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Poll Shows That 75% Prefer Printed Books To eBooks

Posted by samzenpus on from the give-us-dead-trees dept.

Attila Dimedici writes "In a new Rasmussen poll, 75% of American adults would rather read a book in traditional print format than in an ebook format. Only 15% prefer the ebook format (the other 10% are undecided). The latter is a drop from the 23% that preferred the ebook format in Rasmussen's 2011 poll. In addition, more say they buy their books from a brick and mortar store than say they buy books online (35% from brick and mortar, 27% online). I suspect that the 27% who buy online buy more books, but these results are interesting and suggest that the brick and mortar bookstore is not necessarily doomed."

15 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. I agree by Virtucon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For casual reading, e-books are fine but for technical materials I prefer hard copy that way there's no fear that the distributor won't change their TOS and I wind up losing a ton of C++ reference material or my favorite books on Roman History.

    Spoiler alert: If you're wondering about the Roman History part, the empire collapsed.

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    1. Re:I agree by davide+marney · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The irony of eBooks is although they are orders of magnitude more capable of random-access reading, the only comfortable way to use them is for sequential reading. Try flipping back to an earlier part of an eBook, and then returning to your original place. Agonizing. Try looking at two or more passages at once. Impossible. Try keeping notes or a collection of citations, and on most eBooks, it's amazingly lacking.

      The main problem with eBooks is that the user experience is very immature. Developers gave us an easy way to sequentially read, and apparently thought that was enough. You have to go to desktop-based ebook readers to even come close to satisfying the normal use cases for reading books.

      Of course, don't get me started on how less of a value an eBook is compared to a physical book. Amazon's policies on lending ebooks are an insult (you can only lend 'x' times, for two weeks, and you have to give Amazon the email of the person you're lending to.) And that's just Amazon.

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      "We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
    2. Re:I agree by EdZ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Try flipping back to an earlier part of an eBook, and then returning to your original place.

      If you can't do that, then the issue is with your software, not the format. Being able to flick back between two (or more) bookmarked positions instantly is one of the really useful features of ebooks. One example I use almost every day is in laptop disassembly manuals: to get to one part (say, the HSF assembly) there are certain other parts that need to be removed in order. The location for that specific part will have a section listing links to the parts that need to be removed to access that part. Clicking one of these links, stepping through that sub-process, then hitting the 'return to last position' shortcut is far faster than flicking through a printed manual.

    3. Re:I agree by Virtucon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You just put a qualification on your statement "don't allow it to run scripts" Again, if I have a PDF with DRM in it, you bet it can there's more than one way to do it. You have to run your e-book in some piece of software and unless you're willing to write your own e-reader you can assume that it's disposable content. But anything you can do with software you can do to your digital content, even something as mundane as deleting it. Knowledge of executable and non-executable formats my ass.

      --
      Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    4. Re:I agree by RedHackTea · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Yes, disadvantages and advantages. The biggest advantages eBook Readers gave us over the usual arguments of easily readying heavy books and carrying around many books at once are:
      • Search for text; in my eReader, I can search for a word and find all instances quickly
      • Instant dictionary built-in, else, I have to carry around 2 books or (1 book and a laptop/eDictionary)
      • Instantly buy a book from anywhere with Wifi; don't have to drive to the bookstore or order a book and wait 3 business days
      • Notes are harder to type in, but I can keep a lot more notes (not restricted by margin width) and in better organization (not a bunch of post-its)
      • Spill coffee on my eReader... still have all of my books online

      Ultimately, the many books in one book sold me. I love to read 4-5 books simultaneously with auto-bookmarks and only having to carry around one light device. When eInk came out, it was a done deal, as I originally still disliked the idea because of more shining lights into my eyes...

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      The G
  2. Slow death despite nostalgia? by melonman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd be interested to see the answers broken down by age. It may well be that most of the people who love paper books will be dead in 20 years.

    I suspect there's also a "fake good" effect, in that people feel they ought to be supporting their local bookshop and therefore say that they do, even if, in fact, they buy a book a year in an airport and every other book on Amazon.

    Personally, I really like paper, even for technical books, but all my colleagues look at me like I'm wearing sabre-toothed tiger skins and wielding a club.

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    Virtually serving coffee
    1. Re:Slow death despite nostalgia? by u38cg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I suspect there's a big cohort effect. People like what they know, and the vast majority of the book-reading public has been using paper longer than screens. I know I see teenagers who have no problem using a screen for extended reading, which drives me nuts.

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      [FUCK BETA]
    2. Re:Slow death despite nostalgia? by illaqueate · · Score: 4, Insightful

      iirc Rasmussen telephone polling doesn't even include cell phones. Polling people who still have a land line seems like a good way to get a skewed result.

    3. Re:Slow death despite nostalgia? by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And don't forget that people's eyes tend to start to go as they age, which means being able to enlarge the font arbitrarily becomes more valuable as people age. Means that you don't have to replace those books with large print editions, assuming there even is one for that particular book.

  3. Real vs Virtual; Permanent vs. Temporary by QuietLagoon · · Score: 3, Insightful
    When I buy a printed book, I own the book. I can read the book whenever and where ever I want.

    .
    When I buy an eBook, I do not own the book. In order to read the book, I have to hope that some DRM server somewhere will authorize the eBook reader to show me the book I want to read.

    I have books on my book shelves that are over 50 years old, and I can still read them fine. Can the same be said about eBooks 50 years from now?

    1. Re:Real vs Virtual; Permanent vs. Temporary by russbutton · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Several years ago I purchased a hard copy of the Doris Kerns Goodwin book, "Team of Rivals", which is about Abraham Lincoln's cabinet. An extraordinary work, but it's HUGE! I tried taking it with me during my work commute, but it was a real pain to stand on the bus and try to read. So it just sat on the shelf.

      I purchased an e-copy of the book from Amazon. I have a kindle reader on my Android phone that allows me to pull it out and read a few pages whenever I have dead time and now I'm finally getting a chance to read it.

      We own a 92 year old, 1100 sq ft bungalow in California and there really isn't all that much room to store books. I've also pitched out about 2/3rds of my music collection due to lack of space. I'm down to about 600 records and about 600 CDs. I've ripped all of the CDs to digital and now listen to them off of a music server. The records will take a LOT longer.

      Hard copy books are cool, but after a time, stuff you collect is just stuff...

      That being said, I totally agree that tech books have to be hard copy. Can't work with that off of an e-reader.

  4. Kindle changed my view by Secret+Agent+Man · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, more specifically, Amazon did. With a Kindle book, I can read it on any device (Kindle preferred, of course; love its display), can access my books anywhere with an Internet connection, and can even put documents I want to read on my devices onto my Kindle/cloud/etc by e-mail. Their implementation is rock-solid, and their main device feels just like reading a book to me.

  5. Sir, Permission to disagree. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I like both printed books and ebooks. They both have strengths and weaknesses, they complement each other rather than replace either in my view.

    I like to have heavy to carry around technical books (DRM free) and vendor documentation on ebook reader. eBook also more convenient not causing problems to breathe compared to a 3000+ large page monster on you chest when you lay on couch, hammock or bed while reading. But then often reading experience on table or while sitting on good armchair with good lighting etc. often nothing comes near real printed book.

    IMHO, eBook is great especially for short lived stuff, manuals that are updated few times a year with the product they describe and of course magazines, but printed books anything I expect to have more value over let's say 5 years.

  6. Re:Can't travel carrying 500+ dead-tree books by nurb432 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And ironically these days losing a kindle would be less of a financial hardship than losing a couple of books. ( it wasn't that way not too long ago tho )

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    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  7. Reading is a journey by swm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For me, reading a book is a journey through its pages.
    Not in some metaphorical sense, but in a very literal, tactile, visual sense.
    I associate the words in a book with their position on the page,
    and the pages with their (approximate) position within the thickness of the book.
    It helps me keep track of what I've read, and place words and passages in context of the overall book.

    I never thought about any of this until I started reading eBooks and it wasn't there.
    An eBook is just one long (long, long, very long) stream of words.
    Some eBooks paginate the words for display, but that pagination is typically not stable:
    revisit those words another time and they will likely appear on the screen in a different place.
    And those pages--such as they are--have no apparent position within any larger structure.

    This is OK for a dictionary or a reference manual, where I just look things up.
    But for any serious work of non-fiction, it's horribly acontextual: the book just turns into word mush.

    I haven't tried reading any fiction eBooks, so I don't know if they would fare any better.