book then I own that copy. On an e-reader or a tablet I buy a license that lets me have a copy on a device. Unless I back up my copy, the seller can take it away from me without even asking. Also, there's something about a nice solid bound book that you don't get from an electronic copy. Personally I prefer electronic formats for more ephemeral things (news, computer books that are out of date before they're published, etc.) and bound paper copies for longer lasting things, e.g. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I suppose we'll see how things turn out.
I live in a small flat with insufficient space to store lots of books. My Kindle solves that problem.
Reading ebooks is a completely different experience to reading paper books. I miss the tactile nature of paper books, the physical bookmarkability, and the ease of flicking through them. But the practical problem of storage space that ebooks solve is, for me, a more important consideration.
-Stephen
The reason why e-books haven't surged to become the primary book format is likely that many readers today have grown up with physical books. This fact results in feelings of nostalgia when we pick up a printed book. I, for one, would never consider reading old favorites on my Sony Reader, nor would I try to read new works that I anticipate becoming favorites on that device, because feeling paper between my fingers and smelling pages of paper has meaning to me. Within a generation or so, kids may not build the same relationship with physical books, and at that time the majority of books may be consumed in e-book format.
Why not literary fiction? I've been travelling the world for the last several years now and haven't read as much classic literature as I would have liked to, because there's only so many books one can put into a backpack. But my significant other got a Kindle as a birthday gift, and after discovering a prominent pirated book site with epub/mobi/lit downloads, we've now got more literary fiction than we've ever dreamed of. We can even read hardcore 20th century modernism like William Gaddis on the Kindle and for the most part, the experience is immersive.
Sure, the presentation is not 100% ideal. I'm a longtime TeX user and I miss the fine points of typography on a Kindle. But things like hyphenation will probably come along pretty soon.
E-paper readers are not suitable for many things. I'm a researcher in linguistics and I have to read my scientific references from paper or my netbook screen (PDF-Kindle conversion is a joke as I'm sure many people here know). I've also found reading poetry to be unsatisfactory on the Kindle, even when the publication is available in a mobi/epub/lit format. But for literary fiction it's quite nice.
I think you will find that its mostly due to their price often times being greater than the printed edition... Its actually quite scary they think its a good idea.
Perhaps its some sort of act of defiance but if an ebook is not offered for a lower price than the paper version I tend go with paper.
... I want to read in the bathtub might work until the Kindle Paperwhite becomes water resistant.
Currently my digital books tend to be technical references that I want to carry around with me in case I need to look up something at work or old classics that are available at no charge.
Stuff I read for fun still tends to be on paper. Perhaps that will change if pricing changes, or maybe I'll just move on to another excuse
My wife does and quote "loves her nook" which was a simple touch, turned tablet
I got her simple touch, rooted it, and use it constantly for office documents, technical PDF's like mechanical drawings and other things such as email, news and weather
as someone who does not read for escapet, I love being able to drop a doc on a tablet and walk it around, she loves it cause its an entire bookstore AND local library, one click away that also lets her take a moment to check facebook, or play a round of scrabble, while listening to her music while between classes
sure the devices have taken a drop, most people are happy with ones they bought... most people now days are not stupid and buy the product they like instead of this weeks fad / toy, and as time marches on the difference between printed and ebook preference will shift
I hope I never have to do research in a paper book again.
No random access, useless index, no xref, no links, no instant glossary...
The books I studied in school weighed far more than a tablet, cost nearly the same, and offered far less. A tablet could contain 1000 such books and provide pulp fiction too if I wanted that. Not to mention that the tablet provides the internet, Wikipedia, other media and access to all my friends and associates.
The only real books I keep are those that have not been digitized or are very rare. OK, some have value and I'm not going to burn them. It's the same philosophy that helps me to decide which LP records, audio tapes, and video tapes to keep. Once they are properly digitized, the old media is out of here.
I'm a writer. Unlike those of the past who refused to learn to type or use a computer, my feeling is that the technology is irrelevant- it's the story, stupid. If you read it from an illuminated parchment or a pixellated screen or the wall of China, what difference does it make?
I do keep a paper book in the bathroom, just in case the other paper runs out.
Take that you paper snobs!
...omphaloskepsis often...
I still buy printed books all the time. I like that each book looks unique. I like the artwork. I like flicking through books on a shelf while I choose one. I like the feel of the paper while I read and turn the pages. I like bookmarks. I like old books with coffee stains on them, strange smells and dog-ears. I like the variation of printed text from one book to another. I like illustrations on one page and text on the other. I like the weight of a book in my hand while I hold it.
I like vinyl records too, for much the same reason. I can play music easily enough on my computer, or from a CD, but when I play a record I take the sleeve up in my hand and enjoy the artwork and perhaps a fully fledged gatefold. I like taking the record in my hand and wiping the dust off. I like putting it on my turntable and the physical actions required to get it playing, firing up the amp, dropping the needle, adjusting the gain. I like that my attention is required to take the needle off at the end of the record, it keeps me engaged. I'm fully involved in the listening experience.
Computers take all the fun out of everything!
I see that people buy them and they continue to work next year so they dont have a reason to buy another, which was not an uncommon thing pre 2000
I disagree. It is more than a fad in the sense that an e-ink reader actually improves reading in a number of ways. It is lighter than a single book. Can hold thousands of books. There is no curve to the page and can be easier to read than paper. It will sit flat on its own.
When "lying on the couch at home" it is superior to a regular book in every way. There are pros and cons for buying it since there are limited options to buy (but instant delivery) and there is no resell value of an ebook.
Not a fad, just a luxury.
t
The thing I find amazing is how people (and by people, I mean media/tech pundits) consistently buy into the hype cycle (and by buy into, I mean, write stories that feed it) and then are totally amazed/smug when their most extreme predictions don't eventuate. Stay tuned for the next part of the hype cycle when the self-same pundits who told us that e-books would soon replace ALL printed media begin proclaiming that ebooks are a stillborn technology that nobody really wanted anyway.
Technological innovations are so often presented as either/or propositions: either technology B will completely replace technology A, or technology A will see off the challenge of technology B and live on (and in most cases tech B is going to replace tech A so you'd be better be ready for it, buddy, or else BAD STUFF)
In reality, most times technology A and technology B fall into a relationship with each other that satisfies most people, forming a new hybrid which offers people the best of both worlds. The only time a new technology completely overshadows an existing technology is:
a) when the new technology offers exactly the same thing as the old tech, but also offers up some significant benefit over the old;
b) when the new technology is backed by a power with the ability to distort the market; and,
c) the combination of a and b.
So e-books will co-exist with printed books because there are strengths and weaknesses in each format that the other does not completely account for, and there is not a significant/powerful enough vested interest trying to make one displace the other.
But wait! I coud be wrong. After all, soon MOOCs [or insert other darling tech] will completely replace universities [or insert other established institution/tech/practice].
Point by point.
1) This example is absurd. A cromulent contrast would be "pure text" vs. "mixed text and images". Novels work fine with flowing layouts that adjust to the size and pixel density of the display. Doesn't matter if they're fiction, non-fiction, or historical fiction. However, if you have material with a lot of pictures and diagrams (textbook, magazine, etc.) then printed books have a distinct advantage. Most e-readers are not good at handling images and re-flowing the content can separate images from their associated text. However, that is starting to change. The iPad and a few Android tablets are sporting 2048x1536 displays which have enough pixels to adequately reproduce something pretty close to the quality of a printed page. And now there's the Nexus 10 at 2560x1600 that does an even better job.
Also, pretty significant advances have been made in the design of electronic "printed" media. I used to work for a large magazine when they were first starting to produce content for phones and tablets, the result was pretty crude. I took a look at what they're producing today on Google Magazine using my Nexus 10 and it's amazing. Razor sharp text, sliding columns, Pullup/pullout sidebars, print quality images, etc. So even the "mixed text and images" presentations are improving significantly on portable devices. It's just a matter of time before color e-ink is available in densities of 300ppi or higher, bringing a similar experience outdoors.
2) While I may be an early adopter, I'm not much of an early consumer on the content side. I didn't use my first e-reader much until I had a way to remove DRM from the content. Amazon's Kindle hardware and content sales were booming long before I started making content purchases. That was regular folks who were dazzled by the tech and didn't care about the high prices and content controls. Ebooks outsold paper books at Amazon over 1.5 years ago.
The author says 59% have no interest in ebooks. So that means as many as 41% do have an interest in a new form of literature consumption that's only been around for a few years. That's one hell of an adoption rate. Amazon's done for print distribution what Apple did for music distribution.
3) Oh, my gosh! People who are being paid to market a new thing might be exaggerating. That's unpossible!
4) LP to cassette to CD to MP3. VHS to Laserdisc to DVD to Blu-Ray. Same thing. So people re-purchase their favorite titles in a big chunk when they get the device then slow down to their regular rate of buying 5-10 books per year. That seems like the expected pattern for existing content being re-released on new media.
5) This statement makes no sense at all. The fact that I can read my content on my phone and tablet has increased my adoption of ebooks. When I had to carry a dedicated reader, ebooks were far less convenient. There was little advantage over a regular book because it was still a single-purpose object that had to be carried around. Now I can read anywhere on my phone because I always have my phone with me. And it syncs with my tablet so I can pick up where I left off on either device. So if I know I'm going to have some downtime, I can bring the tablet. If I have unexpected downtime, I've got my phone. And, since I've stripped the DRM from all of my purchased content, it doesn't matter which device I used to buy the titles. I can see how there would be adoption problems for people who get stymied by DRM. That is the kind of thing that will turn people off.
6) I actually agree that ebook pricing is bullshit. I can understand premium prices for new releases but, once a title gets to "paperback" phase, the price should be significantly cheaper than paperbacks because so much of the production and distribution cost has been eliminated. As I said, I worked for a large magazine. I know what it costs to print and ship all those dead trees. Not to mention the coordination required to make sure everything happens at just the right moment.
You want eBook adoption to work? QUIT BEING PROFITEERING BASTARDS.
They already have the book in an electronic format before printing begins. It's what they send to the damn printer that actually puts ink on paper. Why then is the "cost" of an eBook more than the paperback counterpart? I could see justification for a higher price when the book is Hardback only (usually the first 9 to 18 months the book is available) but once the paperback hits shelves, why is the ebook still so much more expensive?
I've actually seen some eBooks at a higher price point than the hardback.... dafuq?
Books are only portable up to 10-20 items. After that their cumulative weight is too much to carry. I could consult any of my 100 scanned private library on any of my devices without so much as carrying an extra gram.
Why? For the various things they can be used for - none of which include actually reading them - well, ok, reading them too!
They can be used for such wonderful things as:
- Umbrellas
- Door/window stops
- Seats
- Tables
- Hiding things
- Hammers
- Paper towels
- Gift wrapping paper
Plus, there's nothing better than walking into a room full of musty old books and paging through some ancient tome. Or curled up next to a fire under the stars watching the shadows bounce playfully off the pages that you're reading. Some things digital will never replace. :-)
I have had three e-readers, the first way decent but it had cheap plastic keys like on a really cheap small calculator, it did have a high rez display (iRiver device) and had a wide format support. But it was slow. So it was well suited to reading a page BUT flipping a page took a long time, PDF's were especially a nightmare, it was best for manga with high text content since it displayed those very well and then the relative slow page turning with lots to read isn't that distracting.
I have bought a very big e-reader for manga reading, it is beautiful but the device is so big (9 inches) it is not all that suitable for on the go reading. For books it is to large.
recently I bought a Odyssee HD from Bookeen. It has a build in light and is small. It is a very nice device for reading books BUT its manga support is dismal (no archive support) and its directory structure is arcana. Calibre helps but it needs to convert zip archives to epud files. It DOES have nice PDF support with a reflow option.
ALL the devices have margins in margins, it is traditional to print a page and leave a wide border BUT on a computer screen IT IS NOT because I PAYED for those bloody pixels so fucking USE THEM, I want a SMALL margin. Only the last device has tiny bit of support for it but you STILL have well over a centimeter of wasted space on either side. The device already has a wide physical border, I don't need one on the screen.
What does this rant mean?
E-Readers just ain't mature yet, they are in the state of MP3 players before the iPod when the likes of Sony found it perfectly acceptable to only support their own format which nobody else used while iRiver had support for formats you could even find on google, but used a directory format that only a unix wizard could grasp.
That a player like bookeen still doesn't support archives shows an attitude that "we do what we want and standards, fuck em, we are the standard" (the device also can't fit epub images to the screen (no zoom)). I knew this in advance, it is my book reader, not suitable for manga.
Page turns are getting really fast, almost capable of playing animation. In device lighting has made a HUGE difference (it also removes a bit of glare in bright light) but they still as said, MP3's before the iPod. Or mobile phones before standarized OS'es.
iOS en later Android STANDARIZED software behavior on a wide array of devices, especially with android you didn't need to check that it would support your media files, it would, because it was android and even Sony now supports a long list of formats.
What e-readers need is a base OS on which perhaps companies can build their own actual reader software UI but in which the basics are simply present and standard supported. Perhaps EVEN allow third party apps to be installed so the community can come up with a manga reader that is actually suited to the subtleties of manga and not comics.
Right now, (small) e-readers of the latest lighted generation offer:
But they have downsides
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
- DRM (enough said - are you kidding me????)
- When reading an ebook I don't get this satisfaction of "visible progress" that I have from having more and more pages on the left than on the right. This is not important to me at all when reading novels, simply because I'm usually done within a day or two, but the last couple of years I've read tons and tons of sometimes dry (but interesting) non-fiction, where somehow deep inside of me this seems to make a big difference.
- Regardless of further tech. progress, unless the human genome changes significantly and you can plug a USB stick into your head directly, it will ALWAYS be true that when technology fails your books will still be with you, and you can still read. Books live for hundreds of years, technology maybe a dozen. Combine this argument with DRM...
- I am human. I DO get a feeling of satisfaction when other people who visit me can see what I've been reading. Wherever I go I always have a casual look at the titles of the books (and then feel soooo erudite in comparison :) ). Doing the same on a computer, e.g. looking at someones book list on facebook, is tedious and feels like work, it does not feel "natural".
So now I get novels for the e-reader (but DRM free), and all the books I care about I buy in print.
I went to Stanford University bookstore to see if I could purchase a few graduate level textbooks in human motor development, neurology and (a separate interest) particle physics (easy stuff like alpha particles).
Wikipedia beat Stanford University Bookstore on each of these topics. I walked in with $200 plus a credit card and spent only $.75 on parking.
Eventually, my daughter who is in college got me an old edition of the motor development book I needed.
The paper book is shrinking due to the economics of printing: The weight and cost of paper, the taxes on unsold book inventory, the system change where fine printing is typeset in USA and printed in China. In contrast, electronic books are 2% for the webserver, 49% to the publisher and 49% to the author.The markup or profit on an electronic book is basically set by the marketing skill and chutzpah of the publisher. You can weigh a book and look up the wholesale price of paper and see that relatively little is left for the publisher and author.
Can I have my bookstores back now?
I skimmed the article and it looks like a wishful thinking of the publishers who see the writing on the wall.
The Association of American Publishers recently reported that annual growth in adult e-book sales dropped to 34 percent during the first half of 2012
So e-books are still growing and growing fast (34%!). The fact that an e-book costs as much as a paper one, has a DRM, and a delivery fee(!) is a disgrace but just imagine what will happen once those get fixed.
And with the Kindle Paperwhite or the Nook GlowLight you can read in bed and not have to worry about a light source.
But I'm quite positive that there's going to come a time when using paper as opposed to digital is going to get prohibitively expensive, and when that happens, the printed form will finally become the uncommon exception.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Quarter of a ton of books in my study, most over 50 years old, reference not fiction, long 'out of print'. e-media won't help. But sometimes I find vital things all mixed up from Google Books or PG scans, and can then buy originals from specialist dealers or Abe Books. Good news for a certain kind of bookseller.
whenever I go to someones place, the last thing I do is finger fuck everything on the shelves, and I sure as shit dont care about what dribble fictional garbage they picked up at wallmart
please, do us all a favor and get over yourself, no one gives a shit
I am a convert to E Books from 2005 onwards - starting with a primitive Sony E Reader (by the way Sony still makes good E Readers - the software was coded by Monkeys though.)
I use a Nook and an iPAD. The former for books - classics, non fiction, fiction and all that, the latter for magazines - mostly The New Yorker, comics etc.
This is an incredible age...I have on my fingertips, anywhere in the world any book or any magazine as long as I have an internet connection. No printed dead tree book idea / shelves / stores can come close. The only paper book I bought in the recent past was a paperback edition of Roberto Bolano's 2666 (arguably the first classic in 21st century) for a lovely friend who is dead against any E Reader.
Yes, people will buy printed books...but they will go the way of DVDs. Someone somewhere will come with a solution for a "digital shelf" in the living room...where all the books and magazines are displayed and anyone can borrow / read through their device (or borrow a device itself.) For this to happen, a lot of interoperability and standardization needs to happen and a few of the "walled gardens" should go the way of Berlin Wall.
Tat Tvam Asi
Paper only. Why waste electricity when you can waste paper? :-)
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
I like the idea of eBooks, but the reality just isn't there yet. The easiest way to look at it is by comparing with the transition to MP3s/iTunes:
1) Hardware
On the move, an iPod is smaller than a Discman, has better battery life, doesn't need a wallet to carry around extra content, and can be used anywhere the discman was. At home I can pipe my music wirelessly to various speakers, or just dock the iPod. Finding the track I want is much quicker and I can create playlists which would otherwise mean changing multiple physical discs Only downside I can think of is potentially higher hardware costs (and maybe audio quality, and there are lossless formats to help with that)
eBook reader / tablet may have a size/weight advantage over a single book (depending on book/device), but will have a massive one versus multiple books. Battery life is obviously worse, but probably not actually a problem on an e-ink device. Device might allow me to read in the dark. Paper book I'm happy to read in the bath, or take to the beach where I'm going to leave it while I swim, not so much with an expensive and lest robust device. At home, I don't see much advantage to the device (self-illumination, and not running out of bookshelves). On holiday, I can definitely see the upsides of not have a large chunk of my luggage being books, but there are downsides too.
2) Content
I can rip all my CDs into iTunes. It takes some time, but it's a pretty painles process that I can do in the background. New content I can download (DRM free these days) for instant gratification, or I can just buy and rip a CD if that's cheaper (or the only thing available). Browsing for music online is better than in a physical shop as I can easily listen to samples of anything. Less legal avenues for music aquisition are also easier and cheaper for those that choose to go down that route. More options for sharing with friends & family - worst case I can just burn a CD. CD's I can re-sell, digital music not so much (at least for now).
I can't rip my existing books into a digital format. I certainly don't want to re-buy them all (and probably there are plenty I couldn't get at all). I could format shift via less legal downloading (which may or may not be more effort than CR ripping), but that's still unlikely to give me a complete collection. For new content, eBooks are not necessarily cheaper, certainly when the second-hand market comes into play - but if I get the cheaper paper book, I can't get it onto my e-reader. Even if I do get a digital copy, it will probbly be DRM'd and thus of questionalble long-term value (and can't be easily loaned to friend/family, certainly not if they don't have a compatible reader). The browsing experience in a physical bookstore is most definitely better (although Amazon admittedly to a good job of reccommending me things I might not have otherwise found). On the flip side, if you don't care about getting books legally, an e-reader would be a clear content win!
Concusion:
For me, the switch to iTunes/iPod was all upsides, once I'd put in the effort to rip all my CDs. Not so for eBooks - whilst I can see some real advantages for trips longer than a daily commute, even there there are some downsides. The real killer is content - an e-reader is pretty much useless to me if the vast majority of my books can't be read on it! For a younger generation without a massive dead-tree book collection, the story may well be very different.
What I want:
1) A service that allows me to, for a nominal fee, trade in my physical books for DRM-free digital copies.
2) Disposably cheap e-reader hardware. What I'd really like to see is dumb "books" of 200+ pages of e-paper (selling for maybe $10-$20), with a smart docking station which contains all the content and re-writes the e-paper books. The book itself is battery free, and if it gets damaged/lost/stolen than I can buy a cheap replacement and easily sync up with my content (even on holiday, where the docking station can stay safely in the car/hotel room).
I have gifted my mom a kindle, the paperwhite to be exact. It's not bad. But at the same time it's a total piece of shit.
Here's the problem. It's a closed ecosystem. When you buy a dead tree book, who you bought it from falls out from the equation. It doesn't matter anymore. You can read it, you can loan it with abandon, you can photocopy parts you need to reference easily, you can tear out the pages and wipe your ass with it.
People who ever used a computer in one form or another the last 25 years know all about closed ecosystem. It made itself first apparent in computer programs, where you take an Apple program and run it in DOS and vice-versa. Same with video games. But people tolerated that, there are certain technical reasons to do it that way, and besides, to people computers were new and they didn't know any better.
But once accustomed to an open ecosystem, people tend to stay away from closed ones. iPods sold music for a time DRMed, but Apple was in the business of selling hardware and was tired of the headaches that came with it -- iTunes has been selling normal MP3s for a while now. If anyone could have made a closed ecosystem with music, it was Apple. But people were used to the relatively open CD format - plays in any brand CD player, no hassles.
Now comes the Kindle. Books DRMed to the Wazoo. Amazon is the only store place to buy. It charges huge commissions, bigger than physical goods iirc - what the hell is that? No secondhand market unless the publisher greenlights it. Fuck, my mom can't even access German Amazon kindle store - she would need a German billing address. Something to do with publishers having area rights. She's an immigrant. The biggest potential plus out the window.
The kindle is an excercise in unmitigated greed and a step backwards in many ways. Greed of Amazon's monopolistic ambitions and publisher trying to stay relevant. No, we're talking a lightbulb constrained to the brightness of a candle (to make you buy more), expensive as all get out, having to lay electric lines and sockets for it's use, and the only upside is that it's less likely to cause a fire. All it's other potential upsides vanquished to placate candlemakers or to line the pockets of the single bulb manufacturer. And we're here sitting around wondering why people still use candles.
And by that I don't mean pdf, mobi or whatever else is around. I mean a format that combines the text with abilities that can't be found in classic paper books. Imagine reading a military history book with animated maps showing the movement of troops. Or a thermodynamics book where you can scroll, move and change the attributies of a graph so that you understand how they fit together. Imagine a book about electromagnetism where you can actually see the field lines and how they change when you move the coils or whatever. That would be the equivalent of a killer app in my book. Of course, those are indeed genre books, but I'm sure there are appropriate uses for general fiction books.
The publishers don't really seem to try these things. They basically give you only a pdf of the printed book, no added value. The only things I have enjoyed reading in my tablet are comics, because the color image translates well and there is fewer text on the screen. And I believe that is true for a lot of people, and that's part of the reason the comic publishers have tried new things while the majority of the publishing industry just tries to cling on the old ways.
Quick, help this man, SELDOM is on fire!
It depends on the operating system running on the device.
The non-Touch Kindle for example has a very good visible progress indicator. For some reason, it's not as good on the Touch version.
I can understand tablets replacing e-book readers (and this double-sided one does both normal LCD and e-ink, though quite why a phone needs that rather than a tablet is anyone's guess), but when I looked whether to join the e-book revolution, I was appalled by the price of them! They are often the same and - shockingly - even more expensive than the equivalent hardback book!
The classic example was the #1 bestseller - Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography. When that was selling like hot cakes, it actually more expensive to buy it as an e-book than the already-expensive hardback. That one example put me off e-books hugely.
Thank you for thinking I'm stupid :)
I have a Kindle, I have a progress indicator. It just does not FEEL the same. Possibly because with a book all my senses (touch - e.g. when holding the book in both hands) "see" the progress.
The automobile may turn out to be more a complement to the horse than an outright substitute. You know, because some people still ride horses. What is this, Slashdot: News for Luddites?
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
If/when e-book readers become blister pack items at the super market checkout isle ("with free book inside!") and a $10 price point they will get closer to replacing books and magazines in most cases - essentially once they are disposable.
The problem with e-readers today is that they are property that needs a lot more attention and care than a book. Because of the price point you can't afford to lose or damage it, unlike a book. Once they are disposable and a simple login puts all your previous purchases at your fingertips, books will have a much harder time competing.
The coffee table book will likely survive however.
Old technology does not die off quickly.
Piano rolls died only 4 years ago http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/01/05/0224202/player-piano-roll-production-ceases
New technologies do replace old technologies but not overnight.
The problem with non-fiction on an eReader is that there are diagrams that the text refers to. It's really hard to see so little on a page. I started going through a python ebook on my wife's nook, but found that there was just too little presented on a page to help me really digest the topic. I was constantly flipping back and forth between pages. When I pulled out a paper book, there was about 4x the amount of content facing me, which was far easier to look through.
But Amazon/B&N have pigeonholed the ereader into the 6" screen size because nobody bought the $400 Kindle DX and instead preferred the $100 6" size (now $50) or a $500 iPad. Well, duh. Why a Chinese company hasn't figured out that there's money to be made on larger ereaders is beyond me. They could take an ARM A8 + 10" eink screen and sell a android 4.2 eink tablet for $100-150 that I would buy 2 of in a heartbeat. They could also try out a dual screen hinged approach, though the software to make that happen would be challenging since Amazon/B&N aren't going to modify their software to support a random Chinese ereader.
Not to mention the DRM encumbrance... once you buy an eReader and books from that store, you are stuck with them. That's one reason I want the android eink tablet... at least then I could run the Kindle app, which is better than nothing.
Ereading for nonfiction will take some sort of major disruption/vision that I don't see coming. Even the second level brands like Kobo or Sony don't try to push the envelope.
One nice thing about the old fashioned ritual of buying printed books, with cash, from brick and mortar stores is privacy.
Your interests, your thoughts, your reading choices are registered with big brother (Amazon, the credit cards, potentially the government ).
Maybe you aren't planning the next big takeover. Maybe you just enjoy the simple please of reading without everyone else
Paper books come with their own "DRM":
Only one person can read them at a time.
They are nearly impossible to copy.
They impose a constant and significant cost in terms of space and maintenance.
They will deteriorate and self-destruct over time.
In fact, even disregarding the (probably illegal) digital ways of removing DRM, simply optically copying an E-book is simpler than copying a physical book. Furthermore, most books published after the middle of the last century just don't seem to be worth keeping around anyway. I have trashed plenty of paper books.
it's a USB Mass Storage device you can drag-and-drop DRM-free ebooks (in .mobi and a few other formats) perfectly fine.
But what professional-quality ebooks are lawfully distributed DRM-free? I can see pre-1923 works, Baen Books, works of Cory Doctorow and a few other authors who have embraced Creative Commons, and what else?
the popular authors are more concerned about being in Barnes and Noble than Amazon
Then why isn't Nook kicking Kindle's behind?
I should be able to start my own app store for Apple devices which offers many of the same popular apps and ebooks, just 25% cheaper. Just because Dell and HP sell most laptops in the US is no reason they should get 30% of every on-line sale.
Since 1981, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have chosen to preload an operating system that allows sideloading. Even in the case of Windows 8, where Microsoft gets a cut of all Windows Store applications, this is still true of desktop applications. Likewise, both Google Play devices and Kindle Fire allow sideloading. So start your own app store for Android devices.
in comparison, what was the average number of books being sold in that time?
I think one of the big problems of ebooks was that the adoption of the technical&scientific puslisher wasquite low up to one year ago.
I am buying ebooks happily from several sources (google books, kindle, epup from various sellers). And i think that in the last 3 years (since i bought a Sony Reader) i spend more money on books than the 10 years before. After one trans-continental relocation i decided that i will buy only ebooks, if possible.
I prefer non-DRMed ones over DRMed ones and transparantly DRMed ones over walled gardens (so sorry, Apple, you are out).
No one has brought up the "1984" incident of a few years back. Amazon deleted copies of 1984 from customers' Kindles. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/07/amazon-sold-pirated-books-raided-some-kindles
Really? 1984? The irony was over the top.
It may be a rare occurrence, but it doesn't concern anybody that you aren't in full control of what you have purchased?
Then I want an actual physical book. Not some ones and zeros that may or may not be portable to other platforms and that requires a "device" to access them. Even in a portable format I'd prefer the physical book. About the only instance where I'd prefer an e-reader is if I were going on a long trip and wanted to take several books with me but the physical bulk of transporting them all would be too inconvenient.
The reason why e books aren't taking off are manifold and many even produced by the fuckwits trying to sell the bloody things.
Major reason #1. Price. The Ebook costs practically the same as the paper book.
Corollary. Utility. You can't sell on an ebook. They are "licensed". Therefore the book itself worth less.
Corollary. Expense. You dont need a paper book reader to read paper books, but you need to buy an ebook reader to read ebooks. Therefore the ebook remains more expensive unless you buy hundreds, which makes not owning them even more of a financial risk.
Major reason #2. Availability. Most books you can't get as ebooks at all
Corollary. Expense. Therefore it is not possible to replace your books with ebooks since they aren't available as ebooks. That makes the amortised cost of the reader per book make the ebook more expensive.
Major reason #3. DRM. Buy a book for your kindle and it can't be read elsewhere and you must keep the kindle account and device to read it. Books with other DRM mean you need several ebook readers (fragmenting the library and making it more expensive per ebook to buy the reader).
Minor reasons include the poor utility of ebook readers for technical books or pdfs which is why some go for a tablet (which is frankly a crap ebook reader and a huge waste of resources on things that allow "games" "videos" and so on when you only want to read the bloody books on it).
Paper books should be priced INCLUDING an ebook version.
Ebooks should be returnable if they're going to remain 50%+ the price of a paper book. They get the use of your money so they get utility off that to offset the utility of you reading the book. Otherwise, they need to be less than a tenth the price of the paper book if they come on their own. Hell, make the ebook a subscription at $1.29 per book for the series when you buy the first one. It guarantees further sales of the series to the publisher and means that the reader may take a risk on what seems to be death-by-a-thousand-installments where you buy a book and are risking not finding the ending until 20 books later.
The industry said it was entirely due to the price of printing and paper going up.
Now they're admitting (?) that this was a lie.
Or they're lying now.
Or both times (since they did it at least once, there's nothing stopping them doing it twice, is there).
A hardboiled detective story set in Chicago in the early 2070s. Sex, drugs and robots.
No DRM. "Machines of Easy Virtue."
That's not DRM'd (unlike text to speech forbidden on ebook readers).
Read over someone's shoulder.
Just pass it on to them to read.
There's no DRM.
And not just because there's no digital information.
Simply copying an ebook does nothing. It's random information. Encrypted without decryption, it's meaningless. Might as well "cp /dev/urandom mybook.pdf"
Having just returned from a 3 week trip, I can tell you that the 300 ebooks I took with me were a hell of a lot lighter than even one good sized paper book.
Life needs more saving throws.
If you travel you can carry a gazillion books with you and the reader weighs less than one book. On the other hand if you're sitting at home and want to curl up with a good read... there ain't nuthin' that beats a book.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
This will solve a huge part of the problem where the current crop of e-ink readers are dedicated mostly to fiction novels.
Myself, i LOVE my ink, but for a tech book its totally useless. So i carry both a ink reader and a 9.7" LCD tablet, even tho it will cause eye strain and I cant stray far from a wall outlet. Once color ink is here and doesn't cost an arm and both legs, both will be retired in favor of the reader.
The first Kindle was released in late 2007. The iPad was released less than three years ago. It seems a bit premature to predict that printed books will keep their traditional place in people's lives. There is still a large segment of the population that has never even tried reading an ebook. Many of those people are older, and have no interest in the "new." But there are already younger, technology-addicted people who rarely, if ever, touch a paper book. They don't have the same fondness for the feel and smell of paper that older people do.
Of course, books will be around forever. Scrolls still exist! So do phonograph records. The question is, what will be the normal way people consume text. I believe the e-reader will obliterate the paper book publishing industry the same way the Web is obliterating the newspaper industry.
...if he had released this pronouncement in printed form.
Exactly.
If the ebook market was had any resemblance of real competition ebooks would cost at most half paperbacks (currently they typically cost *more* than paperbacks although less than hardbacks).
If prices came down this way I think we would see a rather different adoption rates.
The problem with ebooks is DRM. When your entire library can be wiped out on a whim by Amazon or Barnes & Noble, there's no guarantee that your books will still be there tomorrow. Not only that, but they're not portable, you can't use them as you see fit. You're beholden to draconian rules regarding something *you purchased* but can't actually use as though you own it.
When DRM goes away and we can use our books as we see fit, and a court has ruled that no company can delete your books because they fucked up some publishing deal, or becuase they think your accout is "suspicious," then ebooks will be viable. Until then, physical books will be the only way to go.
many people tire very quickly of customer service, and of the quality of the devices... just look in the forums. updates gone wrong, getting hung up on, getting incorrect instructions, being told that theyre being escalated to never have the issue fixed, it doesnt inspire confidence. and the company that used to own one brand doesnt even offer extended warranties, whats that about?
I prefer eBooks, but I'm sick and tired of formatting problems. Words at the end of chapters missing, obvious problems with bulk replacement, links from TOC's that don't work, scrolling through tables or pictures because the screen is too small. It's back to paper for me until there's a reader that will read scanned pdfs in full size. I know they have been out there, but have had problems with cracked screens, etc.
I used to be a big fan of digital books, great convenience, until once the google book reader for iPad upgrade came and I was informed that my book is also on another device (I have a reader and an iPad), and the book disappeared. Sorry, but at this moment all the convenience was gone.
I am still a fan, but only not DRMed e-books, fortunately there is enough to read, and mostly much better, well if a book is still being read after a few hundred of years it means it is worth it.
Well it is pity, because I have time to read mainly when I travel, and there are books, which are worth reading, but could not have been written long time ago.
Since it comes from Nick Carr it is most probably (historically speaking) bunkum. He misses the fact that the old fogies (40+) are going to be replaced by the young guns that will grow up with e textbooks.
Here is what people already have: a physical item bearing a DRM-free, read-only copy of a paged plaintext file, costing about $5-$8 for the lowest-quality item. The item requires no batteries, and does not need to connect to any network to enable the file to be read.
Here is what publishers are offering: a license to a DRM-encumbered file that requires additional hardware and your own network connection, costing 100% or more of the cost of a printed book.
Therefore, I conclude that eBooks have not taken over because people aren't stupid.
Publishers ought to be putting eBooks on ROM chips in a USB and SD compatible form factor, and selling these chips in retail outlets next to the print books and the eBook readers, but at a lower price.
is a thing, not a machine. The only things you need is a light source, and the knowledge to read it. Also, you can preserve it easily for 100 or 1000 years. Good luck with with an (any) electronic reader after 30 years. You have to find and buy a new one, and of course compatible with all the previous ebooks you own.
Ownership and the transfer of said ownership is a fundamental flaw in eBooks that keeps me from buying them in most situations.
When I buy a paper book I own it.
I can read it.
I can reread it.
I can lend it to a friend.
I can give it to a friend. Or a stranger.
I can sell the book on ebay or what ever.
I can cut out the pages and use them for wall paper.
If I die my books are part of my estate and pass to my kin.
When I buy an eBook I don't own it.
Not according to the publishers.
I am only licensing it.
I can't lend it to a friend.
I can't give it to a friend or anyone else.
I can't sell the book on ebay or anywhere else.
I can't cut and paste the book onto my wall, legally.
If I die my children can't inherit my eBooks.
eBooks suck for these reasons.
Most of this has to do with greed on the part of the publishers.
When they solve the rights of ownership issue then eBooks will be more interesting.
Watch an episode of Hoarders and wonder no more.
I really miss physical bookstores. The only new books store in my town was a Borders and it closed last year. I have to drive more than 10 miles to get to a book store so I rarely do. I liked wandering through the aisles, seeing thousands of titles laid out physically according to genre and author. I liked seeing the other people wandering the aisles too. Half an hour at the bookstore was not time wasted. It takes me LONGER to find a title I want to buy online.
Also, I want to share books I buy with my wife, so we share the same Amazon account. Only thing is, she reads more books than me and our reading interests only have about a 30% overlap. So 70% of the books she buys are things I would never read and that's what the on-line seller uses to generate suggestions for me. Consequently the suggestions are dominated by books I will never want to read.
Other than my wife's questionable reading choices, I don't know what else is going on at Amazon that seems to be keeping me from finding books I want to read. But there sure seems to be something. Maybe they promote books on which they make the most profit. Or maybe it's the flood of books that never would have been published in the bad old days of print books.
Of course, there were plenty of bad books then too. But for every great book that is now published because no print publisher would touch it there must be 20 pieces of garbage cluttering up the e-sellers' virtual bookshelves.
I think both physical and digital formats have their place. What really chaps my arse though is when people talk about not switching because of smell or feel or some other nostalgic garbage. Nostalgia is not a durable value proposition. You like the smell of a book because your brain ties it to memories of your youth securely snuggled in a blanket or on a couch, this is good for you but is not a value proposition that you can sell to future generations. More and more their sensory experiences will be tied to the tactile experience of using a reader or a tablet.
Reading any kind of book in any kind of situation is better on a retina iPad than on paper. Once everyone can afford and has time to try similar and better devices, paper books are kaput. And yes there are niche markets like an $4.99 paperback to read on a beach vacation with high theft/damage concerns, or conversly high quality collectible volumes, but by and large people will read on the screen.
That's just geek dogma, and some of it is just incorrect.
The fundamental flaw is price, as a nearly full-price ebook makes you miss those things. If it was cheaper you might be willing to sacrifice those things, as most of the value of a book is in your own use in your own lifetime.
I say "might be willing", because obviously if this stuff is dogma for you, you wouldn't be willing.
Swoosh, AC as well as whoever modded aztektum's post as Flamebait.
I found this whole thing so offensive, I started working on Ebooks.coop, to provide a path out of the walled garden.
I found a lot of free books on this site here
... to the previous article "E-books are the death of printed books"
Reading these comments makes one think that this is a forum for the technophobic.
I don't know how many times I tell this to people, it just is a problem with medium. There is nothing great about the medium of a paper book. Where a e-book can easily be deleted, so a dead tree book can easily be torched in a flame. There is nothing magical about the old "interesting smelling" book that was mass produced on a printing press over one that had been copied by scribes merticulously for years (these probably smell much more interesting, mind you).
Most of this "quicker" crap is just relying on learned behavior. Honestly, I learned Quantum Field Theory from a pdf (Srednicki preprint) and General Relativity (Misner, et. al.) from a book (to Srednicki, I promise, I will buy the actual book someday!) With my study of both books, I found that I adapted different habits for both, to the point that it felt awkward reading Srednicki on my laptop screen instead of the lcd in my room because of the smaller screen. I could change the zoom to where they both have the same type size, it just felt awkward not seeing the whole page. Was there any need for such a tall view? No...I just had grown to be used to it.
I found similar issues with the other book too. A few days ago, I was running around testing coffee at various shops and I found it harsh to carry the massive Misner, et. al. around (the thing is like a telephone book, wonderful book though!) and it was embarrasing to whip it out, honestly--imagine a bunch of hipsters onlooking in horror as you take out that book and sip your coffee! I found that it was scanned on Google books, so the next time out, I just used that on my phone. Was it more awkward? You bet! Was the information any different (is an exterior derivative different on a phone screen versus a dead tree page)? No, but it did affect how I felt reading it in this new form.
Was it harder to find pages in Srednicki over Misner for me? No, for the latter, I used page tags; the former, I tended to remember page numbers or offsets from the start of chapter. Again, different habits for different media, and I understand both at the same level. In fact, I think I feel better with QFT over GR.
Look, nostalgia is nice, but that only affects you. I think the only reason that e-books are still faultering are implementation issues, such as DRM, improving (while needing improvement) reader programs/apps, and rendering issues. Imagine if they didn't print books in easy to read serif types: you can have so much nostalgia about it that you can bottle it and sell it to wanting amnesiatic, but that doesn't mean with time, you can't become more profficient with an easier to read typeface.
Surely you mean there are still Kindle makers in existence.
FTFY
(a) The price point for Kindle books (and others) is totally off. Sure, if the book is exclusively physically available as a $30 hardcover, then in that case a $13 e-book pricing is acceptable, but if I can get new physical copies for $6-8 (or used copies for $3), why would I pay $13 for an e-book? Are you mad?
(b) Well, I would pay $13 because e-books don't consume a book's worth of tree, nor do they incur the negative externality of the chemical processing of its pulp. (Yeah, I care about the environment, albeit buying a used book somewhat side-steps these issues.)
(c) E-books are immediate: we can make totally impulsive purchases, anywhere. From this standpoint e-book prices should be lower to incentivize us, I hypothesize.
(d) The DRM situation is not good. Although I generally don't re-read books (I get around this by writing down all the good quotations and making notes on my sole read-through, thus I only have to re-read the good parts), sometimes I do want to lend them to friends. Solution: if I buy a book, and you, the publisher, give me a DRM version, I go and steal a copy from piratebay using a coffee shop's wireless. I _own_ this shit, dog.
(e) Some books just aren't good for the e-format. Lonely Planets on e-readers? They suck. Anything where you're going to be flipping around a lot or randomly accessing certain pages is just not going to make for a good experience on an e-reader at this point, unless you feel like developing ninja skills with the search utilities.
(f) Other languages: I speak Japanese, and so far Japanese publishers have largely refused to sell e-books, allegedly because it cuts into their existing infrastructure and profits. Like why would they simply hand over their margins to this American "Amazon" company? On that note, Japan has been raping its own forests (heya, rural Shikoku) and Taiwan's (back in the day) and pretty much everywhere else in its hunger for wood and paper. (Not that the US isn't a resource-devourer and -waster, but that's not the point here.) Point being I would love to be able to buy Japanese language books in the US (without paying absurd import fees and currency conversion fees), from my couch, DRM-free, in an environmentally-conscious manner (I love your nature, Japan!), but my desires probably won't be met until a shift occurs in the larger consumption habits of the Japanese populous as a whole, in terms what they demand and expect of their book publishers.
Just get me some (Haruki Murakami) on my Kindle, dagnabbit!
I have a Nook Color 7" that has 28805 e-books, about 70 pdfs, and approximately 30 magazines (and have another 5000+ that I would like to load, but need to get a bigger Micro SD card). At home I have 2 large bookshelves that are triple stacked with about 500 books. Between the two I much prefer the e-books. The e-books cover business/management (85 books on that electronic shelf), programming/web/DBs, non-fiction (politics / history / physics / calculus, chess), science fiction, horror, military and so on. Do I really need all these books. Yes, I really do and really enjoy them. Do I *really* need to have a copy of CRC Handbook of Chemisty and Physics available to read (yes, I know no one (short of a Sheldon Cooper type) really reads it, it is a look up reference book) while I am waiting in the supermarket line? No, but I still would like it to be available.
Practically speaking, do you really want to lug 7 or so printed tech manuals into work with you each day? How about to a client site in case you need to look up something? How about bringing those gotta-read-latest-books (ex Brent Weeks) to bed? Do you really want to clutter up your nightstand with tall stacks of books? E-book readers rule!
In the long term paper books sales will diminish and dwindle but will never disappear. In general consumers will buy whatever is most convenient for them for the price. For most people right now that may not be e-reader devices and eBooks. However just like computers took a while to become mainstream with consumers it is now and most US households now have at least one computer. Computers never created the "paperless" office, but certainly greatly reduced the amount of paper used. The same will be true of e-book readers.
Books will never completely go away. There will always be collectors and those willing to pay more for the latest big name author's new hardcover book. Where ebooks will slowly replace existing paper books are in the realm of trade paperbacks. Here the prices are closer to the same as is the purpose (buying less to keep/collect the book forever and more for "something to read"- often on the go- which is where ebooks shine). The irony is that it may actually HELP local bookstores as the big name chains- er now only chain (in the US, at least)- will be harder pressed to maintain their store size and product mix as paperback sales begin to diminish (over time, though, this isn't something that'll happen all at once).
In short- there will always be specialty bookstores, we'll keep seeing big name authors' new hardcovers for sale at the grocery store, books aren't going away. It's only the (slow) death of trade paperbacks that we'll watch.
I'm also predicting the same with with gasoline engines. A few decades from now we may be having this conversation about them and may be reading a "Death of Gasoline Engines May Have Been Exaggerated" post to talk about. But then, the same issue will be there. There will still be collectables and specialized, highly tuned (and highly expensive) gasoline powered cars for enthusiasts and collectors. But that doesn't mean the rest of us won't be moving (or have moved) onto other means for transportion (some form of electric vehicle being the most likely).
Agreed. I'm afraid a lot of people haven't experienced that feeling that you can't do what you want, because of your possessions. Even getting rid of them can be a long chore.
I am an avid reader who just received my first Kindle as a Christmas present. A couple of books later, I have noticed that my reading speed on the Kindle is a fraction of what it is for the same text on paper. I decided to re-read a novel before starting its sequel, and after a few chapters switched back to my old paperback. I found myself reading about 3 times faster on the physical book.
This is at least partly because there is so little text per page on the Kindle, a function of both display size and line- and letter-spacing. But beyond that there is also an issue with readability or legibility. The font used on these devices is remarkably ugly.
These are not permanent, unchangeable characteristics of E-readers, so I hope things will get better as the products evolve.
I won't buy ebooks because they are not mine, I can't store them away on a shelf in the even the service goes down and I can't look up the DRM. If the service goes down permanently, I loose my collection! I can't loan an ebook out to a friend. The worst problem is I cannot resell an ebook. An I still don't understand why publishers are making consumers pay an exorbitant cost for them, the publishers don't even have to pay for the printing anymore. Until all of these problems are solved I will buy very little ebooks.
Classics? That's like the shit with looooooong words and no pictures?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Honestly I find my Kindle pretty great. I live in a fairly small flat and i'm out of room for books unless I want to have piles of them stacked on the floor. I've just bought the latest Wheel of Time book in hardback because the Kindle version isn't out till April, going back to a huge heavy awkward thing like that is going to be such a pain after the ease of reading on the Kindle. Honestly digitalisation is pretty great, yeah it's neat to go down the charity shop and pick up some random old paperbacks for a couple quid, but you just can't beat the convenience of downloading and reading something instantly.
This reminds me of Lawrence Durrell passing by a burnt-down storefront and finding a book lying on the street in perfect condition. The contents, he claims, seemed to have changed his life.
This is how readers often find the important books in our lives.
I don't think the same thing happens or can happen with eBooks.
Classics? That's like the shit with looooooong words and no pictures?
Slashdot. News for... autistic 11-year-olds with a vocabulary of 50 words and the attention span of a flea.
Sigh.
It might spur the distribution of e-books if they went the Blue Ray direction and offered a digital copy with the hard copy.
Those are, IMO, the two things keeping e-book sales low. Why should the hardcover edition cost $15 and the e-book $14? For the extra buck I get a physical product that can never be taken away from me and that I can resell if I choose.
Publishers are greedy and don't want e-books to be successful. They give crappy OCR, non-proofed copies when they could easily create perfect electronic versions and do everything they can to drive the purchaser away from e-books.
I finally got tired of hauling books around and went with e-books for a very select set of series and use the public library for everything else. Publishers would get a lot more of my money if they didn't act like pricks when it comes to e-books.
Printed books have a few remarkable advantages over eBooks:
- They do not require a power source.
- When purchased, you own them, they are not licensed.
- You can really share them with you friends, even without an network/Internet/USB connection.
- They are often cheaper than their electronic versions (e.g., Fifty Shades of Grey).
- They only use recyclable materials.
- If they get wet, you can simply dry them up and they will still be perfectly readable.
- You and your children will still be able to read them fifty years form now.
That being said, there are times I find paper handier. It's often simpler to flip back and forth between specific sections/pages in an actual book, to get a feel for context And I do attach a certain sentimentality to physical books. The image in my mind of the traditional study - a room dedicated to a personal library, with a tall-backed chair, and maybe an enormous globe, surrounded by towering shelves filled with hundreds and hundreds of books new and old - is a fond one. Or the connection with history I feel when, for example, running my hands over some eldritch leather-bound tome from the local library's special collections, or feeling the crisp pages of my gilt-edged copy of Lord of the Rings, or seeing the (often funny or interesting) annotations left in the margins by a previous reader, or opening a well-worn book that my grandparents owned, knowing that their eyes once gazed over the very same ink and pulp. I find it hard to imagine quite the same experiences translating over to the electronic version.
Maybe one day a descendant of mine 10 generations hence will view a copy of my data (that is maybe 30 or more electronic generations hence), yet but for bit identical, and have a similar, if not quite identical experience.
Of course, if they have the actual devices I owned (provided they can still find/devise a compatible means to power them up), that would be something else.
Not the least of which is that the rights which the publisher has for every book, and the terms of their licensing of those rights from the author is different. There are hundreds of older titles that publishers technically own the digital rights to (under some "future delivery system" clause in the contract) and are attempting to recreate/exploit (sometimes from an archaic printer's file or even hard copies scanned in by poorly-paid interns--and no, the printer's file is not the same as the ebook files).
The other (bigger) reason is the way book sales are structured in paperland versus ebookworld. And it's what got the big 6 publishers in trouble. When you're dealing with a physical product, the retail stream goes like this: Publisher produces the book->Distributor purchases the item from publisher at wholesale price->Retailer purchases the item from Distributor at retailer discount->Consumer purchases the item from Retailer at cover price (or more likely, discount). In that revenue stream, the Publisher gets paid 40% of the cover price of the book, no matter how much or how little the Consumer ends up paying for it (it's why you can find hardcovers at four bucks on the bargain table).
The big publishers negotiated with Amazon, at the dawn of the digital book age, to treat their digital content like physical content. Amazon purchases X copies at 60% discount of cover price, then turns around and sells the ebooks for whatever they want. But then things changed, and the publishers did not want electronic sales cutting into the more lucrative hardcover or paperbacks, so they turned around and re-negotiated something called 'Agency pricing' where the publishers got to set the price of the ebook, and Amazon could not discount at its discretion (but the publisher could). Since discounting is usually done to shift inventory, and digital inventory doesn't exist, and the publishers didn't get paid until the ebooks actually sold on Amazon, the publishers wanted their percentage of the full cover price. But because they all colluded, the US DOJ found that a bit of a no-no.
So as a result, you see deep discounts of hardbacks to move inventory out of a warehouse, but an ebook stays the same price because there is no physical inventory.
On the other end (the content-provider end, aka the "pay the author" end), many book contracts were negotiated to offer authors a royalty percentage of cover price *no matter what actual price the book sold at* and very quickly, ebooks became an albatross around the necks of traditional publishers because they tried to fit a digital product into a physical business model.
Us indie authors do things directly. We pay up front for author services like formatting, editorial services, art licensing for covers, and the covers themselves. We upload our ebooks direct to retailers like Amazon or B&N or to distributor-retailers like Smashwords (which can get you into a myriad of smaller/foreign to USA/or Apple retailers). The retailers take their cut first (about 30% or so) and we get the rest. We set our own prices, discount when we want to, and retain our publication rights. When you buy an ebook from an indie author, you're mostly supporting the person who did most of the work, with a little tip to the infrastructure that hooked you up with the book. And on the "book creation" end, it's still the same amount of work that goes into crafting a story for digital consumption as much as physical consumption.
En kaliteli chat chat odalar sayesinde kimse arkadasz kalmayacak
Üyeliksiz sohbet sohbet - chat sitemize giri yapabilir online sohbet etmeye balayabilirsiniz haberler ve magazin okuyabilirsiniz..
chat siteleri olarak canl arkadalar kzlarla sohbet edebilirsiniz.
"that e-books are well suited to some types of books (like genre fiction) but not well suited to other types (like...literary fiction)"
I can see 'nonfiction' (the bit I elided) as non-linear reading is still a pain on ebooks. But this one just baffled me. 'Genre fiction' and 'literary fiction' both consist in the main of your classic 350 page novel, in chapters, read in order: how can ebooks possibly be suited to one but not to the other?
Oh right! I forgot. Most literary fiction 'readers' don't read their literary fiction, they just leave it lying around prominently to let everyone know how intellectual they are. You can't do that with an ebook. Got it.
People prefer different things but it all comes down to quality. There have been several e-books that would never have been printed by the big publishing companies, but they gained e-book success. These successes are now becoming more common place and publishers are now more open to new submissions from unknown authors than ever before. It's a self-correcting system. The real problem is the appalling lack of book 'readers', so now that we are getting better quality books how do we get people back into the habit of consuming them?
The crappy thing is that I knew about e-ink two years before it was commercialized into the ebooks, but didn't have the liquid doe-rah-mee to invest at the time. Now, kick self in butt, kick self in butt ....
Pulp 'n' ink has been compatible with human eyeballs for 5,000 years. You can STILL read scrolls today (assuming you speak ancient languages). You can't say the same with e-books.
Not only is it harder to read a book on a computer or one of those lame embedded devices, there are too many negatives with e-books.
1. They take away first-sale doctrine.
2. You can not easily mark, make notations, etc
3. Depending on where you buy it *cough* amazon, you risk getting it taken away at any time.
4. E-book readers can break, making it expensive to replace it just so you can read what you already paid for.
5. Format incompatibility. If you have some reader today and next year a new awesome format comes out and only new stuff uses it, you are at the mercy of your hardware vender to provide an update.
It has exactly two advantages:
1. Easier to lug around then a stack of books.
2. Makes it easier for would-be authors to self-publish.
People generally aren't stupid and buying e-books is stupidity defined.