Unfortunately, here you run into the issue that even today’s text recognition software is not glitch-free.
Some of the e-books I have read recently are ones I first read back in the pre-e-book era. Some of these have numerous text-recognition glitches (reading an i as an l, or in as m, or even not recognizing a character at all and inserting a nonsense character.
If the work is all done by robots, there’s no-one to correct these mistakes, which is a time-consuming (and thus costly) process.
You are absolutely right, of course; I was only thinking of the work scanning them. Projects like Gutenberg, Wikisource and some others rely on multitudes of volunteer proofreaders, and in the worst case slightly garbled but still searchable text, in conjunction with images of the original pages, is better than nothing. One also hopes automatic OCR will get better eventually.
Every time I see this thread title I hear "I like print books and I cannot lie, you other readers can’t deny, when a guy walks by with glasses on his head and a novel that’s half read… "
I know the feeling. If I did that, and I’m tempted, I’d have to live to 110 to finish all my books instead of the 105 I have to live to now.
There are a few used bookstores around here I have to keep myself from going to.
I have no problem avoiding alcohol or drugs but books are another matter.
In fact, a Canadian friend back in Bangkok kept trying to convince me e-readers were better. But he kept breaking his. Stepped or sat on them. He went through at least four in the few years I knew him. I pointed out to him I could step or sit on my dead-tree books all I wanted and still read them.
Bingo. One of my most treasured books is a first-edition, signed-by-the author-with-marginalia-by-the-author, book of poems by Dorothy Parker. If anybody sits or steps on it, I might not like it, but the book would be still readable and valuable.
Right, and if an e-reader breaks, is stolen, lost, or otherwise rendered unusable, the content you have purchased will be restored at no cost when the device is replaced. If your paper books are lost, stolen, or destroyed, singly or en masse, you have to buy them all over again.
Okay, here is one point where paper books have it all over e-books. Even if there were a way for author to e-sign e-books, I don’t think they would ever have the same cachet as an autographed first edition. (I own nearly 100 autographed books, many of which are firsts.)
I quoted this in full because I just went through the exact same nightmare. I am still surrounded with unpacked bins full of books (and DVDs) because the five full book cases I installed were not enough.
ETA: I am so shell shocked from my move that I forgot I already posted earlier in this thread.
I can’t find it now, but I found an article that reports about at least one study that shows that readers retain more content from book than a screen. You get physical cues from holding a book, such as whether a particular part was at the beginning, middle, or end of the book. You can also recall which side the page was, and where on the page the part was-which you can get from a screen if the pages don’t scroll.
I don’t care to buy books. That might come from not appreciating my mother’s thousands of paperback bodice-rippers, or because I usually read mysteries and rarely want to read them twice. We also frequently don’t have room in the budget for books, so the library is the way we get books. I have a Kindle, and because the local library is…not optimal, I read ebooks more often than paper books.
I still have hundreds (thousands?) of paper books, and still acquire and read them. But given the choice, I’ll always pick the Kindle. It is more comfortable than any paperback and can travel with me anywhere. I have no particular nostalgia for paper. Pure backlit displays like tablets are garbage for reading, but the Paperwhite is awesome; better than a paperback, since I can dial in the brightness to feel natural and just still be a tad brighter than I can get from room light.
In our garage we have 63 unpacked boxes of books, DVDs, and CDs, and 13 bookcases totaling almost 120 linear feet of shelf space. Coincidentally, today Ikea will deliver four new bookcases with 53 linear feet of shelves for our family room. (We needed new ones because the old ones are the wrong color, and Billys are inexpensive.) This will allow us to unpack about one quarter of our books. The rest will languish in the garage until we finish the basement, hopefully sometime in the next six months.