
College Students Prefer Reading Print Books to E-Readers - Thevet
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120765/naomi-barons-words-onscreen-fate-reading-digital-world
======
saosebastiao
I just had a conversation about this last friday with a coworker. We both
basically came to the conclusion that the only e-books that work are prose-
oriented, not learning-oriented.

With your average novel, you only read from beginning to end, and you only
read words. With a textbook, you not only read words, but you read diagrams
and figures. You also skip around...you follow footnotes, references, and you
also might follow a curricula that was not defined by the author. You will
often refer to two or three different hotspots while studying a single
chapter...for example, while working on practice problems, you will flip back
and forth between the practice problems, the chapter intro, the context for
that problem, and possibly a chapter recap.

This user-adoption gap is not one of the underlying medium, but rather of the
user interface. Flipping pages one at a time is not sufficient.

~~~
ashark
There are tons of text features that suck or are absent in ebooks. Even
footnotes aren't great, let alone things like facing-page translation—or
anything else that relies on two pages being visible side by side at once,
which is quite a bit if you're reading much outside of mass-market fiction.
Plus, yeah, diagrams, figures, _et c._

Poetry often blows in ebook form. A good paper book of poetry has a lot of
care put in to precise placement of the text, and it can add a lot to the
experience. Ebooks can't do that. Really, any book that benefits from fixed
page boundaries has similar problems.

Even one of ebooks' big advantages, full-text search, is worse than using an
index unless either 1) you need to search for something that's not in the
index, or 2) you're on a device with a full, real keyboard, so not a tablet or
eink device.

Ebooks are also very expensive and there's no used market—I'd effectively have
to pay ~3x what I did to assemble my physical book collection to replace it
with ebooks, provided there were an ebook version for all my dead-trees (not
the case). It'd be even worse if most of my books were common paperbacks (the
thing ebooks are best at replacing) since you can pick those up for next to
nothing if you keep an eye out. 10x the cost to take such a collection
digital, I'd imagine.

~~~
icebraining
Sure ebooks can have precise text placement, just use a PDF. As for indexed vs
full text search, an eBook can have both, and many do.

No argument on the price, though it didn't hold for works out of copyright.

~~~
ashark
> Sure ebooks can have precise text placement, just use a PDF.

Not so hot on most e-ink devices, but yeah, you can use a print format to
achieve print-like documents that throw the middle finger at your screen's
dimensions/resolution with sometimes-nice results.

> As for indexed vs full text search, an eBook can have both, and many do.

Ah, but their indices are usually more of a pain to use than an index in a
real book. Like footnotes, but even worse. As with full text search, though,
it might beat the dead-tree if you're on a laptop/desktop (bigger screen that
can show the index to the side of the text) but at that point there's not much
distinction between an "ebook" and anything else one might read on a computer.

> No argument on the price, though it didn't hold for works out of copyright.

Unless they're not originally written in a language you can read, in which
case odds are good that the best translation is still under copyright. In
fact, it's not uncommon for there to be _several_ copyright-protected
translations all of which are better than any of the public domain ones. So
technically, yes, you can go to PG and grab a ton of classics for free.
Practically speaking, for non-[language(s) you can read] works, if it's worth
putting in the time to read it you'll be well served by buying (or borrowing)
a newer translation. All those 19th century ones have a way of being both less
accurate _and_ less pleasant for a modern reader.

------
alexland
I feel the complete opposite for all of the college textbooks I've used
(although all of my textbooks are filled with problems rather than readings).

Using a laptop or e-reader to read textbooks is awesome for a couple of
reasons. First off, having multiple textbooks doesn't weigh anything, and I
can carry them around at all times. Secondly, when doing assignments and the
like, I can bookmark the answer section in the back, and flip back and forth
between questions and answers arguably faster than I could with a paper book.
Finally, the best part of electronic books is the ability to search through
it. Every definition in the book is a Ctrl+F away.

So maybe reading books electronically isn't as great when you're doing a lot
of actual reading, but in my experience using more math/science textbooks,
electronic wins out every time.

~~~
lqdc13
You need to have multiple copies open at the same time if you want to refer to
different parts at the same time.

Ctrl+f is great, but you end up losing the part of the book you were at before
you started searching. So basically I needed to have 4 copies open at a time.
3 for different parts of the book I needed to refer to and one for searching.
This made the actual size of the text way too small on a laptop screen.

Some of the problems could probably be solved with bookmarking software, but
then you have to remember where each bookmark is instead of glancing at it.

~~~
spike021
Not necessarily. I use the PDF-reader on OSX called Skim and it lets me
bookmark the current page I'm on. Then I can just keep clicking the bookmark
menu item and switching to the page I need. Only one copy. Each bookmark can
have a label. Not too bad.

~~~
alexland
I also use Skim, it works really well. A pretty cool feature is the back and
forward buttons, that hold your page if you skip through large chunks. For
example, if I use the table of contents (Cmd + Shift + T) to go to the answers
section, I can press back to get back to the question I was on. Then forward
brings me to the answers once again.

That's basically my textbook workflow 90% of the time.

~~~
spike021
That works too! I really like using Skim. Without it, I would definitely not
like reading/doing problems from my textbooks.

------
lbotos
I think the biggest problem is we are getting e-books that are just digital
representations of physical books. I'm learning music theory right now and it
would be great if the book I'm following was an app with animated examples to
re-enforce the concepts.

I'm also imagining the time I first saw the animated unit circle gif (years
after trig class):

[http://i.stack.imgur.com/1oSJw.gif](http://i.stack.imgur.com/1oSJw.gif)

If that was in my "e-textbook", I think some concepts would be easier to
explain. I think we are sitting at just the cusp of what "e-books" in school
should be. They shouldn't just be for words, but for conceptual learning in a
school setting.

~~~
ashark
You seem to be describing web pages. In ~20 years they've had little success
in replacing textbooks.

Since they're so obviously superior for that purpose, I can only assume it's
because there's not enough money in it for one reason or another.

Seems like some sort of free multimedia web textbooks resource would be a
great way to spend public money helping some of those unemployed/underemployed
professional scholars and scientists that are often covered on HN. Shouldn't
even cost much, as government education expenditures go.

~~~
Retra
My biggest irritation with using web pages for school is that with schoolwork,
I am often looking down at my desk with paper and pencil in front of me. Using
a website requires me to look up and deal with a keyboard taking all my desk
space. It is hard to focus on the work when you are fighting with a computer
at the same time.

~~~
AtmaScout
I agree. When the tools get in the way it is very difficult to learn.

------
ecspike
"In the United States, e-books are less expensive. Students will say, “I’d
like to have the print version, but the electronic version is so much less
expensive.” But if you buy a book used, the publisher and the author are not
getting any money but they are getting another reader and they’re not cutting
another tree. And the cost is less. And if it goes to a third generation the
cost is really less."

That's a nice sentiment but there were a bunch of books in college that
purposely changed portions from year to year to kill to resale market. Some
profs were cool and researched what sections/questions would be so that you
could use one of the 3 editions available but others didn't care.

I was happy to get all some of my books in digital form in grad school.
Preparing for finals was so much easier.

------
stegosaurus
'they say they get distracted, pulled away to other things.'

This is probably the biggest draw away from e-readers for me and the reason I
gave up on them.

For prose, Amazon's Kindle achieved the right form factor, battery life,
display combo many iterations ago for me; but I seemingly can't handle having
so much information available with a button press. It's just too little
effort.

It's one of those oddities of being human, I feel. It seems perfectly possible
in theory to learn about a complex field fairly rapidly by simply using
Wikipedia and Google, but in practice the discipline required to not wander
off-topic I find impossible to manage.

The sort of semi-procrastination that occurs when you're still being
productive (because you're still learning), but you realise that you've gone
from studying waveforms to ventricular fibrillation.

The thing that's so strange about it to me is that books themselves are alien
concepts, there's nothing inherent about them - humans chugged along for
millenia without them. Yet somehow, clicking off of an e-book for 'just a few
seconds' to look something up seems to function differently to, say, closing
one book and opening another.

Reminds me of the Doorway Effect.

~~~
stegosaurus
I've also seemingly paradoxically found that scarcity seems to have a dramatic
effect on this.

Immersion, the sense of losing hours to a good book (or a good movie, or video
game, etcetera) I seem to find more difficult as availability increases.
There's a constant nagging feeling that I could be making better use of that
time, that perhaps the next book on Gutenberg would be 'better' (whatever that
means).

It's very difficult to really pin down why that is. If I were fantastically
wealthy and could buy books by the truckload without even thinking about it,
would I feel detached from them all in the same way?

~~~
morbius
What you're describing seems to me like blasé, and it's a fairly well-
documented phenomenon.

------
walterbell
We need a comparison of print, pdf and epub. PDF can retain print layout and
typography, which makes a big difference in aesthetics. EPUB still needs work
from device makers, to honor embedded fonts.

When the flexible eink screen from the 13" Sony Digital Paper goes mainstream
with a bluetooth keyboard and Android clones, students can have access to a
large yet lightweight device for reading PDF+epub, handwritten annotations and
typed notes.

[http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/sony-
digital-...](http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/sony-digital-
paper-review)

~~~
thrownaway2424
That looks Pretty Cool(tm) for dorks, but what's the real advantage over an
actual piece of paper? Other than infinite content-to-weight ratio I don't
really see the justification for the price tag. It's inconvenient, much
heavier than single piece of paper or small magazines, journals, and printed
out papers, needs a special pencil, requires charging.

I used to think that something like a Kindle DX would be amazing for reading
datasheets while I design circuits, but in reality I need to draw the circuit
and read multiple datasheets at the same time. One of these gizmos can't do
that. Printing can do that, and at a tiny fraction of the price.

~~~
walterbell
No device can compete with the usability of paper. Devices can compete with
libraries.

Letter size e-ink pdf readers have long battery life (weeks), no eye strain
due to page refresh, security/privacy of cloud-free offline SD card storage,
fonts & diagrams in their original layouts, with handwriting annotation that
exercises motor memory. The Sony device weighs 20% less than an iPad Air 2
while providing 60% more screen space.

For anyone who travels and needs access to a changing subset of a large
document corpus, there are few alternatives. The excessively high price on the
Sony device is reportedly due to an exclusivity period (less than a year),
because Sony funded research for the new screen. Hopefully cheaper competitors
will appear soon. Even at the $1K price, the Sony device is selling far beyond
their expectations, into business markets, so they are now selling it direct
online.

------
Htsthbjig
I travel a lot around the world, so I digitalized my entire library,
University notes, everything...

I used a Fujitsu ScanSnap(amazing scanner with automatic feeder) to
digitalized them using a Wood saw to cut the back of the books. I stored them
in boxes in a locker room.

I love it because I control it. I could analyze my documents, I could index
them, I could organize them as I want. I could mark them too on my tablet.

Much better than paper.

But most people can't do it(each of my kids going with a USD400 device to
school sounds ridiculous to me). A tablet is expensive just for reading, and
more expensive if you are going to add an active pen, like I use.

What is quite shocking is that the device I use the most for reading is a new
55 inches LG OLED screen, rotated 90 degrees. I use software that converts
black over white "paper" to green on black.

Einks are slow, very bad resolution, monocrome(exchanging resolutions for
tones using halftoning), and very small screen.

If only Qualcomm Mirasol or other technologies were cheaper it will be totally
different. Not ready yet for the mass market.

~~~
walterbell
_> What is quite shocking is that the device I use the most for reading is a
new 55 inches LG OLED screen, rotated 90 degrees. _

Is that because you prefer to focus at a longer distance?

 _> I love it because I control it. I could analyze my documents, I could
index them, I could organize them as I want. I could mark them too on my
tablet._

Do you store them as PDFs? What software do you use for indexing/ocr?

------
taylorwc
>found a near-universal preference for print, especially for serious reading

Is this really any surprise for "serious reading"? Reading a textbook,
especially one with lots of graphs, charts, figures, etc., is miserable on an
e-reader. I suppose I always assumed that pleasure reading was the most
popular use case for an e-reader. Maybe I'm way off.

EDIT: while muddling through this in my brain, I realized that I've been
mentally defining e-readers as E-Ink readers.

------
vph
This finding is not surprising and is a result of shortsightedness by
technology companies, IMHO. They placed more importance in video games,
multimedia than the simple readability of texts. First, they moved away from
antiglare, matte screens. They favor flashy, shiny highly reflect displays,
which show shiny videos and images very well, can are subpar compared to matte
screens when reading in different lighting conditions. Second, they put less
money in developing technologies similar to the Kindle readers, which
prioritize reading.

I am sick and tired of reading reviews of devices based on their ability to
watch videos and play games. I want to get things done. I want screens that do
not reflect. I want screens on which I can read comfortably in different
lighting situations. Give me those.

------
davesque
Well, yes, if you force people to use today's college ebooks. I made the
mistake of buying ebooks a year ago. The ones I got forced me to use
proprietary crap-ware that hardly worked, let alone worked the way I wanted.
Eventually, I downloaded illegal PDF copies of the print versions of the books
(that I legitimately paid for!) Using simple PDFs and an iPad was a dream come
true. I can't imagine anything better for large, technical textbooks.
Unfortunately, the legit offerings from text book companies don't even come
close.

Honestly, I'm inclined to look sideways at this article. The college text book
industry is just too entrenched and future-phobic for me not to believe that
special interests funded these findings.

------
bbcbasic
"They run out of battery, they hurt your eyes, they don’t work in the bath."

None of that is practically true.

The Kindle can run out of battery but lets face it it lasts weeks so you just
need to remember to charge it occasionally. It is unlikely to die on you like
a mobile phone.

I am not sure what they mean by hurt your eyes, but the ability to change the
font size and still have convenient paging is brilliant. With a paper book you
have to don your 2x non-prescription glasses I guess.

And they do work with the operator in the bath, and the eReader just above the
surface. Just keep the window open so it isn't too steamy, and have a table
ready for when you want to put the reader down (stop reading once your toes
start to wrinkle!).

~~~
com2kid
Oddly enough, my mother started having problems with eye strain with her
Kindle a couple months back. She switched to a high DPI tablet and says it is
easier for her. Rather odd since it goes against everything I think I know
about eInk versus LCD, but the end user is always right!

------
rishubhav
I'm suprised that no one's mentioned this yet, but I've found that even for
linear prose-text, my recall of what I've read is much better with paper books
than with ebooks.

My working hypothesis for why this is true is that it's easily the mentally
differentiate the paper books I've read: when I try to remember a book, often
the first thing that comes up in my mind is the cover art. My mental records
of paper books are indexed by a multitude of factors---what the cover looked
like, what the paper felt like, approximate size, typeface, etc.---that just
aren't there for ebooks

------
jimkri
At first I was going to agree with this statement; however, I hate carrying
all of my textbooks around, and if I have the e-book of the text that means I
saved a lot of money. I do love reading paper books, you cannot replace the
feeling of holding a paper book in your hands. It is something that I love
about paper books. But I really do love the fact that I can have all 5 of my
text books in one device that weighs less than any text book I am currently
carrying around.

Last semester I had all E-Books and I was able to bring them all with me at
work, and I was also able to read them while sitting in my work truck in the
dark. This semester I do not have any E-Books and two of my text books are
fairly large. Which really sucks, because I hate having a heavy back pack.

All around I do love having E-Books, on the Kindle I can slide back and forth
to different sections, high light the pages and everything I do with paper
books. I also take notes on paper as I go along with the E-Book, it really
helps me to remember certain parts.

I am saying this at the beginning of the semester though, I might change where
I stand but I currently love E-books, except when the battery runs out I hate
the thing haha. Who wouldn't love to have 6 major textbooks on one device?

------
SixSigma
What this doesn't go into is how the students evaluated such a task

> When students were given a choice of various media—including hard copy, cell
> phone, tablet, e-reader, and laptop

How many have actually compared those devices? And what digital format were
they using epub, pdf, HTML, txt ?

I have all those devices to try out the same books on. And I'm a student. I
would rate them

1) E-reader - least eye strain, good bookmarking, one more device to carry - I
only have one without a backlight

2) Tablet - better pdf support, good bookmarking, backlight is handy, multi
function can be a boon and a distraction

3) Hard copy - I still read a lot of paper books - too bulky, I bought a sheet
feed scanner just to scan my library and dump it

4) Laptop - at least it's not a phone

5) Phone - too small but I have read whole books using it when I had no option

~~~
com2kid
How do you deal with flipping back and forth pages?

For math classes specifically (realistically the only classes that I used a
book for), I would frequently flip all around the book, where I was flipping
too and from varied per chapter of course. Often times it would be 2 or so
locations in the book that had all formula's listed (for the well organized
math books!), the n and n-1 chapters text, the page with the current problem
set that I was working on, and an answer key in the back of the book.

I guess I could set all of those up as bookmarks, but it'd be a real pain to
have to keep adjusting bookmarks every day.

The slow page turn speed is just a killer for e-readers IMHO.

Heck even for large PDFs on tablets I have issues. Right now laptop is about
competitive with a paper book (and searching can help a lot, but PDF searching
is abysmal in seeming 80% of PDFs), and last time I tried a tablet (about a
year ago) they tended to just choke and die on RPG ebooks. (But hey, they are
2x as fast now so maybe things work...)

~~~
SixSigma
I should have said that my course is Supply Chain Management, so there's not
so much page flipping.

But if there was I would probably write formulas down in my hand written notes
as I was reading.

------
hackuser
A few thoughts:

1) Hardware interface: People here are conflating hardware interfaces (e.g.,
on Kindles) with the data medium (e.g., paper or ebook). For serious knowledge
work, such as studying, of course a large screen area (such as dual 22"
monitors) and good input (such as a full-sized keyboard) are essential. I
think the question is, in that environment, which data medium is better

2) Software interface: How much is an issue of basic interface design. Paper
book interfaces have been perfected over centuries; ebook interfaces are still
immature. With the right interface, could ebooks exceed paper?

3) Does anyone know if ebook formats combine these capabilities:

* I own the data; it's not licensed to me.

* Open formats, so the book is readable 20 years from now, including the annotations (see below)

* Annotation: I can add notes and associate them with specific locations in the text.

4) An interesting article on ebooks disrupting the college textbook business:
[http://www.fastcolabs.com/3028855/why-cant-e-books-
disrupt-t...](http://www.fastcolabs.com/3028855/why-cant-e-books-disrupt-the-
lucrative-college-textbook-business)

------
withdavidli
Love digital text. The find command saves me so much time than flipping and
skimming.

Books with a lot of charts and graphs, it's a hassle even in print. Figuring
out the placement so relavent text and visuals can be displayed on a single
page would be better, and it would be easier to experiment with the format
digitally.

------
ghshephard
It took me several years before I made the cognitive switch to preferring
eBooks for large, complex, dynamically accessed textbooks over the paper
variant. For the first few years I actually couldn't stand trying to read
stuff on my laptop versus a nice healthy paper text book (of which I have
about 4 boxes that I've incredibly carefully curated down from around 10
boxes). And even attempting to read them on the crappy kindle technology and
laggy ipads just sucked beyond belief circa late 2010. It was probably around
2012/2013 that they became my preferred platform on Laptops. Two things
probably changed things - SSDs became commonplace, so load times were instant,
and, EPUB/CHM readers got a lot betters - allowing quick hotkey movement
back/forth. Now, laptops work great - but tablets (in particular, everything
I've tried on the iPad), still lags horribly for textbook reading (though they
are great for longform prose - I devour books on my iPad - but it's not clear
that the iPad is any better for reading fiction books for me than my iPhone -
and I suspect the iPhone 6+ is going to replace reading on both in short form
for everything except magazines/comics).

Recently, I purchased the Oreilly 5th Edition "Learning Python" and almost
laughed. (A) The book is entirely infeasible to bring with you on a trip, (B)
I actually had a hard time navigating it, compared to the electronic version
which gives me the quickly navigated TOC on the side.

And, the deal breaker - I carry about 30 commonly used textbooks with me on 9
month+ international engagements, all the time in which I'm constantly moving
from country to country. It's hard (but I guess possible) to imagine how I
might do that with physical textbooks (Just keep shipping them to the hotels
I'm next moving to, and hope I'm there long enough to meet up with them).

But I can think of no conceivable scenario in which I could be using these
textbooks on the 22 Hour+ flights that I frequently take.

I'm willing to wager I'll never use a physical textbook again.

------
joshuapants
> There are two big issues. The first was they say they get distracted, pulled
> away to other things. The second had to do with eye strain and headaches and
> physical discomfort.

These problems may be common with laptops and tablets, but e-readers fix that.
You can't get distracted if the device is only capable of reading books, and
e-ink screens offer far less eyestrain than typical LCDs.

Personally, I would say that I prefer reading print books over ebooks, but I
vastly prefer reading ebooks on an e-reader over reading them on a different
device. I also have almost no shelf space, so being able to store hundreds of
books on my device is a great benefit. I get print copies of my favorite
books, but in general I use the e-reader for everything else.

I have no experience with e-textbooks, however.

~~~
higherpurpose
This is what I don't like about this headline and study. It seems to conflate
pretty easily iPads/tablets and "ereaders", because it doesn't look like they
only tested e-ink ereaders, but "ebook readers", and many use iPads for
reading ebooks. That's how they got the eye strain.

------
redler
We'll know the solution is near at hand when there's a satisfying way to
represent a book like "House of Leaves" (colored words, intentionally
blank/sideways/mirrored pages, backwards text, and other typographic mischief)
or "Gödel Escher Bach" (diagrams, puzzles embedded in formatting, messages
riffing self-referentially on the medium in which they're represented). This
is apparently a long way off, given that after all these years, the Kindle
hasn't even evolved to the point where it can render a page without what is
often sparse and uncomely full justification (to the best of my knowledge).

------
Kluny
Found it weird that the only explanation they could come up with for why
students still buy ebooks was "saving the environment". How about the sheer
weight of all the books you need to carry to last through a 16 hour flight?

------
adam419
The problem with ebooks is the false ownership. I much prefer ebooks, but as
opposed to a physical copy, unless I get my hands on the pdf or epub file when
I "buy" a book in iBooks I don't actually own that book.

~~~
dublinben
This is most apparent with digital textbooks, which are often only sold as
rentals for the duration of a single semester. You are paying for the book,
except it disappears after a few months.

------
donald_trumpet
They need an e-ink screen that is big enough to show an A4 PDF. The e-reader
(which actually an Android tablet with an e-ink screen) below at [1] is the
only one I am aware of, apart from the very expensive Sony legal A4 e-reader.

(I own the smaller version of this e-reader and it is excellent)

[1] [https://onyx-boox.com/shop/onyx-
boox-m96-universe-97-inch-e-...](https://onyx-boox.com/shop/onyx-
boox-m96-universe-97-inch-e-ink-pearl-display-e-book-reader-google-play-ivona-
text-speech-bluetooth-4-0-low-energy-powered-android-4-0-4/)

------
jasonwilk
I am not a college student anymore, but I can only imagine the time savings of
searching for answers and/or keywords in an ebook when writing a paper or
finishing a take home test.

As for the ebook vs print argument as a 29 year old, I always order my books
on amazon in paperback or hard copy. I stare at a screen all day, and don't
want to sit down for an enjoyable read using the same medium. I also always
order used copies of books and the prices are often times $.99-$2.00. Far
cheaper than a digital copy.

------
codexjourneys
I also prefer print books for in-depth work that requires flipping around
between different pages while also working on the computer. There is also
something comforting about reading a paper book for fun. My iPad is just not
warm and fuzzy.

However, I can't carry my paper books everywhere I go, so I have largely moved
to reading by iPad for necessity's sake (I travel quite a bit). Search
functionality is awesome for non-fiction how-to books, but my thought process
hasn't quite adjusted.

------
mrbird
I was surprised I didn't see mention of the reason I buy so many books
electronically: Impatience. Getting the book now versus waiting a couple days
is a big benefit for me.

------
Quequau
I think part of the problem is that there is no full letter/A4 device that
isn't heart stoppingly expensive and hard to actually buy.

I might have most of the texts I need to read in digital form but I'm not
going to read it on a tiny eReader meant for pulp fiction and my iPad has too
many distractions for me to honestly get through dense centent like text
books.

------
azernik
"NB: If you’re annotating on a Kindle, on a Kobo, you see—you know how many
people thought that word was really important, or maybe everybody else liked
this passage. If we sat and thought about it, what we think the author has to
say. … Rather, we’re just trying to present ourselves or fit in."

... who thought this feature was a good idea to build??!!

------
mostly_harmless
ereaders are a really nice platform but the current problem with ereaders is
the lack of tactile feedback, and the difficulty of random seeking.

The first issue is mostly just preference. being able to see how far finished
a book you are and the satisfaction of flipping a page is nice, but has little
utility.

The second issue is a bigger problem. anything but a linear read from start to
finish is difficult on an ereader. the only reasonable use case of ereaders in
the current form is reading a novel. anything with a more complicated
interaction, such as textbooks where you need to jump back and forth for
reference to equations; choose your own adventure books; or books with
footnotes or endnotes are severely limited.

I'm not sure if either of these issues can be fully solved, but they will
definitely need to be mitigated in the UI for ereaders to have a more
sustainable demand.

------
programminggeek
College books on e-readers aren't amazing yet. This isn't very surprising at
all.

Novel style ebooks are a great fit for the Kindle reader. Technical books are
not so great. I don't think there is a big push to get technical book reading
experiences to be super amazing, even with the iPad being so popular.

~~~
TillE
A 10" iPad is still too small to legibly render a typical textbook. It
requires a lot of scrolling and/or zooming. If the rumors of a 12-13" iPad
turn out to be true, this will certainly be one of its primary uses.

I'd buy one just for reading my large collection of PDFs for tabletop RPGs.

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zyxley
It would be interesting to see the comparison done again with a subset of
e-textbooks actually designed to take advantage of the platform (and not just
be an exported PDF dumped into an azw or epub), like some of the better iBooks
examples.

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fnordfnordfnord
College e-texts are typically "rented", the use terms are terrible. Also,
exams in courses I teach are almost always open-book, but I don't allow
electronic communication devices, which most tablets qualify as.

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hnnewguy
The two (huge) advantages of e-books, for me: 1) physical space 2) abundance
of available material.

In a perfect world, I'd own physical copies of all books. But as an avid
reader, ebooks have been a godsend.

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jghn
I much prefer printed books, but what I prefer even more than that is the
savings of physical space I achieve by having e-books on my iPad instead of
print books sitting on a shelf.

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Fomite
This does not surprise me - I print all peer-reviewed journal articles I'm
giving anything beyond a cursory glance, and generally prefer print editions
of journals.

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GoldenHomer
Not what I expected at all. I would guess that college students would prefer
taking notes electronically rather than writing with traditional pen and
paper.

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SixSigma
Sample size: 300 across four countries.

There are 20 million college students in the US alone.

I don't think that is a large enough sample size.

~~~
Retra
With those numbers, that's about a 5.5% error margin at a 95% confidence
level.

~~~
SixSigma
Assuming the same rate of higher education in Europe, that's another 20m.

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facepalm
I've seen a calculation claiming an ebook-reader is better for the environment
after 10 books.

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user3141592653
smart people, good for them!

