Reading printed books

edited July 18 in Books
As some of you heard, Borders is going out of business. I thought to ask some of you and generate some conversation. Do you like physical copies of books, or are you making the transition to ebooks?

For me, I am not sure how I feel. On one hand, I really like the convenience of an ebook reader and a library of digital books, since I tend to move a lot and the place where I store all of my accumulated crap (my parents' basement) is on the other side of the world.

However, there is a certain appeal in having physical copies of books as well. Part of it is the appeal of looking at your own library of books, but part of it too is having something tangible to represent your purchase as well. Plus, when I look at the ebook store for my Sony ereader, all the books are the exact same price as brick-and-mortal stores, and they never have sales to entice purchases like other online media distributors like Steam has. As a result, I've asked a colleague to pick me up a copy of A Dance with Dragons when he returns from an overseas business trip early next month.

What do you all think?

Comments

  • edited July 2011
    I think the situation is very similar to music downloads about ten years ago.

    The conservative nature of the publishing industry is going to be a hindrance. Control of the medium is being taken out of their hands, and they're reacting in an ineffective manner, which is why pricing isn't considerably cheaper and why ebooks are bum fucked with DRM.

    I also have a problem with the ubiquity of proprietary formats. Kindle, Sony, iBooks, Nook. All have similar selections but all are incompatible. Say you buy a Sony eReader but they decide to drop out of the business? Sure, you'll have all your bought books, but have no way to transfer them to a different device.

    Plus, one of the advantages of digital distribution with other media, such as films and games is that any dolt can get a product made and sold. However the ebook Market is still controlled by the old publishers, making self publication very difficult. This doesn't make sense, as films and games require technical expertise not every one possesses, while everyone has access to a word processor and an ability to spin a tale.

    So until the Market becomes a bit less controlled and better for the consumer, I'll probably stick to physical books (Besides, I'm a snob. Inconvenient though it may be, I'd still rather read a hard back, gold leafed version of Shakespeare's complete works than on a digital device.)
  • edited July 2011
    I guess I enjoy a physical book when I have something significant. I can't say I've tried an e-reader yet, so I really don't know how it compares. To me, a book doesn't run on batteries and that's very nice. It doesn't go out of date and need upgrading, so that's handy as well. It's bulkier I'd think, especially if you have a big hardcover, so maybe an e-reader would have an advantage there. Overall I'm not prone to reading things more than once anyway, and I hate the idea of having to store shelves full of random collected crap. In that sense I may eventually get into the e-reader thing. At the cost of requiring power and other negatives it DOES make for a much smaller bookshelf. And I don't doubt there are or would be steam-like benefits involving online accounts that store purchase records so if you lose your reader you can still get a new one and redownload books you already purchased.
  • edited July 2011
    I don't trust technology. There's something sexy about real books.
  • edited July 2011
    shakeycat wrote: »
    I don't trust technology. There's something sexy about real books.
    You know, you've not posted any pictures of your daughter...

    How do we know she doesn't consist entirely of paper and ink?
  • edited August 2011
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  • edited August 2011
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  • edited August 2011
    I'm impressed.
  • edited August 2011
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  • edited August 2011
    We know their weakness now. Send word to the other countries!
  • edited August 2011
    Just finished reading the new Dresden Book. I could've borrowed it from my mums kindle but I read the previous books in print and it felt weird to read this one out of it.
  • edited August 2011
    I really need to get back into the habit of reading again. The other day I found a bunch of books I own that I've started but never finished, and it's absolutely ridiculous how many pages I can get through and still put the book down and forget about it. A bunch of the books I found had a bookmark placed several hundreds of pages into the text, and I even remember really enjoying some of those books before I put them down! I just stop reading for some reason, and I don't get back to it until months and months (if not years) later.

    This needs to be a goal of mine. Stop being ADD when it comes to finishing a goddamn book.