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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."

4 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.

      --
      "We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
  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.

    --
    Virtually serving coffee
  3. 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.