This is certainly what the publishers would like you to think, but how many of those publishers went out of business during that era due to rampant copyright violations?
If I had a reader with a good screen, easily portable, inexpensive, and has access to lots of books that I want (Yes, I know that there’s no parallel structure where there should be. Live with it.), I would prefer it to paper books. The only convenience of a book, to me, is the better display, lack of battery (though power of some kind is often necessary for light), and being able to flip through, when you know what you’re looking for, but not specifically enough to make searching possible.
I had a Palm a few years ago, and I would have read a lot more on it if the books I liked had been available.
That’s like saying that shoplifting isn’t a problem just because the stores stay open. Loss of revenue is a concern to every business.
How about Wikipedia? Hyperlinks that take you from one connected topic to another and another and another are a pretty nice feature. Sure, books can have a “See also:” list, but hyperlinks are far superior.
We’re just at the beginning of what can be done with the internet. The day will come when everything ever created by mankind will be accessable over the internet…every movie, book, song, poem, radio broadcast, TV show, map, or game.
Sure I do. It’s the only way to be sure of finding it again. Websites have a nasty habit of disappearing on me. Dagon Bytes had the publiuc domain works of HP Lovecraft. Dagon Bytes disappeared a few months ago.
What about books that are still in copyright, but not popular enough to be made into ebooks? If I can’t find Gone To Be Snakes Now or The Muller Fokker Effect in ebook format (and I doubt very much I could) I need a way to copy those books, and the dozens of others on my shelves, to ebook format.
My first response to “Get over it bookworms” is “Get over yourself, e-geek”, but then I remembered reading Moby Dick online this past summer. For some reason I find huge books more readable on a screen. Less daunting, maybe.
Anyway, once e-books have evolved to be more readable, have infinite or near-infinite battery life (anyone working on solar arrays for the damn things?, and I mean built-in cells, not some panel on a dongle), be cheap enough that you can read one on the subway without worrying someone will mug you for it, and durable enough that you can swat bugs with them and take one to the beach without worrying about dropping in in the sand, stepping on it, or your kid squirting sunscreen on it—
Once all that has happened, I predict, we’ll find e-books have done for paper books what cars did for horses: replaced them for work and commercial and routine use, sure, but done away with them, not a bit. Ever noticed there are entire cable channels devoted to horse racing? Ever noticed how much money is spent on horses every year? Ever noticed even our ultra-tech military still brings them out for parades and state funerals? Ever noticed how many people just LOVE horses? Want to find such a person and yell “Horses are nineteenth century, idiot! Get over them!”? Go ahead.
Work and commercial books, bulky reference books, have already gone electronic and aren’t going back. But recreational books? Art books, novels, all the stuff people read and look at for fun? If you’re waiting for those to disappear you’re likely to wait a long damn time. If you can’t imagine that, then ask yourself why people still study drawing and painting, and take pride in drawing and painting, when they could just go take a photograph.
And get over the e-fixation. Not every worthwhile activity needs batteries.
I love snuggling up with a good paperback. Can’t imagine giving up books anytime soon.
The only advantage of an e-reader is that it creates its own light. Sometimes it’s tough to find the right lighting for a traditional paperback.
Art books are gonna go digital in very short order. Four-color printing costs big-time compared to Web publishing.
As for that whole reading in bed thing … imagine a huge digital picture frame hung on a wall. Imagine it having ebook reader capabilities. Imagine someone lying in bed with a little remote in their hand, reading text on the screen.
Beats the heck out of trying to prop a book open for hours on end.
My eBook vision of the future consists of a roughly 100 page paper back sized sheaf of e-ink on flexible paper. You could connect it to your computer or a separate book loader dock, and it would display 100 pages or so of the novel you’re reading (the book could come in different numbers of pages depending on your reading habits and price ranges). Because e-ink only uses power when the words change, it would keep the words on the “page” until you decide to change it. Thus, no batteries. When you change the book, it draws its power from your computer or your laptop. Maybe the book loader could just be a memory card slot and it would have a small solar panel or something for power? Who knows? In any case, it would be like reading a book, complete with flipping pages and all that, but you buying one would be far more convenient. If it were memory card loaded, it would essentially be an iPod of books.
Even still, I’d rather have paper books.
That’s a cool idea, but I don’t think it would work very well in practice – partly because of the function of ocular dominancy at reading distance (we automatically “edit out” input from the other eye as noise) and partly because at that distance reading a line of text would call for conjugate eye movement instead of the usual saccadic movements used for casual reading. This would very quickly become fatiguing.
I can read 5.25" floppies with my current computer.
Fred Flintstone, is that you?
Thanks for the info and the link Spoons.
And just to weigh in on the whole debate, I use my PocketPC with Mobireader to read books. Haven’t held a real book in a while. I have thousands of ebooks.
Or as the man once said, “The paperless office is about as useful and desirable as the paperless bathroom.”
This bookworm won’t get over it my lifetime - thank god.
I love having a book in my car, at work, in the bedroom, in the kitchen and of course in the bathroom. I like going through my library and pulling out an old friend I want to re-read.
I often stop while reading and look at the cover art - I suppose it helps me immerse myself in the story.
Bah e-books!
Ebooks, of course, are much more likely to be illustrated because as I have already noted, four color costs nothing extra.
I believe the “iPod equivalent” to printed books is already out there. It’s called the iPod.
Granted I wasn’t *huge *into reading books before (a few a year, usually for a few minutes at a time before bed) but since I got my iPod I have really become enamored with books on CD (or MP3, or Audible or whatever I can find).
No kinking my neck, no eye strain, no pages, nothing to carry or lose ('cept for my iPod I guess, but that rarely leaves my sight). I can listen while I drive or I can relax and close my eyes if I want.
It’s pretty much replaced books for me, but will it for everybody? I doubt it. Different people like different things and that’s that. Some people still buy and listen to records, some people still film in 8mm or 16mm, VHS or Super 8, instead of DV.
You don’t know from clumsy. Either that, or you run screaming in confusion from a doorknob.
Unless you somehow have the mystic ability to inscribe marginalia without picking up a writing utensil. :rolleyes:
Yeah, and try pressing flowers in a e-book! 
For me, most of my reading for pleasure is done with paperbacks, because if I spill my dinner on it or drop it in the bathtub (I love to read in the bathtub), I’m out less than $10, and that’s only if I have a real problem with wiping the book off and having a stain or reading crinkled pages. If I drop my Palm LifeDrive in the tub, I’m out serious bucks.
Well, I think that the clear split in personal preferences means that both formats will be viable for some time (as many others have said). As for me, put me in the “they can have my paper books when they pry them out of my cold, dead hands” camp for the following reasons:
- A book is tactile. I can hold it. I don’t know why this matters to me, but it does. A lot.
- I can’t write on an e-book. This drives me to the point of madness. For me, there is NO SUBSTITUTE for pen and paper. I have immaculate handwriting and take great pleasure in the practice of penmanship. I hate styluses and other electronic substitutes for the art of handwriting with the passion of a thousand burning suns.
- In working with students, I have found that doing all communication in electronic format (for example, students emailing me their papers so that I may comment on them with ‘track changes’ or some similar function) wastes my time and does not command student attention. Handing a student a paper with my corrections handwritten in ink forces the student to focus in a way that even the most malevolent use of highlighting and bolding in a .doc file does not (at least in my experience). I will require my students to give me printed copies of their work unless there comes a time when I am specifically prohibited from doing so by a university’s policy.
Oh, and one more thing…
GET OFF MY LAWN! 