
Publishers Determined to Kill E-Books - mgrayson
https://eclecticlight.co/2019/12/26/publishers-determined-to-kill-electronic-books/
======
dangoor
As an indie author, I've paid more attention to what's going on in publishing
than the average person over the last few years. This article has some things
I could quibble with, but the overall premise is, I think, true. Publishers
don't like the ebook market, and my guess is that it's because of how little
control they have over it.

In the world of ebooks, indies actually have the upper hand. For one, we don't
have the overhead of big publishers, so we can sell ebooks at more reasonable
prices (while pocketing more than authors with traditional contracts). We have
the ability to move more quickly and thus take advantage of new features (like
Amazon's ad platform) earlier. We can sell worldwide with a click, instead of
negotiating messy contracts.

With print on demand, we can also have our books in print. But publishers
definitely have the upper hand there and, I presume, always will.

Also, as an indie I have the option to make my books available DRM-free.

Personally, I _like_ ebooks, especially for fiction. They weigh nothing. They
have search. My highlights can get aggregated together. I can switch devices
and even switch between ebook and audiobook. Further, I think there are very
few print books that actually have real resale value, so that's not a big
factor for me.

~~~
emodendroket
It's hard to give away print books, let alone resell them.

~~~
syshum
hmm, I buy 1 or 2 printed books every month, and I try to buy Used when
Possible, it is just cheaper

~~~
ghaff
That's the buyer's perspective though. I buy used books as well although I'll
often actually pay a premium for an eBook because I have the most reading time
when I'm traveling.

But selling low cost goods as an occasional thing is incredibly time consuming
for the return. In the past I sold on Ebay every now and then and basically
came to the conclusion that unless I was making $50+ on a transaction it just
wasn't worth the hassle. Books are easier in general but they also are usually
a race to the bottom in terms of pricing.

------
officemonkey
> So why have eBooks failed so miserably, when other media such as movies and
> music now sell and rent so well online?

Repeat after me: the average person doesn't read. The market for ebooks is a
fraction of the market for movies and music.

OTOH, there is a viable market because there are such things as "avid readers"
(people who read more than one book a month.) Those are the people ereaders
are made for.

I predict that ebooks will be like jazz records: they not terribly popular,
but they'll still be made because there's a devoted audience.

~~~
sfifs
Well NO ONE I personally know buys or keeps physical books any more except for
children's books if they have kindergarten or primary school kids. Everyone's
book collection is on the Kindle including middle school and high school kids.
Living in a tropical/sub-tropical humid climate, the tendency of physical book
collections to deteriorate or grow mould is a major liability especially if
you have small kids.

~~~
EliRivers
Whereas I genuinely think that everyone I know buys, owns and keep physical
books. Some have only a few, some have hundreds and thousands, but all of them
do.

I do live in a country comprised entirely of Oceanic and Subpolar Oceanic
climate, though.

There's selection bias here; people tend to know people like themselves and
people like each other. Be it people like themselves because they work
together, or live near each other, or have similar hobbies, or are from the
same family, or some other non-random selection bias, but however it happens,
people tend to know people like themselves and people like each other. I have
thousands of physical books and probably acquire a few dozen more each year; I
tend to like people who like physical books, and presumably you do not.

~~~
ghaff
>There's selection bias here; people tend to know people like themselves and
people like each other.

And, presumably, someone who is young, mobile, and lives in a small urban
apartment (and knows mostly people in the same boat) will tend to default to
lugging and storing less stuff than older folks who have a roomy house. I know
if I were starting out today I'd almost certainly have less of a physical
footprint than I did in college and immediately afterwards.

~~~
EliRivers
Ha. You could almost be talking about me, as was. Moved in to this apartment
15 years ago, not long out of university. Been through a half-dozen jobs since
then, ranging from less than ten minutes' walk away to literally in a foreign
country (not remote working either - moved there while still paying rent on
this one), and I'm starting to think that I'm going to end up buying a house
purely to be able to build a proper library room for the books.

------
mstolpm
Slightly off topic, but I often wonder why there is no backlash on print media
regarding the environmental aspect of this whole publishing industry. Most
books are mass-printed, shipped to warehouses, then shipped to local sellers
(or e.g. Amazon, that ships a single book to a buyer) - and the (huge) non-
sellable rests are either deeply discounted or completely dumped. If you see a
pile of the latest "bestseller" at the local store, its almost guaranteed that
only a fraction is sold, the rest will be disposed.

Moreover, most print books, magazines and newspapers aren't even fully read by
the buyers, let alone multiple times. Its a huge industry producing, promoting
and selling mostly single-use items.

And the used market for most books is virtually non-existent: I had to move a
couple of times and the paper weight was one of the biggest hurdles. I dumped
lots of books because I couldn't find a buyer on the used market (handling
would far exceed the value of the books, some companies buy used books only
based on weight and condition) and even libraries and social services like the
Caritas declined to take used books.

So, I'm really wondering why we as a society aren't more demanding on the
sustainable side of the publishing business, especially the environmental
effects. Ebooks could perhaps be a much more environment-friendly alternative,
but I agree that publishers and market places have done a lot to make them
less attractive, affordable and available for most readers in comparison to
printed alternatives.

~~~
hannasanarion
Our culture holds print books as sacred objects. Talking about the
environmental impact of books is like talking about the environmental impact
of churches, or music halls, or war memorials, or grave stones: it doesn't
even make sense to talk about it because people don't imagine those things at
the level of costs and impacts, they are inherently worthwhile.

If you propose printing less books, or even worse, destroying existing books
that nobody reads to recycle their paper, you will quickly have a pitchfork-
bearing mob at your door calling you a book-burner.

~~~
naniwaduni
They'd be right, too, if not necessarily for the right reasons.

------
emodendroket
> So why have eBooks failed so miserably, when other media such as movies and
> music now sell and rent so well online?

[...]

> Then there’s the question of what you get for your money with an eBook.
> According to the publishers in that recent case in the CJEU, you get a
> perpetual licence (not ownership) to access their copyright content, which
> never deteriorates in the same way that physical books do. As a result, the
> publishers claimed successfully, you aren’t free to sell on your licence,
> and can only do so if they, the copyright owners, agree. In other words, you
> pay much the same price for something which immediately on purchase becomes
> worthless.

Well... what's the difference there? That doesn't seem like it, since it's no
less true of movies or music.

Actually, my guess is that most people never read most of the books they buy.
Maybe they intend to, but it ends up mostly being some kind of affirmation of
the kind of person they are. While the e-book experience has a lot to
recommend it if your object is actually to read a lot of books (particularly
outside the house), it doesn't do much to burnish your bookshelf.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _According to the publishers in that recent case in the CJEU, you get a
> perpetual licence (not ownership) to access their copyright content, which
> never deteriorates in the same way that physical books do._

What crap argument is that?

In reality, a random physical book has expected useful lifetime longer than
most publishers, longer than Internet and anything recognizable as personal
computing ever existed. Books don't deteriorate into uselessness for decades.
Licensed content on-line typically disappears after few years, very often
together with the service that you rented it from in the first place.

~~~
emodendroket
Does it really though? In 100 years I think people will care more about
Citizen Kane or Michael Jackson than Rich Dad, Poor Dad or Excel 95 for
Dummies.

~~~
mplanchard
It doesn’t seem fair to compare classics of two media with books that are
definitively not in the same league.

I definitely want to be able to pick up my copy of Pale Fire in 30 years and
read it. Similarly with The Idiot. Those physical books will definitely still
be functional in three decades. And, if a copy is lost or damaged, it’s easy
to get a cheap replacement at a used bookstore, something that isn’t possible
with ebooks.

~~~
emodendroket
Of course, but the point of the comparison is that there is no shortage of
forgettable books.

I predict it will be quite easy to download a new digital copy of The Idiot in
30 years if you lose access to the one you have today as well.

~~~
catalogia
There is no shortage of forgettable _anythings_. If that was your point, it's
a poor one.

If you could predict ahead of time what might be valued in the future, then
you could discard the rest. But you cannot do that, since you are not from the
future. Scraps of data once thrown away as mundane are now valued in the
present by researchers; there is no reason to believe this won't continue to
be true into the future. Even your poorly contrived example of mundane data
was debunked easily by another commenter.

Keep what can reasonably be kept, and let future researchers worry about
filtering it. Preemptive filtering will only deprive future researchers of
data they'll desire for reasons you cannot presently fathom.

~~~
emodendroket
I took the claim to be that there was something inherent about books that made
them more enduring than other forms of media, which just isn't really true.
Anyway, libraries, among others, make these kinds of decisions all the time,
because they don't have infinite space for books (hey, here's another reason
ebooks might be valuable).

------
MisterTea
> _So why have eBooks failed so miserably, when other media such as movies and
> music now sell and rent so well online?_

Well let's look at the technology involved:

Books have been around since writing and evolved from clay tablets which we
can still "read" to this very day so long as the text is intact. Nothing other
than your eyeballs and hands are needed to interface with a book. No
batteries, headphones, passwords, or wires. Plus reading a book is quite a
different experience as your mind is actively painting images and creating
sounds. Video and audio can present some wonderful sensations but ultimately
arent as personal as the creations of your minds eye (and ear). So books as
they are work very well and do exactly what they were meant to do. Plus
reading on a screen sucks and who wants to buy another electronic gizmo with a
good screen like e ink which will become obsolete, fail, or have your book
deleted after some DRM copyright spat? Please no.

Video and Audio NEED electronics. They are already hamstrung with a
technological need so consuming via digital means is much more practical. And
as far as physical media goes nowadays, it's less convenient than streaming.
Though Music still enjoys a strong association with the medium being an art so
it goes hand in hand with physical collecting which is why you still see tapes
and vinyl. Like a book, you want to be able to hold it and also enjoy the art
work. Some artists even release ultra limited handcrafted cases to house said
physical media adding a more personal touch.

~~~
fastball
eReaders are amazing. I have 3 books that I am reading at the same time that I
literally carry everywhere I go because it is so easy. I never did that with
physical books.

Additionally, my Kindle was $90. Between all the books I can get for free from
Project Gutenberg and how ebooks are often cheaper than physical books (and
should probably be even cheaper given their effectively $0 distribution
costs), my kindle has already paid for itself and then some, so the fact that
it will become obsolete isn't a big deal (I've had it for 5 years). I can buy
a new one in a year or so (or tomorrow) and very easily it will pay for
itself.

We also have plenty of storage mediums for digital data that last much, much
longer than a paper book, so ebooks win on the "surviving a mass extinction
event" front too. Hell, every book published today is starting out as an
"ebook" anyway, given that they're all written digitally. Given that, it's
even easier to distribute it digitally than physically.

~~~
samatman
There are 49 remaining copies of the Gutenberg Bible, I'm not sure how you can
claim with a straight face that digital media last "much, much longer" than an
acid-free book.

~~~
falcolas
Reading devices aside, you can copy an e-book and have the exact same ebook.
You can back it up across a variety of mediums, and keep doing it so long as
we have access to digital devices. The ebook containers (epub and mobi) are
also remarkably future proof, consisting mostly of HTML and CSS.

I can also assure you that a lot of time, money and resources have gone into
keeping the Gutenberg Bibles around; and it’s not as if your or I could pick
one up and read it (unless it was copied into a digital format and
distributed).

~~~
samatman
While all of what you say is true, and there are numerous additional
advantages mentioned by GP, I am responding specifically to:

> _We also have plenty of storage mediums for digital data that last much,
> much longer than a paper book, so ebooks win on the "surviving a mass
> extinction event" front too._

My assertion is simply that this isn't accurate. Digital is easy to copy
exactly, but also easy to lose completely; I see the sibling comment about
Github's archival storage, but most of us don't have a way to either print or
read microfiche, and surely, this is less apocalypse-proof than plain old
acid-free paper.

~~~
falcolas
If, and only if you can protect that paper from the elements. If someone
devotes effort to protect those paper copies.

Frankly, any event which can destroy all digital copies of a book can just as
easily destroy physical copies. And the same amount of money and effort put
into the preservation of a physical book, when applied to a digital book, will
be just as effective (digital books can in an extreme case, be printed out on
“acid free” paper as the raw HTML and CSS, and redigitized later with no loss
of fidelity).

------
james-skemp
I can't help but compare this to the tabletop RPG space, something I've gotten
into recently for inspiration.

Over the last few months I've spent a good deal of money at DriveThruRPG.
Distributed via (usually) watermarked PDF, with limited security.

Prices are cheap, and often the electronic version is included for free if you
get a print on demand version.

Buy a product and want to get a bundle it's in later? Bundle price of the
product is discounted (not the price you pay, which is fine).

When I was buying electronic versions of programming books about a decade ago
this is what I was hoping for. Instead I have useless files since they can no
longer authenticate.

~~~
pandesmos
I’m in the RPG space myself. Ive basically bootstrapped up a small but
profitable publishing company in that scene
([http://shop.swordfishislands.com](http://shop.swordfishislands.com)).

I also like how DriveThruRPG gives drm free PDFs. The watermark is up to the
creator (I don’t). I wish they took a smaller cut on their market though. :p

There is also the Bundle of Holding, that does bundles of drm free rpg PDFs
and content. It’s pretty great as well.

My personal take is that the ebook/pdf/digital book market is replacing the
“cheap paperback/trade” market. I use Kickstarter to raise funds for pretty
deluxe offset print runs and am then pretty liberal with the digital copies
(buy a book get the digital free, charity bundles, bundles, free in person
download codes, etc). This seems to have been beneficial because the “infinite
digital” product serves as a gateway to the “limited, special, ‘deluxe’”
version.

Paperbacks, even big ones are pretty cheap to produce, so I’d imagine there’d
be more of a “sales cannibalism” between a paperback and ebook wing (e.g., I
have the digital I don’t need the paperback) so downplaying the digital seems
like it would make sense long term for books that don’t make sense to exist in
some sort of “deluxe, you’ll want this for 50 years” format.

~~~
james-skemp
I've got some of your stuff. :) I think from a BoH, in fact. (Whether part of
a bundle or not, Questing Beast's videos are how I really know of your works.)

> Paperbacks, even big ones are pretty cheap to produce, so I’d imagine
> there’d be more of a “sales cannibalism” between a paperback and ebook wing

Counter to that is people like Questing Beast, or the guy that did Grognardia,
who like to have print. I've been going OSR systems and have purchased way
more than I would have because they're electronic and won't take up (physical)
space. I almost skipped Whitehack because I could only get a print copy via
Lulu.

Granted, you could purchase a PDF and then pay to have it printed, but your
point about deluxe editions is dead on. That's why I bought my SO the
illustrated Harry Potter books, and why she bought me the Final Fantasy
Ultimania books; they're beautiful deluxe books that we'd cherish and pass on
to our descendents.

------
djsumdog
I hate that I need to break DRM to keep a copy of an ebook. There was that
famous case where Amazon found out they didn't have a license for a book in
Canada and pulled it from everyone's devices. The book? Orwell's 1984.

We have DRM free music from BandCamp, iTunes, CDBaby, AmazonMusic and others.
But the only place to get DRM free books is Kobo, and it's not a huge
selection.

Offer me a DRM free book where most of my money goes to the authors and I'd be
all over it. This recent trend has lead me back to pirating the larger or
older titles.

~~~
zozbot234
If you want "most" of your money to go to the author, you'll need to look
outside traditional book publishing - even Amazon ebook publishing will take a
70% cut. Your best bet is supporting your preferred authors on Patreon,
Kickstarter or other crowdfunding platforms, and asking them to refrain from
adopting DRM. The crowd-funding model works very well for this, because you
aren't restricted to paying per-copy in the first place.

------
resoluteteeth
The title is misleading and makes it sound like the publishers are actually
trying to kill e-books which is not the case.

~~~
derstander
I don’t know what sort of actions would fall under your definition of trying
to kill e-books. But from my (admittedly unsophisticated) point of view, some
publishers seem willing to at least hamstring them if it will net them more
traditional sales.

[0] [https://www.npr.org/2019/11/01/775150979/you-may-have-to-
wai...](https://www.npr.org/2019/11/01/775150979/you-may-have-to-wait-to-
borrow-a-new-e-book-from-the-library)

~~~
resoluteteeth
That's almost identical to how movie companies restrict rentals (as opposed to
sales) of videos for a period after movies are released, but nobody would
claim that this means movie companies are trying to "kill digital video
rentals."

At the very least, "trying to kill e-books" would mean that publishers were
actually attempting to convince people to buy paper books instead of e-books,
which is not something they are doing. Moreover, when I first read the title
of this article, I thought that publishers were actually considering ceasing
publication of ebooks, which is definitely not what is being described.

~~~
mcguire
Someone mentioned _Special Topics in Calamity Physics_ , so I looked it up.
MSRP for the paperback is apparently $18
([https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297621/special-
topi...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297621/special-topics-in-
calamity-physics-by-marisha-pessl/\);) on Amazon the Kindle version is $13.99
while the paperback is $11.39. On the other hand, Barnes and Noble has the
NOOK version for $13.99 and the paperback for $16.20, so maybe Amazon is
trying to kill e-readers.

------
hnarn
When e-books came along, I can only assume publishers panicked and said "we
have to protect these books from being copied somehow", so they crippled them
with DRM, created their own standards, and so on. Years later, the only way to
_comfortably_ enjoy a purchased e-book from a major publisher (that uses DRM
technology) is to:

* Pay for the crippled e-book and download it to some Adobe application that is only used to unlock your crippled e-book.

* Use a plugin for an open source application to strip the book of the DRM, creating a real e-book.

* Send your "pirated" and de-DRM'd e-book to your device of choice as it can now be easily converted.

The whole e-book market is backwards and is reminiscent of the way music was
being sold around ~2005. You were forced to buy a CD so you could rip it to
mp3 files and put them on your device. Sell mp3 files directly? Oh no, we
can't do that, anyone can copy those! (Except you can, of course, copy the mp3
files created from the CD, so your guaranteed sale is one disc).

Then comes the argument about making piracy uncomfortable: "Sure, books can be
copied, but if we at least make them annoying to copy, people will gravitate
towards buying them through legitimate channels" \-- except they won't,
because the reason people aren't buying through legitimate channels in the
first place is the same reason for e-books as for music: they suck. They
create problems for the users, they are price-inflated and overpriced (to prop
up the dying physical copy-part of the industry), so everybody hates them.

I'll buy a book online if it lacks DRM, but only then. Humble Bundles are
great for this. But, if you publish a book and you use crippling DRM
technology because you're scared of being copied, you are making the book
market a worse place for everyone, and you are contributing to the problem.
Only an absolute fool would think that going back to physical copies of books
is the right move here -- and if that turns out to be what happens, I will
gladly dedicate my time to digitizing books made by these consumer-hating
Luddites, and spreading them online against their will.

Find a new model, or die like the rest. Stop being scared of change, it's
getting old.

~~~
zuppy
I keep hearing again and again the same argument regarding DRM. I really doubt
people (not the technical ones found here) care about DRM. They didn’t care
when the music industry implemented it, see how much the music pirating has
fallen. I think what they care about is convenience. The convenience of
instant access to hundreds of thousands of books, recommendations, ratings.

~~~
lmm
You're right that people care about convenience rather than caring about DRM -
but the DRM affects the convenience. Publishers have handed Amazon a monopsony
on a platter, because it's just too inconvenient to buy books somewhere else
and put them on a Kindle. And that's all down to DRM.

~~~
hnarn
This is exactly it. No, people don't care about DRM because they don't know
what DRM is: but they care about the actual consequences. DRM makes media
harder to consume, share (even to yourself) and secure through backups.

------
droro
I'm finding the article's arguments pretty unconvincing.

eBook prices might be high, but as I've grown older I've realized that the
price of the content is typically well below the opportunity cost of consuming
it. If a good portion of that money makes it back into creators' hands, I'm
satisfied.

The author spends some time complaining about the lack of first-sale doctrine,
which is just a relic from the time when all content came on costly physical
media. It would be wasteful to be forbidden from selling a book that you no
longer want to read, so the reasoning went.

The arguments get even more nonsensical ("eBooks don't appreciate in value",
"You can't photocopy them")

Meanwhile, they totally miss my biggest issue with eBooks: that they give
significant power to platform providers, who may demand unreasonable
concessions from authors and publishers.

In the process of writing this, I wondered if there was a Bandcamp for eBooks.
HN had an answer:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18704436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18704436)

------
bwb
For me, ebooks are life changing. I read around 100 to 150 books a year and i
can carry an infinity of books in my pocket no matter where i am at in the
world! And, 99% of the time ebooks are cheaper when i compare....

I put ebooks right after electricity and i dearly hope my print books
disappear.

------
brink
I have a Kindle, but I often find myself buying the physical copy of books
just for the satisfaction of having something I can physically touch. It's the
same reason I go and buy physical copies of games from BestBuy when I can
rather than buying games from Nintendo's e-shop.

~~~
wrycoder
A used copy on Amazon is often a fraction of the Kindle version price.

------
petre
No worries, everybody will pirate e-books, just like it happened with music.

Indie publishers will make some money, probably more than going through a
publishing house because they can sell directly to the customer and cut out
the publisher. A 70% cut on eBooks sales is outright theft imho. If I were a
book author and Amazon took a 70% cut, I would rather publish it online for
free under a license that prohibits commercial distribution of the work (in
exchange for money).

~~~
ossworkerrights
Not every culture is based on theft.

------
thaumasiotes
> Did you give or receive any books for Christmas? If so, were they physical
> books, or electronic ones? I suspect that, while many of us have exchanged
> real, printed books as presents, eBooks were far less popular, and unless
> you give a voucher, they’re almost impossible to give as presents anyway. So
> why have eBooks failed so miserably, when other media such as movies and
> music now sell and rent so well online?

Huh? You can't give digital copies of movies, music, or games as Christmas
gifts for exactly the same reasons. What is this paragraph supposed to have
established?

> eBook readers are still incredibly primitive, and won’t even let you refer
> to two or more sections of the book at the same time. You can’t photocopy
> them, copy quotations, or do anything remotely advantageous.

Kindles have supported copying quotations since at least 2010.

------
amelius
One problem with e-books is that you have nothing to show for it. Books have
lost their collector value.

~~~
falcolas
Most books purchased are mass market paperbacks. Those have only rarely had
market value after being purchased. I can’t even give most of mine away.

------
jccalhoun
I love ebooks. I also hate drm so I only "buy" drmed ebooks if I can strip the
drm and usually convert it to epub.

I do wish that the highlights I make were actually saved to the epub file
rather than in a separate file that is difficult to transport to another
device.

------
dboreham
New to me that ebooks have failed. I almost never buy physical books now.

------
BooneJS
No! Since buying a Kindle I don’t have nearly the same guilt over my stash of
unread ebooks compared to the reminder I see of physical booms. I read a lot,
but not as much as I buy. :/

------
mFixman
I have a Kindle which I loved and used to be my main way to read books when I
lived in a third world country.

I've pretty much abandoned it since I moved to a next-day Amazon delivery
country. Dead-tree books are much more convenient in the ideal case when I'm
in a comfortable position at home, and I never have the foresight to buy an
e-book to read something on vacation without having to carry a physical tome
of whichever book I'm reading right now.

------
gabrielrdz
This is why I love Manning Books. I actually ordered a book off of Amazon that
I forgot was produced by Manning, and I went to cancel the order and get it
from Manning instead. That way I got the print version, the digital version
and even free digital of the older editions of it. They've won me as a
customer in that I'll always order off them if they have a book I want even if
it's available on AMZ.

------
tharne
Publishers don't need to kill e-books, they were never a good product to begin
with, which is why they've mostly failed to replace paper books.

The author missed the most obvious reason e-books have hit a wall. Compared to
hard-copy books, e-books offer a vastly worse user experience, with the only
benefit being lower price and easier storage.

Paper books are incredibly durable, easy on the eyes even for very long
periods of reading, affordable, and a nice break from staring at a screen all
day. Even children prefer paper books to kindles and other e-readers, so it's
not a matter of nostalgia or people refusing to change. Paper books are just a
really great user experience as far as media goes.

The comparison to other media like music and video is also completely wrong.
Records, tapes, video cassettes, etc. are all new technologies, less than 100
years old in most cases. So eight-tracks and CDs getting replaced with mp3s
and streaming services is a case of a new technology being displaced by a
slightly newer technology. Books on the other hand have had centuries, even
millennia to develop and perfect the user experience, which they largely have
(I can't take credit for this last argument, Nassim Taleb points this fact out
in his Incerto series).

~~~
KingMachiavelli
I think you're completely backwards about how much ebooks are failures and in
what manner. And your comparison to other media is incomplete.

> Compared to hard-copy books, e-books offer a vastly worse user experience,
> with the only benefit being lower price and easier storage.

For novels, ebooks are a vastly better user experience. Adjustable font size,
lighter weight, adjustable brightness and color temperature. There is no
curved page warping of the text, each page is perfectly flat and legible. You
can actually have the book with you when carrying around a book all day can
get impractical. I suppose I should preface this with the fact that if you
aren't using an e-ink screen then you really aren't using e-books properly.

> Even children prefer paper books to kindles...

There is a learning curve and pre-novel children books are more of a visual
medium than text so children have exposure to page turning prior to actually
reading.

> So eight-tracks and CDs getting replaced with mp3s and streaming services is
> a case of a new technology being displaced by a slightly newer technology.
> [...] Books on the other hand have had centuries...

This comparison still feels off... The technology of CDs, records, etc. is all
pretty new but the content is just as old as the content in books e.g live
concerts, live plays, oral history, etc. Bound, mass printed books were just
ahead of their time compared to music & video since the latter two contain a
lot more actual data (bytes/item) so incremental improvements matter much
more.

Of course, I too think there are reasons why e-books don't completely replace
physical novels/books.

1\. Format is only good for novels and stuff without lots of diagrams or
images. Textbooks are a huge market and having e-readers the size of them is
kind of impractical at this current time. Even so lots of students prefer the
PDFs anyway so it's kind of a toss up. 2\. Upfront cost. e-readers are not
cheap for a lot of people and people don't read a ton in general so paying for
an e-reader + books vs the free library is a tough sell. (Most people don't
know or don't know how to use free ebooks services through public institutions
and a lot of the time they don't work on all e-readers, etc.)

I think there is also some generational trends that work against e-books such
as the older & less tech savvy perhaps reading more but having learned
preferences for books BUT I haven't researched this theory yet.

~~~
tharne
This really doesn't hold up. If people liked e-books and if they offered
anything near the "vastly better user experience" folks here are claiming they
do, they would sell better.

The publisher conspiracy theory argument as to why they don't sell is also
silly. Record companies, network television stations, and hollywood studios
all tried their hardest to kill streaming music, mp3s, streaming video and so
on. They failed miserably and those new mediums succeeded because they offered
the user a great experience that they weren't getting previously. If anything,
publishers have taken a much warmer approach to e-books than the recording
industry did to digital music. Fortunately for them e-books just aren't very
good and have mostly failed on their own.

If e-books offered real benefits over traditional books that most customers
actually valued, it wouldn't matter what publishers thought or did, e-books
would succeed the way streaming music and television have.

In terms of generational trends, the only folks I regularly see with e-books
are retired baby boomers, so if anything I'd expect e-book sales to gradually
decline as that generation rides into the sunset.

I like technology as much as the next guy. Much of the time tech can offer
serious improvements over the way something was done before, but sometimes it
can't. We need to get over the knee-jerk belief that digital always equals
"better".

------
Havoc
Worse the latest gen kindles have firmware/DRM that can't be cracked (yet).

I was sorta OK with all their bullshit because I knew I could break it (for
personal use/backup)

Might need to steal my mom's ancient kindle

------
soapboxrocket
This is how an industry sets itself up for disruption.

------
coding123
I can't read a space fantasy/sci-fi book on the same device that has my
addictive free cell game.

~~~
crest
You can as soon as you converted it to EPUB.

~~~
CrazyStat
I think the issue here is not the technological ability to read it but rather
the personal ability to decide to read rather than playing the game.

------
sunflowerfly
Amazon has a monopoly and monopsony in the ebook market. Oddly, the department
of just does not seem to care. Their recent test of “does it hurt consumers”
is too narrow. In this case the monopsony is hurting the entire industry.

------
asimovfan
Physical books are gone. The people who actually read books have already
switched to e-books. I haven't bought a single physical book since i bought
the first iteration of the amazon swindle.

Some people who also read books will try to refute this argument, saying they
still buy love and read physical books. So do i. I love physical books. I love
them as a commodity. I love holding them, reading them, putting them on
display after finishing them, but sadly, it's simply not convenient for
someone who really reads. When i finish one book and want the next in the
series, when i find out about a book that i am actually curious about what it
is saying, i will simply get the e-book. The desire to read and convenience
simply wins.

I thought the last iteration of the generic ebook reader was my last purchase
because it had the backlight, but now they came up with the yellow backlight
so i have to buy this. Blue light causes macular degeneration and yellow light
is so much more comfortable.

Ebook readers are like a dream come true. When they came out, i thought wow,
truth is probably solipsism.

~~~
rossdavidh
Physical books are not "gone". The word you are looking for is "dominant".
Physical books dropped down to about 80% of the new book market in 2012, and
since then have held steady or even gone back up, closer to 90% in recent
years. The used book market is, of course, even more dominated by physical
books.

The preference for physical books over e-books is actually higher among
younger readers than older readers (who appreciate being able to increase the
font size in e-books).

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/physical-books-still-
outsell...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/physical-books-still-outsell-e-
books-and-heres-why.html)

~~~
MiscIdeaMaker99
Totally anecdotal here, but we bought several physical books for our nieces
and nephews this Christmas. These were all requested by them, too. Totally
didn't expect that.

