books: e- version or the real deal?

[belamyi]

eBooks challenge the whole notion we have had of books.

An author can now write several endings to a mystery novel, within a single edition of the "book," and using information about the reader, select which ending to present to a particular reader at a particular time.

A poet could select a specific poem, or group of poems, for a particular reader, based on the time of day, the weather at the reader's location, the reader's demographics, the reader's pulse, the reader's history of past readings and ratings of what he or she has read -- or the reader could turn off the interactive feature and just read the generic ebook.

A minister could select specific Biblical passages, and their order in which to be read, for a particular reader and particular occasion.

On the other hand, authors can't really sign ebooks in quite the same way that they sign hardprint books. (Yes, an ebook can capture a tablet-signature, but it's not quite the same thing, is it?) Book signing tours become something very different in a world in which there are only ebooks.

That they change the notion "you" had of book doesn't mean they actually change anything... *double face palm*...

 

[belamyi]

A number of the changes I have described in this thread have already become routine for electronic versions of professional journals and newspapers. No reason for them to not extend to electronic versions of books.

They have been routine for centuries... that they go electronic doesn't bring anything new... get my point now?

 

[Callum]

I'm too old for modern technology...no eBooks for me.

 

[geloge]

I'm an old fashioned guy, but it would have make the last moving much more easy

 

[alley]

I received a kindle for my birthday and have used it much more than I ever thought I would. I can set the text to speech feature to play and I listen to different books at work.

I really do like going to bookstores but the e-books are very convent and they sync up with my droid. It keeps my place in the book if I read on the Kindle or use my phone if I have spare time while I wait for an appointment or something...very cool.

 

[wooffy]

Changing font I'm good with. Totally. I don't like the idea of endings or themes being selected for me based on what I've read before.

I can see it now:

Based on the latest emails in your gmail account, we have improved the ending of this book. It now has more penis enlargement devices and male impotence treatments than before!​

 

[wooffy]

It is kind of scary to wonder what would happen if there were some crisis -- major energy crisis, widespread war, etc -- that led to severe restrictions on energy availability. Like those rolling blackouts in California from a few years back, but all day, day after day, week after week. If we completely abandon printed books and put everything into ebooks, we better have a way to guarantee that we can continue to power those ebooks when we need them.

USB connector, solar panel from Canadian Tire. Done. 5v and 100mA is hardly a challenge to supply. About 3 hours of charge every week or two.

It's like with the computerized library catalogs. All hell breaks out when the computer goes down.

That's because many are stupidly designed - you are using terminals with with all the info on the server. The better way of doing it is to have local copies of the info, so the system is not useless if one server goes down.

If your power goes out for a few days today, you can still read your printed books. But what will you do when the power goes out and your books are all stored in an ebook reader, or, worse, in the cloud?

Last time we lost power, having lights to read books was more of a problem for me. And any power outage longer and a day will have me dealing with far greater priorities than reading.

 

[wooffy]

You've got a plan, but does everyone else who might be converting over have a plan?

I don't really have a plan, I just came up with that off the top of my head. In practical terms, unless you live in an area prone to power outages, I find these concerns ludicrous.

(And the rural people I know all have generators for when the power goes out.)

 

[Callum]

Everyone in Canada should, logically, have a generator. I do. I don't know anyone that doesn't.

eBooks are just silly.

 

[wooffy]

You find these concerns ridiculous, and apparently so do a lot of other people. And that's the problem.
I'm talking about a whole-scale shift in which a society is contemplating a complete move from print to digital, whether in libraries or medical offices. If that is to happen, it won't be enough to think only about usual circumstances.

And, again, that is completely off topic! We are talking about an end user - someone like you or me - buying paper books vs. ebooks. That is the subject of this thread.

 

[fetaby]

Like anyone will have time to read when the zombie apocalypse begins... pfffft.








And I won't knock it, till I try it.

 

[belamyi]

I'd rather have a 1200 page book on my e-reader to take on a long trip, than the print book!

That's right, but picking up a real book and not the usual supersized best-selling log as a book i the first place would help a lot too.

 

[TriBi]

I had a look at an 'electronic reader' (can't remember which brand) at a bookshop yesterday. Call me old fashioned - but I'd much rather read a printed book.

Oh - and libraries are such wonderful institutions...

 

[wooffy]

Oh - and libraries are such wonderful institutions...

Indeed! The local library was one of my main reasons to get an ebook reader!

 

[belamyi]

Interesting you are so quick to assume I was referring to a "supersized best selling log" when the ones I was happy to find in e-versions were E. F. Benson's six "Lucia" novels and Earl Derr Biggers' six Charlie Chans each in omnibus form.

I guess everyone is your intellectual inferior by definition though ... sigh ... now I know.

Something characterized as "a 1200-page book" is a best-selling log... not all of them are by Grisham, Follett or Rowling: they are just the newcomers in a two-century old publishing tradition, and the older authors have been best-selling (sigh) for decades and even centuries now. It could be a specialty best-selling, of the Grey's anatomy sort, but you gave the perfect example of the sort of log I was referring to: all that Victorian and post-Victorian supersized collections of Anglo black-on-white (half-pun) spawn focusing on murder, "mystery" and/or "horror", The Empire, various sorts of juvenile crap, bugs of the forest or heros in the forests, and the like.
The books that overstock the rows, and the works and authors than fatten the many of those books overstocking the rows in British (and American) literature sections in the libraries I visit every day.
I'm my own intellectual inferior... by default... sigh... sigh...

 

[belamyi]

Oh - and libraries are such wonderful institutions...

Yeah, so are churches.

 

[just_mills]

Both. However, I do have many more physical copies of books. It's nice to sync multiple books onto the iPad though.. Less luggage space!

 

[FanofFiction]

I like libraries. It's nice going out in public and meeting people who read the same things that you do. Or bumping into a friend in the stacks. Maybe I'm just a sociable person but whatever.

And there are a number of books at libraries that can not be appreciated to their fullest on a tiny screen- such as the oversized art publications. One of teh libararies in my town has these books that are a metre tall and have incredible prints of great works of art by some great artists.

These are all things you lose on digital copies.

 

[wooffy]

I like libraries. It's nice going out in public and meeting people who read the same things that you do. Or bumping into a friend in the stacks. Maybe I'm just a sociable person but whatever.

You must be sociable - those are the things that turn me OFF about libraries!

And there are a number of books at libraries that can not be appreciated to their fullest on a tiny screen- such as the oversized art publications.

eReaders, particularly the current very limited ones, are really only good at text based display (e.g. typical fiction book). My Kobo, much as I like, only does 8 shades of gray!

As for art, though, I will take a high-res photos or scan (12megapixal minimum) over a static print any day. Nothing like being able to zoon in and see the individual brush strokes!

 

[BrownBoi89]

I prefer the real deal but if the e-version is encouraging more people to read I'm all for it.