New York's Last Remaining Independent Bookshops (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via The Guardian, written by Hermione Hoby: Michael Seidenberg, pictured kingly in his throne of a wicker chair, feet spread, pipe in mouth, is one of around 50 New York indie booksellers featured in a series of portraits by Philippe Ungar and Franck Bohbot, a pair of bibliophilic Frenchmen who met and befriended each other in Brooklyn. The two, writer and photographer respectively, have taken great pleasure in traveling across the city, to neighborhoods in every borough, to meet and photograph booksellers in their habitats. Despite their diversity, the way their distinct personalities and passions are reflected and amplified in their shops, they are all, says Ungar, "looking for the same thing -- a generous vision of sharing culture". Ungar mentions Corey Farach, owner of the scruffy, adored and longstanding feminist bookshop Bluestockings. Farach, as Ungar recounts with admiration, encourages those people who can't afford to buy a $40 book to take a seat, make themselves comfortable, and just read it in the shop. "That is to me," says Ungar, "the spirit of the indie booksellers." Because, as he sees it, "a bookstore is much more than a bookstore, it's much more than selling books. It's a public shelter. Whoever you are, you don't have to buy anything, they won't ask you for your ID. You're free -- you can stay for hours and browse. There's a generosity, an optimism. And that's what we wanted to enhance." "[I]ndie bookshops are outposts of idealism," writes Hoby. "And if they seem like the most romantic places in the city, it might be down to this -- to the way their owners and customers might all be engaged in the same project, a kind of sanctuary building in the unsheltered world."

She goes on to mention Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, "a small space crammed with vintage titles," as well several closed bookshops "which have fallen to astronomically rising rents." "Three Lives & Company [...] narrowly escaped closure in 2016 after an upswell of neighborhood support," writes Hoby. The group that owns the building decided to "provide it with stability," given how well-loved it is in the West Village.

Comments

Save "The Shop Around the Corner"!!!

[anvilmark]

the remake, not the original. Sorry, it was the first thing that popped into my head.

Nonprofit Nerd Shelters?

[bill_mcgonigle]

If people want to fund nonprofit nerd shelters, cool, do that. Sell some books for additional fundraising too if that helps.

There's no need to bemoan the loss of bookshops for the small group of people who valued bookshops over more books if the goal wasn't ever to be a bookshop; if that was the excuse rather than the purpose.

Re: Nonprofit Nerd Shelters?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my nook of Brooklyn we have one Indy bookstore, and nothing else. Half of the books are for children (a market-based decission), and volunteers to read it to them. It offers the only book club, and organizes meetings with authors. There is absolutely no other business that provides these services for roughly a million pleople which B&N and others consider too working-class to care about. Indy book stores are not about activism; they actually deliver literature to communities. Thus, my eternal thanks go to Boulevard Books.

Re: Nonprofit Nerd Shelters?

[jedidiah]

If it made money, then "evil capitalists" would care about it. On the other hand, there's no reason that a meetup or a fen group couldn't fill the gap.

Like the other guy said. This is the Internet age, not the Guilded Age.

Re:Nonprofit Nerd Shelters?

[whitroth]

Can you even explain why you ever visit slashdot, aka "news for nerds"?

Your kind isn't wanted or needed here. Go away - you're mostly illiterate, anyway, since you clearly don't understand logic.

Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had the pleasant experience of coming across "green activists" who are gung-ho about "saving the environment." That's a great thing, but when these same people then talk about how they're upset that digital books are ruining America and that people need to go back to reading print...I don't get it.

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to be so blunt but that's probably because you haven't read many books yet. In case you haven't gotten the memo, books are the cornerstone of modern society, not 5 min Youtube videos.

On a side note, do you have any actual statistics that shows that books are - in total, including the whole live-cycle - more dangerous and destructive to the environment than ebook readers+phones+PCs that are trashed after 3-5 years? Books last hundreds of years so I kind of doubt that...

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[mschuyler]

Well, no, books rarely last hundreds of years. The acid in the paper makes them too brittle to read after a few dozen years and by that time no one wants to read them anyway. Most books these days are some form of paperback, which are not meant to last. On a good day they wind up pulped and recycled, and on a bad day just wind up in a landfill. I don't know of a valid study comparing books to bytes as far as reading is concerned, but hauling that paper across the country in diesel trucks can't be good, nor can cutting the trees to make the paper or making ink that is toxic. I'm a librarian with 2500 books of my own, so you can't say I'm anti-book, but it is inevitable that bytes will win over paper. The infrastructure required to handle paper is just too vast. It's not the paper books that are a 'cornerstone of modern society.' It's the words that fill them, which can be rendered in bytes just as well as ink on paper.

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[Anonymous Coward]

Previous AC here. My father was a professor at a school for librarians and my family has about 30,000 books - I myself have far less, maybe 1000. Many of my parent's books are hundreds of years old. So far for my own anecdotal background.

Now here is my take on it. Even cheap paperbacks last longer than digital media. Books on acid-free paper last hundreds of years or longer. Normal digital media last 5-30 years, depending on the type. (Tapes last longest, I guess, but who uses them?)

As for the ecological life cycle accounting, I'd say that overall the infrastructure to handle ebook readers and all the electronics associated with them including batteries and all the energy in producing all the infrastructure (servers, electronics, rare earths, global shipping, etc.) have a far worse ecological life cycle assessment than printed paper. The total costs for maintaining ebooks are also higher, you have to buy new devices every few years and the old ones pollute the environment a lot. To be fair, many people will have electronic devices suitable for reading electronic books anyway, though.

The point is moot, however, since technology can hardly be stopped. Printed books will not go away anytime soon, for the same reasons we don't have paper-free offices either. I work with large amounts of texts professionally every day and affordable readers are still far too uncomfortable and small. In the long run, looking at 100 years into the future or so, this will change, of course. Technology cannot be stopped.

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[Grunschev]

With no special care or handling, books will easily last a century or three. My oldest book was published in 1848 and it's in pretty good shape. I own three other books that are more than 100 years old. Roughly a third of my ~800 books are older than your few dozen years (i.e. published prior to 1982). They're all perfectly readable and the vast majority are in fine or very fine condition.

If you're really a librarian, you'd know how ridiculous your claims are. Most books are withdrawn from circulation because they're not being checked out, not because they're unreadable. I don't find century old books in the collections of my county library, but I can easily find them in the main branch of the Denver Library or Norlin Library on campus at C.U.

As a counterpoint to your preference for digital, I have a copy of the first software I developed back in the early 1980's. It's construction accounting software. I printed out the source code and documentation and also have copies on 5.25" floppy disk. I can still read the hard copy, but the digital copy is unreadable for me. You may have some old hardware available to you, but I'm not a collector. I'd have had to convert the format of that stuff several times over the years to keep a readable digital copy. I don't think I've had a machine with a 5.25" floppy drive in more than 20 years.

Are you going to format shift your eBooks or just let them fade away? Sure, somebody will keep doing it, but what makes you think they'll make it available to you? Think of how much music and how many movies are already unavailable because they're not commercially viable.

Not only that, but do you realize how few books are actually available as eBooks? Sure, most titles being published today are, but I seldom read new books. Had this conversation on a plane, once. Guy sitting next to me said I should get a Kindle. I had him search for the book I had in my hands. Not available. I gave him the titles of the last half dozen I'd read, only one was available. But, you're a librarian. You already know everything I've said.

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, no, books rarely last hundreds of years. The acid in the paper makes them too brittle to read after a few dozen years and by that time no one wants to read them anyway.

That has not been true for all but the most trashy pulp books for over 50 years. Time moves on. Acidic wash pulp isn't cheaper to make anymore and does not sell as well. Even when it was true that acidic paper would destroy itself, that time period hardly lasted a century. Even within that time, books that are taken care of last. I have several that are around 130 years old showing the painful signs of brittleness and foxing, yet still in reasonable condition.

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[mschuyler]

I stand by my original statement. Please don't pretend to tell me my business. I've been a librarian for 44 years. How many of you have books over 100 years old? Oh, you have one, or two? Hey, that's great! Where are the others? In a landfill. So mildewed that they are unusable because you stored them in a garage or basement. Pulped. Gone. Only the finest books are published on acid-free paper. And you know what? They won't last either, not because they can't last, but because they will be mistreated, discarded, thrown away, sold for fifty cents at a yard sale, given to the Rotary auction, devalued completely, unwanted. Pick up a random book from 1950 that has "lasted" a whopping 70 years or so. Is that on your reading list? I didn't think so. And if you think your current mass market paperback will last hundreds of years, you're completely delusional. Sure, you may have a beautiful Currier & Ives from 1860 that you rarely look at, but that's not normal. Keep it. It might be valuable.

I'm associated with an active "Friends of the Library" group. We make $90,000 per year selling old books for 50 cents to $4.00 a book at weekly book sales. They are all donated by area residents or discarded by the public library. We milk those books for everything they are worth, selling the most valuable on Amazon before they get to the local sales. And you know what? You know those old post office canvas mail bins on two wheels? We fill a couple of those a week that go directly to pulp and another bin of books so mildewed that they won't even take them for pulp so they go to the dumpster. . You guys have a couple of old books and come to the conclusion that "they will last forever," but you completely lack the scope of the issue because you do not deal in thousands of books at once. You've never dealt with the issue in bulk. 99% of books will NEVER get saved for posterity. In the Real World, they get tossed.

Now what about the digital book being obsolete? You think because I don't have a 5.25" disk drive that somehow makes a digital book obsolete? I have had digital books since their infancy. Anybody remember the Rocket Book? Well, it's true, that's obsolete, but the Kindle isn't. In fact, I don't need a KIndle to read a Kindle book, just an app for my PC, any PC, or my phone, or any phone, and the book itself is stored in the cloud. I can get to my "library" from anywhere, or even keep it on a thumb drive. It doesn't matter what the "reader" is made of or what OS it uses.

The fact is, paper-based books are not cost-effective in the long run. As the cost of paper and transportation continues to go up, the gap between e-books and paper books will grow ever wider. And when it costs you $25 for an ebook, but $75 for a hardback, guess which one you are going to buy? And for that matter, when is the last time you used a card catalog in the library? Probably about 30 years ago. We have adults now who have never seen one. And what were they made of? Paper. Nostalgia is going to be worth only so much to you, and if you can't bring yourself to do it, your kids will without a care in the world.

Contrast the physical book made of paper and glue, ink and cardboard, made mostly from trees, and transported by diesel truck all over the place. Anybody want to claim that is a cost-effective and efficient way to transport words? Yeah, one book feels good in your hand. Try lifting 50 pound boxes of books every day and see how soon you tire of them. The paper-based book is a dead man walking. It's just a matter of time.

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[JaredOfEuropa]

affordable readers are still far too uncomfortable and small.

I beg to differ. I read an awful lot, and I say that modern e-readers have come a long way, and are now as comfortable to read as printed books, under pretty much any circumstances, with a few nice extras like built-in backlights and the ability to carry thousands of books (plus the ability to download more) in a package weighing less than a single paperback. But I do not "work with texts", I read fiction, start to finish in a linear fashion. Maybe that's the difference. Because the way e-readers handle annotations, search, and images stinks, compared to paper. For the past decade or so I have bought all my fiction in electronic format... but any reference material or non-fiction works that I might want to annotate or lend to friends, I've bought in paper format. So yeah, paper still plays a role. But for a large number of people, e-readers are actually a better choice already.

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[Rob Lister]

Not only that, but do you realize how few books are actually available as eBooks? Sure, most titles being published today are, but I seldom read new books. Had this conversation on a plane, once.

What year was that? It couldn't have been too long ago since he was searching for the books while on a plane. But I found a random article from 2013 wherein the writer bemoans as you do and lists 18 books that are not available as an ebook. https://bookriot.com/2013/03/1...
Every single one of those is now available, most for less than $10.

This was funny ...

Are you going to format shift your eBooks or just let them fade away? Sure, somebody will keep doing it, but what makes you think they'll make it available to you?

Dude! It's on the internet.

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[Rob Lister]

As for the ecological life cycle accounting, I'd say that overall the infrastructure to handle ebook readers and all the electronics associated with them including batteries and all the energy in producing all the infrastructure (servers, electronics, rare earths, global shipping, etc.) have a far worse ecological life cycle assessment than printed paper.

I would disagree. The servers, electronics, rare earths, etc would all exist absent e-books. As to the e-book itself, sure it may only last 5 years or so but in that five years I will read at least 100 books. So, is my single nook more or less environmentally friendly than at least 100 paper books?

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[Anonymous Coward]

You're like the weenies who think every film ever made is on Netflix.

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dude! It's on the internet."

Hey! I once had an Interact computer. Where's MY emulator?

Steal this book

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for disposing of your dead tree material

Liberals

[bestweasel]

I bet they don't even call the police if they get a brown customer.

Re:Liberals

[ScentCone]

I bet they don't even call the police if they get a brown customer.

But what do you want to bet they'd pitch a fit and try to throw out a group of several people wearing MAGA hats camping out in their four comfortable chairs all day without buying anything? We've seen other businesses eject people just for looking wrong (in the wrong hat or t-shirt) that way. Something tells me that a famously feminist book store wouldn't say they threw people out because they were all pasty white, but instead because they didn't like what they were doing. You know, sort of like that Starbucks manager who got tired of non-customers camping in her store, and then got more frustrated when they refused to leave private property when asked to. You know, trespassing. The sort of thing you eventually call the cops about, because you don't want to get sued for putting hands on anyone yourself as you try to free up your store's resources for actual customers.

Re: Liberals

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but you don't really have black people in Russia. I suppose the Chechens are your equivalent. The police in Russia are different too, much easier to bribe (unless they grab you for something 'political').

Re:Liberals

[jedidiah]

So your idea of "making things right" again is stealing from each other and murdering each other?

The problem with the "anti black crime" narrative is that it ignores black crime victims. They certainly deserve the sympathy and attention of social justice warriors.

Re:Liberals

[shplopt]

Methinks he doth protest too much.

Re: Liberals

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you fall for that troll or just use it as an excuse?

Either way, your 2nd paragraph makes no sense without explaining what the "anti black crime" narrative is.

Re:Liberals

[Grunschev]

I love how my conservative friends complain about liberals. Oh, liberals are a bunch of namby pampy snowflakes. They're everything that's wrong with America today. One even told me how he "fucking hates liberals". I laughed, being perhaps the most liberal person he knows.

I remind my conservative friends that America's founding fathers were the most liberal men in the world. I remind them that their favorite Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, was the most liberal public figure of his time. I remind them that Teddy Roosevelt was a liberal.

I ask them, if we had a time machine, how far back into the past would we have to send them before they'd be a liberal. They get all agitated because it's only a few decades. They get all agitated when I tell them that over 6000 years of human history, it's been liberal positions they support. The usual response is something along the lines of "well, it can't be true that liberals were always right." Sure, you can think about it a long time. Do some serious research. I'm sure you can come up with an exception here and there. I guess that's why they think they're exceptional thinkers. "Liberals have been right 99% of the time for 6000 years, but liberals suck!"

Re:Liberals

[ScentCone]

I love how my conservative friends complain about liberals.

So ... your complaint is that people who are liberty-minded complain about people who call themselves liberals but who cheer on identity politics, the squelching of speech, the stripping away of everything from the right to privacy to the right to self defense ... those are things that liberals now embrace. Liberals are now authoritarian nanny staters who actually hate liberty. Conservatives call them out on that and push back against it. And you hate them for it. If you don't like being complaining about your embrace of totalitarianism, then stop being a contemporary liberal. Because even as you lecture about how what liberals used to be, you're indirectly embracing what today's liberals stand for. Stop wagging your finger at people for no longer liking the people who've taken over a word and turned it inside out as they embrace the statist, freedom-crushing goals of the left.

Re:Liberals

[mrsquid0]

You mean like you just did?

Re:Liberals

[Anonymous Coward]

I remind them that their favorite Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, was the most liberal public figure of his time.

The idea of whites being superior is a liberal position now? Sounds like something your conservative friends could support!

Re:Liberals

[Whibla]

Your posts, including this one, strongly indicate your own ideology, but, in your knee-jerk objection to someone who has a differing opinion, you seem to be reading rather more into his post than (afaict) was ever there.

So ... your complaint is that people who are liberty-minded complain about people who call themselves liberals ... And you hate them for it.

His comment related his amusement with his friends' cognitive dissonance or lack of historical perspective. There was no hatred displayed. I'd have thought the multiple instances of the word 'friend' would have been a bit of a giveaway as to how he felt about the people he was talking about.

Now, for what it's worth, I pretty much agree, to varying degrees, with everything you wrote about the current breed of 'liberals', although it's worth pointing out that this breed are still relatively rare, just damn noisy and therefore more prominent that actual 'laissez faire' liberal people. I've met and debated several of this new breed of 'liberal' and they have been some of the most unpleasant, shrill, divisive and intolerant people it has ever been my displeasure to interact with. However, rather than fall into the trap of playing their game, I don't assume everyone who thinks of or describes themself as liberal is a raging asshole like the members of this new breed. Labels can mislead as much as they can inform.

Sometimes, for example you responding to GP's comment or me to your's, it's worth taking a deep breath and asking: "what, from what's just been said, can I find to agree with?" rather than "how can I express my disagreement and displeasure with what's just been said?".

A knee-jerk rage reaction rarely improves a situation, for anyone, for all that it might feel cathartic at the time.

Bluestockings!

[shplopt]

I love that place! I used to stop by whenever my old band was in NYC. My copy of Snow Crash came from there. Last time I was there I went to another cool bookstore called Book Thug Nation that had a massive amount of used sci-fi at surprisingly reasonable prices. It really saved my ass because I forgot to bring any books on that tour.

Visit the Library

[scrib]

Looking for a cool, community-accessible place where anyone can walk in, pull a book of the shelf, and start reading without being pressured?
Try the library!
If, like the article, you think "a bookstore is much more than a bookstore, it's much more than selling books. It's a public shelter. Whoever you are, you don't have to buy anything, they won't ask you for your ID. You're free -- you can stay for hours and browse. There's a generosity, an optimism." What you are looking for is a library. Many will even let you check out books on exchange with other library systems, not just other branches.

Re:Visit the Library

[vikingpower]

Here in Europe there is an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_public_access_catalog that will let you order a book from say, a Madrid university library while perusing the Vienna Technical University's library. Hundreds and hundreds of libraries participating.

Re:Visit the Library

[Anonymous Coward]

Super job you did on that link there.

Re:Visit the Library

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a Guardian piece. A shitty dead rag that appeals to the far-left which can actually read. Despite the ability of their staff everything they write is with a Marxist slant and blames everything that fails on a successful system. Waste not your time on this "newspaper", once the last 300k readers die, their bought articles from the three main outlets will still exist in more reality based publications.

They'll blame the inevitably football violence at the pending World Cup on the Conservative party, even after the crappy home nations have been knocked out. They won't discuss the anti-Jews in their own Labour party, nor their corruption with Soros money; likewise with their own income from the EU.

Re:Visit the Library

[Type44Q]

I walked into a library a couple years back and it had no fucking books. Fine... but the surreal shithole should either be replaced by a webportal or at least serve beverages and call it a "Public Internet Cafe." But "library??" Crazy, ignorant fucks.

Re:Visit the Library

[jedidiah]

> Here in Europe

Fueled by software written by a company in the US in the 70s.

ILL has been a common thing in academic institutions since before you were born.

Re:Visit the Library

[Anonymous Coward]

Get off my Sim Lawn, old timer! :-)

Re:Visit the Library

[rtb61]

Well, that would be no further than my recliner chair, with custom over bed table for the monitor and keyboard and https://www.gutenberg.org/. Largely my book reading days are over, and that is from over the top avid reader. The internet provides me with more reading than possible, split with interactions and moving or still images and of course even books.

Although it would make sense for public libraries to be maintained for tech works et al just in case things fuck up. For me though, the internet is my interactive library, pretty much where ever I go and the best version is the one in my own lounge room.

Re:Visit the Library

[Hognoxious]

If you were such an avid reader how come you don't know the difference between "et al" and "et cetera"?

Re:Visit the Library

[Rob Lister]

Echo that. I can't count the number of times that I discovered a nasty dried booger halfway through an otherwise excellent used paper book. I just can't bring myself to read past it. Boogers I discover on my nook don't seem to bother at all. :)

Would be OK if they didn't damage the books

[Anonymous Coward]

Serving coffee and cupcakes, etc makes it likely that the books and magazines will be damaged. And people bend up the pages, etc. Does the huge profit on coffee overcome the stock writedowns?

Have Public Restroom? Is Starbucks Next Door?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stay for hours and browse, and not buy anything. Sounds like the same winning business model Borders Books had until liquidating. Do these independent book stores have a public restroom? (if yes, is a purchase required? -likely not) -or do they tell people to visit the nearest Starbucks?

On a related note, wonder how many of those camping out for hours are on the internet via their phone, laptop, etc and not reading any books there at all.

Re: Have Public Restroom? Is Starbucks Next Door?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's NYC, purchase is not required to use restrooms by law. All the ones I've been to have restrooms. I think that you don't get economics of large cities: there are choices. Businesses actually have to give a damn to cater to any, and all, potential customers, regardless of their bladder size.

Re: Have Public Restroom? Is Starbucks Next Door?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to know. However, not all establishments in NYC, even those selling food and drink items, are required to have restrooms. If many of these independent bookstores do have a public restroom, props to them.

where to pee?

[AndyKron]

If I'm ever homeless I'll pee at the indie bookstore.

Re:where to pee?

[ve3oat]

Barbarian! One might hope that you catch some incurable human cross-over book-mould disease from the experience.

uh, no... no idealism here

[Anonymous Coward]

How is a 3rd party taking a cut of an Author's "hard earned cash" have anything to do with idealism?
It's not a public shelter for blah blah blah, those already exists... they're called libraries and community centers

Of what value are they then?

[SuperKendall]

It offers the only book club, and organizes meetings with authors. There is absolutely no other business that provides these services for roughly a million pleople

As you say, roughly a MILLION PEOPLE live around there, and yet can only (probably barely) sustain one tiny book store. What real value then are they providing? I don't mean money, I mean real human value, because if there was tremendous value there would be other similar stores, or people would find a way to make them work.

There are already book clubs all over the place (there is no way in all of Brooklyn that is the "only book club"), and authors may find it harder to find stores to sign material in can still be seen at conventions and the like, or even online AMA's...

It's nice to maintain cultural traditions but over time some things will go away, and small bookstores are juts plain going to be one of those things. I say that as an avid reader that has spent many, many enjoyable hours in small bookstores... but I can clearly see that time is past, and I don't see value in hanging onto archaic traditions.

Re:Of what value are they then?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Well said. The only thing I would add to that is that for every community where there are not a million people, other solutions are required for people who have the same interests or desires.

Re: Of what value are they then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ages ago, the solution would have been internet forums. But today, if it ain't facebook, it's crooks and darknet.

Survivorship bias

[sjbe]

Even cheap paperbacks last longer than digital media.

Doesnt matter because you can copy digital content from one medium to another with as close to zero cost imaginable. You can easily make backups on multiple forms of media and easily have those backups self propagate to new media when available thanks to the internet. Not just backups either but perfect identical backups. Not true with paper. Paper has it's charms to be sure but if we're comparing the potential for longevity the only way paper will beat digital is the event of an apocalyptic EMP. Paper is kind of a least common denominator technology which will likely always be around and be useful but it isn't generally speaking more durable unless you are confining digital documents to a fixed medium which isn't really what happens these days.

People tend to forget that when they pull out decades or centuries old books as proof of how long books last that they are experiencing survivorship bias.

I'd say that overall the infrastructure to handle ebook readers and all the electronics associated with them including batteries and all the energy in producing all the infrastructure (servers, electronics, rare earths, global shipping, etc.) have a far worse ecological life cycle assessment than printed paper.

Then you have evidently never researched the issue. Paper accounts for about 25% of all solid waste. Paper production is hugely polluting and accounts for about 5% of all industrial pollutants. It also has issues with deforestation, evidently consumes about 35% of harvested trees, contributes to monocultures of planted trees, and uses more water to produce a ton of product than just about anything else we make. While at the end of the day your statement may be correct it isn't obviously so. Paper production isn't eco-friendly like many imagine it to be.

More survivorship bias

[sjbe]

With no special care or handling, books will easily last a century or three.

Hogwash. You are suffering from survivorship bias. The vast majority of books experience no special care or handling and demonstrably do not last anywhere close to that long.

As a counterpoint to your preference for digital, I have a copy of the first software I developed back in the early 1980's. It's construction accounting software. I printed out the source code and documentation and also have copies on 5.25" floppy disk. I can still read the hard copy, but the digital copy is unreadable for me. You may have some old hardware available to you, but I'm not a collector. I'd have had to convert the format of that stuff several times over the years to keep a readable digital copy. I don't think I've had a machine with a 5.25" floppy drive in more than 20 years.

Again survivorship bias. Much data from that era has been transferred to other media. It's trivial to search on the internet to find software even older than yours and to copy it trivially. I can easily find software that perfectly replicates computers I used in the early 1980s. Yes some was lost but that's no different from paper. And once it is available online it is comparatively trivial to make innumerable perfect copies. Good luck doing that with paper.

Paper is hugely useful and I'm not arguing for or against it. I just think your arguments in favor of it are flawed. There are good arguments for continued use of paper books but you aren't using those arguments.

Not only that, but do you realize how few books are actually available as eBooks? Sure, most titles being published today are, but I seldom read new books.

So because you don't read ebooks they don't exist? Despite you admitting that they do? Despite the fact that it's unusual anymore for books to not be electronically available?

Had this conversation on a plane, once.

Wow, one conversation! That's proof if I ever saw it.

Re:More survivorship bias

[Seven Spirals]

Despite a fancy phrase (survivorship bias) everything you said is still bullshit hand-waving and everything he said still appears true & valid. You can't 'explain away' or handwave the FACT that books will outlast all the format-shifting. The fact that some things can be emulated doesn't mean they will be or that it will be done well. It also utterly fails to address the role of DRM. Nah, anyway, you're just wrong and trying to pimp some weak points in the face of a superior line of reasoning. Oh and just like homeboy, I have *many* books from the 1800's and turn of the century. They are in fine shape and perfectly readable. So.... bullshit flag thrown.

Libraries != Book repositories

[sjbe]

I walked into a library a couple years back and it had no fucking books. Fine... but the surreal shithole should either be replaced by a webportal or at least serve beverages and call it a "Public Internet Cafe." But "library??" Crazy, ignorant fucks.

I got a good chuckle how you proudly proclaim your ignorance of what libraries are and what they do. As if they should somehow be forced to conform to your preconceived and uninformed idea that they are merely repositories of paper books.

Re:Heh - Did THAT VERY THING this a.m. ... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing you did this AM was fist your own asshole

Ray's Occult

[gazelam]

Please tell me that I can still pick up stuff for the coven at Ray's Occult Bookstore! If he shuts the doors, I just don't know what I would do.

You must be new here

[sjbe]

Despite a fancy phrase (survivorship bias) everything you said is still bullshit hand-waving...

A "fancy phrase" that you apparently are incapable of understanding. If a "fancy phrase" scares you then maybe go somewhere with a dumber crowd more your speed.

You can't 'explain away' or handwave the FACT that books will outlast all the format-shifting.

SOME books might. MOST books will not. I suggest you study the difference. Using the few books to survive hundreds of years as evidence that books as a whole are profoundly durable is a dumb argument. It takes fairly heroic efforts or incredible luck to keep paper in readable condition for hundreds of years. Most of it decomposes long before then.

The fact that some things can be emulated doesn't mean they will be or that it will be done well. It also utterly fails to address the role of DRM.

DRM does not affect most digital content in any way. And had you bothered to actually read you would have noticed I explicitly said that regardless of format (books or digital) some of the content is going to get lost in the sands of time.

Oh and just like homeboy, I have *many* books from the 1800's and turn of the century. They are in fine shape and perfectly readable. So.... bullshit flag thrown.

You have a FEW books from the 1800s (assuming you aren't lying). Far more books from that era are residing in landfills. You have the fortunate few that survived. That does not constitute proof of the durability of books as a general proposition or that it is superior to digital data.

Re:You must be new here

[Seven Spirals]

Hehe, "Some will be lost in the sands of time." Let's see.... how many ebook readers customers primarily read non-DRM'd content from places like Project Gutenberg. Oh yeah, basically none as all the e-book providers DRM-by-default. Thus, you are full of shit. Personally, I've already lost more ebooks to DRM than any other reason. When Sony ditched their e-readers they didn't port their DRM scheme to Kobo. That's just one of dozens of examples. The books I have form the 1800's are ones that folks wanted to save and thought were worth more than the pulp-fiction of their day. At least the winnowing process there is pretty obviously based on reader-choice, and not some corporate asshole deciding I haven't bought the book enough times in enough formats. You seem to think format-shifting is just bullshit or doesn't occur. Did you just start collecting e-books yesterday or something. Bro, do you even read?

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

This "tastes great", "less filling" debate brings back good memories.

I probably have a bunch of those commercials recorded on VHS tape. I think I'll grab a Miller Lite, dig it out and watch them. Oh, wait...

Re:You must be new here

[terrycarlino]

EPUB does not use DRM. DRM problems are problems related to over extension of copyright. EPUB format does not need to be format shifted because there is absolutely no reason that EPUB can't be read on multiple platforms. I read EPUB on my PC tablet and phone using different operating systems. From Project Gutenberg. Using Barnes & Noble's Nook software, which reads non-DRM entangled texts just fine.

Failure to transfer printed work to electronic copy is the reason many works will become unavailable.

Printed books are great. I love print. But some really great works have been almost lost because they are out of print. The fact that a few people have print copies will not prevent them from being forgotten. Hopefully someone will transfer them to electronic copies before they're gone.

Re:You must be new here

[Seven Spirals]

Cool man, you are one of the few "good ones" then. I also read books from Project Gutenberg. Old or new, almost all book readers support epub, too. So, I agree that it's a fantastic format. However, in general, most folks who use e-readers are buying books from the built-in store and nearly all of those are DRM'd and they are rarely epub format. So, not to refute anything you've said, Terry, but my challenge to the "books are shit" troll fucker before you was "how are you going to not-lose your DRM'd books when the reader-vendor goes bust?" Answer: You're fucked. So, stop squirming and lying. You lost.

Star Trek version

[Anonymous Coward]

As usual, Star Trek chimed in with this lib fantasy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11:59_(Star_Trek:_Voyager)

It is rents and isn't nessessarly everywhere

[Jastiv]

East Lyme Connecticut has a huge used book store that takes up several buildings. My husband likes to take my son there. They have used kids books for $1.00 and paperbacks for $1.00. Its great because they even have areas in each of the bookstores with toys for the little kids to play with at the store.