
How ebooks lost their shine - xwvvvvwx
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/27/how-ebooks-lost-their-shine-kindles-look-clunky-unhip-
======
vityaz_
_> "Here are some things that you can’t do with a Kindle. You can’t turn down
a corner, tuck a flap in a chapter, crack a spine (brutal, but sometimes
pleasurable) or flick the pages to see how far you have come and how far you
have to go. You can’t remember something potent and find it again with
reference to where it appeared on a right- or left-hand page. You often can’t
remember much at all."_

I don't care about creating dog-ears or cracking spines. Really, who does?

On my kindle I'm able to highlight passages and/or make notes (which are saved
to my amazon account) and I can look them up later. I can create multiple
bookmarks. Some books have support for the "X-ray" feature, a reference tool,
in which there might be entries on such things as characters, locations and so
on.

I'm able to highlight words and look them up on wikipedia or the oxford
dictionary. Very useful.

I'm able to "flick" pages back and forth and easily return to wherever I
started out.

 _> "You can’t tell whether the end is really the end, or whether the end
equals 93% followed by 7% of index and/or questions for book clubs."_

I guess, not that it's a real issue for me.

And maybe best of all... I'm not dealing with mountains of books taking up
space in my home anymore.

~~~
Kihashi
> > "You can’t tell whether the end is really the end, or whether the end
> equals 93% followed by 7% of index and/or questions for book clubs." > I
> guess, not that it's a real issue for me.

Agreed, but also, is that really not a problem with physical books? Lots of
them have backmatter with preview chapters, indices, and "questions for
bookclubs".

~~~
foobarchu
It's much easier with a real book to flip back from the end until you find the
real ending, then estimate your progress based on thickness from there. This
can be done with e-books, but it's not a use-case that the developers have
really worked with, so its cumbersome.

------
PeterStuer
I'm a book aficionado. I just love books. Our house is filled with thousands
and thousands of books. And I have a Kindle. 2 Main reasons: (1) Travel. Going
on a trip used to involve careful selection and (for longer trips) substantial
packing weight and volume (I travel light), now I just take the Kindle, and
don't even have to buy the books i want to read in advance (2) Pint quality. I
read lots of paperbacks, and frankly, the print quality on some of them has
become so atrocious that it is almost impossible to enjoy the read. Blurred
tiny prints on flimsy but coarse grained paper are no exception.

Still love the physicality of books, but i succumbed to the practicality of
the e-reader

~~~
gentleteblor
Amen to that. My eyesight isn't the best, and Ebooks are a god send for being
able to read in large, clear print.

I'm reading a paper book now (Fortress Draconis, ebook is not available) and I
find myself squinting for hours at a time.

------
j7ake
I find ebooks useful if the book is meant to be read from start to finish. I
have yet to find ebooks useful for technical books, where I need to flip
through chunks of pages and go back and forth between sections of chapters as
well as where I need to search by figure or equations rather than by text.

~~~
z1mm32m4n
I'm considering getting an iPad Pro just for this purpose. With a 13" screen,
you can fit an entire 8.5" x 11" page on the screen at 1:1 scaling.

Alternatively, there are some really interesting 13" epaper tablets coming out
soon that might fit the role more aptly.

------
pedalpete
I wish they gave more clarity to this stat * Overall digital sales up 6% to
£1.7bn despite a continuation of the drop in eBook sales down 3%

I personally doubt that ebooks have 'lost their shine', I think this is more a
matter of a journalist not being able to read into the numbers.

I haven't bought the report, but what little I know about the book market, I
know that in 2016, adult colouring books became a BIG thing, really big! Are
you going to buy those for kindle? No, so more money is spent on physical
books and less on e-books.

If you're an ebook reader, you may also have noticed that Amazon has
significantly raised prices on e-books in 2016. 25-50% on average it seems to
me, and I often now see ebooks that cost the same as physical books. Now, I'm
not going to buy a physical book because my ebook price has increased, but I
do buy slightly fewer ebooks now.

Physical books have their place, but I don't see ebooks in serious decline in
the near future.

~~~
BlackjackCF
I really don't get why ebooks are so pricy. If they were half the price of a
book, I would actually consider buying them instead of borrowing them or only
using Amazon Prime's free offerings.

~~~
zBard
Partially because Amazon lost to the Publishers in 2014-15 -
[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/technology/amazon-
hachett...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/technology/amazon-hachette-
ebook-dispute.html) ? All ebook prices jumped after that.

I am not sure why no one is correlating the price increase to the the drop in
Ebook sales, especially since Amazon at that point pointed out exactly this as
a consequence - since ebooks have to compete with other digital media.

~~~
soreasan
I'm surprised no one is focusing on this as well. I believe that ebooks being
overpriced is the main reason they aren't selling well. If ebooks were at
least the same price as paperbacks instead of more expensive I would buy more
of them. But right now it's cheaper to buy physical copies of books than
ebooks.

------
djhworld
One of the reasons might be due to price, physical books are exempt from VAT
in the UK, whereas ebooks are not, so ebooks tend to be either the same price
as their paper counterparts, or more expensive.

I read mostly on my kindle out of convenience, it doesn't take that much room
in my bag and is comfortable to read on my commute.

~~~
dozzie
VAT as a reason of e-books being expensive is complete bullshit. VAT is not a
tax of some absolute value, it's a percent of the price. Smaller the price,
smaller VAT.

------
Semaphor
I buy hardcopies. If they are heavy on graphics (as an example Krampus by
Brom) or have a lot of code listings.

For fiction? No way. I sometimes read 5 books in a month. I really don't want
to open up a private library or bother reselling them. When I travel I don't
want to add several kilograms of books. When I reach the end of a book in a
series, I don't want to have already bought the next part and have it lying
next to me, instead I prefer to just click two buttons to instantly but it.

And for now, Kindle unlimited gives me some great value.

------
tzs
There is one general problem I have with ebooks that limits them for me when
it comes to technical books, but is generally not a problem for things like
novels.

There is also a problem specific to Amazon ebook readers that holds me back
from many technical books I would otherwise buy in ebook format.

First, the general problem. Suppose I am reading a 200 page mathematics book.
I'm on page 150, and to understand something I want to review some point that
was covered much earlier. I can close my eyes and visualize when I read that
earlier point, and I get an image of the page it was on, where it was on that
page, and how far it was into the book. I can pretty quickly jump back and
find it.

This is not some "photographic memory" type thing. I don't "see" the page word
for word, and cannot read the page number to know where to go. But I will get
that the page I'm looking for had a diagram on the bottom and was a left side
page, and that what I wanted was near the middle...that kind of thing.

It is enough that when combined with the way the pages are laid out in a
physical sequence to give a sense of "place" to each page and the information
on it. It seems kind of like a weak form of a memory palace.

With an ebook I do not get that sense of place as I read, and so if I need to
find something much earlier in the book I have to rely on the search function
or the table of contents, and often have to do a lot of paging around (which
is slow on eInk readers). It usually takes a lot longer than it would have
taken in the paper book.

The second problem, specific to Amazon's ereaders, is very inconsistent
handling of images. For example I have some chess books that make extensive
use of images for chess diagrams.

On my eInk Kindles, the chess diagrams are about the size of a postage stamp.

On the Kindle application for OS X, they are about the size that they would be
in the paper book (in other words, they are the right size).

On the Kindle application for Windows, they are postage stamp sized.

On the Kindle Cloud Reader, the are the right size.

On the Kindle app for iOS they are the right size.

Same problem for math books. They often use images for equations. If those get
the postage stamp treatment it makes that book very hard to deal with.

For things where images aren't needed, and where I'm not going to have to do a
lot of looking back, I've greatly enjoyed reading on Kindle. Harry Potter was
fine, for instance, as was the complete Sherlock Holmes stories.

~~~
terminalcommand
I think these are issues with formatting. Kindle has the ability to render any
mathematical book or chess book with diagrams. One only needs to find a good
epub/mobi.

On the other hand reading magazines on kindle is painful, because they're
meant to be viewed on a larger surface.

I read technical books (programming) on my computer/ipad.

If you intend to use the book as a reference, kindle is hard. The ability to
go back and forth highlight take notes, remember what you thought by looking
at the page these are very important.

For example I cannot study efficiently without printed codexes. I tried
converting the laws into org mode and they became somewhat manageable. But I
still prefer printed copies.

------
garethsprice
"While ebooks, which are not things of beauty, have become more expensive; a
new digital fiction release is often only a pound or two cheaper than a
hardback."

I'm betting has more to do with it than romantic notions of people preferring
physical books. Given the choice of a fiction book for $10 in hardcopy or $9
as an ebook, I'll take the hardcopy.

If ebooks (and movie downloads come to that) were priced the same as the
physical copy minus the true costs of printing, distribution, warehousing,
shipping, etc. they'd (I'm guessing) be closer to $2-5 and would sell far
more.

~~~
Koshkin
> _a pound or two cheaper_

Also, sometimes a pound or two lighter. (That's _per book_.)

------
robomartin
I prefer PDF files rather than ebook formats. I don't like the idea of being
locked into a particular technology, be it Apple's or Amazon's.

I consider PDF viewers to be superior to the experience offered by ebook
viewers. For example, Having to tap the left and right side of the screen to
move between pages is a pain compared to swiping up or down in a fluid motion.

Another issue is the waste of space by trying to simulate paper. On my iPad
both Apple's and Amazon's ebook readers display almost an inch of white space
margin all around the page. On the same device PDF viewer will zoom text to
use the entire screen with a double tap of a paragraph.

And then there's zooming.

PDF's are easier to view on multilple devices. I keep all my books on Dropbox.
They are instantly available no matter where I might be.

~~~
Koshkin
> _no matter where I might be_

Well, with a few exceptions, such as an airplane and some other places (on a
trail, deep in the woods) where you may not have an internet connection.

~~~
robomartin
If that will be the case I take a USB stick or preload my device with what
I'll need

------
Pica_soO
Because they are e- so you never own them. You lend them- and the day the
library is on fire- your books turn to ashes in your bag.

I also regret showing up at a friends place and at partys near his book
shelve, and get the guy/girl to recommend me the books they lend from me and
no returned.

------
LeeHwang
I only buy technical/developer e-books, and read them on my computer, or open
them for a quick sanity check on a concept at work. I can take them everywhere
rather than carrying 40 lbs of reference material.

However when it comes to pleasure reading, I usually like to buy a physical
copy.

------
tsukikage
> "You can’t tell whether the end is really the end, or whether the end equals
> 93% followed by 7% of index and/or questions for book clubs."

...um, you can't with a real book either? At least without looking, which is
something you can also do on a Kindle?

That said, the Kindle Keyboard 3G was the peak. Knowing you need never run out
of book; and also the ability, in a pinch, to get on the internet and check
your email / look up a map, free, wherever you are in the world.

------
anotheryou
The first paragraph is alread bullshit:

Ebooks have full-text search, of course you have bookmarks and a progress bar
(not as "nice" but does the trick) and usually pages render always the same on
one device. For literature I also doubt I remember less, why would I.

Where paper actually excells:

\- good for advanced layouts

\- you can find something you know was "somewhere arround XY" but don't have a
clear keyword for (More important for literature, but even there full text
search often wroks better. I once read a book in print and than wrot about it,
I mainly used the epub for quotations and not just because of copy and paste).

\- some books are only available in print

\- a used print is cheaper than an epub...

\- you don't look like a mid 50s housewife in the train

If given the choice I still always take the epub.

~~~
Ntrails
>you don't look like a mid 50s housewife in the train

Stay classy.

I far prefer reading real books (on the train and off) myself - but am already
having storage issues due to city living...

~~~
anotheryou
I can totally understand how one could prefer paper books.

The last one was a joke :) (And I have no shame sitting in the train with my
reader).

------
maverick_iceman
One thing I miss in a physical book is the ability to look up a term
immediately.

------
anta40
For practical reason, I prefer e-book nowadays. They don't take much physical
space, easy to search, and so on.

The only reason I buy hardcopies these day is photography books, which rely
heavily on graphics.

~~~
Koshkin
I find graphics looks much better on a computer screen than it does on paper
these days.

------
protting99
It is the multitude of form factors on the internet that keeps absorbing and
reducing the total value of books. For what subject is a 300-page collection
of "pages" still the best form factor? How can it compete, for example, with a
StackOverflow page, when answering technical questions? Maybe a book is still
useful for fiction, but how long will it take before people design better form
factors even for novels?

~~~
Koshkin
Indeed. Being stuck with the fixed page format is like being stuck in the
"horseless-carriage" mentality. A4 or whatever paper sheet format should be
completely abandoned in favor of dynamic text formatting - not unlike what
browsers can do when displaying HTML.

~~~
Shorel
That only applies to PDF.

Most e-books are in epub or mobi format, and those are essentially HTML.

------
combatentropy
As I read the article I remembered that I would rather read a magazine article
online --- an ezine? --- than flip through a real magazine. The same goes for
newspapers. And I remembered I would much rather look up a function in an
online reference than a thick, heavy book. I would rather get my mail
electronically. But I would rather read a novel in paperback.

------
mattfca
I read around 70 space operas a year on my kindle. Before getting my kindle 3
year ago? Nothing. Kindle is amazing for reading at night when my partner is
sleeping or while travelling. I use amazon prime and "borrow" the books, only
buying a few series I'm hooked on. Overall costs are much lower than other
forms of media.

------
abrookewood
Things you can't do with a book (though I still love them): tap words to get a
definition; carry thousands in your back pocket; highlight text non-
destructively; write notes non-destructively; change the font size; read in
the dark; know how long until you finish the chapter/book ....

------
sotojuan
Minimalism might be trendy but I have to say, I love the look of a home
library.

Of course, that doesn't mean I horde books :-)

------
random_comment
I find it very hard to read traditional books now because I'm so used to being
able to drink a cup of tea or eat a snack while I read. Or read outside on a
warm but windy day.

I use the PRS-350 which is an old sony model that fits comfortably into one
hand and can be used one handed. I recommend it.

