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

[Christopher]

I was reading them on my phone and tablet. Not even close to reading a physical. Industrial, cold, stale, homogenized, pasteurized.

Oh, don't be silly. You make it sound as if print books are individually hand-crafted by medieval scribes. Modern print books are every bit as mass-produced and industrial as modern electronics. They're even printed from the exact same digital files as the e-books. And news flash -- we write them on computers too. We don't use fountain pens and parchment under dim candlelight. Every step of the creative process of a modern book is electronic up until the actual printing.

And in a print book, you're stuck with the typesetting and font the book designers chose. On an e-book, you can change them to whatever you want. That's literally the exact opposite of homogenization.

 

[Dayton Ward]

I read eBooks for various reasons, and they’re an absolute godsend when it comes to research, but for leisure reading, I still prefer physical books. I want to unplug, kick back, and lose myself in the pages. That’s just me. YMMV, and to each their own.

 

[John Clark]

I read eBooks for various reasons, and they’re an absolute godsend when it comes to research, but for leisure reading, I still prefer physical books. I want to unplug, kick back, and lose myself in the pages. That’s just me. YMMV, and to each their own.

I'm more the opposite. Most of my leisure books are now ebooks and most of my non fiction books/research books are physical ones. I did start to run out of space for physical books unfortunately

 

[Dayton Ward]

I just bought a house with more office and library space.

 

[Christopher]

I just don't see the sense in treating it as a competition or a binary choice. You can read e-books and still read print books too. It's not like you have to give one up to use the other.

Heck, I recently read a single book in both formats, after a fashion. I borrowed a Hal Clement anthology from the online library as an e-book, and I realized that already had three of its longer stories in a slim paperback volume on my shelf. So I read those three stories from the print copy I have, then read the rest on my phone. Flexibility is good. More to the point, availability is good. I'll read print if I have it, but I'll read an e-book if that's all I can get. The digital library has been a godsend to me during the pandemic, especially when it comes to access to comics.

 

[JD]

Also the imperfections of the physical—cover cut off kilter, the printer running low of ink on a page.

I'm very picky when it comes to my physical books, and stuff like that drives me absolutely nuts. I've dug through multiple copies of a book at the book store trying find the closest to perfect copy I can. I'm also very, very careful not to bend or break the spine. I've literally yelled at people when I've let see my books and they folded the pages back.

I recently borrowed some Avatar/The Legend of Korra art books from the Hoopla digital library. The e-book format was less than ideal for viewing an art book, especially since there was a glitch that caused the 2-page spreads to be reproduced too small so I couldn't zoom in for a closer look. If I could afford it, I'd much rather buy them in print. But you know what? I still read the e-books, because that was what was available and I at least got most of the benefit of the experience. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

I'm the opposite, I actually prefer e-books for art books like that. Most of the art books are big and heavy, and tend to be kind of awkward to try to read. With the ebook they're the same size as every other book, you also don't have to worry about big images being split between 2 pages, and depending on the format you can even zoom in if you want to.
Both formats definitely have their advantages, but given the choice I prefer e-books, just because there more positives to them for me. I can carry multiple books in one tablet, I can change the formating if I need to, and every book is the same size, and I don't have to worry as much about the book getting beat up. I've occasionally had issues with holding things, and with ebooks I can hold it open with one hand or prop it up a lot easier.

 

[Christopher]

I'm the opposite, I actually prefer e-books for art books like that. Most of the art books are big and heavy, and tend to be kind of awkward to try to read. With the ebook they're the same size as every other book, you also don't have to worry about big images being split between 2 pages, and depending on the format you can even zoom in if you want to.
Both formats definitely have their advantages, but given the choice I prefer e-books, just because there more positives to them for me. I can carry multiple books in one tablet, I can change the formating if I need to, and every book is the same size, and I don't have to worry as much about the book getting beat up. I've occasionally had issues with holding things, and with ebooks I can hold it open with one hand or prop it up a lot easier.

I'd agree with you if the e-book reader let you expand images to any size the way you can with, say, a PDF document. But the Hoopla online library service's digital comics reader (which is the format the art books were provided in) is more limited than that. As I've been saying, it's a flawed format, but I use it anyway, because everything is flawed, and an imperfect experience is better than none at all.

 

[JD]

Yeah, I've run into that with Kindle too, and it bugs me. I was flipping through The Art of Archer, the making of show for the animated FXX series, and I was trying to zoom in on some of the artwork and it wouldn't let. I read on my tablet, so it's at least a pretty good size. It would definitely be worse if I was reading it on a phone. Google does let you zoom in, so I'm just going to make sure get the rest of my art books from them.

 

[Christopher]

It would definitely be worse if I was reading it on a phone.

I only read prose books on my phone. For comics and such, I use my desktop screen. I did just get a new phone with a bigger screen, about checkbook size, but I think it's still a bit small for comics and art books.

 

[Therin of Andor]

They are the same. The content of the eBooks is the same as the pBooks.

They don't smell the same. You can't enjoy the sight of the eBook on your shelf. eBooks might be convenient for travelling, but a real book is a thing of beauty.

 

[Christopher]

They don't smell the same. You can't enjoy the sight of the eBook on your shelf. eBooks might be convenient for travelling, but a real book is a thing of beauty.

Surely that's secondary, though. The purpose of books is not to have a smell or to look good on a shelf. The purpose of books is to be read. The words and ideas are the only parts that truly matter. Everything else is superficial. It's just the delivery system. You guys are arguing about the box and ignoring the contents.

 

[tomswift2002]

Also another thing is if the publisher ever decides to remove the ebook from everyone’s account, because of expired rights or whatever, you’ve got no way to keep it and read it. Ebooks are licensed versions that are up to the whims of the publisher. Whereas physical—-the publisher can stop publishing it, but if you own a physical copy you can read it whenever—-even 70 years after it’s been put into the out of print section.

 

[Christopher]

Also another thing is if the publisher ever decides to remove the ebook from everyone’s account, because of expired rights or whatever, you’ve got no way to keep it and read it. Ebooks are licensed versions that are up to the whims of the publisher.

That's not true of all e-books, only ones that use DRM (digital rights management). Many e-books these days are DRM-free, meaning you can save and copy them like any other file.

 

[James Swallow]

I read eBooks for various reasons, and they’re an absolute godsend when it comes to research, but for leisure reading, I still prefer physical books. I want to unplug, kick back, and lose myself in the pages. That’s just me. YMMV, and to each their own.

I'm of a similar mind. I'm a late-comer to digital, after a friend of mine gave me a hand-me-down Kindle and I've grown into using it for maybe 30% of my reading. I read fast, so it's great for travel - no more filling up my case with books to read on the beach! And I like that digital opens up the marketplace for authors and formats. It's also cool to have digital copies of my physical media.

But... For me, there is something special about the intrinsic act of holding a physical, dead-tree book in my hands as I read. The action of the page turn, the texture of paper, the smell of an old paperback and so on - the object-ness of it adds an ephemeral quality to the experience that eBooks just don't provide. I have nothing against digital - I'm happy to see people reading no matter what the format - but for me paper always beats electrons.

I'm reminded of this Picard quote from First Contact: "For humans, touch can connect you to an object in a very personal way, make it seem more real." When I think of the books that have connected strongly with me over the years, I recall the object as much as the words on the page.

I just bought a house with more office and library space.

Nice. I think I'll just build another storey on to my place...

 

[Christopher]

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. I'm reading a ton more now since I discovered digital libraries, and that is an absolute plus. Quibbling over what format the books come in is trivial. Just give them to me.

 

[Csalem]

It is funny how this debate seems it will never end after nearly two decades of it. I could sort of understand it when we had certain stories that were ebook only a, but surely now we should be happy we have the option of ebook or paper book. Heck we even now have audiobooks on a regular basis again. Surely it is now a win-win-win situation?

 

[Christopher]

"Fans do not argue for reasons. They simple argue."

 

[tomswift2002]

That's not true of all e-books, only ones that use DRM (digital rights management). Many e-books these days are DRM-free, meaning you can save and copy them like any other file.

Wow! Can’t believe an author is sanctioning piracy! But even still, with watermarking or whatever the publisher can always leave a command on your device saying that if another copy is loaded the device is to delete it immediately.

 

[Christopher]

Wow! Can’t believe an author is sanctioning piracy!

Don't be insulting. I'm doing nothing of the sort. A number of major publishers and vendors have abandoned DRM because it wasn't effective at preventing piracy and just created inconveniences for readers. Tor Books has been DRM-free since 2012, for instance. But you still have to pay for it in order to own it, the same as with anything else.

 

[Sci]

I was reading them on my phone and tablet. Not even close to reading a physical. Industrial, cold, stale, homogenized, pasteurized.

I prefer physical books over eBooks as well, but I really just want to point out that mass-produced printed books are every bit as homogenized and industrial as eBooks -- arguably moreso, since at least you can control your own eBook reader's text font and size, which you can't control in a printed book. I mean, do you really think it's not industrial homogenization when tens of thousands of identical copies of a book are put together on a machine and then shipped out?

What you really mean is that you find it easier to emotionally connect to a physical object and that the physical sensation allows you to better get into the imaginative headspace of reading a novel. Which is fine -- I do too! But that's about the meanings we imbue into physical objects, not about any intrinsic property of the objects themselves.