
Amazon Has Drastically Changed the Way I Read - diego
http://dbasch.posterous.com/amazon-has-drastically-changed-the-way-i-read
======
jaysonelliot
Anything that gets more people reading more books is a positive in my opinion,
but I'm still disturbed by the idea that ebooks are acceptable alternatives to
physical books overall.

If the future is one of ebooks and real books coexisting, I'm all for it.

But if the more likely scenario plays out, where publishers use the higher
profit margins and control that come from cutting out the printers and stores,
and books die as physical objects, then I can't begin to express the sadness
and loss I feel.

The joy that comes from holding a book in my hands that I know was read and
held by my grandfather years ago is irreplaceable. So is the beauty of a well-
designed book, from the paper choices to the typography to the feel of the
spine in my hand. And of course, the conversations that flow from seeing the
title of a book someone's reading, or browsing their bookshelves at home.

The very lack of technology in a book preserves their integrity against the
strong temptations of adding sounds, animations, interactivity, advertising,
even video. It's easy to imagine a world in the not so distant future where
the idea of reading just words alone is sneered at as primitive and boring.

Is there anyone that can offer any optimism?

~~~
johnnyn
IMO, the only way for physical books to exists alongside ebooks is by bundling
the ebook with the physical book, similar to movies. It baffles me why
publishers haven't already done this, but then again...publishers aren't the
brightest people.

~~~
troymc
Some publishers offer the ebook + physical book combo for less than buying
them separately. For example, you can get the following deal on a particular
book from O'Reilly:

ebook: $31.99

print + ebook: $32.99

print: $29.99

Ref: <http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920018414.do>

~~~
phillco
> ebook: $31.99

> print: $29.99

The fact the ebook costs more than the print book is just laughable. It
reminds me of Ticketmaster's "delivery fee" that they charge when you print
tickets at home.

------
djacobs
I refuse to buy a Kindle.

TL;DR: ePub > Mobi, I do not support RAAS (reading as a service)

Don't get me wrong, I love eBooks, and I will probably buy a Nook or Sony
Reader some day. (For now my iPad is a decent substitute.)

Why does the Kindle rub me the wrong way? It doesn't render ePub books. I
think the ePub spec, though flawed, is a great tool that generally follows the
spirit of Unix. It's just complicated enough to be flexible but is something
that you can pretty easily craft by hand. (I'm in the middle of building a
library that will make that a one-line command.)

Mobipocket, on the other hand, is an ugly format. It's binary. It's over-
engineered. It's _legacy_. Mobipocket represents each book, magazine, or comic
book on your Kindle as a _database_ for basically the same reasons that
Windows still uses the Registry. I cannot deal with such an ugly format or
support an ecosystem that refuses to support better standards.

Side note: I will never invest in a proprietary book "platform" because, I
like to own my books. And book "platforms" are the road to RAAS (reading as a
service). Amazon doesn't have a great track record for making you feel warm
and fuzzy about owning your eBooks [1]. Giving up physical books is something
I might do. Giving up the right to read them when and how I want is another.

[0]: <http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/MOBI#MOBI_Header>

[1]:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html)

~~~
anatoly
I own a Kindle and buy books through Amazon, but strip DRM off them
immediately after buying.

~~~
swombat
Here's how to do it: [http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/how-to-strip-drm-
from...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/how-to-strip-drm-from-kindle-
e-books-and-others/)

(I haven't tried this method, but it seems extremely straightforward)

~~~
anatoly
The method offered at the post urges you to install the desktop Kindle
software, and de-DRMs files from its storage. That hasn't always worked in the
last year, as Amazon tried to obfuscate the key storage in the desktop
versions, and there's been a kind of race between Amazon and the authors of
the de-DRMing tools.

I don't know what the status is now, but I want to emphasize that if you own a
physical Kindle you don't need to install the Kindle Windows/Mac reader at
all. Just follow the instructions on the blogpost linked to in the Wired
article and customize the plugin with the Kindle's serial number. To de-DRM,
you then connect the Kindle to your desktop and just Add the books off Kindle
as a disk drive into the Calibre library.

~~~
seanx
For all you ever wanted to know about removing drm:
<http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/>

------
FreeKill
I completely agree with the OP, at first I thought I would miss having a
physical book in my hands, but to be honest I don't really miss it at all.
There are so many advantages to eBook reading such as light weight (compared
to some hard covers), increased font size, etc. I now find myself thinking of
buying a hardcover book as more of a painful inconvenience rather than a
benefit.

~~~
hyperbovine
Me three. Avoided buying a Kindle for years because I was unnerved by the idea
of my book running out of batteries. In the three months since I acquired one
my reading time has probably increased fivefold. The Kindle is a _terrible_
device in so many ways--frumpy UI, 1980s-ish refresh rate, poor resolution
compared to printed material--and yet still manages to be enjoyable to use.
Makes me excited about the future of reading devices.

~~~
crander
I bought the first kindle and took it on a month long trip to Africa and re-
read the Baroque Cycle on it. I jave a a few new Kindles since. I love most
the platform aspect of Kindle and I rarely buy novels or computer tech books
in any other form.

However I grew up traveling to Powells books and living with physical books. I
find that a good physical book has something that the digital version lacks.
The physical form is a symbol for my memories of a book. I can simply pick it
up and thoughts, themes and so forth come back to me. A quick flip through
pulls out my memories.

For deep study I still find that writing in ad underlining a book increases my
understanding dramatically. For awhile I composed notes at the computer while
I read but this was time consuming and akward.

Digital books are disruptive. As Carr once wrote though, the disruption
doesn't mean something isn't lost... often much is. We need to find the right
ways to bring as much as that along with us from the physical world into the
digital as we can. Perhaps I am too old already, but I am sure I will be one
of the last with physical books as well as a continual user of the digital.

~~~
docgnome
What do you think of the note taking on the Kindle? I've never been one to
write in books so It's hard for me to say how well it works.

~~~
crander
It doesn't work for me at least. Part of the value of note taking is to flip
through the book quickly and see the notes and then recall the most
interesting parts. This seems lost.

------
waffle_ss
I got a Kindle about a month ago but have since returned it. It seems to be an
excellent device for reading any book that should be read serially (e.g.
novels), but any type of book that requires "random access" (e.g.
reference/technical) doesn't work well due to the small screen, inability to
jump to page X (which makes it difficult to use an index since you can't
easily jump to it from anywhere), and poor search functionality.

Even if these features were implemented better, it would probably still be
annoying as Kindles are sluggish, low-power devices (which is probably a boon
for the serial-reading use case as it encourages you to just flip pages and
not get sidetracked, as well as providing amazing battery life).

Then again, maybe I'm just missing something as my coworker seems fine using
his Kindle for this purpose.

~~~
manojlds
Technical books are so HEAVY and I actually prefer the Kindle for them than
carrying those books. Also, reading a huge technical book in say, an airport,
would bring you lots of stares ( don't say you don't care about them!)

Yeah it is tough to jump around and some books just cannot be read on a 6"
screen ( and I doubt that the DX fares better.) but for most books I found
that I am good with reading them on Kindle. The benefits far outweigh the cons
for me.

~~~
joelhooks
The DX is fantastic for tech books. Code and diagrams look great.

~~~
jedc
I specifically got the Kindle DX for manuals and other tech books, and it's
been awesome. And approximately the same size/weight as an iPad...

------
pistacchio
i got a kindle for xmas. it is amazing. however i've grown up in a house where
every wall is covered by a bookshelf full of books. i love owning them, i love
the fact that my father and me exchange books and than when i was a kid i
could read the very same book that my father read as a child because he saved
all of them.

i don't want my children to grow up in a house with no books, so i intend to
only read ebook of books i own.

i am against most of the forms of piracy, but frankly i don't like the idea of
having to pay for the paper version AND the electronic version of a book. i
don't feel it like it's buying two copies of the same book, but more like
having to pay for the same book twice because one time you read it on the bus
and the other time you read it on the couch. it's the same book whose rights
i've already payed once, i think i buy the right of reading like i prefer.

~~~
troymc
Here's an idea:

Sell physical placeholders that look like books, along with ebooks. You can
put the placeholder "book" on your bookshelf to remind you what you own,
decorate your room, and give your kids some reading ideas.

The placeholder could come in a variety of smells: musty, smoky, neutral,
National Geographic I-think-I'm-gonna-faint inksmell , and my personal
favorite: Earl Grey.

~~~
estevez
> _National Geographic I-think-I'm-gonna-faint inksmell_

This thread is making me nostalgic. I was in the doctor's office with my
mother the other day and I actually picked up a copy of National Geographics
and sniffed it in the middle of the waiting room. I'll occasionally do it in
the supermarket checkout line too. Always reminds me of pulling the first copy
I got (Feb 1990) from the Christmas subscription I hounded my mom into buying
for me out of its brown paper sleeve.

I don't discount how powerful the emotions elicited by the Proustian recall
triggered by tactile interactions with the written word, but I just think the
gains far outweigh what we'll lose. The conveniences that dominated the OP
don't move me nearly as much as the idea of $10 solar-powered e-readers loaded
with the equivalent of entire libraries spreading throughout places like sub-
Saharan Africa or rural India (cf. mobile telephones). That kind of stuff
gives me a warm fuzzy you wouldn't believe.

------
caela_ielle
I read very specific types of books on my Kindle.

Thick classics that are too big to carry around, New York Times bestseller
page-turners, interesting books with an intriguing synopsis or something
recommended by a friend. Things that I will read once, and maybe twice. Even
though the ebook selection is still appalling with my local library, I've
found it useful in this.

What I don't buy: textbooks, and the favorites I've probably read at least ten
times. Those are the books I want to keep in physical form--eReaders don't
flip well, and no amount of slick e-ink and shiny devices is going to have the
same soothing effect on my nerves as my much-loved copy of The Hobbit.

Kindle, et al, at least for me, is dramatically streamlining the way I consume
one type of book--the ones that before, I would go to the library, read, and
return without a second thought. But not a whole lot else.

------
kghose
Kindle -> fiction/non-fiction text

Real books -> books needing many illustrations (e.g. art books)

But, I really appreciate the issue of "What do we put on the bookshelves?" my
wife and I have bookshelves filling a wall where we have our combined
libraries - and that is aesthetically very pleasing for us. What will our
children do if they only have electronic format reading material?

------
estevez
Did you notice the little girl reading the kindle on amazon? What I wonder
about is what happens when you grow up with only limited exposure to codices.
Is a book still a book?

~~~
lpolovets
To play devil's advocate, should the format matter? It seems like the content
is the most important thing.

People say, "don't just a book by its cover." Shouldn't that apply to a book's
format as well?

~~~
estevez
My reaction to your question might be telling:

    
    
      1. I dimly remember that The Shallows had something thoughtful to say about the topic;
      2. I pull out my kindle and search the full text of 443 books for "carr kindle";
      3. I wait 3 seconds;
      4. I re-read Carr's take and mull it over.
    

Perhaps not fundamentally different from looking it up in the index, but it
certainly feels so.

------
WalterBright
I've been running my old paper books through a scanner and throwing them away.
The resulting pdf's are readable on the Kindle or my computer, or even on my
ipod.

I've probably done around 500 books by now. There's a looong way to go yet :-)

I don't see much point in having physical books anymore other than coffee
table books. I like having my library at my fingertips rather than scattered
everywhere.

~~~
swah
And by throwing away you mean "donating them", right? :)

------
Tichy
I love ebooks, but I hate the kindle way that ties me to Amazon and makes it
hard for me to share my books. Effectively, I no longer own books, I only
borrow them from Amazon.

Every now and then I get weak anyway and buy a kindle book. But often Amazon
tells me I first need to switch my account from Amazon.com to Amazon.de. That
is the reminder of what is wrong with it. Why does it matter where I buy my
ebook? I want to buy my ebook wherever and whenever I want, and just have a
device that can handle all my books. I know it is possible to get other books
onto the kindle, but it is very cumbersome (I don't own a kindle, so the email
transfer does not work). And they won't sync between devices, either, afaik.

I find this very depressing, because it seems unlikely to change in the near
future. Everybody wants to own their customer, nobody is going to deliver a
reader that is simply a good reader. Not the least because it would also
require titanic negotiations with book publishers to make their content
available somehow.

~~~
pauljonas
I believe there should be a law, or at least some economic disincentive to
motivate Amazon (and other ebook providers) to export/import collections from
their proprietary readers onto competitors. Ereaders should not be tied to a
given collection -- it is an insane state -- imagine buying a CD or DVD that
could only be played in players belonging to a single company or an appliance
that would only run on selected utility systems. Why is this considered a
natural and beneficial state for books?

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manojlds
One way my reading habit has changed is that now I read even upto 3 books at
the same time ( as in reading them not one after another, but switching
between them.)

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restreitinho
I think the most positive outcome of Kindle and other digital reading
platforms is the ability you suddenly gain to carry a whole library without
effort. It's just there. Also, I find the notes functionality to be a
lifesaver (I love taking notes of things I read but hate to write on books,
so) and overall the reading experience is just very swift.

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joelhooks
The killer feature for me is the highlighting. I can fully review a book
(technical) in minutes.

Wife appreciates the shelf space.

------
maukdaddy

      When my wife goes to the bathroom at a restaurant, I can either check Twitter
      or read a couple of pages on the phone.
    

Maybe you should spend these few minutes in quiet contemplation? You can learn
a lot by exploring your mind during quiet times and not constantly binging on
information.

~~~
diego
For that I go outdoors. Restaurants in San Francisco are not precisely quiet
:)

------
davidf18
Novels and light non-fiction is easy to read on the Kindle but for non-fiction
with lots of ideas that are new I often have to buy the hard copy as well and
underline and notate. Still I like the Kindle version because I travel a lot.

~~~
crander
As a hybrid user who reads many books in both physical and digital forms, I
have found that my preference for Kindle is directly related to how much I
have traveled in the last month or two.

