Being a discussion of the various merits and drawbacks of physical books and e-books

[casey]

There are other advantages to eBooks not yet mentioned.

eBooks do not sell out. You do not have to order online and wait or drive to the local bookstore. When you see an eBook available for sale, you can buy it and get it now from your computer or phone.

I'm all in on eBooks, but going to the book store is in thing I miss most, because I could get Star Trek books at Barnes and Nobles on the Thursday or Friday before the release date. Every month I'd be there to get them, sometimes they'd have to go dig through boxes in the back--they probably hated me.

I'll never forget how anxious and excited I was to get my hands on books 2 and 3 of Destiny, so much so that I sat in the bookstore and read half of the book, both times. It would have been hell waiting until the following Tuesday to get them delivered to my kindle, especially with everyone here posting when they saw a copy in the wild.

Now that everything has moved away from MMPB I don't know if they are as flexible with the release date, and I prefer eBooks now, but back then the Friday before the last Tuesday of the month was practically a holiday to me.

 

[David Weller]

I'm all in on eBooks, but going to the book store is in thing I miss most, because I could get Star Trek books at Barnes and Nobles on the Thursday or Friday before the release date. Every month I'd be there to get them, sometimes they'd have to go dig through boxes in the back--they probably hated me.

I'll never forget how anxious and excited I was to get my hands on books 2 and 3 of Destiny, so much so that I sat in the bookstore and read half of the book, both times. It would have been hell waiting until the following Tuesday to get them delivered to my kindle, especially with everyone here posting when they saw a copy in the wild.

Now that everything has moved away from MMPB I don't know if they are as flexible with the release date, and I prefer eBooks now, but back then the Friday before the last Tuesday of the month was practically a holiday to me.

I’m in the UK and since the resumption it took nearly a month for a new book to reach me because of shipping (which got worse after COVID-19).

Now I’ve switched to ebooks I get them on their release date.

 

[DimesDan]

I tend to read my Trek and Wars stories in ebook form and my Reacher and Rebus (to give examples) stories in TBP (the Irish market doesn't like proper Hardbacks it seems) They both have their place and they're not mutually exclusive either.

 

[JWolf]

I switched to a Kindle after having various Nooks for the past 10 years, and holy crap was I surprised at the speed. Page turns are fast and actually finding a book or a collection is so much easier than the Nook. It's not waterproof so I'm going to keep my Nook around to take the beach or read in the bath, but my Kindle is going to be my main reader from now on.

Given that you like the Kindle for eBook management, you'd love Kobo. Compared to Kobo, the Kindle is a bad as the nook. Kobo has so much more eBook management options when used with Calibre. The Kobo firmware is just so much better then Kindle or nook.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Given that you like the Kindle for eBook management, you'd love Kobo. Compared to Kobo, the Kindle is a bad as the nook. Kobo has so much more eBook management options when used with Calibre. The Kobo firmware is just so much better then Kindle or nook.

Interesting. I have a Kobo, and have felt (through many iterations) that its book management/categorization left a lot to be desired. Good to know that everyone else is actually worse.

(I don't use Calibre, though.)

 

[JWolf]

Interesting. I have a Kobo, and have felt (through many iterations) that its book management/categorization left a lot to be desired. Good to know that everyone else is actually worse.

(I don't use Calibre, though.)

Do you have the latest 4.25.15875 firmware? Also, using Calibre gives you excellent control over the eBook management and it's very good. If you need any help with Calibre, I suggest you go over to Mobileread to get help.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Do you have the latest 4.25.15875 firmware?

Apparently not. Just checked, and I'm currently at 4.22.15190.

 

[JWolf]

Apparently not. Just checked, and I'm currently at 4.22.15190.

I highly suggest you upgrade the firmware and then head over to the Kobo forum on Mobileread. You can do all kinds of things with the firmware patches that are available there.

 

[JWolf]

Interesting. I have a Kobo, and have felt (through many iterations) that its book management/categorization left a lot to be desired. Good to know that everyone else is actually worse.

(I don't use Calibre, though.)

You do need to use Calibre to get the full eBook management out of your Kobo. Also, if you are not using it, you should install the 4.25.15875 firmware. The dictionaries have really been improved. So remove the Kobo dictionaries and download them again from the dictionary management page in settings.

 

[tomswift2002]

Where do you get $2? That's not correct. You have to pay for the paper, the printing, the packing, and the shipping. Then sometimes you also have to pay for warehousing. That's more then $2. Also, you sometimes have pBooks being remaindered especially when it comes time for a format change.

Another thing, I've been looking at prices of some older Star Trek eBooks. They are much cheaper then the pBook. $8.99 each for the two DS9 Mission Gamma books and $40 for the omnibus pBook. There are other examples where the eBook is considerably cheaper.



That's BS to say that an eBook will be discontinued before the pBook. The eBook is the one that won't be discontinued as it sits on a server in various eBook stores and does not take shelf space from other books that may sell better. Also, if the sales slump enough, the pBook may not get another print run as it's not economical. But the eBook is already done it doesn't need another print run. You have it backwards. There are a lot of pBooks that you cannot find as a pBook but can be found as an eBook. eBooks do not go out of print. The main reason an eBook is pulled is because the publisher's rights have reverted back to the author or the author's estate. pBooks that don't sell well enough may not be restocked and going into a bookstore such as Waterstones may not find the pBook you want on the shelves. eBooks are easier to find and easier to buy and depending on your needs, eBooks can be easier to read.

Your the one full of baloney here!

But the $2 comes from the shipping and publishing. When they are doing mass quantities in the thousands, the discounts on material and shipping are massive. So on a $20 book, only 10% of the list price is for printing and shipping, while the other 90% is editorial, publishing and profit for the book store and publisher.

It’s like with pressed DVD’s. The reason why print-on-demand DVD’s from places like Warner Brothers and Sony use DVD-R’s is because of the cost. For pressed DVD’s that you see in Walmart or other stores going for $5-$20 dollars, publishers need to print at the very minimum 5,000 copies (most say 10,000 is their minimum before they can see discount returns) before they can even offer a disc for $19.99. Otherwise below 5,000, the cost of making the glass master and materials would cause the publishers to have to charge $1,999.00 per disc (for the glass mastering alone you are looking, for the barest bare bones DVD at about $2,000USD).


And in an industry like Ebooks where the market has lost 30% over the past 5 years, it would be very easy to not offer underselling Ebooks anymore. If the server stops working and they need to reload the files on a new server, why pay someone to track down a file for a book that doesn’t sell.

But with books from the 80’s and earlier, in order to get them into digital, just like with video, someone has to convert the analog material to digital. Sure authors may’ve sent floppies in in the 80’s—-but how often are the publisher’s going to find those floppies or even if they did, still have a working program to access them (that is if the floppies haven’t gone corrupt)?

And in the 90’s, the digital files were generally sent to the printers for the printers to use—-the publisher didn’t keep them. So now they have to contact the printer to see if the still have the digital files—-and if the printer’s our of business or the book went out-of-print years ago, those files may be long deleted. So now you are getting into what could be called “TNG-R” territory where the publisher needs to lay out more money to publish the book. And in an industry where the year-to-year returns are vanishing by 6%, that would be a hard business decision to make, unless it had been a really popular book.

 

[BillJ]

Your the one full of baloney here!

But the $2 comes from the shipping and publishing. When they are doing mass quantities in the thousands, the discounts on material and shipping are massive. So on a $20 book, only 10% of the list price is for printing and shipping, while the other 90% is editorial, publishing and profit for the book store and publisher.

It’s like with pressed DVD’s. The reason why print-on-demand DVD’s from places like Warner Brothers and Sony use DVD-R’s is because of the cost. For pressed DVD’s that you see in Walmart or other stores going for $5-$20 dollars, publishers need to print at the very minimum 5,000 copies (most say 10,000 is their minimum before they can see discount returns) before they can even offer a disc for $19.99. Otherwise below 5,000, the cost of making the glass master and materials would cause the publishers to have to charge $1,999.00 per disc (for the glass mastering alone you are looking, for the barest bare bones DVD at about $2,000USD).


And in an industry like Ebooks where the market has lost 30% over the past 5 years, it would be very easy to not offer underselling Ebooks anymore. If the server stops working and they need to reload the files on a new server, why pay someone to track down a file for a book that doesn’t sell.

But with books from the 80’s and earlier, in order to get them into digital, just like with video, someone has to convert the analog material to digital. Sure authors may’ve sent floppies in in the 80’s—-but how often are the publisher’s going to find those floppies or even if they did, still have a working program to access them (that is if the floppies haven’t gone corrupt)?

And in the 90’s, the digital files were generally sent to the printers for the printers to use—-the publisher didn’t keep them. So now they have to contact the printer to see if the still have the digital files—-and if the printer’s our of business or the book went out-of-print years ago, those files may be long deleted. So now you are getting into what could be called “TNG-R” territory where the publisher needs to lay out more money to publish the book. And in an industry where the year-to-year returns are vanishing by 6%, that would be a hard business decision to make, unless it had been a really popular book.

I seriously don’t know what you’re on about? If you don’t enjoy ebooks, don’t buy them. Complaining about them or the business model makes you look petty and takes time away from reading the paper books you enjoy.

 

[Smiley]

We have been told many times on this site that the bulk of the expense of getting a book to publication is the same for paper and digital formats (writing, editing, marketing, etc.). There are costs associated with printing and distribution, and there are also costs associated with creating and maintaining the digital versions, but they are a small fraction of the other costs of making a book, at least for a publisher the size of Simon & Schuster/Pocket.

 

[David Weller]

I listen to a lot of audio drama that is released on CD or download. I often see the question “Why is the download only a couple of £ cheaper than the CD?”.

The answer is, of course, the manufacturing of the CD is only a small fraction of the overall cost.

 

[DimesDan]

Not sure if this has been pointed out, but if you drop a pbook in the bath, you can put it on a radiator or in the airing cupboard, it's dryout, if you drop an ebook reader in the bath, then you need to replace the reader.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Have you ever seen, heard about, or read about an eBook having only so many copies available for sale or only available for a specified limited time? I can honestly say I have not.

Yes, especially textbooks.

 

[BillJ]

Not sure if this has been pointed out, but if you drop a pbook in the bath, you can put it on a radiator or in the airing cupboard, it's dryout, if you drop an ebook reader in the bath, then you need to replace the reader.

Depends on the e-reader.

https://the-digital-reader.com/2019/06/26/waterproof-ereaders-currently-on-the-market/

 

[DimesDan]

Depends on the e-reader.

https://the-digital-reader.com/2019/06/26/waterproof-ereaders-currently-on-the-market/

Yes, of course, waterproof ebook readers exist, my mistake.

 

[BillJ]

Yes, of course, waterproof ebook readers exist, my mistake.

Technology has just matured, probably because folks were pissed when they dropped it in the bath and had to replace it.

 

[JWolf]

Not sure if this has been pointed out, but if you drop a pbook in the bath, you can put it on a radiator or in the airing cupboard, it's dryout, if you drop an ebook reader in the bath, then you need to replace the reader.

If you get a waterproof Reader, you can drop it into the bath and it will still work. Kobo Libra H2O and Kobo Forma are both waterproof.

 

[Indysolo]

Not everything has to be a competition. I like print books and e-books. I like books, and the more ways I can get them, the better.

Same, and I'll go even further than that.

I like music and I'll listen to it however I can. I stream, I play CDs, SA-CDs and vinyl. My entire music library is in Apple Lossless.

I like movies and will watch them however I can. I'll buy from iTunes or Vudu, stream, and watch Blu-rays and DVDs.

I'm about the content, not the delivery format. As long as it's good quality I'm happy to get this stuff however I legally can. What I don't understand is denying yourself the pleasure of watching a good movie or listening to a good piece of music because it's not available on your preferred format.