I thought I wpuld ask here, whether it is a good idea to go to ebooks versus paper ones? Since most paperbacks I buy are Trek, this seemed the logical place to ask first.
SOT: transition to ebooks
- Thread starter Ronald Held
- Start date
I use ebooks now for all my fiction reading. Using my Kindle I have all my star trek books in one compact location. Plus, reading using a e reader helps you get into the Star Trek experience because it is like you are using a PADD.
For now, I would be using an Android kindle app for my phone. Over time the books should be much cheaper?
I purchased dozens of Trek books over the years (since 2001-ish) from eReader.com (later converted to ePUB) and decided to continue again after a brief return to paperback in the latter Oughts. The savings on storage space is worth it to me.
Much cheaper? Probably not. If we're lucky, Simon & Schuster's settlement with the Department of Justice will be approved, and retailers will discount the books for the next two years (by no more than 30% - hopefully it'll be at least 25% so we have price parity with the print versions).
After two years S&S will be able to stop discounts again, and prices will spike back up to above-retail-for-print levels.
I'm a huge supporter of e-books. I know you can get paperback's cheaper, but for me the convenience and space saving more than make up for it. I have medical problems that sometimes make it hard to hold stuff up and with the e-books I can set it down and not worry. Plus there is the fact that I am very quickly running out of shelf space, and with e-books I can store hundreds or thousands of books in one device. It's also lighter than a paperback, and I can change the text size and style if I don't like the default. There's also the convenience of being able to buy my books on the device without having to leave my house, and since I don't drive this makes getting new books much easier. With e-books I also don't have to worry about my books being beaten up if I stick them in my bag. Having a case for my e-book is much more convenient than trying to find something to store my paperbacks in. For me all of these things more than make up for any price differences between e-books and paper-books.
No, don't switch to ebooks just yet. If you're going to switch to ebooks today, you're most likely going to buy into a DRM-ladden system like the Kindle or the Nook, and once you start building up your collection in one of those, you'll end up being locked in even though you knew better. This is bad for both authors and publishers, as well-known scifi author Charles Stross explained really well earlier this month (go read that now).
Here's the good news: You won't have to wait much longer. DRM is on the way out, because it's not just the consumer who is getting locked in, it's also the publishers, and the one and only option they have to break the lock is to drop DRM, which will give you free choice where to buy your books again, where to put them, what to do with them. In fact, it's starting to happen now: Tor just announced it will drop DRM within three months.
Aside from this DRM issue, e-reading is awesome: If you have a good device with good software, you get lots of advantages like being able to pick font/formatting settings that suit you, tight integration with dictionaries and other sources of information, better ways to organize large collections than doing it on a shelf, and so on. In fact, I find the much-touted ergonomics of paper books to be overrated anyway: Books are heavy, when you're near the beginning or the end they're ill-balanced, etc. A good e-reader is actually much nicer.
So yeah, I've already gone all-e personally - but only because I go through the trouble of removing DRM from all the books I buy, which requires some amount of technical skill and/or time. The path of lesser resistance is definitely to just wait a bit longer until it's no longer necessary.
Edit: Stross also wrote a second post that goes into much more detail and is also highly recommended if you're interested in the ebook market: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/04/more-on-drm-and-ebooks.html
Here's the good news: You won't have to wait much longer. DRM is on the way out, because it's not just the consumer who is getting locked in, it's also the publishers, and the one and only option they have to break the lock is to drop DRM, which will give you free choice where to buy your books again, where to put them, what to do with them. In fact, it's starting to happen now: Tor just announced it will drop DRM within three months.
Aside from this DRM issue, e-reading is awesome: If you have a good device with good software, you get lots of advantages like being able to pick font/formatting settings that suit you, tight integration with dictionaries and other sources of information, better ways to organize large collections than doing it on a shelf, and so on. In fact, I find the much-touted ergonomics of paper books to be overrated anyway: Books are heavy, when you're near the beginning or the end they're ill-balanced, etc. A good e-reader is actually much nicer.
So yeah, I've already gone all-e personally - but only because I go through the trouble of removing DRM from all the books I buy, which requires some amount of technical skill and/or time. The path of lesser resistance is definitely to just wait a bit longer until it's no longer necessary.
Edit: Stross also wrote a second post that goes into much more detail and is also highly recommended if you're interested in the ebook market: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/04/more-on-drm-and-ebooks.html
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These are all good inputs, so any more would be appreciated, including writers and editors.
I enjoy reading books on my kindle. Though Sho's advice is sound.
I still buy physical books. Not because of the price disparity, not because of the "ergonomics" of paperbacks (never even heard that one prior to this thread), but because I believe that the digitalization of media will inevitably contribute to the stagnation of culture - especially popular culture.
Once digitization occurs on a widespread basis (meaning that the majority of published works in a medium are available for sale digitally), than the need for new material is drastically reduced, because what once might have been out of print, or at least difficult to find, is now readily available. Most, at first thought, would tout that as a positive factor. But we need things to cycle out. There's only so much room in the public consciousness, and if any material is to exist, certain old material must be filtered out. There is a second problem associated with this as well, and that's information overload - until the point is reached at which new material ceases to exist, such new material that is released becomes lost in an endless sea of digital noise - at which point it might as well not exist at all.
That's the primary reason, I don't buy digitally, at least. The other reason is that the "decluttering" of our lifestyles has drained away our passions. I suppose this ties into my first reason, now that I think about it. Its less widespread at this point among people like us who were already fervently passionate about one thing or another, but it still exists. When I look at my bookshelves, I enjoy its aesthetic quality, as well as what it says about me as a person. A quick glance across my shelves will tell you exactly what kind of person I am - they're an extension of me, just as many of my other possessions are. We own some things out of necessity - but we own others because we want to own them. I don't know about you, but I don't feel nearly the same feeling of ownership over something that doesn't physically exist outside of a brief series of electrical signals.
Now, all this being said, do I think eBooks are a bad thing? No, except in the capacity that I believe they will eventually slow down and stop the evolution of popular culture, a thought I find disquieting. Do I begrudge people using them? Honestly, a little - because so many people use them at this point that I'm afraid it will become next to impossible to get new print books in the near future.
Yes, I'm a dinosaur, yes, I need to get with the times. Whatever. I'm 21 - I'm not someone who just can't embrace the technology, hell, I almost majored in computer science. I just really don't like what it says about us as a society when we're willing to give up the tangible connections to the things we love.
Once digitization occurs on a widespread basis (meaning that the majority of published works in a medium are available for sale digitally), than the need for new material is drastically reduced, because what once might have been out of print, or at least difficult to find, is now readily available. Most, at first thought, would tout that as a positive factor. But we need things to cycle out. There's only so much room in the public consciousness, and if any material is to exist, certain old material must be filtered out. There is a second problem associated with this as well, and that's information overload - until the point is reached at which new material ceases to exist, such new material that is released becomes lost in an endless sea of digital noise - at which point it might as well not exist at all.
That's the primary reason, I don't buy digitally, at least. The other reason is that the "decluttering" of our lifestyles has drained away our passions. I suppose this ties into my first reason, now that I think about it. Its less widespread at this point among people like us who were already fervently passionate about one thing or another, but it still exists. When I look at my bookshelves, I enjoy its aesthetic quality, as well as what it says about me as a person. A quick glance across my shelves will tell you exactly what kind of person I am - they're an extension of me, just as many of my other possessions are. We own some things out of necessity - but we own others because we want to own them. I don't know about you, but I don't feel nearly the same feeling of ownership over something that doesn't physically exist outside of a brief series of electrical signals.
Now, all this being said, do I think eBooks are a bad thing? No, except in the capacity that I believe they will eventually slow down and stop the evolution of popular culture, a thought I find disquieting. Do I begrudge people using them? Honestly, a little - because so many people use them at this point that I'm afraid it will become next to impossible to get new print books in the near future.
Yes, I'm a dinosaur, yes, I need to get with the times. Whatever. I'm 21 - I'm not someone who just can't embrace the technology, hell, I almost majored in computer science. I just really don't like what it says about us as a society when we're willing to give up the tangible connections to the things we love.
I do not believe that your argument is entirely logical. First of all it seems to presuppose a degree of homogeneity of experience, interest and taste that simply does not exist. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that every single piece of written fiction ever published were available digitally. While to be certain there may be some people who could spend the rest of their lives happily mining all that which exists, there will be others who will be more interested in newer works, or works of a particular genre, or subject matter. Also you will have people who will become interested in a particular author, and presuming said author is still living will desire to acquire anything new they write. Then there is simple human nature. Tastes will change, interests will come and go. People will come up with new ideas, or with new ways to communicate old ideas. People will want to read things that speak to them and their times. Because of these and many other factors the "cycling out" of which you speak will happen organically and consistently regardless of whether material is made scarce or abundant.
This next section is a bit cluttered. First of all your supposition that those of us who embrace minimalism lack passion is entirely specious and without basis in fact. I have a great many interests which I am incredibly passionate about. The only real difference between you and I would be that I am comfortable with there not being a large number of external indicators of my interests, and clearly you prefer such indicators. This is to my mind simply a matter of personal preference. While your lack of feeling of "ownership" without tangible connections may be true for you, it is not true for all of us. For my self, my "ownership" of the deeper reality of a thing is not diminished one iota by the loss of a tangible connection to it.
But beyond that the simple truth of the matter is that absolutely no media is inviolable. Paper burns, hard drives get destroyed, discs get scratched, etc etc. Personally one of the reasons why I embraced the Kindle was because I tend to lose books or end up with them falling apart, no matter how careful I am. But thanks to the digitization of books I can now have copies that are as close as possible to eternal. Because now when my current reader dies I merely have to replace it, and all my books are there waiting for me. As opposed to if my library were entirely physical where if that were destroyed I'd have to spend untold amounts replacing what was lost.
This is an argument that is almost entirely without merit. Print is not going anywhere. In the short term virtually nothing about the printing industry will change. In the long term I believe we will see an increase in new ways of getting physical copies of books into the hands of those that want them, including solutions such as micro printing (smaller runs) and print on demand.
Whereas I think that it indicates that perhaps our culture is slowly changing so that we are more concerned about ideas than we are about the container in which those ideas are presented.
Leaving aside whether I agree with your predictions at the moment, I think what you're writing can basically be summed up as fear of change, because you're advocating for what you perceive as an equilibrium that was only achieved accidentally rather than by anyone's design or society's conscious approval.
Basically, you're saying that both of these statements are true at the same time: "not having access to our culture's past creative output is bad" (actually you don't say that, but I'm reading between the lines and giving you the benefit of the doubt here) and "having unlimited access to our culture's past creative output is bad". And apparently the fact that books have a limited time span of wide commercial availability and existing copies eventually perish manages to achieve just the right balance between the two.
Now, assuming this is a correct picture of the world, it makes me really, really queasy, because this isn't an engineered balance, it's not a balance that exists by social conviction, and it's not a balance protected by many safeguards. That invites the possibility of things swaying toward the "no access" part of the spectrum, which I find a whole lot scarier than "unlimited access": I'd much rather count on us finding ways to cope with and remain culturally productive in the face of unlimited access to the world's collective back-catalog than on us prospering without a chance to reflect on our past. And once things are gone, you can't get them back.
As for the prediction itself, I feel rather callous about it. It may well be true that unlimited access to older works means greater competition for the authors of new works, but since I consider the loss of those older works an artificial advantage, I fail to feel pity for the authors: They're just going to have to find a way to write a "better" book, by making effective use of all the things working in their favor, such as their more direct connection to their audience, be that in space or time. In that sense, I don't fear that retaining access to older works will cause stagnation, but rather hope it will motivate and inspire evolution in the arts.
Doesn't make a difference to me, personally. Your and my reality is just a brief series of electrical signals, too, after all. Really, the difference between media is in the formula with which they stimulate our senses and whats sort of cognition they kick off in the process, and along those lines, the differences between a codex and an ebook are relatively neglibible (they're still interesting however, for example I wonder how the different carrier formats impact consumer's notions of book length down the road).
The thing I love is the text, not the paper it is printed on, so I don't feel like losing a "tangible connection" to the work. The only thing I can think of along those lines is losing the connection to past readers of the same book: If I pick up a book inherited from my late father, and I happen upon a coffee stain or an underlined sentence while reading it, that's certainly a powerful emotional experience that e-books currently don't generally provide. But it's not actually related to the content of the book in any way.
As for the whole my-shelf-reflects-me thing: Maybe so, but then there are many things which offer reflections of ourselves for others to see, and a good number of them have only sprung into existence relatively recently and alongside the genesis of the e-book. There are lots of websites dedicated to listing your collections of belongings of different types online, there are websites that track and make public your tastes in music or films or books, people routinely mention what they are reading in the communication media of their choice (including this forum). I would argue that the digital world offers a great many options for self-expression that more than compensate for the loss of the bookshelf. Indeed, publishing yourself has never been easier: We have witnessed a democratization of media.
Or as Dr. Phlox put it: Optimism, Captain!
To add some more, I did not say I would abandon print completely, What I now have in books and other paper collectibles will not be wholesale replaced by digital copies. I will still buy TOS novels in paper.
Honestly, I can only see the rise of e-book as a good thing. Sure we don't have a physical copy of the book to put on a shelf, but we have websites like LibraryThing and Shelfari if we want to track or share our collections, and honestly I find it much easier to keep something like that orgainized than a physcial bookcase. Not to mention the fact that they have pretty much infinite shelf space, compared to the very limited space in a physical shelf. Another big plus is the fact that it allows us to get access to things that we might not have ever come across if we were limited to only what is available in a local bookstore or library, and if you ask me can me that can only be a good thing. I don't see where having access to more old stuff is going to limit how much new stuff, as long as the new stuff is good, and deals with stuff that old books haven't dealt with, or deals with things in a new way people are still going to want to read it.
It is easier to get the backlist Star Trek books as eBooks then it is to try to find them in paper. I read Star Trek in ePub and I don't find I'm missing anything not reading the pBook version.
I'm using a Sony Reader PRS-650 and the Sony Reader PRS-T1 is quite nice. With the ePub versions, you do get a nice look as S&S embeds fonts to give it a nice look. You miss out on that nice look with the Kindle.
Actually, use the Bluefire Android app. Then you get the benefits of ePub over the Kindle eBook.
So far I haven't seen a better reader-app than Aldiko. All books look just like I set them up to and I can change setting without having to overwrite the CSS.
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