E-readers: Yes or No

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E-readers: Yes or No

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1CliffBurns
Jun 12, 2009, 10:58 am

Kids: sooner or later these new-fangled e-Readers, currently around $300 (U.S.), are going to plunge in price. As a writer and reader I'm curious if you'd ever consider buying one and what your threshold price would be: $100? $50?

Further: How much would you be willing to pay for an e-book, downloaded directly onto the device, a la iTunes?

2inaudible
Jun 12, 2009, 11:03 am

Horrible things. I've never seen one and plan on continuing that trend.

Ebooks? Bah!

3Medellia
Jun 12, 2009, 11:04 am

Nooooooooooooo! (spoken with falling-off-cliff plunge in pitch)

'Til real books disappear at last, no e-reader for me. I don't care that you can get all of Project Gutenberg for free, or new releases for $10, or whatever. Give me my paper cuts, my dogearing, my underlining, my old-book-smell...

4iansales
Jun 12, 2009, 11:07 am

I like the idea of ebooks, but I also like the idea of bookshelves full of books. But I think there are certain books I'd happily read electronically - I don't need the physical paperback in my hand. Classics, and the like. Reference works. That sort of thing. Unfortunately, few of the ebook readers on the market strike me as all that good. The Kindle locks you into Amazon. The Sony looks quite good, but is still less satisfactory than paper. I like the iLiad, but it's very expensive.

As for the price of the books - well, they have to be substantially cheaper than paper books. At the moment, they're not... because the publishers claim that the manufacturing cost of a paper book is only a small fraction of the cover price. There's also the promotion cost, artwork, writer's royalty, etc. This is true, but it's also complete rubbish. Distributors get huge discounts - typical 50% - on books. Ebooks can be distributed directly by the publisher, so there's no need for those discounts. Also, the production costs for paper books drop per unit depending on the number produced. Ebooks... well, you create one. That's it.

5Irieisa
Jun 12, 2009, 11:21 am

They'd have to be bloody cheap, and they would have to have books that I couldn't get elsewhere available. Else, give me my paper. Bookshelves would be appreciated as well. ;-)

Besides, all e-books I've seen are plagued with typos. Blah.

My maximum price for an e-Reader: $75 (and that's pushing it).

My maximum price for an e-book: $7 (and that's REALLY pushing it, but we're talking absolute maximums here).

6kswolff
Jun 12, 2009, 11:48 am

I'm not a fan, for these reasons:

1. I hate reading things off a screen.

2. I like the look and feel of books. The glorified data slate just doesn't appeal to me. Unless I'm on an interstellar starship and space and materials are limited, then also no.

3. Trees are renewable, not so much the plastic, metal, and whatnot that goes into making Kindles and such.

4. I find a reading source that depends on energy (battery, electric grid, etc.) highly troubling. What happens, when we are all be-Kindled and there's a long-term blackout? We'll have nothing to read except the back of our cereal boxes and billboards. What a horrifying proposition.

7Irieisa
Jun 12, 2009, 12:46 pm

>6 kswolff: - I agree with your three latter points. Thus, even if I got an e-Reader, I still wouldn't get rid of my physical books. No way in hell, or heaven, for that matter.

8Saieeda
Jun 12, 2009, 2:15 pm

Absolutely no. I need the hard copy in my hands. I love the smell and feel of a book. The screen is just so impersonal to me. Besides I like to have bookcases as decoration. My rooms would be nearly completely bare if not for all the books. Hard copies are easier to loan too; there is nothing more enjoyable to me than to be able to invite a friend over and pick up a book from a shelf and say, "this is perfect for you." I hope e-books never take over.

9lilithcat
Jun 12, 2009, 2:39 pm

I'd probably buy one if it went under $100, to use when I travel. I always spend an inordinate amount of time deciding what books to pack. I worry about weight, space and whether I'm going to run out of reading material.

And think of all the suitcase space I'd save in which I can pack the books that I'll buy on my trip!

10theaelizabet
Jun 12, 2009, 2:39 pm

No, for all of the reasons above.

11inaudible
Jun 12, 2009, 3:05 pm

If you buy and use an Ereader you lose snob status, honest!

12geneg
Jun 12, 2009, 4:50 pm

I still think the solution to this problem is the home bindery. The publisher creates the e-book, sends it to you for a price (say $3.99 for active copyright titles and $.50 for public domain stuff) and you print and bind it at home if you want it that way, or you download it into your reading device via the USB/Firewire port on the bindery. Adding post script type functionality could open up all kinds of avenues for customizing books.

Best of both worlds. This is an idea that I feel should really be pushed and could be the end of this question. My guess is, this would be a self limiting phenomenon. After a few years of reading from a screen, home binding will fall by the wayside for most.

13inaudible
Jun 12, 2009, 4:55 pm

No, that is not the best of both worlds. What do you think a home printed and bound book would look like? Probably worse than the 'print on demand' stuff looks. I want a well made, well designed book, thank you.

14lilithcat
Jun 12, 2009, 4:58 pm

> 13

What do you think a home printed and bound book would look like?

Depending on the skills of the binder, it could be gorgeous!

15inaudible
Editado: Jun 12, 2009, 5:02 pm

Indeed. But if we're talking about mass produced home binding systems and straight from pdf books... the results are going to be mediocre at best.

Hand binding is a wonderful art (and one that I will learn at some point in an apprenticeship I'm currently doing at a traditional printing press), but I do not think fine hand binding is what gene had in mind.

16swevener
Jun 12, 2009, 5:20 pm

I'd absolutely get one for textbooks and journal articles once the e-readers get to $100-ish and don't look so... Kindle-y. Keeping my non-specialist book-books, though. Cold dead hands and all that.

17AuntieCatherine
Jun 12, 2009, 5:23 pm

I often find myself with two copies of a book: one for reading (and carrying around in pockets or handbag) and one for "best" ie reading indoors, before a roaring fire.

The one for reading could be e-book of some kind but I haven't been impressed with the ones I've seen so far especially the Sony, which has too little on the page and a small but perceptible pause when the page is "turned".

18iansales
Jun 12, 2009, 5:29 pm

#13 Are you talking design or quality of binding? Because POD books are no worse than offset printed books in quality of binding. The actual design is an entirely different matter, and there's no guarantee a POD book would be worse. Besides, the publisher would provide front, back and spine cover art.

19CurrerBell
Jun 12, 2009, 6:01 pm

I've got both K1 and K2, though I don't intent to buy Kindle-DX. (I'm perfectly happy with the screen-size on K1 and K2, don't need a larger screen, and figure the larger screen will just make the whole contraption that much bigger to fit into my pocketbook.)

I carry my K2 with me pretty much everywhere and charge it, if need be, from my car's battery while I'm driving. I keep my K1 for back-up (because K1 is really a better piece of hardware, although K2 is thinner for pocketbook carrying and has some better software features).

I can't imagine using anything other than Kindle, as far as the current generation of devices are concerned, and I'd never use a Sony. I'm particularly attracted to Kindle's wireless tie-in to the Sprint network. It's particularly useful to be able to look in Wikipedia or Google while I'm reading, without having to put the book down and go to a PC.

That's not so say that I have anything against treeware. Far from it. But I'm not going to annotate, for example, my Folio Society editions of Elizabeth Gaskell, my 1922 J.M. Dent edition of the Brontes (six volumes, with sixty Dulac illustrations), my movie tie-in edition to the 1926 Scarlet Letter (autographed by Lillian Gish), or anything else like that. Kindle, on the other hand, has great software for searching, highlighting, and annotating.

Also, there are a lot of books that I read (for example, Kim Harrison's Buffy-ish "Rachel Morgan" series) but that I don't want taking up space around my house.

And I've been saving my pennies for the past several months, and I'll probably use part of my tax refund to get a sixth edition (1826) of Bewick's History of British Birds that I've found at an affordable price from a seller who lives near enough to me (within 500 miles) that I can drive there to look-see before I plunk down the money. That's, of course, something that you'd never be able to get on Kindle.

Kindle and treeware both have their own uses.

20auntmarge64
Editado: Jun 12, 2009, 10:58 pm

I've had a Kindle for over a year and have never read so much in my life. Usually I'm in the middle of 2 or 3 books on the Kindle and 1 or 2 in paper. Even when I'm reading a paper copy I keep the Kindle nearby for the dictionary function; and for keeping track of characters and places for entering into Common Knowledge, there's nothing like the page marking function on the Kindle. The Kindle is especially useful for carrying several titles in a small package (actually, 1500 at a time is possible on the K2, but I keep only a couple of dozen on it at a time). Just throw it in the purse and I'm off with a library in tow.

I'm a retired librarian, and sure, there's nothing quite as wonderful as browsing the stacks at the library or book store. But when I'm at home late at night or early Sunday, and someone on LT mentions a book that sounds interesting, I can immediately go to the Amazon storefront, download a couple of sample chapters, and, if I like, have the entire book to read in seconds. The sample chapters have opened up my interests in different types of subjects and authors and made exploring them easy. And I'm more likely to do it if I can have the book NOW.

Of course not everything is available electronically, and some things, such as art books, are not appropriate for the technology as it currently exists. But ebooks have added a new flexibility and availability to reading which I can't imagine doing without now. I rather think of the difference as using the Internet to do research instead of waiting to go to the library when it opens. Who would think now that it's better to wait till Monday to get to that lovely hardcover set of the Britannica when Google is a button away?

21Irieisa
Jun 12, 2009, 11:01 pm

>20 auntmarge64: - Though Google is often infuriating to use, with all the bad hits...

And all the porn that appears when it isn't wanted...

22kswolff
Jun 12, 2009, 11:09 pm

Isn't wanted?

23Irieisa
Jun 13, 2009, 10:04 am

>22 kswolff: - Yes, on the chance you DON'T want porn, you get it anyway. Some might call it good service; others, bad and immoral. I call it annoying. I'm afraid sex isn't always on my mind, Google; it may be often, but not always. When I search for porn, I want porn. When I don't, I must not want porn.

Or is Google assuming that we all have the subconscious desire for the lewd? ;-)

24vq5p9
Jun 13, 2009, 10:23 am

I PINE for a Kindle and probably spend five minutes per week staring at the Amazon specs page. I would get one if they were about $100 cheaper.

To auntmarge64 and CurrerBell, I've heard you can read your email on a Kindle as well. Do they charge you for that?

25kswolff
Jun 13, 2009, 11:12 am

23: In Google's defense: "Sex sells." That's why it permeates everything in Western culture: commercials, narratives, etc. Bill Hicks has a great monologue about this.

But I understand where you come from. For a nation that is supposed to be "the most religious nation," we consume about $1 billion annually in porn. Then again, moral hypocrisy is the foundation of the United States. Between slave-owners fighting for their independence from Britain and our genocidal conquest of the West, we're not really in a position to chastise dictatorships and tyrants (well, at least those dictators and tyrants who don't have the foresight and moral virtue to be our allies).

What, me cynical?

26emaestra
Jun 13, 2009, 11:30 am

moral hypocrisy... I remember driving across Florida and seeing all these teeny, tiny little towns with maybe five churches and five bars. You've got your whole weekend covered and get to start the week off clean.

I get no ads whatsoever on google, but I have Adblock. It is definitely worth the few minutes it takes to download.

27kswolff
Jun 13, 2009, 12:17 pm

I have AdBlock and ScriptBlock and all sorts of goodies via Mozilla. A godsend, since pop ups and such feel like harassment.

As far as Florida goes, yes it's a festering bastion of conservative Christianity, but it's also a state that thrives on tourism, especially a kind of tourism that can be summarized in two words: Spring Break. In the words of those patriotic businessmen who rake in the cash during that time: "Show me your boobs!" Is that the Bible Belt or are you just happy to see me? At least we're living in a time where the power of these sanctimonious spiritual car salesmen are on the wane -- clinic and museum shooting aside.

"Only laughter can blow (a colossal humbug) to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand." Mark Twain

"F*** 'em if they can't take a joke." -- Jesus

28CurrerBell
Editado: Jun 13, 2009, 12:17 pm

24>

Apparently (so I'm told) you can read Gmail and some other forms of web-based e-mail on Kindle, but I use an old ATT dial-up account for e-mail. It does have an interface for web-based reading, but I haven't been successful in getting into it for Kindle reading although I'm able to use the web-based interface on a PC. It's possible that ATT has some kind of security that blocks Kindle access, although I'm really not sure because I haven't made that much effort to succeed.

If you're successful in reading your e-mail on Kindle through a web-based interface, then more power to you. You won't be charged (under the current Amazon terms-of-service) and haven't been charged since Kindle's inception, though of course that could change at Amazon's discretion (but I doubt it will).

I wouldn't get a Kindle, though, to read e-mail. You might be successful in some cases, but I can't imagine you're going to want to go with Gmail or any other specific e-mail host just for the sake of reading it on your Kindle. Besides, although you might be able to read it, I imagine it will be even more difficult (assuming it's even possible) to reply to e-mail on a Kindle.

I love Kindle for the convenient access to Wikipedia or Google to look something up on the fly while I'm reading an e-book, but it's not a substitute for a PC.

29geneg
Jun 13, 2009, 1:52 pm

Next time someone says, "Show me your boobs!", tell them you're already looking at one.

30kswolff
Jun 13, 2009, 4:06 pm

I would also accept "a swift kick to the nutsack" as a valid answer.

I'll take "The Penis Mightier" for $200, Alex.

31Irieisa
Editado: Jun 13, 2009, 5:18 pm

>25 kswolff: - Haha, sex is indeed a powerful entity. I believe that pornography was (or is?) the main force driving the evolution of the internet. It's a good thing. In Google's case, I must inquire as to whether there's a setting to make it kid-friendly. If not, then it would not be smart... Just imagine the indignation of parents everywhere.

In elementary school, for my own amusement, I would search for nasty stuff on Google and then walk away from the computer. ;-) I swear, it wasn't me!

Ah, hypocrisy is everywhere; without it, what would be the fun?

By the way, I also have something that takes care of ads. It just doesn't keep porn away, because that isn't part of its job, unless, of course, it's an ad for porn.

32bobmcconnaughey
Jun 14, 2009, 7:39 am

if the price was right ~ $2.50/book to replace a mass market paperback that i own but can't enjoy because of their physical condition (mold/dust) and under $100. for a e-book reader that i could use in the bath...sure.

33ReadStreetDave
Jun 14, 2009, 8:17 am

I understand the appeal of e-books for some folks: parents with toddlers, frequent travelers, etc. But I like the physical presence of a book -- the heft, the feel, the smell. I also would be reluctant to part with my bookmarks, which carry good memories (the current one is from Bistro a tartines, a great shop in Lyon).

But an e-reader would at most only be a supplement for me. When I travel, I always stop at bookstores to get recommendations about local books and authors. If I relied heavily on e-books, those folks would vanish.

The Millions recently carried a compelling essay about the inwardness of e-readers. Here's a link to it (and to my 10 Reasons to Hate the Kindles). http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/books/blog/2009/06/more_reasons_to...

34auntmarge64
Jun 14, 2009, 9:16 am

>33 ReadStreetDave:

Hate? Wow, you must have had a really awful experience with one!

35auntmarge64
Jun 14, 2009, 9:35 am

>24 vq5p9:
I live in what's called a 1X area, which means the reception is slower and less reliable than in the EVDO areas. The once or twice I've tried to access the web have been unsatisfying, and I don't bother trying it any more, and haven't tried email. For the moment, Kindle is "just" my movable library. You can check availability of the types of coverage at http://www.showmycoverage.com/mycoverage.jsp?id=A921ZON. Outside Whispernet areas you'd need to download books to your computer and transfer to the Kindle via USB cable.

I had he same concern as most when I bought my first Kindle: I'll miss books! (that didn't last long, any more than talking on a phone means loss of personal face-to-face interaction). Besides, I still have and buy physical books and can pick one up whenever I want. What made the decision for me was a frozen shoulder. I couldn't hold regular books for a few months, and the Kindle was a desperate move to alleviate that problem. It became such a valued tool that I keep it with me almost all the time, wherever I am, so I always have lots to read.

If you're at all interested in one, you can try it out for up to 30 days and return it (if you're not addicted by then, heh, heh, heh.....) There are also a few used ones for sale on ebay and Amazon. You'd have to check the return policies on those.

36CliffBurns
Jun 14, 2009, 10:04 am

#32 "Man Electrocuted in Bath"

"Police were called to a house in ___________ and discovered a grisly scene. A smoking, empty-socketed corpse, clutching an e-Reader device, was found in his bathtub. 'He was reading Anna Karenina,' his wife reportedly told investigating officers, 'he was telling me that because it's a classic book you can download it for nothing and he--he--'

Then she broke down and could say no more..."

37ray2009
Jun 14, 2009, 10:15 am

>3 Medellia: HAHAHAHAHAHA. I'm literally laughing out loud at the truth of that.

I'm a teenager and there's no way I'm reading my books digitally! I love going to the library and checking out a new book with dog-eared pages or opening a fresh book straight from my $70 order from amazon.com. I find nothing appealing about staring at a screen or whatever. I think Kindles (or whatever they're called) are good for people who travel a lot because they don't have to carry several books with them (especially several hardcovers, ouch!)

I actually find it somewhat shocking to see older people and seniors reaching for digital books. But, just my opinion.

38auntmarge64
Jun 14, 2009, 10:31 am

>37 ray2009: I actually find it somewhat shocking to see older people and seniors reaching for digital books.

a) seniors are teens at heart. Literally. Looking in the mirror is a shock every time.
b) ebooks provide lightweight alternatives for arthritic and tired limbs
c) the variety of print sizes are a great boon for aging eyes.
d) we're old enough to know a good thing when we see it.

39beatlemoon
Jun 14, 2009, 11:40 am

I have to say, I'm quite shocked that the issue of ownership has yet to be mentioned in this thread. Physical issues of book vs. e-reader aside, there is also the ownership issue. It amazes me how many Kindle lovers never really ponder the fact that they really don't own those books. You can't loan them to others, or resell them; you cannot put them on other devices (iPhone excepted) unless you are a savvy enough hacker to strip off the DRM (which most Kindle users aren't). And if you get rid of your Kindle (which you just might when you see the slew of new devices coming out in the next year or so), you cannot take your Kindle books with you. They won't work on another device. Truly, your books belong to Amazon and you're just borrowing them. Which is a sad thing, as the file format, pricing, and device design wars are just beginning in the land of e-books. I expect things in e-book land to change greatly over the next ten years and sadly, I think the early adopters stand to get burned.

40auntmarge64
Jun 14, 2009, 1:43 pm

>39 beatlemoon:

It's true, but think of all the great reading getting done in the meantime.

41geneg
Jun 14, 2009, 2:25 pm

Yeah, my mirror has been on the fritz for well over twenty years now. It just doesn't reflect like it used to.

42CliffBurns
Jun 14, 2009, 3:23 pm

I know what you mean--it's like someone switched mine for one of those circus jobbies that distort body shapes, making me look shorter, stouter (and uglier).

What's up with that?

43beatlemoon
Editado: Jun 14, 2009, 4:39 pm

Wow, sorry, didn't mean to cause offense.

I just mentioned the topic because ownership and DRM is such a huge discussion among the members of the book industry - publishers, distributors, etc. - but I just don't hear readers talking about it nearly as much. Not until they've bought something only to discover the limitations on it and then being disappointed.

Ah well, apologies again.

44ReadStreetDave
Editado: Jun 14, 2009, 6:20 pm

> beatlemoon, I don't think you offended anyone. We're all just struck by the fact that we've grown old and crinkly, while we still feel young.
You've hit on one of the real shortcomings of e-books. I enjoy sharing a good book -- just last night I gave a friend a book that had been passed on to me by my dad. The issue seems even more pointed with Google's plan to archive books and sell people the opportunity to read them.

45Roseben031
Jun 14, 2009, 6:50 pm

For my personal reading, I have no interest at this time. Maybe if it were $50 and e-books were free with the purchase of the physical version, AND I traveled more so it was necessary, then maybe.

Where I think they'd be great if the price were right is for textbooks. I teach high school and on some days the kids who regularly study and do their homework are going home with half their body weight or more in a back pack. A book reader we could load with text books, novels for class study, etc. would open so many doors for us as teachers and would be great for the kids (the ones we could keep from losing theirs, the big drawback after price, in my opinion).

So I am excited at what I think the technology could do and be in my life and those I work with, but not for what it's being used and sold for now.

46CliffBurns
Jun 14, 2009, 8:35 pm

I don't like the DRM either and don't see how it can survive in the free-booting internet culture. It's like trying to stop the flow of water, something will always trickle through, breech the system, and then it all gives way.

47krazy4katz
Editado: Jun 14, 2009, 9:15 pm

I love my Kindle (version 1)! It has allowed me the freedom to read what I want when I want it. I have a wonderful cover that makes it feel very comfy and cosy for reading curled up in a big chair, in bed etc. I suppose the main RATIONAL argument against it right now is that it doesn't have the range of books that would be required by literary snobs. This will change. As for the idea that books are more environmentally friendly because they don't require a battery.... well, storage and delivery of books probably trumps that one. On the other hand, if you mostly buy your books from second hand stores, you are probably correct. My favorite book that I have read on my kindle so far is The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. My second favorite is Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela. My third is The Count of Monte Cristo. I love that they are all there in the same small kindle. k4k

48London_StJ
Editado: Jun 16, 2009, 8:29 am

#33 - "I understand the appeal of e-books for some folks: parents with toddlers" That's me!

My husband (a computer geek) bought me a Kindle 2 for my birthday, and I love it. We also have a 20-foot floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in our living room that is nearly at capacity.

I wouldn't have paid the money myself, but I was happy to accept the gift. I recently spent $10 on an ebook, but on a regular basis won't buy anything over $5-6 (which I still think is too high). I love that you can get copies of classics for free, or for less than $1. I keep copies of my favorites on there just to have them with me.

Having the Kindle hasn't kept me from purchasing books; I use the Kindle to read what I consider "junk" books, or books that don't seem promising, and likely wouldn't have purchased them before because I wouldn't want them displayed on my shelves. I still frequently buy classics and copies by favorite authors. For my personal habits, the Kindle is convenient and comfortable - my son can't run off with my book and lose my place, the screen really does read like paper, and I have a bookstore at my fingertips when I'm stranded somewhere.

I can't imagine using one in the classroom, though. I teach lit and comp at our local community college, and there's no way I would support my students using Kindles in place of actual books at this time. For one thing, citations become complicated, and for students that already have problems with basic MLA it's just not a good idea to try to "make it fit".

49emaestra
Jun 16, 2009, 3:52 pm

I tried to post this a while ago, but LT freaked out and wouldn't load. Anyway, trying again.

I think college would be the first place Kindle could be put to real use. I remember lugging massive books around campus and the backaches and exhaustion from doing so. Imagine how much cheaper buying textbooks could be if they worked a deal with the publishers. The highlighting, annotating, and bookmarking features, as well as dictionary and online encyclopedia access, make the Kindle a dream for literature study. My daughter will be entering college in fall 2010 and I would like this to be one more tool to help her succeed.

Personally, I would love to have a Kindle. My bookshelves are overflowing and my husband's tolerance is wearing thin. I don't imagine that I will ever stop buying books, but my wall space is already full of books.

50bobmcconnaughey
Editado: Jun 16, 2009, 4:42 pm

There does come a point when all the shelves are filled. Like many here, we have an awful lot of linear shelf space in a small house, and while the hundreds of overflow or never to be reread books have gone to the library book sales there's just not much more room. One reason, among several, that i use our local library a lot more these days than i might have 20 years ago. And it's not just our accretion - though Patty's family didn't have a substantial library, mine did, so there are a couple hundred books from that source (though my sister ended up w/ many more than my brother or I - and she had MUCH less space when we divvied up the biblio-inheritance; but Janet doesn't mind having books shelved 3 deep).

So sooner or later, probably later, i can imagine a kindle thingy showing up. Right now the book prices for kindle fmt looks more or less around the price of mass market paperbacks. And, at the moment, just looking at the SF selection, not all that much is available. Modern poetry is more or less absent - though new poetry is one format that i'd almost certainly keep in "classic" book format. Chapbooks are pretty thin, as a rule!

I defn agree that textbooks are an ideal place to start - esp if text book publishers and universities could agree on a pricing structure that brought texts back down to $20-$25 as opposed to $50 on up to totally absurd levels. I KNOW i'm not adjusting for constant dollars - but $100/semester was a pretty normal semester @ william and mary circa 1968 - unless you had the misfortune of being a poli-sci major in which case one might read 30+ books in some courses (and hassle w/ reserve reading). An e-reader would need to be pretty damn sturdy to survive in many a backpack - but the backpack would be a lot lighter.

Might be the case that something like a kindle would be something of a boon to self-publishing more or less in the way mp3s and the revolutionary ease in DIY recording technologies have given life to bands than would never have been signed to a major (or even specialty) label? Of course 21st century authors can't make money touring ala Dickens or Twain (i don't think, anyway; they depend upon sales almost totally. But maybe DIY publishing would allow the author to keep almost all the receipts? ). This is all off the top of the head speculation sans any knowledge of the workings of the publishing machine.

51CliffBurns
Jun 16, 2009, 6:28 pm

"There does come a point when all the shelves are filled."

Bob, I LIVE for that day...

52kswolff
Jun 16, 2009, 10:19 pm

When all the shelves are filled, you start double-stacking. That's what I do.

53ReadStreetDave
Jun 16, 2009, 10:57 pm

... or build an addition onto the house.

54CurrerBell
Jun 16, 2009, 11:00 pm

50> "Modern poetry is more or less absent - though new poetry is one format that i'd almost certainly keep in "classic" book format."

Poetry can be a problem for Kindle formatting. If the verse is laid out in such a way that a new line isn't necessarily left-justified, then you're probably going to have problems.

Even when every new line is left-justified, there's a problem with poetry given K's relatively small screen size. It's OK if you keep the font size fairly small, but if you like a larger font size for easier reading, then you'll get a single line of verse running onto two (or possibly even more) lines on the K screen.

There's a similar problem with plays, since dramatic dialogue involves such frequent line-breaks.

Generally, K formatting works best with prose.

The larger screen on the Kindle DK might help a bit with poetry and drama, although I personally like the current size of my K1 and K2 for their easier portability.

55bobmcconnaughey
Jun 16, 2009, 11:17 pm

i might double stack, left to my own devices - but there's no way in hell Patty would go along. And, in my heart..etc. (if anyone is old enough to remember the Goldwater campaign slogan..iirc).

We actually restored an old general store that is next to our house and, in addition to ping pong, excess artwork, my home gym, some of my parents' furniture there are 3 or four free standing bookcases. But even being 120 feet away means i'm a lot less likely to look for books there, rather in in our house. It IS a shame, in retrospect, that when we had the general store restored (ie raised up out of the clayey muck, insulated, electricity etc) we didn't have any bookshelves built in. The guy who built our house put in built ins everywhere - and then we added more. Of course as I've shrunk quite a bit over the years, the shelves which line the walls under the ceiling have become much harder to reach. I wouldn't have expected 3" to make such a difference.

And a serious problem w. double stacking (or triple like my sister) if one has a dust allergy is keeping dust a bay. Of course she's lived in New Orleans which is hotter and more humid than the Piedmont of North Carolina since 1977. And hell on books, even though she totally lucked out during Katrina.

56geneg
Editado: Jun 17, 2009, 10:01 am

If I had several thousand books and the shelves to keep them on, I would use tags and/or collections to pinpoint which shelf the book is supposed to be on. Alas, at something just under 1,000 books I don't have a problem finding a particular book.

Most of my shelves are currently double stacked.

57billymcbrie
Jun 17, 2009, 10:12 am

Not as they stand. The eInk technology is great, but who wants to lug another device around? I'd wait until netbooks (those mini-laptops) can utilise eInk, so you can use video and music and books in one device. But it would only be for textbooks, travel guides etc. No fiction, that'll be paper bound for years to come yet.

58bobmcconnaughey
Jun 17, 2009, 10:18 am

we have ours sorted roughly by genre. Non-fiction books are gradually acquiring Dewey decimal numbers to indicate place of book residence.

While many many books still need entering, we are trying to decide whether our grad. school geography texts can mostly be discarded. There ARE a few classics (Braudel's the Mediterranean and Wallerstein's 2 volume set on the Modern World-System. And the "high end" physical geography texts. But an awful lot of those shelves are expendable, i think.

59CliffBurns
Jun 17, 2009, 10:20 am

Bob, I'm impressed. You sort/stack using Dewey? High five, my man...

60theaelizabet
Jun 17, 2009, 10:53 am

Dewey? Egads, I'm impressed. I've only managed, so far, to sort my library into fiction/nonfiction/reference.

61jlelliott
Jun 17, 2009, 10:59 am

Nobody has mentioned it yet, but has anyone used any of the book reading apps on the iPhone? I download one (free!) and really enjoyed using it to read The Time Machine (also free!).The app seems to be quite well designed (you can bookmark pages, look up word definitions, change the background lighting and font size, etc) and it also makes it really easy to download any of the thousands of free books at Project Gutenberg and other related sites. There are several of this type of app in existence, and you can use some of them to read pdfs or DRM encoded ebooks.

I never thought I would like an e-reader type device, as I really really love physical books, but using the iPhone in this way is a quite convenient addition to my reading repertoire.

62CliffBurns
Jun 17, 2009, 11:56 am

I'm of mixed mind on e-Readers--not interested in them for my own use but since my stories, novels, essays are only available through my blog (or Scribd), I'm finding an increasing number of people are accessing them and reading them through devices like the Kindle and similar devices. It's obviously a potential audience I can't ignore: affluent, educated, looking for other venues for their reading. So I can't be TOO smarmy about e-Readers or I'll end up looking like a complete hypocrite.

63sollocks
Jun 17, 2009, 12:41 pm

Just wanted to let you all know that there is some new technology out. I think you'll really like it: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/9/

I can't read a book from a screen myself. Even though the kindle has a neat screen that looks like paper and doesn't hurt the eyes, reading in that format just disconnects me from the book for some reason. I find myself finding fault with the writing where there may be none. But it's a cool bit of technology, and I'll bet it is very convenient to be able to use the internet on the go in a format that isn't small enough to accidentally swallow, like a cell phone. I won't be worried unless they catch on enough to actually threaten the existence or future of paper books: then I'll join whichever organization plans to burn their factories down.

49> Electronic textbooks would be an enormous boon to students (who are always on the lookout for enormous boons), but I predict that the corporations who charged me 80 bucks per book, per semester, and every year a new edition, will never EVER release them in a cheaper format.

64inaudible
Jun 17, 2009, 12:49 pm

I used to work at a copy store. The smart students would bring in the shrink-wrapped spiral-bound text-books, take the binding off, photocopy the whole thing, have us rebind it and re-shrink-wrap it, then they'd return it to the bookstore within the time frame to get all their money back. Saved them a nice bundle of money as many of those "books" cost near $100!

65Medellia
Jun 17, 2009, 1:10 pm

#63: That cartoon reminds me of this medieval helpdesk video.

66sollocks
Editado: Jun 17, 2009, 1:20 pm

Ha! Oh, Norway.

67bobmcconnaughey
Jun 18, 2009, 2:12 am

well, i doubt i'd put the DD#s on, on my own. But Patty, enjoys doing that and hopes it cures me of my habit for "general area" shelving. If i know (or at least hope) a book is somewhere on a couple of specific shelves i'm fine with skimming the titles. But Patty would rather have specific locations as she'd rather go straight to the wanted volume. I DO appreciate the result however.

68ReadStreetDave
Jun 18, 2009, 10:47 am

>55 bobmcconnaughey: The restoration sounds great. It reminded me of the difference between the homes we've lived in. Our first house in Baltimore, built in late 1920's, had beautiful built-in shelves in the living room. The current house, built about 15 years ago, has no built-ins. I've place book cases in various rooms, but it's just not the same. Somewhere along the way, homebuilders sacrificed bookshelves for home theaters and other modernizations. Pity.

69RedRightHand94
Jun 18, 2009, 11:35 am

I hate E-reading because it discourages reading ordinary books, people are FAR too dependant on technololgy, we may as well turn books into little electrical screens.

70lilithcat
Jun 18, 2009, 11:46 am

> 64

That may be "smart", but it doesn't say much for their ethics. Or your store's.

71inaudible
Jun 18, 2009, 11:53 am

I don't shed tears for textbook publishers.

72krazy4katz
Editado: Jun 18, 2009, 1:02 pm

>69 RedRightHand94:: I understand the romantic aspect of reading an old book by firelight, but technology has brought a lot of benefit to many. For example, LibraryThing! How many of us would have this opportunity for discussions with diverse groups of people from all over the world without technology?

Of course, no one means to totally replace hard copy books, but many people do not have access to good bookstores. The ability to download a book is a blessing to them. I have read a number of old classics far more easily by downloading them (for free!) than going to the bookstore and getting new copies to overfill my bookshelves.

I think a positive way to look at it is that e-books encourage reading, rather than thinking that they discourage reading ordinary books.

k4k

73auntmarge64
Jun 18, 2009, 3:20 pm

>69 RedRightHand94: wrote:
I hate E-reading because it discourages reading ordinary books, people are FAR too dependant on technololgy, we may as well turn books into little electrical screens.

I wonder if there was someone who grieved for hand-copied books in the early days of the printing press....certainly there are those who see computers as detrimental to more traditional ways of communicating, writing and researching. Yet here we are, discussing this electronically.

One thing about ebook readers is the wealth of new authors able to get their work out to the wider public. And in my book (ahem), reading is what's important, not the format.

74ReadStreetDave
Jun 18, 2009, 4:00 pm

When I blogged about "10 reasons to Hate the Kindles," one topic that came up was the device's uselessness at book signings. Who's going to let an author -- even a famous one -- scribble all over their $350 e-reader?

Well, leave it to someone in New York -- where it's the local custom to deface buildings, subway cars, Broadway musicals and everything else with graffiti -- to prove me wrong. The New York Times notes that at a recent reading by David Sedaris at Manhattan's Strand bookstore, a man asked the author to autograph his Kindle. On the back, Sedaris, in mock horror, wrote, "This bespells doom.”

Indeed.

75auntmarge64
Jun 18, 2009, 7:26 pm

>74 ReadStreetDave:

Good point! Perhaps anyone attending a signing and wanting an autograph should take along a paper copy.

My Mom and I attended a talk by the Canadian painter Robert Bateman a few years ago and he autographed the glass on the print she purchased. I always thought that while it was a sweet gesture it was spectacularly impermanent and, in fact, the person who inherited the painting washed the words right off the glass (deliberately).

76holcombjmarie
Jun 19, 2009, 3:02 pm

Have we learned nothing from all of the famous library fires of the past? LOCKSS!!! (If you know that acronym, you get a cookie.) May I also cite the wall street debacle: the lesson again being, don't put your eggs in one basket.

So, obviously, I'm not a huge fan.
#48 I use the Kindle to read what I consider "junk" books, or books that don't seem promising, and likely wouldn't have purchased them before because I wouldn't want them displayed on my shelves."
Why don't you use the public library? Your tax dollars are supporting it, so why not use that instead of paying for books you probably won't read again?

77RedRightHand94
Jun 19, 2009, 5:55 pm

#73 I wonder if there was someone who grieved for hand-copied books in the early days of the printing press....certainly there are those who see computers as detrimental to more traditional ways of communicating, writing and researching. Yet here we are, discussing this electronically.

The printing press was kind of more like an invention to INTRODUCE reading to everybody, as before the printing press reading wasn't at all widespread, now books can be bought cheaply in any charity or book store, it seemse even a little lazy to sit and read them on computers and screen light can damage eyesight, sometimes very badly.

I see what you mean, however about us all discussing it electronically, however we are only reading and writing comments which isn't similar to reading an actual book on it.

And, a little bit is, (for me, at least) slightly to do with the format of the thing, I think real books have more character than electronic screens that can hurt your eyes anyway

78bobmcconnaughey
Jun 19, 2009, 7:12 pm

In re E-Readers - i assume you can alter the font size easily? I had my "good" reading eye wacked w/ a hand paddle (another swimmer) the other day, and i'm needing to use a much larger font than i generally use, to read stuff on line.

79krazy4katz
Jun 19, 2009, 7:19 pm

Yes, the kindle has 6 different font sizes. The Sony also has several, not sure how many. It is very useful to be able to change font size in dim light or when my eyes are tired. The new kindle (which I do not have) also allows you to change the number of lines per "page".

k4k

80CurrerBell
Jun 19, 2009, 7:35 pm

78> Yes, Bob, at least on Kindle. My K2 has six different font sizes, up to (I think I'm right on this) a maximum of 16pt. I think it's possible, though, for a publisher to create a larger-size font for Kindle because I've seen one book advertised as being specially designed for a maximum font-size of 20pt. K1 also has the ability to change font sizes, but I don't have my K1 right in front of me to check how many different font sizes K1 has, though I suspect it may be the same as K2.

Additionally, on K2 (but NOT on K1), there's an undocumented feature that allows you to change the line spacing by pressing (all three simultaneously) the ALT key, the SHIFT key, and a number key, with the amount of spacing being based on the number key pressed. When I say this is "undocumented" I mean it's a feature that doesn't appear (as far as I'm aware) in the official Amazon K2 User's Manual but is one of those tips passed around on K2 message boards.

Note, however, that this line-spacing feature may not work on all files, specifically, on the so-called "dreaded Topaz format" (which has file extensions of .azw1 or .tpz as opposed to the more conventional .azw or .mobi extensions).

81krazy4katz
Jun 19, 2009, 7:42 pm

Yeah, what CurrerBell says... ;-) k4k

82bobmcconnaughey
Jun 19, 2009, 9:36 pm

Thanks! i am defn. looking forward to a price drop. I can't imagine it won't happen pretty soon.

83CliffBurns
Editado: Jun 29, 2009, 10:50 am

Here's a piece for you Dickens fans. Reading the great Charlie D in 4 formats--including that old stand-by, y'know, the book thingee?

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i39/39b01601.htm

84AuntieCatherine
Jun 30, 2009, 11:28 am

I'd like to know how she gets her Penguin paperbacks to last 40 years, mine are disintegrating at that age, pages falling out, all brown and brittle.

85geneg
Jun 30, 2009, 1:54 pm

#83, If you are going to listen to a book, that's fine, just don't call it reading. Call it listening.

86geneg
Jun 30, 2009, 1:55 pm

I've had success with shellac, but if you aren't careful it can turn a good book into a mess.

87CurrerBell
Jun 30, 2009, 2:33 pm

83> I've found some quite old paperbacks that are in great condition. The pages are a bit yellow of course (what would you expect?), but they're otherwise great. A 1940 Penguin reprint of The Brontes Went to Woolworths. Also by Rachel Ferguson, her Charlotte Bronte play in the 1933 original (and probably only) "Contemporary British Dramatists" printing.

I've also got several paperback movie tie-ins (Tisha Sterling, Jane Fonda, Ann Sothern) in really nice condition too.

88AuntieCatherine
Jun 30, 2009, 5:41 pm

> 87. It's probably due to central heating, or not enough heating or too much reading or something, but I have 1940's paperbacks that look fine and then crack down the spine if you try and read them.

89vq5p9
Editado: Jul 4, 2009, 6:42 pm

90CurrerBell
Jul 4, 2009, 8:11 pm

89> If the "ads" are just suggestions for other books you might want to buy, and they're included in a "recommendations for further reading" section that could be clicked on from the table of contents, I'd actually be in favor of such "ads." (The freebie site Feedbooks|Mobile already does something like this.)

91auntmarge64
Jul 4, 2009, 10:13 pm

>90 CurrerBell:
Oh brother, just what I need: a longer TBR list!

92phonesystemseattle
Jul 23, 2009, 12:51 am

Mensagem removida.

93iansales
Jul 23, 2009, 3:55 am

Some e-readers I think may prove useful, but not the Kindle. Given that Amazon can delete books from tour Kindle, as and when they want, means I have no intention of every buying one. When I buy a paperback from a book shop, it's mine. I can subsequently do what I want with it. I do not expect someone from the book shop to break into my house to take it off my book shelves.

94auntmarge64
Jul 23, 2009, 10:00 am

>93 iansales:
Apparently the books were illegally uploaded by someone and Amazon was obligated by law to do whatever they could to retrieve them.

Yes, it is weird to know that something like that can be done, but it's just part of the experience, I guess. I certainly wouldn't deny myself a Kindle because of it. I've been thrilled with my Kindle, and I read 3 or 4 times as much as when I read only hard copies. No reason not to have both, is my philosophy, and as I've advocated for years, especially when it comes to kids (and now, joyfully, to adults), who cares what you read (or in what format) as long as you're reading!

>92 phonesystemseattle:
The screen is different from a computer screen. It's not backlit and can be read in full sun. Very easy on the eyes, and the font can be enlarged or reduced as desired.

95iansales
Jul 23, 2009, 10:27 am

Actually, they're obligated to withdraw the book from sale, but not to repossess all the copies they had already sold. Or are you suggesting sellers of paperbacks and hardbacks are obligated by law to visit the homes of everyone who purchased a book subsequently found to be illegal in order to demand its return?

Also, on this occasion it was because the books were illegally sold by Amazon. But if some nutjob pressure group succeeded in getting Amazon to withdraw sale of a book you'd bought because they found it "offensive". Remember the stink about the search rankings for gay and lesbian books being cocked up by Amazon last year?

96auntmarge64
Jul 23, 2009, 11:06 am

What can I say? I love my Kindle. I guess the glitches in the new format are still being hammered out.

97iansales
Jul 23, 2009, 12:02 pm

It's hardly a "glitch" if the supplier of your ebooks reserves the right to yank them back from you, whether you want them to or not.

98CliffBurns
Jul 23, 2009, 12:35 pm

It certainly sets a troubling precedent.

99beardo
Jul 23, 2009, 1:00 pm

There's a relevant ongoing thread over in the BookTalk group at the moment.

Several posts discuss the varied ways that you can lose access to your Kindle account and the ebooks you have already purchased.

Certainly not the kind of "glitch" I, as a consumer, am willing to tolerate.

The thread is titled "Amazon, censorship and the future of ebooks"

http://www.librarything.com/topic/63158

100CliffBurns
Jul 23, 2009, 1:59 pm

Hmmm...thanks for drawing our attention to that.

101krazy4katz
Jul 24, 2009, 5:12 pm

Jeff Bezos has posted an apology and says Amazon will learn from its mistakes. This is encouraging.

I am like auntmarge -- I simply love reading on my kindle. I could spend my time worrying about whether Amazon is going to remove an illegal book (while refunding my money) or I could just have fun and read. Any online store that sells you digital media and maintains a record of it (for your convenience -- in case you don't back it up) can do this, including B&N's new ebook store, Apple etc. I remember when Apple wouldn't allow you to redownload your music and people complained about that. Electronic media purchase rules are definitely a work in progress.

k4k

102CliffBurns
Jul 25, 2009, 9:56 am

Watch out for Apple's pending reading device (due out in 2010). Some reports are referring to it as a "Kindle-killer"...

103bobmcconnaughey
Jul 25, 2009, 11:12 am

just a "technical" question on behalf of a friend who goes to the beach as often as possible. How sturdy do the kindles seem to be? Do their screens scratch easily?

104geneg
Jul 25, 2009, 11:26 am

Do they float?

105CliffBurns
Editado: Jul 25, 2009, 11:28 am

Electrocute whole populations if you drop 'em in the water?

106TheLeMur
Jul 25, 2009, 11:54 am

I'd probably want a Kindle, or at least some kind of ereading device, (the new sony ones DO look nice...) because I just have so little room for new books. (I listed a whole pile on bookmooch recently just to gain the space.) I'll still buy paperbacks probably because I prefer having a physical book, but if I'm not sure about how good a book will be, or I'm taking a chance, I'd probably be more likely to buy a virtual copy.

However, I'm going to wait for a price drop. $300 is just too much. $150, that's more my price range. For ebooks, I'd probably pay about $2-$5 a book. Anything above $7 is just ridiculous.

So for now, I'm going to wait.

107BookMarkMe
Jul 25, 2009, 12:15 pm

I'm against, for when the next (insert despicable regime of choice) decides book burning is the order of the day, what a gooey mess it'll make ;-)

108Papiervisje
Jul 25, 2009, 12:39 pm

I am considering an e-reader, but certainly not a kindle. They are too expensive, the books are just on-loan for a ridiculous price, Amazon decides what you can read (see the discussion on gay searches) and if- for some reason- they pull a book from their sales list, they break into my computer and remove it ( I do NOT trust Bezos apology on this).

Other e-readers -at this moment- have technical difficulties: They break-up too easily (battery dead, screen breaks), they can't be read in full sunlight, they have problems with file formats and character fonts, their format is too small, etc.

If e-readers come in the $100 price range, have a clear screen (even in full sunlight), support most popular file formats and character fonts, have wireless access to newspapers and other magazines and do not break down when you drop them, then I most certainly want one. Book sources should be open format and not limited to 1 or 2 companies. I like the idea behind them, just not the present version.

109krazy4katz
Jul 25, 2009, 3:48 pm

>103 bobmcconnaughey:

I haven't taken mine to the beach. I would suggest a good cover for beach-like activities. For example, something like this, which you can read through: http://www.buymedge.com/products/kindle1-leisure.psp
Note that this is a kindle 1 accessory, so it would not be useful for the newer kindle 2. M-edge doesn't seem to have one yet for the newer kindle, but other companies probably do.

For just general reading outside, I don't worry about protecting the screen.

k4k

110PMcCullar
Jul 25, 2009, 3:57 pm

Your preference for media is all about when you grew up and what you are raised with. Al of us mid-twentieth-century kids were raised on paper, and it is what we treasure, but the now and future kids are being raised on pixels and megabits, and they will want their entire library at their fingertips wherever and whenever. And that is what they and we will have soon. I will always treasure the look, feel, and smell of paper and leather bound books, new and old, but I embrace the instant availability of data regardless of location.

111holcombjmarie
Jul 27, 2009, 2:56 pm

Did you folks hear about the Orwell books erased from Kindle-dom?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

112CurrerBell
Jul 27, 2009, 3:54 pm

#111> See posts #93 through #101 above.

113CliffBurns
Out 15, 2009, 9:55 pm

A good discussion on e-Readers and the brain. From N.Y. TIMES (and courtesy my tireless friend, Gord):

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/does-the-brain-like-e-books/

114Jargoneer
Editado: Out 16, 2009, 5:16 am

An E-Reader is a pointless device - they are overpriced, delivering a function other multi-functional devices can already perform. Readers would be better to wait to see what handhelds are delivered in the next 12 months - the Apple tablet (although this will usually come with Apple developing some "unique" format that users will have to pay more for - not that will stop users buying it: see all Apple products) and the Microsoft's Courier (looks brilliant, like a book, but will it actually work?).

Ebooks are definitely the future though - paper-based products won't disappear but they will become less prevalent, not unlike what is happening with CDs. This will happen because the big players want this to happen - the tech companies, the publishers, Amazon, and now, perhaps more importantly, Google - who plan to open their own bookstore, selling device-independent books (already one up on Amazon and the Kindle).

ps...e-books are probably better for the (independent) writer as well, it's much easier (and cheaper) to produce and sell an e-book and than POD book.

115krazy4katz
Out 16, 2009, 9:37 am

In the meantime, while others are waiting for the perfect device, I have read 50 books on a device that is easy on the eyes, fits in my purse, has a 1-2 week battery life and can be taken anywhere -- planes, doctor's offices, waiting in the car for my husband etc. -- and lets me download a book in the middle of the night when I can't sleep.

I am not arguing that you will save money buying one, but it is a wonderful companion. Someone has to buy the first ones or the future, improved iterations will not come. I also think a multifunctional device is not always the best answer.

I am also hopeful that publishers will be encouraged to sell more books that are out of print but not out of copyright.

k4k

116CliffBurns
Out 16, 2009, 10:17 am

I'm of two (or three) minds on e-readers. Of no interest to me as a reader but as a writer, as Jargoneer rightly points out, it gives me more of an opportunity to bypass traditional publishers and reach readers through different channels. I've had hundreds of hits on my site from those employing e-readers who are looking for material to download and read. Who am I to complain?

117ASparrow
Out 28, 2009, 9:54 am

Yes, but only when I travel. I spend a month in Africa every summer and I can't fill up my suitcase with books. One time I brought two novels with me and finished them both with weeks to go on my trip.

That's no longer a problem. I can't afford a Kindle or Nook, but I load up a Palm TX with some Project Gutenburg classics (e.g. Ulysses) and other stuff and I don't even need a book light.

118benjclark
Out 28, 2009, 11:18 am

This digital-only journal says no. Loudly.
http://www.evergreenreview.com/120/electronic-book-burning.html

119inaudible
Out 28, 2009, 11:27 am

Like any product, the book must run harder and faster in the marketplace or else fall and die. And the books are falling. Only the fittest now survive. While mid-list authors drop in the snow, blockbuster thrillers and middlebrow memoirs and diet books huff their way forward. Soon, though, they too will drop. The idea is for no one to be left standing. All physical books must go up the chimney stack. Such was the methodology of the SS who forced their prisoners to run naked races round and round the barracks yard in the Polish winter, a race that no one was meant to win.

The book is fast becoming the despised Jew of our culture. Der Jude is now Der Book. Hi-tech propogandists tell us that the book is a tree-murdering, space-devouring, inferior form of technology; that society would simply be better-off altogether if we euthanized it even as we begin to carry around, like good little Aryans, whole libraries in our pockets, downloaded on the Uber-Kindle.


This metaphor is ridiculous and disgusting.

Is the article satirical?

120iansales
Out 28, 2009, 11:34 am

That's definitely tasteless.

121benjclark
Out 28, 2009, 11:48 am

119> Satircal? I don't know, but something in me says no.

120>Tastless? Heartily agreed. Busting out the ol' Holocaust similes to get folks talking is pretty tired too. I'm distracted, not provoked.

122inaudible
Out 28, 2009, 12:08 pm

In addition to being tasteless (and "tasteless" is a huge an understatement; this guy has the gall to compare Jews murdered in the Shoah to consumer products), it is stupid. Books do not occupy the same place in pro-digitization ideology that Jews held and hold in anti-semitic ideology. There is no comparison.

This paragraph rings so hollow that it has to be satirical:

Not since the advent of Christianity has the world witnessed so sweeping a change in the very fabric of human existence.

Kindles are a bigger change than the rise of Islam, the invention of the printing press, the Protestant reformation, English civil war, and the Industrial Revolution? Really? I just picked those historical events at random.

Stupid stupid stupid. I hate e-books and all that shit, but this is a horrible article.

123geneg
Out 28, 2009, 12:57 pm

Were I to look for a sweeping change in the fabric of human existence, I don't think it would be e-readers. Television in combination with satellite technology, yes. E-books, no.

124Cole_Hendron
Out 28, 2009, 3:04 pm

I'm waiting for the Apple Tablet ;_0
However in the meanwhile I love audio books on my ipod.

125RosyLibrarian
Out 29, 2009, 4:38 pm

I've kicked the idea around of purchasing a Kindle (or it's equivalent - I'm not all that loyal to Amazon). For convenience sake it would be nice to throw a kindle in my purse and pull it out while traveling.

That aside, there seem to be too many reasons not to pick one up. Largely, I can't read for very long on a computer screen. One, it hurts my eyes. Two, I feel unconnected to the story. I'd rather hold a book in my hands. What would fill my bookshelves, nightstands and clutter up my house?

And then there is the adventure of finding a book. Friends of the library sales, used book store credit, libraries...I'd much rather spend the time browsing in the real world than searching through amazon.com.

126CaptainsGirl
Out 29, 2009, 5:25 pm

I have had a Kindle for two years. Reading it is not at all like reading a computer screen and it doesn't hurt the eyes.

I read a third of my books on the Kindle, another third using books on tape and the last third are 'tanglible' mode. (aka real books)

I love bookstores and real books, but I also love my Kindle. I can take several books with me at a time, search for new books using the Kindle itself (not the computer) and it has some other amazing features.

Don't discard the Kindle without sitting down with out and giving it a try.

127CaptainsGirl
Out 29, 2009, 5:30 pm

I read my Kindle nearly every day and enjoy it very much. A story is a story...I find it very odd that people who have never seen or used a Kindle call it horrible, awful, etc.

Can't imagine what they would have said about a typewriter if they had been using a pencil all of their lives. And a telephone. My Goodness! The devil must be hidden in the new-fangled contraption.

The Kindle is a marvelous tool and thank you to everyone who worked to make it happen. And thank you to Amazon.

128krazy4katz
Out 29, 2009, 5:33 pm

I love my kindle, but I have never warmed up to the telephone. Yuck. k4k

129RosyLibrarian
Out 29, 2009, 5:48 pm

127) I wouldn't think to call a Kindle "horrible" as I have never used one before. I also wouldn't knock it for it's "new fangled-ness", just it's...lack of aesthetic appeal. It is encouraging to know that they are made not to tire out your eyes. I wonder how they do that...

128) Me either. I do love a good text message though.

130CliffBurns
Out 29, 2009, 5:51 pm

It will be interesting to see what happens when the price of these devices plummet (as with videotape machines, DVD players and computers) so they become universally affordable and accessible.

131Irieisa
Out 29, 2009, 5:59 pm

>130 CliffBurns: - Only then would I consider purchasing one.

132Sutpen
Out 31, 2009, 12:08 am

129:
From what I understand, the screen is composed of tiny, pixel-esque pockets that contain what they call "ink." When the screen renders a page of text, or an image, what's happening is the "ink" pockets are being selectively electrified, causing some of them to darken, forming words and pictures. That's why, in addition to not causing eyestrain, e-readers that use this technology have such long battery lives. The only time the device needs to use power is to change what's on the screen. Once the text is up, and the appropriate pockets are darkened, they can remain there indefinitely without drawing any power from the battery.

133HannaRose
Out 31, 2009, 3:04 am

Urgh, I am so torn on this subject!!!

As a child of the "technilogical revolution", I feel that I should embrace new technology, particularly if I get to read books while doing so. But I must admit, I am a literary snob. I am very hesitant about things like the "Kindle". I mean, there is just no competition in my view, to actually holding a book, flipping the pages, and hearing the soft sound of pages shuffling. Sure, a Kindle can be more convienent. Easier to store in a pocket or a purse than a book. Less weight. But it's more likely to be stolen than an actual book (not to mention FAR more expensive than any hardcover I've ever come across). Furthermore, eBooks can be just as expensive as some paperbacks. You have to download them too-and if you have dial up internet like I do, it takes FOREVER. And there's something about not having to put it on a bookcase-is it just me or does anyone else get a little satisfaction and pride after reading a book, and putting it up on a bookcase? Plus, if you lose your Kindle, you lose all of the books on it-compared to just losing 1 book at a time.

I suppose I will get a Kindle eventually, even though I shall hate part of myself for "giving in", because hey, I DO get to read books that way. But would I pay $300 bucks for it? No way!! Maybe $50. Maybe.

134mathgirl40
Out 31, 2009, 7:45 am

I don't have a e-reader yet, but I would love to get one. Our family travels frequently, and books take up a good portion of our precious luggage space. When I taught computer science, I hated asking my students to buy $100+ books that I knew would be obsolete in a few years. Now there are electronic versions that cost half the price. I still have shelves full of old technical books that no one wants.

Sure, I enjoy the tactile pleasures associated with having a real book in my hands, but to me, reading is essentially about the author's words and what my imagination does with them.

I recently figured out how to borrow e-audiobooks from my local library and download them onto my iPod. Our library has e-books too, but the selection is poor, for now.

135AuntieCatherine
Out 31, 2009, 11:38 am

I've often thought that the niche for e-readers is the "disposable" book - the ones you read on holiday or on the bus to work. Entertainment you know you'll never want to read again, the sort of book you end up leaving in the Charity Bookshop because, although you enjoyed it, you don't need it cluttering the place up.

Mind you, that column about all the US bookshops closing was rather alarming - has anyone else over there noticed the same trend?

136Sutpen
Out 31, 2009, 12:19 pm

I've seen a few news stories about it over the past few years, but there are still plenty of independent bookstores around, at least in New York City, where I am. None of the ones I frequent have closed.

137RosyLibrarian
Nov 1, 2009, 1:03 pm

132 Thank you for that explanation. Pretty genius, I have to admit.

@133 I could not agree more with your reasoning. I feel the same way being a child of "technological revolution" and yet...I'm also a child of holding a book in my hand. And like you, when they are cheaper (or maybe given as a Christmas present) a little part of me will want to resist, while the other part will want to play with the new "toy".

138MmeRose
Nov 1, 2009, 1:23 pm

Nothing will ever replace holding a real book, but I've gotten too old and disabled to lug several books with me when I travel. Instead of an e-reader, however, I purchased a mini-laptop. I use Adobe Digital Editions to read free e-books downloaded from my fabulous library. And the laptop provides all the functions I want in one device.

139CurrerBell
Nov 1, 2009, 2:09 pm

#138> How much battery life do you get from your mini-laptop? I can go several days without a recharge on my Kindle (though I generally plug it in every night), or at least I can if I don't use the wireless connection. I've got a netbook, which I do use for its portability as a word-processor, but it really doesn't get more than a few hours of use before I need to recharge.

140Osbaldistone
Nov 1, 2009, 4:52 pm

A Kindle-like reader may have its place in my life someday, but I'll respond to the OP question with my post from another group in answer to the question "What are you reading now".

I am reading Moby Dick for the first time (it's been on my reading list for 20 years!). I sit in my reading chair every evening and read 3 or 4 chapters of the delicious Folio Society limited edition. The quality and quantity of Rockwell Kent's illustrations have by this point (about 1/4 through the book) become interwoven into the narrative. The smell and feel of the binding and the paper, the fine typeset and images (large and small), and the text are, even this early on, combining to make this an exquisite read.

Os.

141CliffBurns
Nov 1, 2009, 5:04 pm

Ya got a point, as usual, Ozzie...

142MmeRose
Nov 1, 2009, 7:46 pm

I read for most of a 6 hour flight. It was fully charged and I used it only for the e-book, no internet or other things.
As I mentioned, I read e-books when traveling. At some point, I might get an e-reader, but for now this suits me.

143Osbaldistone
Nov 2, 2009, 11:44 am

>140 Osbaldistone: Guess I didn't answer the OP, actually.

I suppose US$200 would be a price-point for me to acquire a good 'Kindle-like' reader. I will use it as a backup when I travel (I always fear finishing my book and being left with airline magazines to read), and to store PDFs of business documents I'm to have with me to cut down on the weight. It is easier on the eyes than my laptop screen. But I don't see it replacing board and paper books (see 140) ever. And, with over 3,000 works in my library now, if the world goes nuts and stops publishing books in print, I can probably feed on my library until I shuffle off this mortal coil.

For an e-book download - probably no good price. I'd be happy capturing Project Gutenberg books, converting them and uploading them. Now Project Gutenberg I can get behind. Preserving texts of more obscure works to be sure they don't disappear. That's worth sending them a few bucks occasionally. For me, downloading their works would just be a backup for regular books, so probably mostly collections of short stories and e-books of books already in my library.

Os.

144beatlemoon
Nov 2, 2009, 12:24 pm

For what it's worth, I know I am in a minority here, but I've seen and tried out Kindle 1, Kindle 2, and one of the Sony readers (forget which model) and all of them hurt my eyes.

(However, judging by the outraged and disbelieving responses I get from others in regard to that claim, I will have to suppose that the problem is me and I just have really terrible eyes.)

145RosyLibrarian
Nov 2, 2009, 3:34 pm

132

I just wanted to say that I went to Target and looked for myself at the Kindle's screen. You weren't kidding about it looking like ink. I have to admit I was impressed...it might get added to my Christmas wish list.

(Though I still love my books and would not trade them.)

146Sutpen
Nov 4, 2009, 10:59 am

144:
Hm. I looked into the Kindle pretty extensively about six months ago, when I was thinking about getting one (ended up deciding against it, and then got one as a gift, haha). Honestly, of the various complaints I've seen around forums, eyestrain has never come up. The only explanation I can think of is that maybe the text size on the readers you tried out was too small (it's adjustable though).

145:
Yeah, I agree, the technology is pretty captivating. Like I said, I decided not to buy one myself--they're still a little too expensive, and I wanted to wait and see how the competition stacked up, and if any big improvements popped up on the horizon. I certainly don't regret having gotten one as a gift, though. It's a fun alternative to paper sometimes.

147CliffBurns
Jan 10, 2010, 9:54 am

An article that insists books, physical books, are here to stay:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8447996.stm

148kswolff
Jan 10, 2010, 1:04 pm

I bet physical books are here to stay. "Print is dead" is a hollow phrase like "We'll win the War by Christmas," "Compassionate Conservatism," and "Hope is on the way." I see 2 sources for demand in physical books:

1. The Older Generation that still prefers things in its physical form vs. getting it via the Interwebs. The same people that devour and discard Patterson and the usual gang of bestseller idiots. Old people and people with no taste / critical or cognitive functions make up the majority of the market share.

2. Connoisseurs who cherish books as "artifacts." I enjoy my nice hardcovers and my pulp fiction, both for what's inside and the cover art. There's also sensual satisfaction in holding and smelling a book vs. holding a glorified toaster (aka Kindle, etc.).

149CliffBurns
Jan 10, 2010, 1:17 pm

It may be that, like the old days, physical books will increasingly become expensive artifacts, limited editions, almost curios. Seen as a bit decadent when your e-reader is so small and portable and allows access to every book every printed.

Like a vinyl album today--only favored by audiophiles and people who can blow more than twice the money on a record as they would a downloadable CD...

150krazy4katz
Editado: Jan 10, 2010, 2:29 pm

148:

Glorified toaster?! Hmmmph!! Is that the way to speak of a fine piece of 21st century technology that can bring the wisdom of the ages (for free) to you in the middle of the night? OK, the pulp fiction too...

You can buy a cover for the kindle and make it feel and smell like anything your heart desires -- mold, cockroaches, smelly cheese etc.

;-)

k4k

151Osbaldistone
Editado: Jan 10, 2010, 2:46 pm

>150 krazy4katz:
I have hundreds of books (physical, cloth and paper books) in my library right now. A couple of hundred of them are now 20 to 30 years old (many are over 100 yrs old), and yet they still work just as well as they did when they were brand new. And I've never had to replace the batteries, charge them up, or pay for an upgrade. How many of you actually expect to be able to say the same thing about your Kindle, other electronic file reading device, or even e-book file, in 20 years?

I think there's a place for e-books, especially for the more ephemeral reading material and as a backup to the physical book (nice to cut down the weight of my carry-on). So, I loaded the free Microsoft Reader onto my PC years ago, and often load it with a e-book version of the physical book I'm reading (or the book that's out of print and can't be found on the used book market). I even bought an e-book version from Amazon of a contemporary book to load onto my MS Reader. Guess what? About a year later, when I upgraded my PC, the file wouldn't load because it couldn't be verified as a legal copy. I went to Amazon, and they said the time for a free re-downloading had expired and that I'd just have to buy it again!

And then there's the recent case of Amazon removing e-books from Kindles without the owners permission (because Amazon had screwed up the copyrights).

All that is to say that neither the electronic device, nor the e-book file can be counted on to be in working condition 10 or 20 or 30 years from now. But 30 year old books witll still function like new for my grandchildren (or someone's grandchildren), 50 or even 100 years from now.

Yes, publishers of physical books may fade from the scene, but it won't be because physical books are not a valid and valuable form of preserving and dessiminating the written word. It will simply be because we lost site of the inherent value of form and/or because the market discovered that continually changing the technology allows them to repeatedly sell us the same product over and over (as the fashion industry discovered decades ago).

Os.

152littlegeek
Jan 10, 2010, 6:23 pm

But 30 year old books witll still function like new for my grandchildren (or someone's grandchildren), 50 or even 100 years from now.

Only the hardbacks. I recently loaned my Kindle to my husband for a week, and began a reread of The Brothers Karamazov from my 25-year-old Bantam paperback. I barely made it back to the Kindle in time before the binding gave up the ghost completely. It's broken in about 5 places and many of the pages are no longer attached. Plus, the paper has gone decidedly yellow and smells funny.

It's been weird transitioning to a different translator, but that has also been instructive.

153Osbaldistone
Jan 10, 2010, 8:36 pm

>152 littlegeek:
That's usually not so much because it's paperback, but poor quality (acidic) paper (hence yellow and smelly) and poor quality production. In general, in the US, if a softcover book states that the paper is pH or acid neutral, the book is generally better made as well, and the book (and paper) should last for decades if cared for and properly shelved. You can usually check the quality of the paper by scanning the copyright page. Of course, if they've used acidic paper, they don't say so, if they do use pH neutral paper, they usually brag about it.

Having said this, I will almost always purchase the hardcover (unless poorly made) over a paperback, as they do hold up better over the years.

Os.

154littlegeek
Jan 11, 2010, 12:45 am

#153 25 years technically is decades. Back then, they didn't use ph neutral paper, and by the time I was ready for a reread, the book was toast.

But I really love reading it for free and with nice big type on my Kindle. Project Gutenberg is the best thing ever.

155K.J.
Editado: Jan 11, 2010, 12:26 pm

When I was just a lad, I met a charming older woman (25) in a bookstore, and received an education not available on Kindle. When I traveled, as a young man, I used to read an Agatha Christie paperback between LA and New York, and when exiting the plane, I would offer it to the stewardesses who were on layover. This practice resulted in some interesting dates. So, I would ask, how would these wonderful events come about with Kindle, instead of real books?

Technology is separating us from each other.

(bloody typos)

156littlegeek
Jan 11, 2010, 12:43 pm

Loaning or giving away books is something I miss, however, I would say I have met more people in airports or DMV lines who asked me about my Kindle than who started up a conversation about the book I was reading.

Technology does not separate us, that's just an excuse.

157technodiabla
Jan 11, 2010, 3:59 pm

I am not interested in e-books. I love my books. That said I do think they have a place for students who lug around tons of books that they are mostly not even interested in-- so for textbooks and students maybe, but those days are over for me.

If I were in interested I wouldn't pay more than $100 for a reader and $5 for an e-book.

158Sutpen
Jan 11, 2010, 4:40 pm

"I do think they have a place for students who lug around tons of books that they are mostly not even interested in"

*ahem* Or, for that matter, dirt-poor grads living in tiny apartments without the room for a ton of books--even ones they're interested in.

159iansales
Jan 12, 2010, 4:34 am

These shelves would look a bit empty if I had a Kindle...

160CliffBurns
Jan 12, 2010, 8:44 am

That's a mighty impressive collection.

(Mopping up his keyboard, wiping his chin...)

161iansales
Jan 12, 2010, 9:08 am

That's only half of the alphabet. I still have L - Z to do yet. But I don't have enough shelves, so I'll be doubling up.

Then there are the non-fiction books. And the paperbacks. And the space books, the aeroplane books, the graphic novels, the reference books...

162K.J.
Jan 12, 2010, 5:35 pm

156> My point about technology is in reference to the fact that there is no need to visit a bookstore to purchase a book, when one can download it from the internet. A Kindle also removes the ability for the purchaser to share a book with a stranger or friend, by passing it on, which many readers do with paperbacks.

163littlegeek
Jan 12, 2010, 7:01 pm

Let's see, I wonder if I can think of a way that technology has enhanced my ability to connect with other readers.....um, maybe librarything?!!!

I have met many wonderful people through technology, and then met them in meat space for actual face to face. Again, it's not the technology that separates us. It's just as easy to go into a bookstore and not say anything to anyone as it is to start up a conversation with someone online about a subject you both enjoy. Technology in itself does not stop us from connecting, and it can enhance it in certain ways, like across distance.

But I do miss lending.

164Sutpen
Editado: Jan 12, 2010, 7:22 pm

163:
Ha, yeah, I hate people talking to me when I'm walking around in a bookstore. And I think I could count on one hand the number of times I've lent a book to someone. I just don't really have many friends who are interested in literature. And those who are generally don't actually read that much. Too many distractions.

165K.J.
Editado: Jan 13, 2010, 10:57 am

162> Let's see, I wonder if I can think of a way that technology has enhanced my ability to connect with other readers.....um, maybe librarything?!!!

You did take my comment out of context, as I was referring to the direct human interaction that was part of the experiences I shared.

All one has to do is look at the expanding waistlines of America's youth to get a sense of how technology has idled a generation that should be outdoors riding bikes, playing baseball, finding tadpoles in the stream, etc., etc., etc. Technology has isolated people, and your example is proof of this: LT is not face-to-face contact with humanity.

166kswolff
Jan 13, 2010, 11:40 am

Reminds me of an exchange from Freaks and Geeks:

Nick: What did people use to do before there was pot?

Ken: I don't know ... relate to one another?

167littlegeek
Jan 13, 2010, 2:57 pm

#165 Face to face is nice, I agree. When I pointed out that I have met several of my LT friends in "meat space," that's what I was talking about. And again, I have met more people online and subsequently face to face than I have just walking around a bookstore.

There have always been sedentary distractions (including reading books); that doesn't mean we can't use some discipline to get up and interact with other people and nature. "Don't blame the technology for your own choices" was the only point I was making.

168geneg
Jan 13, 2010, 3:08 pm

"Meat space"? Another unpleasant sounding euphemism for real life. Sounds like a butcher shop. Anyone still wondering why Americans are so crude? How does one think of such a thing? Humans as great slabs of meat. No wonder the concept of humanity is falling by the wayside. "Meat space"?

169kswolff
Jan 13, 2010, 3:20 pm

Here's what Jack Kerouac said about Naked Lunch:

"The title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."

Considering America's long history of genocide, slavery, oppression, and other unpleasantness, the phrase "meat space" neither shocks or offends me. It does seem to represent academic-speak in a desperate attempt to seem relevant to the kids these days with their iPods and hippidy hop music.

I admire your idealistic vision of humanity, but it has been falling steady, rapidly, and entertainingly to the way side the invention of written language.

George Carlin has this little gem:

"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little."

170littlegeek
Jan 13, 2010, 3:38 pm

Jeeze, "meat space" is just a very tiny joke, not "humanity falling by the wayside." Oh, right, this is the snob thread, I forgot, I'm supposed to be world weary and tut-tut all day.

171kswolff
Jan 13, 2010, 3:45 pm

(in his best Bertie Wooster voice) "Oh, I say!"

**monocle falls off into his glass of VSOP cognac**

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZb1SkQkt3g

172littlegeek
Jan 13, 2010, 3:50 pm

Ooh, I love Hugh & Stephen and PG Wodehouse for that matter. Michael Stipe, however, is "teh suk" as the kids say.

173geneg
Jan 13, 2010, 4:03 pm

While Karl makes light of my concern here, I am serious. When I started in the work force I had to check in with the Personnel department. When I left that company I had to check out through the Human Rsources department. when I worked for a company with a Personnel department there was a sense throughout the entire corporation that we were a family accomplishing shared goals and with an understanding that management can manage all day long but without someone to manage who believed in the mission nothing would get done. When I left the feel had changed from one of cooperation to achieve goals to an adversarial relationship between my salary and the bonuses the HMFICs wanted to give themselves. That experience represents to me the difference between a corporation that looks after its "persons" rather than its resources. There was a subtle but pervasive change in how employers and employees relate to one another in the thirty years since we all became human resources. Widgets are resources, people are not.

I understand the idea of meat space being the real world, meat as opposed to some cyberspace concept. It's just that when I see something that, no matter how jokingly it is put, increases the daylight between real, flesh and blood people with real skin in the game of life and our concept of "people" as being someone, not me, out there, I get fidgety. When people are reduced to concepts they can be parsed into groups, they can be separated from basic human elements, morality being one. Now that you've reduced people to a concept you can turn them into the other and you can hate the other and feel good about it. In the meantime we have stopped talking about people and are now talking about the concept. The people, not easily fitting any category, are reduced to concepts and groups that can be parsed and used like tokens to represent people that don't really exist, but need to exist to make some kind of point.

I just get hinkey when I see things that over time reduce humans in yet one more way to objects to be manipulated.

174kswolff
Jan 13, 2010, 4:52 pm

Then you probably shouldn't read Foucault or Alan Greenspan

I prefer big, anonymous bureaucracies to smaller, "family" companies. Then again, my experience with small companies -- besides the constant drama, gossip, and unnecessary stress -- has always ended up with them giving me the Fredo Treatment (as in Corleone). I'm not going so far to say "Trust no one," but experience has taught me that corporations, religion, and government all seem built on a firm foundation of bullshit.

175inaudible
Jan 13, 2010, 5:00 pm

It is very hard for me not to post "No!" in this thread every day I see it.

176littlegeek
Jan 13, 2010, 5:31 pm

hmmm, gene, your passion is commendable but I'm not buying the idea that the nomenclature for the department that adminsters my benefits package is what is causing the "HMFICs" (not a loaded term at all!) to take such high bonuses and ignore the rank & file. I'd put it down more to the death of labor unions, but that's just me.

increases the daylight between real, flesh and blood people with real skin in the game of life and our concept of "people" as being someone, not me, out there,

Really, using the term "meat space" does that? Because I certainly think as a flesh & blood and skin-having person, I'm as much made out of meat as anyone else. It seems totally egalitarian to me.

I guess it's all in how you frame it.

177CliffBurns
Jan 13, 2010, 6:13 pm

"Meat theater" is what puppeteers call live actors...

178K.J.
Jan 13, 2010, 8:40 pm

177> Truly? That's a new one for me.

179guido47
Editado: Jan 13, 2010, 9:19 pm

Re. #171 link, is that a young Steven Fry?

Sorry, should have read #172 as well.
I have just ordered the "complete series: Jeeves & Wooster".

Thanks

180K.J.
Jan 13, 2010, 9:41 pm

179> It is likely that you will thoroughly enjoy the set. It is one of the best series ever produced, and the pairing of Fry and Laurie is pure magic.

181mathgirl40
Jan 14, 2010, 7:55 am

My husband gave me an eReader for Christmas (purchased mostly with "points" we earned at the wine store -- embarrassing how much money we spend there). I love it. I still read real books at home, but I keep the eReader in my purse and whip it out every chance I get when I'm out.

As for how much I'd be willing to pay for an eBook ... well, I'm not sure I'm willing to pay any money for an eBook, at least not in the near future. I have several free ARCs that I got from ER and Member Giveaway and the other books I have on my eReader are all classics from Project Gutenberg.

182Osbaldistone
Jan 14, 2010, 8:26 am

A peak at what's coming. If you're not interested in the details of the main topic and the background stuff, there's a summary of other upcoming e-reader/laptop screens on pages 3-4 of the article.

Os.

183CliffBurns
Jan 14, 2010, 9:10 am

IN-teresting. Those sales figures are telling--ebook receipts go from $7 million to $115 million in five years. That's an amazing leap...

184CliffBurns
Jan 23, 2010, 10:32 am

"Read an E-Book Week" is coming up in March and I thought I'd post a link to a site which is offering tons of free fiction from its partners, all of it available for downloading (full disclosure, I'm one of those partners, along with Cory Doctorow and a whole host of others):

http://www.ebookweek.com

186Jargoneer
Jan 25, 2010, 4:31 am

>185 beardo: - in the long-run slates may be the future (if people can live with virtual keyboards and losing half their screen) but $1000 for something that looks like a souped-up iPhone or crippled laptop doesn't seem great value to me. And if Apple go down the normal route they will attempt to tie readers in with proprietary technology.

187kswolff
Editado: Jan 25, 2010, 12:32 pm

I wonder if people had these same kinds of conversations when Gutenberg launched the revolution of "print" (vs. the tradition of scrivening, aka copying by hand)?

I don't see the "Death of Print", but I also don't see the total annihilation of the "printed page" like in Dune and Star Trek The pivotal factor would be the global supply of trees and the publishing industry's acceptance of more sustainable printing technology, since paper making, ink making, etc. poison the environment. Then again, Kindles and such are made of petroleum derivatives (aka "plastics") and unleash yet another Pandora's Box of supply and demand issues.

188littlegeek
Jan 25, 2010, 12:37 pm

Shorter is always better on screen, and so expect shorter books.

Really? I find that longer works are much easier to read on my Kindle. Not only can I enlarge the type, but I can actually lift the thing.

People who write think pieces about digital media might just want to sample them first.

189mathgirl40
Jan 25, 2010, 12:53 pm

188: I too was surprised by that comment from the article. I just finished War and Peace. I started with a printed book, but I read the last quarter with my newly acquired eReader. I found the eReader experience more enjoyable, for exactly the reasons you give.

190CurrerBell
Jan 25, 2010, 1:20 pm

189>> Which edition of War and Peace was it? I just got the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation. The footnotes are very nicely hyperlink-formatted (a rarity in ePublishing), but there are also endnotes that are very inconvenient to access on my Kindle. (In fairness to the ePublisher, these are endnotes in the Pevear-Volokhonsky treeware publication, so you've got to flip back and forth in the book to read them.)

Heck of it is, it's the endnotes that I'd really like convenient access to. The endnotes cover historical references and the like, while the footnotes merely translate French dialogue, and I know French well enough that I don't need translations.

191mathgirl40
Jan 25, 2010, 1:57 pm

190: I had the Maude translation. There were no endnotes, at least not in the file that I had downloaded. There were footnotes, all collected at the end of the file, and there were hyperlinks included within the text.

With my eReader, I can set bookmarks, but it's still awkward to flip back and forth. I have the older version, though. It may be easier to do this with the newer device.

193littlegeek
Jan 26, 2010, 1:27 pm

#192 Perhaps if readers were more confident that the majority of the money went to the author, people would feel more guilty about depriving the author of payment.

You can say that again. The only thing keeping me paying for Kindle books is the thought that the author might get a share, however slight. But I refuse to pay more than $9.99 for licensed content. There's no way a Kindle book should cost more than a QPB.

194CliffBurns
Jan 26, 2010, 2:14 pm

Fascinating article on the book pirate. Advancing similar arguments as were put forward by music pirates, a similar rationale. Copyright and ownership in the Cyber Age--believe me, I give a lot of thought to this and so do many, many other scribblers who barely scrape by as it is and need every revenue source they can get...

195Jargoneer
Jan 26, 2010, 4:09 pm

192-4 - Let's be honest here, despite that report downloading of books is still a minor drain to the publishing industry. Compare it to the used book market (the second biggest bookseller in the UK is now Oxfam) and things like Bookmooch (what's the difference between that and an illegal download), none of that money ever gets back to the publisher or the writer and that is a huge market.

196CliffBurns
Jan 26, 2010, 4:43 pm

It's a minor drain now but groups like the SF writers and others are voicing concerns along the same lines, ownership, compensation, credit. If the e-readers really drop in price, and I assume they will just as VCR's, DVD players, BluRay, etc. did, then three-to-five years from now this conversation could have a decidedly different tenor...

197littlegeek
Jan 27, 2010, 1:51 pm

I'm amused that the new Apple device turns out to be little more than a bigger iPhone. But apparently, Apple is negotiating with publishers to supply books at at higher pricepoint than amazon. What is Jobs thinking? It would def increase the likelihood of more people like the gentleman in #192.

198ReadStreetDave
Jan 27, 2010, 3:43 pm

One great thing about the iPad is that is can be a platform for the next generation of e-books -- thise that are not simply porint books on a monitor. With audio and video capabilities, and a large screen, you can imagine a Louis Armstrong biography with clip of his performance, a Willie Mays bio with video of his famous over-the-shoulder catch, etc.

199Jargoneer
Jan 27, 2010, 5:13 pm

>198 ReadStreetDave: - not quite yet, from what I've read it can't run multiple applications. Plus as I stated above Apple are attempting to tie in the user with iBooks, $8-15 a book doesn't seem much of a bargain either. It's basically just a giant iPhone at the moment.

I think it's a case of wait and see for what Google and HP can deliver.

200littlegeek
Jan 27, 2010, 5:36 pm

Well, and also there's no flash player so most of those vids aren't happening yet. During the demo, the NYT had a big fat empty box in the middle of the page.

For us novel readers there's no value add, especially if they're going to up the price of books.

201CliffBurns
Jan 27, 2010, 5:50 pm

The Apple tablet retails for $499--less than what I expected but still about eight times more than I'd ever pay for an e-Reader.

When these gadgets come down to $50 to $100, things will take a turn for the interesting...

202ezappas
Jan 27, 2010, 6:38 pm

I am a librarian and hate the idea of losing physical books but my kids bought me a Kindle for Christmas and I have to say I like it. It's lighter than many books and easy to hold and read. I wouldn't want an IPad because I don't need it to do anything but provide reading material. If I wanted a book to keep I would purchase the book but I have no room to store more physical books and for the amount of reading I do (2-3 books a week) the 7-10 dollar price for titles is great.

203Jargoneer
Jan 28, 2010, 3:23 am

>201 CliffBurns: - the $499 price is a bit misleading. For that you only get 16GB which in today's terms isn't a lot of storage; plus if you want full access to the internet (not tethered to wi-fi spots) you have to pay another $130 for 3G compatibility and then a monthly fee, probably around $40-50.

204Sutpen
Jan 28, 2010, 3:46 am

I think the iPad (why oh why did they not go with "iSlate"?) looks awesome. Apple aesthetics are just beyond reproach (in my opinion, at least), and the iPad continues the Jobs march onward. Everything it does sounds great, but I have reservations about the book-reading part of it. A friend whose company works with Apple told me he had heard that the iPad's screen would have two settings: one backlit, as you'd expect from an iPhone derivative, and one meant to be used in "e-reader mode," which would lack the backlighting. I thought this sounded pretty unbelievable at the time, but if any company had the resources to develop such impressive technology, I figured it was Apple. Well, I guess if they were ever looking into that option, they abandoned the idea (not all that surprising). But reading for long periods of time on a backlit screen gives you headaches. It's just a fact. I have a Kindle, and one of the things I like best about it is that it is not backlit. What do you all think? Are people just going to accept headaches as a reading-related affliction if the publishing industry embraces electronic reading?

205webgeekstress
Jan 28, 2010, 5:04 am

I received a Kindle for my birthday. Yes, I'm fond of it, but realistically, if I were living at home, I probably wouldn't bother. However, I'm living a nomadic life, and reducing the heft and weight of my belongings is a primary consideration these days.

Pros:
Even with a cover, it's barely larger than a single trade paperback, and much lighter, but can contain dozens, hundreds, even, of books. This makes it easy to read and even easier to pack!
Books in the public domain are available cheaply, or even for free. (I have the complete Sherlock Holmes, and Shakespeare, and Mark Twain, and ...)
E-books are (mostly) cheaper than their paper counterparts.

Cons:
Maps and other illustrations are useless, even with the zoom feature. (Not an issue if you mainly read fiction, but I'm a history buff.)
If you want to double check something you read a "few pages" back, you can't just flip back easily, and you have to remember to set a bookmark to get back to where you were.
I also have the bad habit of paging ahead in books, which can't be easily done with an e-book, but maybe that should count as a good thing!
I seem to find more typos and layout errors in these e-books than their paper equivalents. This is especially a problem with those cheap (or free) public domain editions.
While most recently published books are available in e-format, not all are, and older books are decidedly hit and miss.
I really just miss the tactile nature of paper books. I miss holding them, and lining them up on my bookshelves and looking at them. I even miss bringing the books I've read and don't want to keep down to the local used bookstore to trade 'em in or sell them. And I have nothing to register on bookcrossing.com now!
While publishers are complaining about prices, I think that e-books are overpriced, considering that the publishers are spared paper and material and shipping costs and that at the end of the book, I don't have anything that I can then sell or pass on to a friend.
Nonetheless, they are cheaper than their paper counterparts, and without shipping costs to consider, I'm finding it far too easy to justify going on buying sprees!

206gonzobrarian
Jan 29, 2010, 10:49 am

As an academic librarian, I see a definite use for ebooks with regard to student learning. Especially for lit majors, students can store the classics on their device for exponentially less than succumbing to the blatant racketeering in which that colleges and universities are willingly participating in with their bookstores. It would also provide a helpful tool with technical manuals for science students in the field,lab or whatever. This, I think, is where the iPad will make its biggest gains initially.

That being said, it seems clear that the hype around ebooks/ereaders is downplayed by the trend that free stuff sells best, which leads me to believe that people aren't necessarily shopping for the Kindle as they are for the free downloads.

Ereaders and their content seem to be a good option for the reader who reads a lot of content and travels frequently, but I suspect it definitely won't be a killer of the printed format.

207CurrerBell
Editado: Jan 29, 2010, 12:45 pm

206>>> ". . . the hype around ebooks/ereaders is downplayed by the trend that free stuff sells best, which leads me to believe that people aren't necessarily shopping for the Kindle as they are for the free downloads."

Well, of course if you give it away for free, people tend to download it. I generally do (unless it's the kind of porn that I wouldn't want found on my machine in case the FBI calls on me). Some of this stuff is junk, and I just delete it from my Kindle hard-drive, although it remains available to me in perpetuity in my Kindle account on the Amazon server. But I don't think people are paying $250 or more for a Kindle just to download freebie junk.

Also, I'd be interested in just how many of these freebies are come-ons for other books by the same author. How many, for example, are first-in-a-series and the freebie is intended to get you hooked on the series? You know, I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd ever read one of those "Amish harlequin romances" (as I'll call them for want of a better word), but The Shunning by Beverly Lewis was available as a freebie, I downloaded it and started reading it, and dang it if the thingy ain't half that bad! I don't say I'm necessarily going to get the other two books in her Heritage of Lancaster County series, or read any of her other series or non-series "Amish romances," but this freebie wasn't a bad come-on.

(Oh, yeah, and then there's the freebies of Terri Blackstock's Cape Refuge series. They're some kind of "Christian mysteries" or "Christian thrillers" or some such, and I downloaded a couple of them as freebies too. Definitely not my kind of book, I don't think, but again, they were free, and who knows what a come-on might lead to?)

Also, a lot of the freebies tend to be public domain stuff, and so are a lot of the very low priced books, but they don't cost these publishers like MobiReference anything in royalties and as long as they're formatted half-way decently it's convenient to have the complete works of the Brontes, the complete George Eliot, etc., to carry around with me.

Amazon can sell even less than half of the total downloads for more than freebie or 99-cent type prices and still make a substantial profit on the more expensive stuff.

But I do agree with you, gonzo that eReaders "definitely won't be the killer of the printed format," at least not in any reasonably foreseeable future. I've got the Brontes on Kindle, but I've also got a 1922 six-volume edition with 60 color illustrations by Edmund Dulac, and I've got multiple editions of Jane Eyre (different illustrators) as well as the Norton Criticals of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. And I've got the "honorary Bronte" (Elizabeth Gaskell) on Kindle, but I've also got my Folio Society editions of Gaskell, the Norton Critical of North and South, and so forth.

Give some thought to what I've noted in that previous paragraph and consider whether one market that eReaders might cut into rather substantially is the market for cheap paperbacks. I tend not to buy paperbacks very much at all any more unless it's something like a Norton Critical or a Cambridge Companion or some other specialty publishers (like, say, Virago) or it's something that just isn't available in hardcover, especially a genuine "antique" like Rachel Ferguson's Charlotte Bronte: A Play in Three Acts. (ETA: That touchstone links to an Ernest Benn hardcover. I'll have to get a separate listing posted one of these days for my softcover copy, which, I might add, cost me close to a hundred bucks in very-fine condition.)

208gonzobrarian
Jan 29, 2010, 3:10 pm

CurrerBell, I think we're in agreement here. It merely seems to me that Ereader providers are capitalizing on the iTunes effect, whereby publishers are scrambling to make sense of authorship and royalty challenges in a "new" format. I think the sentiment surrounding the demise of print journalism is what companies like Amazon are benefiting from. Because more and more papers are going online and figuring out ways to charge their customers, there is a worry, however justified or otherwise, that the same will happen to books, especially in this era of downsizing. From Amazon's point of view this is as good a time as any to start hyping the hell out of ebooks.

Yes, one potential positive for ebooks you alluded to would be the increased dissemination of works by aspiring authors. Indeed, there would be a lot of crap to sift through, but there may also be a handful of worthy authors finally getting the attention they deserve after continual denials by the traditional process.

Honestly, I'm just not really drawn to ebooks or their readers. I love Amazon, but what sporadic purchases I make from the site are usually just paperbacks.

209littlegeek
Jan 29, 2010, 5:46 pm

I've never downloaded any of those free books. Why would they give it away unless it was crap?

OTOH, Project Gutenberg + Kindle is the best bargain around.

210CliffBurns
Jan 29, 2010, 6:29 pm

I allow people to download my books and stories for free as an inducement to look for (and buy) my physical books.

I have 25 years worth of accumulated tales, poems, non-fiction, radio plays, etc., and I'm glad to post it on my site and give that stuff a kind of second life.

But, yes, there are a lot of amateur/wannabe writers dumping all sorts of embarrassing, terrible shit on the web. One must be discriminating...

211littlegeek
Jan 31, 2010, 11:41 pm

In other news, amazon caved to MacMillan/Apple and will allow the publisher to dictate the retail price point. All this means is I wait, like I used to do, for the price to come down. It was nice for a year or so to get brand newly published works for a reasonable price, but there's so much out there worth reading. I don't absolutely need to read something the minute it comes out.

212Sutpen
Jan 31, 2010, 11:43 pm

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about that bit of news. On the one hand, Amazon really shouldn't have enough leverage over publishers to dictate prices. On the other hand, publishers charge too much. It's a means/ends thing, I guess.

213littlegeek
Fev 1, 2010, 12:04 am

amazon is a retailer. Since when do distributors have the right to dictate retail prices? If amazon wants to take a loss in order to build up a market for the Kindle, the publishers should welcome it, not get in amazon's way.

They're really just in Steve Jobs' pocket, as he has decided he doesn't want to take a loss on the iPad books. He doesn't want amazon undercutting his price. How he got MacMillan to be the heavy for him in this is anybody's guess, but it should be illegal.

i smell more stupidity and possible lawsuits on the way. And piracy. I'll just read classics until it all blows over.

214Sutpen
Fev 1, 2010, 12:09 am

I don't like the prices either, but we're talking e-books here. Amazon isn't buying inventory from publishers the way they do with regular print stuff. So it's not just a matter of Amazon taking a loss, it's (from a certain point of view) the publishers taking a loss too.

215littlegeek
Fev 1, 2010, 12:34 am

Both the reailer and the wholesaler have less overhead with ebooks. How much less, none of us consumers really know. But we can assume that without shipping, cost of raw materials, wherehousing, possible unsold copies, etc. it's pretty significant.

Why would the publisher (wholesaler) take a loss in all this? Since his overhead is way lower, he's going to be able to lower prices and still make a killing. The retailer, amazon, needs to build up the market since he's also charged with selling the one piece of hardware in the chain, the Kindle. If amazon wants to price the books insanely low or take a loss in order to get lots of Kindles out there, it makes perfect business sense to do it. For MacMillan to interfere with this marketing scheme by dictating amazon's pricing is stupid. Unless they're making a backroom deal with Jobs, it makes no business sense.

216Sutpen
Fev 1, 2010, 12:49 am

No, it make perfect sense. This is the beginning of a potentially huge new branch of the publishing industry, and precedent is big when it comes to consumer satisfaction. Publishers want to maximize their profits, and they (plausibly) think that they can nudge the price up from $10. I was misusing the term "loss" earlier. What I really meant was that they would be settling for less.

217Jargoneer
Fev 1, 2010, 5:29 am

At present Apple appear to be the good guys to the publishers but they should be wary that those white hats are really white - the music industry found itself with little room to manoeuvre when Apple demanded change.

I understand why publishers want higher prices - they increase profitability and maintain the two (electronic/paper) income streams. However, looking at this thread the biggest barrier to entry to the electronic market is cost - the significant cost of an ereader and the cost of an individual book. The problem with an electronic document is that the user perceives it as being less than a physical book therefore they should pay less.

The other problem that publishers have is that the product remains the same - with music, what has happened is that consumers have cut back on buying albums but singles (single tracks) are selling better than ever. (Last year was a record year for single sales in the UK - including the sixties when they were the dominant form). Mp3 lends itself well to this model. It is difficult to see how publishers can effectively provide something different - theoretically they could sell individual stories, or serialised novels, or, and this may be the most realistic model, enhanced novels (i.e., with interactive notes, author interviews, etc). But the success of any of these would probably require a change in consumer mentality, which may not be easy to engineer.

219iansales
Fev 1, 2010, 9:32 am

Andrew Wheeler provides a better and more accurate take here.

220CliffBurns
Fev 1, 2010, 10:01 am

Good alternative take on the issue. Comparing Amazon to WalMart is not a compliment, at least where I live. WalMart is a behemoth and a bully, their corporate mentality positively ruthless. Macmillan can't win alone, you'd have to get all the publishers acting en masse and since that's unlikely, I predict Macmillan will cave in a few weeks, if not sooner...

221gonzobrarian
Fev 1, 2010, 10:25 am

217: "It is difficult to see how publishers can effectively provide something different - theoretically they could sell individual stories, or serialised novels, or, and this may be the most realistic model, enhanced novels (i.e., with interactive notes, author interviews, etc)."

For the individual consumer it see this a difficult issue as well. I rarely watch any of the special features found on dvds so this will be a tough sell for me even for books.

As for selling individual stories, I think that it could definitely work in the academic arena, especially where course packets are concerned. Cheaper for students, less waste of paper, more competition among providers, it seems a no-brainer. A good test market before determining the general public's proclivities.

As for Wheeler's entry, one sentence struck me as strange: "Come to think of it, the social web is entirely made up of middlemen, and they've been the biggest recent successes."

The social web, for me, is entirely made of consumers. Publishers don't do a good enough job of reaching directly to the consumers (especially online), rather than through ads, which I think is a reason they're scrambling to understand the nature of this jackpot they never thought they'd be in.

222littlegeek
Fev 1, 2010, 11:20 am

As a Kindle user, I've been enjoying buying first edition books for reasonable prices. But now that the prices are rising, I'll go back to waiting for the price to drop, just like I used to wait for the paperbacks.

I'm looking forward to the day the market is full of non-proprietary eReaders and we can all just buy straight from the publisher, discount house, or author. amazon is just trying to lock in some loyal customers before that happens.

223iansales
Fev 1, 2010, 11:25 am

You've not been buying those ebooks, you're renting them. Amazon reserve the right to remove them from your Kindle.

224Sutpen
Fev 1, 2010, 11:45 am

223:
That's theoretically true, but if Amazon actually started doing that regularly, there would be a huge outcry and nobody would support the Kindle anymore. So I don't think it's much of a risk.

225littlegeek
Fev 1, 2010, 11:45 am

That's fine with me, because I rarely re-read a book. Usually, I loan it to other people or sell it to a used book store when I'm done. This is another reason why consumers believe that ebooks should be cheaper.

I'm like most people in that I find hardbacks more difficult to read from. Since I've gotten a Kindle, I don't anticipate ever buying a hardback again. That may be the real thing that publishers are afraid of.

226kathyceo
Fev 1, 2010, 11:49 am

Well, I wasn't sure I could every switch from holding and/or owning a book, to reading a screen. I love books, I love seeing books, having book shelves. On the other hand, recently I began to review my some 40 years of saving books, and noticed that many of my very favorite books were missing...having loved them so that I lend them to folks, wanting them to enjoy as I have. Between the prospect of down sizing, and realizing that I generally end up with the books that a) aren't my favorites, b) that I probably won't read again, then why cart them around.

To my surprise, I received a Kindle for Christmas this year. I was hesitant, but suddenly found I carried it everywhere. I have several books at once! I can travel without carrying a breifcase to hold all my reading material!

As to the cost of books, friends with Kindles have already recommended books that I have purchased, yet previously, we would have lent them to one another, so the author may benefit from the increased sales. Either way, I have adjusted to the e-reader much more easily than I anticipated!

227beardo
Editado: Fev 1, 2010, 12:03 pm

#220

Amazon blinked first...

http://www.amazon.com/tag/kindle/forum/ref=cm_cd_tfp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&am...

There's also an interesting thread over at the Book Talk group - Macmillan vs. Amazon

228CliffBurns
Fev 1, 2010, 12:27 pm

Hmmm...interesting. Something happened behind the scenes; other publishers communicating their displeasure with Amazon? The Apple threat having an effect? Stay tuned...

229Papiervisje
Fev 1, 2010, 1:41 pm

#225: But that is just the problem with Amazon (and Apple) and their eBooks. You are not allowed to loan them to others. You are not allowed to sell them. You are not even allowed to put them on a next generation Kindle. What is more, if Amazon decides to remove the book from their selling list, they have and keep the right to remove it from your Kindle (and give your money back).
I like the technology, but I hate the dependency they put me on. It is the same business model heroine dealers use.
I am still waiting for a good cheap open source model without all the DRM limitations.

230littlegeek
Fev 1, 2010, 2:22 pm

You are not even allowed to put them on a next generation Kindle.

Where did you get this idea? I had a Kindle 1, and all the books I bought back then can still be viewed on my K2.

I don't like the dependency either, but honestly, you can get ebooks in a variety of formats, many of which can either be read directly or freely converted to Kindle format. I have yet to come across an ebook that I can't read on my Kindle.

Now if there are ebooks that are published only in Kindle format, that other ereaders can't read, that would be wrong.

231littlegeek
Fev 1, 2010, 2:24 pm

Oh, and btw, the DRMs are dictated by the publishers, not amazon. Lots of Kindle books do not have DRMs.

232benjclark
Fev 1, 2010, 10:31 pm

If it's a book still under copyright, the digital rights just haven't caught up. Wait for the author's lawyers and/or agent to get involved.

(Also waiting for an open source e-reader. It'd be nice not to carry another data providing crack dealer in my pocket. It's getting crowded in there.)

233beardo
Editado: Fev 8, 2010, 1:14 pm

I wonder if this will convince some to make the change...

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article7...

In a nutshell: "More than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the British Library’s collection are to be made available for free downloads by the public from this spring."

That's more than Gutenberg isn't it?

234geneg
Fev 8, 2010, 1:55 pm

65,000 is an interesting number. Reminds me of the olden golden days of DP when 65,000 represented a nice even number achievable in sixteen bits. The maximum number of items that can be addressed in a sixteen bit register is 65,536, or 32k. if you don't need a sign or some other mathematical notation. This is what makes a 64 bit OS so much more powerful. It can directly address many, many more items.

235kathyceo
Mar 10, 2010, 6:57 pm

My sister and I decided that we would just trade Kindles now and then and read one another's books! We'll see if we ever really do it!

236bkhl
Mar 10, 2010, 8:30 pm

I've read a few books from Project Gutenberg on my iPhone. First with the free Stanza app, which is alright, later shelling out for the Eucalyptus app, which is excellent.

For books I actually need to pay for, I will probably prefer real books for a long while, for the usual reasons. I can lend them to anyone, make notes in them, and just look contently at them adorning my home.

237mathgirl40
Mar 24, 2010, 2:52 pm

For those of you who said you'd buy an e-reader if the price were to drop significantly. that time is coming soon. Kobo just announced it will sell its e-reader for 150 USD.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/03/24/kobo-ebook-reader-indigo.html

238tori_alexander
Mar 29, 2010, 5:53 pm

I usually buy used paperbacks at about $2-$7 each and postage is $4. So as long as the ebook is under $10, I'll probably buy it instead of the paperback. I have a Kindle (it was a gift), but if I had an iPod touch or iPhone, I'd be fine with that too. Ebooks will be good for authors (I think) because authors don't get a cut from used books sales. I've blogged on that topic:
http://torialexander.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/the-eternal-return/

239titusalone
Mar 30, 2010, 10:08 am

Engaging article...it is vaguely disturbing that its author fails to distinguish between 'psych' and 'psyche' though

240kswolff
Abr 14, 2010, 4:10 pm

An ode to books as physical objects, focusing on the hardcovers of William Vollmann:

http://quarterlyconversation.com/constant/books-as-objects-complete-vollmann

241CliffBurns
Abr 14, 2010, 6:17 pm

Book lovers...it's just an excuse to indulge in obsessive compulsive behavior. Look at Ian, with his complete collection of DUNE novels. Sad, really...

242kswolff
Abr 14, 2010, 7:16 pm

241: Isn't Librarything responsible for enabling our obsessive compulsive behaviors? Hell, my Wishlist grows by the day.

243CliffBurns
Abr 14, 2010, 8:00 pm

Yeah, hanging around with other addicts isn't exactly a wise lifestyle choice.

244iansales
Abr 15, 2010, 2:52 am

Pfft. It's better than collecting guns like you folks do over the other side of the Pond.

245littlegeek
Abr 15, 2010, 10:52 am

#244 It's my Gawd-given right as a 'Merican!

I confess I really feel at times that I don't belong on LT because I'm only interested in content. I could give up all my physical books and be quite happy, as long as there were a way to consume the text. I know, I'm some kind of weirdo. Whether or not I "own" some dead trees is irrelevant to me.

246CliffBurns
Abr 15, 2010, 11:09 am

I'm a gun nut, Ian, so you're barking up the wrong tree. I'm a Leftie, a tree-hugger...and some of the happiest hours I ever spent were at a gun show in Montana, surveying the wares and trying not to drool. Why should the government and police be the only ones allowed to be armed? That seems like a license for tyranny to me...

247krazy4katz
Abr 15, 2010, 11:15 am

#244:

I think everyone should own at least one gun, but no one should own bullets. The bullets are really the problem.

So "Content is King" doesn't work for most of you, eh? I agree with littlegeek. The more books I can have in a small space (e.g. ebook reader), the happier I am. There is a program on hoarding on TV right now - they show people who hoard and how they fix their problems. This is where we would be with books in my house if I didn't have an e-reader.

k4k

248CliffBurns
Abr 15, 2010, 11:18 am

I saw that "hoarding" series the last time we had access to cable TV and I was riveted. The psychology in the various cases, the interplay between the principals...great viewing.

249PensiveCat
Abr 15, 2010, 11:38 am

248:

We had upstairs neighbors with a serious hoarding problem in the 1990s. Once they moved out, it took two dumpsters full of their stuff before I was allowed to take a peek inside the apartment. Even then there was only a tunnel of clear space to walk through. All I could see was newspapers everywhere. It seems newsprint is a common problem for hoarders. Anyway, it sobered me up a bit, and though I also have had trouble getting rid of magazines and books, the image of that apartment keeps me in check. That was a good TV show, too.

250iansales
Abr 15, 2010, 11:40 am

I always used to keep copies of the magazines I bought. A couple of weeks before I left the UAE in 2002, I threw them all away. But the laundries there use magazine pages to fold shirts and T-shirts around after they've been ironed.

I started getting my magazines back page by page...

251shikari
Editado: Abr 17, 2010, 3:27 pm

Oh, God, give me a good e-reader! Look, I love paper books, but I travel. When Lord Macaulay travelled to India in 1842, he read on the voyage "Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, Don Quixote ... all the seventy volumes of Voltaire" and once in India read in his first thirteen months "Aeschylus twice, Sophocles twice, Euripides once, Pindar twice, Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius, Quintus Calaber, Theocritus twice, Herodotus, Thucydides, almost all Xenophon's works, almost all Plato, Aristotle's Politics, a good deal of his Organon, besides dipping else-where, the whole of Plutarch's Lives, about half of Lucian, two or three books of Athenaeus, Plautus twice, Terence twice, Lucretius twice, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Lucan, Statius, Silius Italicus, Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Sallust, Caesar, and lastly Cicero. I have indeed still a little of Cicero left." (Letters III, 159-60) Could I possibly carry that sort of volume of books with me when I travel? If only!

As an active traveller - and, indeed, a seaman by profession - my laptop is my library, though I might have 15 kg (2 stone) of books on board as well. I have the Perseus Digital Library on my laptop as well as dictionaries (modern and ancient languges, the OCD and the Encyclopaedia of Islam) and a vast collection of PDF papers from academic journals. Also a host of older literature from Archive.com and other sources. Dissertations too. Books I absolutely need for current research I scan to PDF too. But I hate reading from laptop. Yes, I need an e-reader - currently I print too much out when I don't really need to. I will probably get an iPad - in six months, when they've ironed out any issues. They already have Liddell and Scott, Lewis and Short and Bosworth/Toller apps. Hope they do a Perseus app too!

252Texasbooks
Abr 15, 2010, 12:00 pm

I have an iPad and I love it. I will continue to buy physical books and ebooks.

253shikari
Abr 15, 2010, 12:09 pm

#252: What's it like for PDFs?

254AuntieCatherine
Abr 17, 2010, 1:08 pm

I saw a friend's Sony E-Reader once and what put me off was the slowness of the page turning. So little text is shown on each page, and I read so very fast, the appreciable wait before the page turned was too annoying to contemplate.

What's the page turn like on the Kindle?

255CurrerBell
Abr 17, 2010, 3:17 pm

I don't know how the Kindle compares with Sony, but I know that on-line reviews have criticized the B&N Nook in comparison with the Kindle, noting that the Kindle has substantially better page-turning than the Nook. The same might be true as between Kindle and Sony.

I just know, as a fairly early Kindler, I've never had any problem with page-turning and I have both a K1 and a K2 (but no K-DX).

I will say, though, that I've recently found my K2 freezing up more frequently, forcing me to do more frequent re-starts. I'm wondering if this is because I've got too much on my K2 internal memory. The problem is, K2 eliminated the K1's SD-card slot while increasing the K2's internal memory, but I'd personally rather have a small internal memory supplemented by a multi-gig SD-card that I can take in and out of the machine. I'm hoping Amazon restores the SD-card slot on the K3 because I think it might make for better performance.

Anyway, I personally have never had any problem with page-turning on my Kindles and Kindle (mainly because of the free internet connection) is the only eReader for me.

256littlegeek
Abr 17, 2010, 4:08 pm

I have no problem with the page turn on my Kindle. At first it was a bit of an adjustment as to when to hit the button, but it's no different from learning when to grab the next page in a paper book.

As for memory, I keep most of my books on my mac, no worries. I never used the SD-card for my K1, why do you need it when you have a computer? In fact, the only books I download directly are the ones I buy from amazon. Everything else comes to the mac first and then I transfer it when I'm ready to read it and delete it from the Kindle when I'm done. I also have my conversion tools on here (I use caliber and Mobi2Kindle) in case they are needed. I have never met an ebook I couldn't read on my Kindle. And my K2 has never frozen up.

257CliffBurns
Abr 20, 2010, 8:46 pm

Ken Auletta in the NEW YORKER--how the iPad could save the publishing world. Maybe:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_auletta?currentPage=...

(Another nugget from Gord.)

258kswolff
Jun 8, 2010, 6:02 pm

259littlegeek
Jun 8, 2010, 6:31 pm

#258 To paraphrase an Adam Savage T-shirt: I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT SHE'S TALKING ABOUT.

261littlegeek
Jun 21, 2010, 10:57 pm

It won't matter unless they lower the price of the books. Right now on amazon, you can often get new hardcovers at a lower price than the ebook. That's just stupid.

262bobmcconnaughey
Jun 23, 2010, 8:35 am

The only ebook reader i've seen was my nephew's B&N Nook. Pat was about to be shipped out to Afghanistan and as he's mostly interested in old, make that very old, public domain stuff - Homer, Aristophanes, Thucydides - he settled on the Nook because he thought there was much more material available. 2X what was available for the Kindle and far more than the iPad (his view - not owning anything...yet I haven't bothered checking). Pat DID get some newer stuff - Paul Auster, Virginia Woolf - after asking friends and acquaintances for suggestions. But as he and most of them are at or grads of St. John's - "the great books school" the suggestions weren't esp. "modern" for the most part.

B&N didn't make it esp. clear how to give a "virtual" gift card for Nook material which is what we gave Pat for graduation, but the gift ended up working fine.

The Nook's resolution seemed fine, B&W only, but i didn't really play with it much. I guess my curiosity is piqued mostly because the Nook never seems mentioned in these discussions.

263littlegeek
Jun 23, 2010, 11:36 am

If it's public domain he's reading, it doesn't matter which reader you get. And you don't have to buy books from amazon for Kindle, B&N for Nook, etc. Converters exist and they work just fine.

264bobmcconnaughey
Jun 23, 2010, 2:24 pm

he and I both know that..Pat was saying that in the general fields that he's interested in that there is much more available for the Nook than for the other e-readers. Do the converters run on whatever the e-readers OS happen to be (guessing versions of linux, but i haven't checked) or do you need a pc of some type? I'm assuming you can set them all up as external hard drives?

The delivery of e-books over the cell phone network would be problematic for as as our house has been described as an inhabited Faraday box (it's made up of layers of steel doors, except for the greenhouse on the South side which is conveniently exposed should the nuclear power plant ~10 miles SE of us go haywire). But no one gets cell phone reception inside our house - you have to go onto the front porch or, sometimes, the greenhouse has OK reception.

(much of our life at work is spent going from SAS to Stata to SPSS to ASCII and back)

265CliffBurns
Editado: Jun 23, 2010, 4:31 pm

Great post, Bob. Your joint sounds fascinating.

266littlegeek
Jun 23, 2010, 9:41 pm

But all the old public domain stuff is already on the interwebs on various sites, like Project Gutenberg, or library sites. There's no need to ever go to amazon to get public domain stuff for the Kindle, I usually get them from Project Gutenberg. I'm not sure how the Nook works, but why can't you just get them from one of those sites?

The Kindle has a regular web browser, you can go to any website you want to download stuff, but if it's not immediately readable on my Kindle, I download it to my mac, run the converter software, and upload it.

As for downloading books via cell phone, aren't there aps for all the various readers now for cell phones and iPads?

267CurrerBell
Jun 23, 2010, 10:41 pm

@266 >> There's no need to ever go to amazon to get public domain stuff for the Kindle, I usually get them from Project Gutenberg.
True, although for public domain I prefer Feedbooks|Mobile over Gutenberg because the formatting tends to be better. The Feedbooks inventory, though, isn't anywhere near as large. And it can be convenient to pay a couple bucks and get an "omnibus" volume (the "complete" Brontes, Dickens, Shaw, or whatever) at a fairly low price from some Amazon seller, although the need for this is reduced now that the K2.5 software upgrade allows us to put stuff together in Collections.

268bobmcconnaughey
Jun 24, 2010, 10:57 am

Sure - i know Pat got lots of stuff via Pj Gutenberg; when he was demoing the nook, patty wanted a copy of Dumas' the three muskateers and all sorts of editions from different sources, pay a bit for some, lots of free ones from different places showed up. Though i just got a hard copy from the p'boro library for her.

I doubt that Patty's minimalist cell could download anything...but i was curious about how the e-readers themselves download. My brother lives @ a location where getting any sort of true internet access would still be more expensive than he'd care to pay for, but they still have decent cell phone coverage and can download books via that network to e-book readers. I've been idly wondering after the first discussion about e-book readers as to the mechanism of book distribution. At first i assumed one went from source (amazon, B&N, project gutenberg) to pc to reader - but that's clearly not the case, at least for the most part. Ummm i've never sent a text message nor sent/received a photo over a cell phone - but judging from the charges on our son's phone which we still subsidize - texting costs something. Is there a surcharge for downloading book texts? They come in some compressed format i assume that the e-readers' software decompresses?

269RosyLibrarian
Jun 24, 2010, 12:21 pm

I'm not sure how the Nook works, but why can't you just get them from one of those sites?

I own a Nook and I download a lot of things from Gutenberg in the epub format if available, but the Nook does pdfs and everything else too. This is the first e-reader I've had, so I can't help too much with comparisons, but I have been enjoying my Nook. If anyone is thinking of buying one feel free to leave me a comment. :)

270CurrerBell
Editado: Jun 24, 2010, 12:54 pm

268 >> Downloading a book to Kindle is free. Any cost is absorbed in the price of the book. And if you download the book from a freebie source like Feedbooks|Mobile, the download is still free. Amazon does charge you a small fee if you eMail them a file for conversion and retransmission to your Kindle. I did this a couple months ago with an HTML of Mimsy Were the Borogroves and it cost me fifteen cents.

Actually, I could have converted that HTML file to MOBI format myself, using a free utility called MobiPocket Creator, and then transferred the MOBI from my PC to Kindle by USB cable, which is what I'd normally do, but I'd never used Amazon's own conversion service before and I was curious to see how well it worked. The result wasn't as well formatted as I could have done myself but it's still quite readable.

I rarely have to format anything with MobiPocket Creator, though, because there's just so much out there freebie already.

271littlegeek
Jun 24, 2010, 2:32 pm

Yes, Kindles do read lots of formats, including pdfs. I do find that when I use my converter (I use Calibre), it's cleaner than when I don't bother, plus I can add the metadata, etc. There's also a tool to strip out the DRM if you buy another proprietary format, although I confess I haven't found the need to do it. I have gotten a few titles from a bootleg site, although it is often a poor scan job, you get what you pay for, I guess.

272emaestra
Jul 9, 2010, 10:01 pm

I just took a look at Feedbooks and saw a familiar name - Ian Sales - on the first page of the "browse books" section. Downloaded one to check out your style, Ian.

273iansales
Jul 10, 2010, 5:43 am

I hope you enjoy it. I put my stories on there so they'd get a wider readership than just the magazines which originally published them. Incidentally, which one did you download? Weirdly, the one I consider the least good of the four is the one that's had the most downloads...

274emaestra
Jul 10, 2010, 1:01 pm

It is called The Amber Room. Truthfully, I picked it completely randomly. I haven't had a chance yet to look at it.

275iansales
Jul 13, 2010, 7:05 am

How did you get on with it?

276EricCGibson
Jul 14, 2010, 6:19 am

Got the iPad recently. I love it. I still buy books too. I do not see the delivery system as all that important.

277kswolff
Jul 14, 2010, 9:56 pm

I imagine the Kindle version of Atlas Shrugged just has it shouting at the reader for 3 hours.

278CurrerBell
Jul 14, 2010, 10:41 pm

@277>> Is it the abridged edition you're talking about?

279kswolff
Jul 14, 2010, 10:44 pm

No, it's just John Galt's hissy fit. The rest of the time the Kindle automatically bangs itself over the reader's head to emphasize the points being made.

280CliffBurns
Jul 21, 2010, 2:03 pm

282CliffBurns
Jul 22, 2010, 10:56 pm

Another shot across the bow--traditional publishers, you listening? Hello? Hello? Off in the near distance, do you hear a bell tolling? 'Tis for thee...

284bumblesby
Nov 2, 2010, 1:45 pm

>281 beardo:
I think this is very sad. I guess I can understand going around the traditional publishers, but to put all your eggs in one basket - Amazon's Kindle format - is trading one problem for another.

Many of us Americans are very gullible and the marketers know that. If you can get a specific device to actually mean a technology your in for the gold.

-A computer IS Microsoft Windows. Other than maybe a Mac, people have no clue there are alternative operating systems - if they even knew what an operating system was.

-A MP3 player IS an IPod. If it is not an IPod - "well how does it work?" or "an MP3 player? What can you play on it?"

-An eBook reader IS a Kindle. Now if I wanted to buy a digital book by those authors in the article, I have to have a Kindle - of course I have a Sony eReader. Good job Amazon! If Amazon sold these in other formats besides their Kindle format, I would be much happier.

285CurrerBell
Editado: Nov 2, 2010, 6:21 pm

@284

>> A computer IS Microsoft Windows. Other than maybe a Mac, people have no clue there are alternative operating systems - if they even knew what an operating system was.
Linux (or whatever) is fine for the techie people, but for people who just want to use a browser and eMail? Where operating systems are concerned, there really is something to be said for standardization. And even for developers, the proliferation of operating systems creates problems in cross-platform compatibility. (Think iPad, Android, whatever.)

>> A MP3 player IS an IPod. If it is not an IPod - "well how does it work?" or "an MP3 player? What can you play on it?"
Hmmm. This is one area where I think you're being a little too cynical. I don't know, maybe not, but where music's concerned, I tend to be a little old-fashioned anyway and still use CDs (and even a little bit of vinyl), so I don't what to debate issue of the iPod too strongly since I don't use MP3-players anyway. (Actually, the Kindle has some limited MP3-playing capacity, but I use mine for reading, not listening.)

>> An eBook reader IS a Kindle. Now if I wanted to buy a digital book by those authors in the article, I have to have a Kindle - of course I have a Sony eReader. Good job Amazon! If Amazon sold these in other formats besides their Kindle format, I would be much happier.
Well, as a Kindler, I agree that I'd like ePub compatibility too. Nevertheless, Kindle doesn't just use AZW (the format you'll most commonly find in the Kindle Store) but is also MOBI-compatible, there's plenty of free and non-DRM'd eBooks available in MOBI, and even though MOBI is a proprietary Amazon format, there are still free utilities that allow creation and manipulation of MOBI files.

286benjclark
Nov 4, 2010, 12:35 pm

Has everyone seen the new color Nook? *IF* I were to get one of these things, I was leaning that way as it has wifi access (in the boonies of Montana where I live this is important) and it can read .pdfs. In color now!

287maccy_P
Nov 4, 2010, 12:44 pm

If we transferred every book to an electronic device and never used paper, it would be a terrible day. Not only do I love the feel and smell of a book, you aren't going to lose it unless you physically misplace it/burn it/drop it in the bath.

If (and it is getting more likely by the day) that a virus could wipe everything off all electronic devises we would lose all that literature. When we have at least one of every book in print we will never lose it.

And staring at a screen is bad for you eyes. And reading a book in the bath is a love of mine, and electricity and water is a very bad mix.

288RosyLibrarian
Nov 4, 2010, 1:36 pm

286: I looked at the specs on that one (I have just the regular Nook) and it seems that it doesn't use the e-ink technology. I would be worried about it hurting my eyes after awhile...like reading a book off a computer screen. Have you heard anything about that?

289geneg
Nov 4, 2010, 2:26 pm

When I think of electricity and the bathtub, I think of The Reverend Jimmy Joe Jeter and the fate that befell him when he attempted to change channels on his television while in the tub.

290beardo
Nov 4, 2010, 3:24 pm

...and Thomas Merton.

291Mr.Durick
Nov 4, 2010, 5:54 pm

Thomas Merton changed channels on an electric fan, if I remember correctly.

Robert

292CliffBurns
Nov 4, 2010, 6:10 pm

Poor Tom...

293FlorenceArt
Nov 5, 2010, 6:46 am

I also don't think that the color Nook is an e-ink screen. I prefer e-ink, but many people are comfortable reading on a backlit screen and even prefer it (you can read in the dark, which is something I would never do myself). It's mostly a question of setting your display so that it's not too bright and contrasted, I hear.

294benjclark
Nov 5, 2010, 10:14 am

I don't remember who said it, but I agree: e-ink screens look like gutter soaked newsprint.

295CliffBurns
Nov 5, 2010, 10:26 am

"gutter soaked newsprint"

Cool line.

296FlorenceArt
Nov 5, 2010, 11:12 am

I'd rather have a gutter soaked newsprint that I can read and carry around, that a badly printed brick. I like books, but in the end they're just things. I care more about the content.

297beardo
Nov 5, 2010, 4:57 pm

The headline could also have been "Unhappy Kindle readers finally give realistic ratings."

E-book Prices Kindle Amazon Protests

298CliffBurns
Editado: Nov 5, 2010, 5:20 pm

In-teresting.

What really annoyed me was when we were loading on the Kindle version of my latest novel and Amazon wouldn't allow me to charge less than $2.99 for it. I had the price $1.99 in mind. As the publisher, shouldn't I be allowed to charge whatever I want?

299littlegeek
Nov 5, 2010, 11:59 pm

#297 I just wait until the price comes down, just like I used to wait for paperbacks. Why would anyone pay more than they think a product is worth, just to get it a few weeks or months earlier?

Downgrading the product rating doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, do people actually base their book buying decisions on amazon reviews? I sure don't. And all the publishers care about is their bottom line.

300CliffBurns
Nov 11, 2010, 6:22 pm

Good-bye to Barnes and Noble (and maybe most physical bookstores):

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/133251-barnes-and-noble

(Thanks, Gord)

301shikari
Nov 16, 2010, 3:33 pm

It turns out that I am willing to pay something like 2/3 paper price for a digital book. however, I only buy books I absolutely need to travel with (I'm talking about scholarly books). And my device of choice? iPhone4. However, very annoyed at the Kindle reader's inability to tell me which page I am on. It's of little interest to most novel readers, but for academic use, references are vital. And why doesn't it distinguish between appendices and body text? If I pursue a reference, the 'current position' is suddenly at the end of the book. Not carefully thought through. Does anyone know of any ebook system that retains paper page references?

302CliffBurns
Jul 13, 2019, 10:52 am

303Maura49
Jul 14, 2019, 5:20 am

Cliff's new post brought this thread to my attention and it made fascinating reading. I suppose it is not too surprising that the majority of comments were made in 2009/10 when the e-book market was really taking off. However it is interesting to reflect on where we are now.

Here in the UK there has been a lot of comment about the drop in digital reading and the increased strength in the physical book market. Our main chain of book stores, Waterstones, is surviving well in a generally weak retail sector albeit with complaints from staff about poor pay.

That said there is a reliance on big names driving sales and Fiction sales did drop here last year. I am also not saying that e-books are down and out. They still sell well, particularly in genres such as crime fiction. It would be interesting to hear how the picture looks in other countries.