Even on the train, I can read far, far faster than I could listen to an audiobook - the vast majority of which are abridged from the original work. That’s one of my issues with most PDA-sized audiobook formats, actually; I would be changing to the next page really frequently.
first, why to ebooks cost the same as a paper book? I mean a paper book costs about $1 to produce and hardback a whole $2. The infrastructure required to host books in a downloadable format isn’t a ball breaker to a publishing house. Either way the author maybe gets $1/book. So why do they charge so much for the privlidge of having an ebook? IMHO that’s the biggest barrier to adoption.
One cool thing about ebooks is that tons of specialty books are now available free on line that used to be tough to get. I’m into Asian things, and there’s a lot of free stuff with more than anyone could possible want from the 1800’s.
I already have the phone, web browser, mp3, email reader combo. I have long only read wire service news, and now that’s an ingrained part of my day no matter where I’m traveling in the world, to read my wire service news from my pda. Print newspaper - bah, freaking dinosaur.
No, and what about the smell? Books smell good, especially old ones! Nothing like the smell when you walk into a second-hand book shop. 
Yep. Well, unless the book shop gets most of it’s books from heavy smoker’s or wearers of lots of perfume. :smack: 
“Get over it bookworms!”
I’m not quite getting the logic here; ‘bookworms’ are people who love books; as long as there are people who love books, there will be books. What, exactly, am I meant to ‘get over’? Who is going to take away my books?
There are a number of ergonomic advantages that paper books have over any reader software that I’ve seen:
[ul]Rapid scanning - you can riffle through a paper book faster than an on-screen document. Particularly with illustrated texts, it’s easier to find that section with the diagram of the input widget flange when using a paper book.
[li]You can tell how far you are through the text with your eyes closed.[/li][li]Easy bookmarking - just jam a spare finger between the pages.[/li][li]Instant zoom in and out, with fine-grained levels of magnification - just hold the book closer to your eyes :)[/li][li]Instant boot-up.[/li][li]Mark-up using natural handwriting, as mentioned earlier.[/li][/ul]
That, I think, is the crux of the whole issue. It’s not enough for e-books to provide some sort of perceived advantage over regular books; it’s that regular books have to have some sort of large, noteworthy disadvantage.
I fully believe that electronic media will soon replace paper for authoritative reference works. Why print a thousand-dollar, thirty-volume encyclopedia that’s going to be out of date in six months when another small country goes to war and splits up?
Everything else, though - and I’m including smaller-scale reference works that are still convenient to distribute on paper, such as the regular-sized dictionaries - will be books for a long time to come. Which is good, because there’s a sheer pleasure in a big fat dictionary, or a good road atlas.
Well, there’s the rub. Publishers will continue trying to charge the cost of the dead tree version, expect us to shell out for a reader and pocket the extra profit. If the choice is an e-book and a dead tree one at the same price I’ll go for the latter every time. I can lend it out and be secure in the knowledge that my library won’t be made unreadable by tech change.
Sure-online or electronic sources will replace many reference sources–they already have.
But fiction and pleasure reading? No and No and No. There is the handed-ness of a book, that no techno gadget can match–the smell of the paper, the feel of the pages, the weight of it in your hand. People interact differently with books than they do with similiar sized electronic gadgets. I would be interested in a study of that phenomenom.
Books can be so many other things, as well–booster seat for a pre-schooler, doorstop, paperweight, flower press, insulation. If book gets wet, that’s bad, but usually the book is still usable-not so the electronic device. Books require only literacy-they don’t come with user manuals, batteries, warranties and they don’t out date.
There are too many advantages to paper books to predict their demise. I don’t have a cite, (heck, it might have been Cecil’s column) but I read years ago that humans use paper for working knowledge–but to store knowledge–that’s the genuis of a computer. We seem to interact with books as we do with paper for working knowledge use, though.
We also don’t blink as often when staring at a screen–this leads to dry eyes (which I have since entering grad school and spending lots of time on a computer); books don’t do that.
I don’t mind there being a choice for people-some here are more comfortable with ebooks–but as to the paperback being “holy” and respected in the breakroom–I want to work with you! I’ve never gotten anyone where I work to respect the fact that I am reading on my break…
As a publisher of erotic ebooks, I’d point out that porn will likely lead the way in this medium as it does in so many others. The Internet medium is a much friendlier distribution medium than others because the prudes haven’t managed to ghettoize sexual content as they have in traditional publishing.
Plus, and probably a lot more importantly, you can carry around an erotic ebook in your palm pilot and no one will no – the palm pilot doesn’t turn all pink and neon when it is caryring an ebook. Huge advantage there.
Plus, having an erotic ebook on your personal palm or blackberry doesn’t get you into the same kind of issues as having erotica on your work computer does.
This was my thought. And now I want to go out and buy a bunch of books just to prove the OP wrong.
You can pry my books from my cold, dead hands. And I have read plenty of books on screen, but it’s just not the same. That thirst isn’t slaked, not nearly.
And would somebody care to tell me what DRM is? Everybody seems to know but me, and there’s all this mysterious nodding all over the place. No more nodding!
Digital Rights Management. Publishers aren’t generally going to want to sell you eBooks if you can copy them and distribute (or sell) copies yourself.
Not very likely! DRM, with all its flaws, came about because consumers were not respecting fair use provisions of the copyright laws and deciding that it was perfectly kosher to make copies of all their music, movies, games, etc. for their friends so that their friends wouldn’t have to buy them. Paper books have built-in DRM; it’s rather difficult and time-consuming to make a photocopy of a large book and the result isn’t as good as the original.
Yes, DRM prevents the exercise of fair use, but until some way is found to make consumers respect fair use it is here to stay.
Who needs or wants porn on a portable viewer? I wouldn’t expect this demographic to drive an entire industry.
Our society’s porn-delivery infrastructure is pretty highly evolved, and I don’t see e-book viewers offering anything like a significant advantage to porn consumers in the main.
Paper books will never die. As mentioned up-thread, any system that depends on a power source is vulnerable. I can read a book by candlelight if necessary.
They’ll take my books when they can pry them from my cold, dead fingers! 
I like ebooks for some purposes – it’s handy to be able to have books on a thumb drive so I can read at my computer over lunch and not have to lug a book with me. The monitor is definitely harder on the eyes than a paper book, though. I’d be willing to get a good, easy-on-the-eyes reader if (a) the cost were reasonable and (b) I were confident it would not wear out or become obsolete within a very few years.
I really don’t see any mass changeover happening in the near future, though. Paperless offices were just around the corner throughout the '80s and '90s, but easy and cheap laser printing has ended up meaning that offices have more paper than ever. Unless publishers start selling ebooks for appreciably less than paper versions, I don’t see most folks switching for leisure reading.
I dunno, but as I understand it, erotica is by far the top-selling genre in ebooks. So you may want to revisit your ideas.
Faugh.
Physical books are flat-out more convenient than ebooks.
My books do not run out of batteries.
My books do not require use of electricity to function at all.
My books are completely portable (provided I’m willing to lug them around).
My books are still functional after being frozen, dropped, submerged in water, kicked, folded, spindled and otherwise mutilated. I can (and have) chuck a book across a room, bounce it off a wall, pick it up, and read the next page without difficulty.
For a one time fee of eight dollars, a book will be mine to use in all its original funcationality until I die or dispose of it (barring fire, which would destroy an ebook as well). As an additional bonus, I can lend my book to a friend - or give it away - or resell it, at my own personal discretion.
Books cause me significantly less eye strain than display screens of any sort. YMMV.
There are a number of ways data not immortalized in physical form can be scrambled. Of course, one can destroy a book - but physical books do not become corrupted. If my hard drive (if that’s where I’m storing ebooks) becomes corrupted, I’m SOL unless I have a backup of my ebook data. If my bookshelf collapses, I have a hell of a mess in my living room, but the integrity of the contents is still undamaged.
In short, books are more convenient and useful to me than an ebook reader would be.
It gives me real pleasure to let my eye wander over the volumes on my bookshelves; looking through a list on an electronic menu couldn’t be the same. My books are like little rectangular friends.
Not anytime soon, due to greed and DRM.
Every ebook device that I’ve ever read about has been hopelessly crippled by DRM. To make things worse, many publishers charge hardcover, or higher, prices for their ebooks.