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Did technology kill the book or give it new life?

by joshcrowder on 8/14/15, 1:34 PM with 38 comments

• by toyg on 8/14/15, 4:47 PM

  I love ebooks and I'm way too prone to impulse-buying them on my Kindle, but recent price movements are trying hard to kill the market.

  I'm not going to pay £15 for a text file, sorry. I honestly don't care how good your editing is, chances are it's awful anyway: one I got recently, by a mainstream author from a mainstream publisher, has "renaissance" spelled "re nais san ce" (with spaces) throughout the entire book, clearly an hyphenation fail (and let's not go into "wrong" words you can clearly recognise as spellchecking fails).

  So in the end, you publisher-and-author are just shuffling a text file from A to B and you want me to believe your profit is the same as when you were cutting trees, pressing ink and transporting heavy boxes around the land. I just feel insulted. I know cost and price are different and what the market will bear and yadda yadda, I just don't think a text file is worth more than a few quid.

• by tenfingers on 8/14/15, 5:06 PM

  For me the only "ebook" that truly exists is a PDF/file that I can handle the way I want. I never considered the kindle-amazon combo to be an option. From amazon I only buy physical books, and will continue to do so until the stuff I buy can be used the way I want, on linux, with the reader I want.

  There's no point in buying inferior media, especially when the price difference is so small.

  An mind, I regularly use PDFs for searching/references, but I still read books just fine. I would need 4-5 e-ink readers to be able to do what I currently do with regular books, they would need to be A4 size at least, and will never settle for anything which is not a dumb PDF visualizer with no strings attached.

  Until then, books will continue to live strong on my bookshelf.

• by gizi on 8/14/15, 3:16 PM

  I stopped buying technical books approximately 15 years ago. Nowadays I much prefer (online) tutorials along with the (online) reference manual with user comments. In fact, you could quite easily crowd author and publish these things. We could use better software for that, though, because Wikipedia's mediawiki is only so so for that purpose. Furthermore, most reference manuals and tutorial collections do not sufficiently solicit user commenting and other user participation. Books printed on paper do not allow for user involvement at all. Even for novels, I would prefer to read them with user involvement in one way or another. I cannot imagine one type of book that would not benefit from user interaction.

• by verisimilidude on 8/14/15, 3:54 PM

  For adult fiction, I doubt any of us care how or where people read. It's an uncomplicated example. Instead, consider something like scientific research. The possibilities seem endless when it comes to putting research online: richer multimedia, raw data sets, crowdsourcing, timely publication, etc. But paper (and parchment) is still a more reliable archival format, which could be crucial on some unfortunate day in the (hopefully distant) future.

  For content that matters, I wonder how long paper will be able to keep up with digital, and what the long-term effects will be either way.

• by larrik on 8/14/15, 3:26 PM

  The only thing I miss when using my kindle is going to the used bookstores and hunting for treasures (generally obscure sci-fi for $1 per paperback).

  But my kindle 4 lets me stay in sync with my phone (which I can use in the dark and outside the house unprepared, both of which come up a lot). So I tend to read kindle books still, despite a rather large collection of unread fiction.

• by bmelton on 8/14/15, 3:45 PM

  While I used to be the guy that would carry a book on my mass-transit commute, I found that the (admittedly minor) headaches of doing so were contributing to my reading less and less.

  Having to carry a book around is fine if it's a small paperback, but for books I just couldn't wait for, I found that my laptop bag was cramped enough without trying to carry the hardback Game of Thrones, so I ended up prioritizing taking smaller books on the commute, which meant that I had books at home that I wasn't reading. Meanwhile, the Kindle is smaller than a paperback. Advantage: Kindle.

  If I was nearing the end of a book, I would just stop taking it, because (for me at least), the idea that I might take a book into my commute, finish it, and not have a book to read on the way home was a hassle. Moreover, I had to carry the already-read book around for the rest of the day. With the Kindle, I could finish one book and start the next. Advantage: Kindle.

  Bookmarking / placeholding doesn't need much discussion, but I definitely found that on the Metro, I lost my place a lot more often than reading on my porch. Advantage: Kindle.

  Goodreads integration. I like sharing my thoughts on books, but more specifically, I like sharing my ratings of books... mostly for myself, so that when I'm looking for a new book and nothing is jumping out at me, I can check out my Goodreads review, find other books by authors I rated highly, and just grab the next book from an author I previously enjoyed. With paper books, I found that I would often forget to update my rankings, while my Kindle asks at the end of every book. Advantage: Kindle.

  To those who suggest that paper is better on the eyes than e-ink, I can't assert scientifically either way, but as a programmer who spends too much time in front of a screen, I can only say that having begun with the Kindle software on an iPad, and eventually moved to the Kindle hardware, the Kindle is MUCH better on the eyes than the iPad. On the scale of paper to iPad, the Kindle feels like it comes closer to paper than iPad, if it's not exactly the same.

  While I acknowledge that the above quibbles are in fact quibbles, and possibly unique only to me, on the whole, I've found that keeping my Kindle on me just means that I end up reading more, which is the far better alternative.

• by blakeja on 8/14/15, 2:36 PM

  Other than the occasional technical book, I refuse to buy e-books when reading for pleasure.

  After spending all day in front of a screen, the last thing I want is another screen in my face when trying to relax with a good book at the end of the day.

• by sxcurry on 8/14/15, 3:44 PM

  What about audio books? I've read more in the last few years than the decade before, since I switched almost entirely to audio books. In many cases they are much better than the printed version. Case in point, Ulysses by James Joyce. The audible.com spoken version is a masterpiece, and this is definitely a book that's meant to be listened to.

• by stephengillie on 8/14/15, 3:38 PM

  > Adult fiction - particularly romantic and erotic - has migrated strongly to the e-book, whereas cookery and religious books still do well in print, as do books with illustrations. All for fairly obvious reasons.

  Like writing on a notepad, reading a physical book does a good job of communicating with body language what you're doing. And if you believe in judging books by their cover, the book cover provides further information about its subject. And you can leave physical books in public places to start conversations.

  Additionally, large books like cookbooks and illustrated books often come in a large form factor that tablets struggle to match. That's not too surprising, given that humans have been making books for about half a century, but only making tablets for maybe a decade.

  And it's mostly the books we don't want others to know we're reading (adult fiction) for which we use the e-reader, where others can't tell what we're reading.

• by georgefrick on 8/14/15, 5:45 PM

  I have multiple readers, including a Kindle DX and a Sony PRS-505 (still works like new!).

  Print books are still awesome though, and I just pulled a few off the shelf for re-reading. But now there is freedom of balance. We have a whole carload of books on its way to the Good Will. There isn't an inherent reason to simply hold on to them anymore. So now we can keep what we want to keep; and let the rest be digital (which is easier to archive anyway).

  I can't see being extreme either way. My Kindle DX works great for technical books; and I can keep another copy ready for viewing on the computer while I'm coding. My little Sony will show whatever fiction/non-fiction I throw at it (after conversion) and the battery is somehow still healthy. I'm looking to get a used Nook Glow though; as I'm tired of providing my own light.

  But I'll still stop in the book store and browse the fiction. It's not only easier that digital browsing, but more fun.

• by mitchty on 8/14/15, 5:38 PM

  Both for me.

  For good or ill there are books that only exist in dead tree form. I still buy them. I don't entirely miss them to be honest, but for casual reading or it seems super technical things from ages ago, dead tree is where its at.

  For recent things though relating to programming, I honestly can't be arsed to use dead tree form. Being able to have updates to books, sync notes/highlights/blah electronic books beat regular books entirely.

  In my mind technology just expanded the definition of what a book is.