Books: Digital or physical?

[Dan]

There is also a certain friendliness about real books that bunch of components lurking within a piece of plastic can never replicate.

It sure can. It just has to have "Don't Panic" written in big friendly letters on it.

[brandon]

There's also a shortcut to search on Wikipedia and you get unlimited 3G for life (for an extra $50 when you buy the device).

That is an incredible deal if you root/jailbreak your Kindle to make it more of a tablet computer with unlimited free wireless surfing.

[Dan]

That is an incredible deal if you root/jailbreak your Kindle to make it more of a tablet computer with unlimited free wireless surfing.

It already comes with unlimited wireless surfing. And it would make a poor tablet, it's very, very good at reading book, at the expense of not being so good at anything else.

[brandon]

This is ironic:

Remote content removal

On July 17, 2009, Amazon.com withdrew certain Kindle titles, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, from sale, refunded the cost to those who had purchased them, and remotely deleted these titles from purchasers' devices after discovering that the publisher lacked rights to publish the titles in question. ... The move prompted outcry and comparisons to Nineteen Eighty-Four itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#Remote_content_removal

[Dan]

This is ironic:

Remote content removal

On July 17, 2009, Amazon.com withdrew certain Kindle titles, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, from sale, refunded the cost to those who had purchased them, and remotely deleted these titles from purchasers' devices after discovering that the publisher lacked rights to publish the titles in question. ... The move prompted outcry and comparisons to Nineteen Eighty-Four itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle#Remote_content_removal

Jeff Bezos said Amazon deserved all the criticism they received for the incident. They also restored the books and gave $30 to everyone affected.

I understand how the error occurred, they sold by accident a book they had no rights on and wanted to undo the sales. But I think it's wrong because if they sold by mistake a physical book, they wouldn't go retrieve it, they'd just deal with the consequences.

I believe Amazon learned its lesson and wouldn't do it again.

However, I advocate stripping off the DRM and making your own backups. Better safe than sorry.

[Padraig]

I'm one of those old fashioned people who still uses books with paper and pages and covers. Highest I've ever gone is book on tape, and those only on road trips or with my dad, as he listens to them very often since his work involves a lot of driving around.

[Dan]

Interesting but fallacious.

If you want to compare apple to apple, you have to compare books and digital material preserved by people following best practices. I could easily point out cases of book badly preserved, many of which I owned, and claim that digital is superior to books because I did such a sloppy job preserving my books.

[Camper]

I think electronic books represent another cultural loss.

As with any electronic item, we’ll have to budget for the inevitable upgrades.  As soon as a company sells a few million devices, and sales begin to level off, a new and purportedly better device will be released.  Plasma televisions?  Heck no!  You want LCD.  You still have LCD?  Geez, gramps, don’t you think it’s time to get an LED?  Wow!  Your LED isn’t 3-D?  And on and on, forever.  We’ll plop down $300, only to have the device go to $75 within 6 months, and then a cool new device will land. 

Now, televisions and cell phones are one thing, but I worry about throwing books into the digital game.  Black and white isn’t good enough anymore.  Now there are color e-readers.  And with that, you have classic children’s books that are being animated and “added to.”  That Dr. Seuss book now has cartoons and interactive games and it will even read itself to the kid.  Nifty, sure, but what does that take from the reading experience?  Well, reading for starts.  I think our imaginations are increasingly being taken from us.  Electronic devices provide a prepackaged experience.  Won’t there eventually be some improvement in which we don’t even have to open our eyes and translate letters anymore? 

And the social ramifications of the coming dominance of e-books will be comparable to what has happened with the demise of music stores.   Sitting alone in our bedrooms, punching buttons and clicking “like” on Facebook simply isn’t the same as getting off our butts, walking down the local music shop and digging through boxes of LPs.  It isn’t the same as striking up conversations with the clerks and customers about what great books or albums have been released. 

I don’t know.  It seems like the more convenience and ease we add to our society, the more impatient and angry our society becomes.  Maybe everything shouldn’t be a mouse click away.  Maybe it’s good to exert energy accessing knowledge and information.

[Dan]

And the social ramifications of the coming dominance of e-books will be comparable to what has happened with the demise of music stores.

Honestly, I feel that nothing of value was lost.

Sitting alone in our bedrooms, punching buttons and clicking “like” on Facebook simply isn’t the same as getting off our butts, walking down the local music shop and digging through boxes of LPs.  It isn’t the same as striking up conversations with the clerks and customers about what great books or albums have been released.

If you didn't see *more* discussion on the web than in meatspace, I don't know on which web you've been...

I don’t know.  It seems like the more convenience and ease we add to our society, the more impatient and angry our society becomes.  Maybe everything shouldn’t be a mouse click away.  Maybe it’s good to exert energy accessing knowledge and information.

We have a society that doesn't read much in the first place and technology is reversing this trend.

Anyway, the genie is out of the bottle and if you don't offer a digital copy of your book, someone else will (only you won't get a dime from it). And people like to pay $5 for a book rather than $25 for the cost of producing, transporting and storing it.

Digital books enable more diversity kind of in the same way the arrival of Amazon did. Book stores have limited shelf space and can't afford to stock anything but the most popular books. Amazon changed this by having a virtually infinitely big warehouse (they pull this feat by placing *their* order from the distributors when you place *your* order). This was a very successful strategy for Amazon, they make more money everyday with unpopular books combined than with bestsellers combined. Now digital books push this even further since they obsolete being out of print.

Advocating for people being forced to go to physical stores for music and books advocate a shallow and limited pop culture.

[Fitz1980]

Sitting alone in our bedrooms, punching buttons and clicking “like” on Facebook simply isn’t the same as getting off our butts, walking down the local music shop and digging through boxes of LPs. 

The flip side of that argument is that for decades artists had to basically sell their souls to a record producer on the off chance that they would make them a hit.  For a long time that was the only way to get airplay.  If you didn't have such a producer you would never get onto MTV or any mainstream radio station.  If you chose to go with such a producer than you were basically forfeiting all of your royalties from CD sales and such.  They were basically loss leaders to promote you for your live shows.

[Camper]

Honestly, I feel that nothing of value was lost.  If you didn't see *more* discussion on the web than in meatspace, I don't know on which web you've been...

There is infinitely more discussion on the web than in real life, but the quality?  And the outcome of any of these discussions?

We have a society that doesn't read much in the first place and technology is reversing this trend.

Again, the quality.  One researcher noted that e-books have been so quickly adopted because we are a society accustomed to status updates and tweets.  We don’t read 400-page books anymore.  We read snips, paragraphs, blurbs.  E-books encourage that.  Some will argue that this trend is evidence of a more efficient, advanced society.  There’s a cost.  People are changing.  Attention spans are decreasing.

And people like to pay $5 for a book rather than $25 for the cost of producing, transporting and storing it.

Unfortunately, the e-book prices are already creeping toward the physical book prices.  At Amazon, the new Tina Fey book is $13.97 in hardback, $12.99 for the download.  Music downloads are largely a dollar less than their CD counterparts.  There are some e-books with greater price variances, but the elimination of thousands of bookstore and music store and warehouse worker positions should save me more than $2 or $3. 

The elimination of the music industry's power has opened the gates.  Sony doesn't give us boy bands anymore, but YouTube gives us Bieber. 


Digital books enable more diversity kind of in the same way the arrival of Amazon did. Book stores have limited shelf space and can't afford to stock anything but the most popular books.

I agree with this observation.  Making more books available to people without the benefit of a large-city bookstore is a good thing. 

Advocating for people being forced to go to physical stores for music and books advocate a shallow and limited pop culture.

There’s an importance to having actual, physical interactions, even in seemingly mundane daily experiences.  The internet offers little more than a hologram of pop culture.  A mirror image.  A fantasy.  Can we replace sitting in a coffeehouse with friends?  Why not concoct a pill that tastes like coffee that we can pop while chatting with our digital pals?  Why experience the excitement of sitting in an auditorium and hearing the opening chords of our favorite band when you can simply watch a streaming HD concert in our living room?

This is quite relevant to nudism.  Can you replace the rush of skinny dipping on a hot summer day with a nude chat room conversation?
We’re losing something, and I think most people haven’t noticed.  Our social interactions have diminished.  Our attention spans are fading.  Parks are empty.  We endlessly message and text and fill boxes on message boards (as I am shamelessly, foolishly doing at this moment) with words and thoughts that won’t make any difference to the strangers who read them.  Hmmm.  I should go reflect on my own words...

But, there’s no turning back.  I just think we shouldn’t embrace everything described as progress without pausing to consider the costs. 

[Dan]

There is infinitely more discussion on the web than in real life, but the quality?  And the outcome of any of these discussions?

We have quality too. Just as in meatspace, some places have better quality than others but there exist better quality discussions online. You can easily find online fans of specific genres you like and indy artists have a much easier time making fans and reaching them online.

Again, the quality.  One researcher noted that e-books have been so quickly adopted because we are a society accustomed to status updates and tweets.  We don’t read 400-page books anymore.  We read snips, paragraphs, blurbs.  E-books encourage that.  Some will argue that this trend is evidence of a more efficient, advanced society.  There’s a cost.  People are changing.  Attention spans are decreasing.

Ebooks are the same books you'll find printed on dead trees. I'm reading more books on a kindle because it's more convenient and cheaper and I'm not alone. Studies found the newest generation to be more literate (read more, write more and write better) than the one that came before because it it reads and writes so much online.

If people stopped reading full length books, the Kindle wouldn't be such a smashing success.

Unfortunately, the e-book prices are already creeping toward the physical book prices.  At Amazon, the new Tina Fey book is $13.97 in hardback, $12.99 for the download.  Music downloads are largely a dollar less than their CD counterparts.  There are some e-books with greater price variances, but the elimination of thousands of bookstore and music store and warehouse worker positions should save me more than $2 or $3.

Isn't that the reverse, at $14, the hardback book's price is creeping toward the ebook's price.

As for the music price, it's mostly due to the antiquated business model known as labels who insist on those prices. Hopefully those leaches will die the same way they were born (piracy).

The elimination of the music industry's power has opened the gates.  Sony doesn't give us boy bands anymore, but YouTube gives us Bieber.

And that's worse? I have no more trouble ignoring Bieber than I had ignoring boy bands...

Advocating for people being forced to go to physical stores for music and books advocate a shallow and limited pop culture.

There’s an importance to having actual, physical interactions, even in seemingly mundane daily experiences.  The internet offers little more than a hologram of pop culture.  A mirror image.  A fantasy.  Can we replace sitting in a coffeehouse with friends?  Why not concoct a pill that tastes like coffee that we can pop while chatting with our digital pals?  Why experience the excitement of sitting in an auditorium and hearing the opening chords of our favorite band when you can simply watch a streaming HD concert in our living room?

As far as I know coffeehouses do just as well as they always did (but now offer free wifi) and concerts are just as popular as they used to be...

This is quite relevant to nudism.  Can you replace the rush of skinny dipping on a hot summer day with a nude chat room conversation?
We’re losing something, and I think most people haven’t noticed.  Our social interactions have diminished.  Our attention spans are fading.  Parks are empty.  We endlessly message and text and fill boxes on message boards (as I am shamelessly, foolishly doing at this moment) with words and thoughts that won’t make any difference to the strangers who read them.  Hmmm.  I should go reflect on my own words...

But, there’s no turning back.  I just think we shouldn’t embrace everything described as progress without pausing to consider the costs. 

Parks tend to be full of people, try to go to one, they are neat.

[Ed]

I prefer to have a real book in my hands. The Kindle's a fantastic piece of kit - two of my friends have them and they're very impressive and useful - lecture slides are nice to read on them as well as books, but I still just like having a book. It's just a tactile thing, I guess. Ah well :P

[blu333y3s]

I agree with the sentiment that there is something to be said for the tactile qualities of a book.

I have recently purchased an Android phone with e reader built in. Whilst great for convenience and storage it will never replace books for me. In. Saying that I won't end up being the ebook snob that I thought I would be, a time and a place for both.

Walking into a second hand book store and perusing through the covers of pre loved books is one of my favorite things to do.

[Historybuff83]

I own both a Kindle and a myriad of "old school" books, I don't think I'll ever get rid of the older books.  Like others have posted, just something about the tactile feel of pages under your fingertips.  I do enjoy the Kindle because I can shop for books at home (I live far away from an actual bookstore) and it's easier than lugging around a bunch of books when I travel.