
 On Books - wglb
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/09/26/On-Books
======
ajg1977
The lack of sharing (or even giving) is the biggest barrier to my total plunge
into ebooks. As Tim notes, the fact that ebooks are barely cheaper than
paperbacks, regardless of zero printing costs and no opportunity for resale,
doesn't help. I can't help but feel I'm getting a raw deal.

As it stands If i know a book is just for me and/or my wife, I'll pick it up
on the Kindle, otherwise it's the dead tree route.

I really hope that one of the major ebook makers will at least add the ability
to 'gift' books to others, but I think it's unlikely. They have little to gain
and I'm sure publishers would put up a hell of a fight. The best we're likely
to get is the nook's crippled lending function, or something similar that
publishers have the option of disabling, and thus do so for every title (much
the same way as most books now have the Kindle's text to speech feature
disabled).

~~~
cageface
This is definitely a downside but the major upside of a digital library is
that I have it with me wherever I go. If I'm somewhere where I only have my
Droid or my laptop I have all my books. If my Kindle falls in the sink or is
lost I lose nothing. Most importantly, I don't have to lug around 20 heavy
boxes of books every time I move.

On the whole the tradeoffs lean to ebooks for me, and this will be even more
the case if the price of the digital versions come down a bit more.

~~~
xtho
Since this is a prominent argument may I humbly ask, why would you want to
take a library with you? You can only read one book at once. The only use-case
for a portable library would be writing a scientific paper at the restaurant
or coffee shop. I have my doubts though that this would improve the quality of
the paper.

~~~
jseliger
I actually have a Kindle and seldom use it any more:
[http://jseliger.com/2010/04/13/kindle-land-with-requisite-
ru...](http://jseliger.com/2010/04/13/kindle-land-with-requisite-ruminations-
on-the-ipad/) , but as someone with ~1,000 books I can answer:

1) Moving is a pain in the ass, to put it lightly. No, excuse me: to put it
heavily. Very, very heavily. Especially cross country, though I've acquired a
lot of books since starting grad school.

2) Shelving is expensive.

3) At scale the right book can become harder to find. The other day I spent 15
minutes looking for Tom Perrotta's _Election_ because it wasn't quite where I
thought it was.

4) Most of us don't have infinite room and therefore eventually run out of
space.

5) Searching is still pretty nice.

That being said, why do I still read paper?

1) The note-taking function on the Kindle sucks ass, and I compulsively fill
margins.

2) Page turning is still too slow.

3) I actually flip back and forth between pages quite a bit.

4) I'm not convinced that DRM isn't going to bite me in the ass 1 to 20 years
from now.

5) Anachronistic attachment to paper.

6) I'm a grad student, and the citation / edition situation hasn't been sorted
out for the Kindle. This is very important when writing academic papers.

Note that I'm not making some kind of moral argument about whether electronic
reading is good, bad, or indifferent. To me, it just is. I foresee eventually
moving chiefly to electronic reading, but I'm not sure when or how that shift
will happen. I'm also not interested in the iPad because I spend enough time
staring at LCDs as it is.

~~~
nl
_2) Shelving is expensive._

This is so true. Or if it's not expensive, it's not strong enough. I have a
wall of Ikea shelving, and have to stabilize it using old Oracle books (our
floors aren't totally flat, so I use the books to adjust the lean angle
against the wall). I guess that proves Oracle is good for something though.

 _2) Page turning is still too slow._

This is a big problem. I have a Kobo, and the slow startup time and page
turning time are the biggest issues.

~~~
gjm11
>> Shelving is expensive.

> That is so true.

It is, but it's missing an even bigger cost. Walls are expensive. Housing
space is expensive. Space for all our books has been a major consideration
every time we've moved house. Crudely, I estimate $1-2/book for good shelving
and $5-10/book for the space to put the shelves in, even taking into account
the fact that the rooms whose walls you fill with books will have other uses
too.

Of course it depends where you live. I'm in a part of the UK where housing
costs are heinous. In San Francisco or New York it would be even worse. In,
say, North Dakota, I expect it's a different matter.

------
pmcginn
_But given the current arrangements, I’m being charged just a little bit less
than I pay for paper and getting a whole lot less, and it just doesn’t feel
like a good deal._

Speaking as someone who's moved more times that he'd like to count, I enjoy
getting a whole lot less--less weight, fewer boxes, less room taken up in my
home. My Kindle's lighter than a thick magazine and takes up way less room in
my bag. When you compare it to a hardcover (especially a fantasy hardcover)
the difference is amazing. Try reading a Wheel of Time book one-handed for an
entire afternoon in paperback or hardcover. Then try flipping the pages one
handed, too.

For me it's a question of convenience, and I'll take my convenience over that
of my friends in this case. If they don't trust my recommendation enough to
track a book down in a library (or download the free sample from Amazon, if
they've got a Kindle), then I really don't care what they're reading.

------
nl
He didn't address what the screen is like for reading on (compared to an eInk
reader like Kindle etc).

I have a Kobo Reader, and it's pretty good. The DRM is a hassle, so here's my
workflow for buying a new ebook (and yes, the fact I have workflow to buy a
new ebook sucks, and says a lot about where my time goes):

Prerequisite:

You'll need Adobe-eBook-DRM-shit-whtaever it is called installed before you
begin. Otherwise you'll download the book and won't be able to use it. OTOH,
it does run on Linux, so that's something.

1) Find the book you like. I find <http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/> because
they have a good range and good prices on ePub books, and give you 3 copies

2) Download the book.

3) Using the following search, find the python scripts to remove the DRM:
<http://www.google.com/search?q=python+remove+epub+drm+script>

4) Use <http://calibre-ebook.com/> or the KoboBulkFixer program to remove
fixed font sizes from any styles (the Kobo won't scale those, so everything
appears in about 8pt writing)

5) Put my eBook in dropbox so I don't have to do this again

6) Copy the eBook to my Kobo.

I should note that I _need_ to remove DRM to fix the font problem.

Like I said, this sucks. But OTOH, ebooks are good.

------
ascuttlefish
I love ebooks, but I prefer to read paper books. The haptic and olfactory
experience of reading a book is something that I've enjoyed as long as I can
remember, and I won't give it up lightly. However, all those classics I've
neglected to read are now a few clicks away and available for free. The cost
of building my library of paper books versus the wide availability of free
ebooks has made me a happy ebook adopter. There is one other problem, however.

I use linux at home and so cannot use Adobe Digital Editions or other DRM
system. So, I have to rely on freely available, DRM-free files that I find on
the Internet. Legally, many classics are available; illegally, many more. The
upside to this is that not being encumbered by DRM, I'm free to share my
collection. The downside is that it's been all too easy for me to become a
criminal in the eyes of the law.

------
jsz0
I think the publishers are probably factoring in the effects of piracy. In the
past they couldn't stop people from lending/sharing printed books but they
could stop mass produced counterfeit printings. Now it's the exact opposite.
They can't control the digital counterfeits in the form of piracy but they can
stop digital lending/sharing. Maybe they hope to break even in the end. I can
see from their perspective that having both sources of lost revenue combined
is a nightmare scenario. I think as readers we probably need to accept that
$10 or $15 for a book that is going to bring you many hours of enjoyment isn't
a bad deal. We have the Internet to research books, fairly generous samples to
read, social networking to spread the word.

~~~
wazoox
But we have the pirate bay. Piracy just will be widespread, like it was for
software for 35 years, and for music for 12 years, and movies for almost as
long.

------
zacharypinter
Now that there are several options for reading digital books comfortably, I
think the publishing industry is going to face tons of problems with piracy. A
book that takes hours to consume can be downloaded in minutes. Furthermore,
we're already seeing torrent files of hundreds of DRM-free best sellers,
making it easy to download first, decide later.

In the short term, the best solution seems to make the official process more
convenient than pirating (Amazon does this quite well). In the long term, the
best solution will probably be to combine the convenience with a subscription
model. Lending books becomes a non-issue if all your friends have a $10/month
subscription to Amazon's entire catalogue.

------
agentultra
Books are still better, IMO.

I can lend one to a friend. They don't need a $300 compatible reader. I can
lend it to as many friends as I want. I can leave it on a park bench and share
it with a complete stranger.

I own the copy. I can sell it. Burn it. Press leaves in it. I can scribble in
the margins. Fold the corners. Donate it to a library.

I can have two pages open at once. I can flip to indexes, important tables,
and chapters without fiddling with buttons and menus. I don't have to recharge
my book or replace batteries. If I drop it or get it wet, it's probably going
to be fine. I know that in 50 years I'll be able to read the thing.

I've come to be of the opinion that unless I own a physical product, I don't
own anything. Digital goods are meaningless and ephemeral. They come with
digital locks and stupid restrictions that I don't really care to bother with.
I don't want to pay a subscription or find some hack to work-around their
limitations. Books are cheap and work just fine. And I get to own them.

------
danielnicollet
The whole sharing issue is major in my opinion. If a new technology brings new
benefits but takes away some key benefits of the paper medium, I would bet
that the users community will quickly question the future of e-books with some
serious hacks and p2p challenges to the publishers and distributors.

------
lzw
Everyone in our house gets to read all the iPad books.... First off most of
them are drm free books from orielly and pragmatic programmers or PDFs that
can be emailed. But even the ones from the AppStore are just in iTunes and
itunes syncs our book libraries, so if she adds one to hers i get it
immediately on mine. ITunes supports sharing of drm encumbered media this way.
Also it means we have a backup in case one of e laptops dies.

~~~
Tichy
I see a new definition of family emerge - are you in my Apple home network?

