E-Readers (Kindle, Nook, using iPad for reading) yay or nay

I mean, what the hell is this "experience" people talk about wrt real books? Is it erotic?

sometimes.

brb . . .

Sensual yes, erotic no.

What books have going for them is that, when they are well-designed, they represent the culmination of many centuries of design iterations and refinements. otoh, only some books are designed with that level of care and knowledge. Cost factors almost always rule the book design process, so in a typical year you get a ton of shitty airport-bookrack mass paperbacks, a plethora of mid-range coffee table books, a smattering of oddly sized and self-concious "look at me" designs, plus a few well-printed literary books that make good use of quality paper, binding, typeface and typesetting.

Hearing about how people like to run their fingers through pages is gross.

― moonbop, Sunday, December 25, 2011 11:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Permalink

haha

this all just seems to be an extra expense. you can pick up cheap paperbacks, secondhand books everywhere. ridiculously cheap on like abebooks for example. i bought the new biographical dictionary of film for £2 secondhand hardback including delivery but its closer to £20 as an ebook. it just seems like you would need to be reading A LOT for these to make any sense economically. especially when books do not come super cheap. i mean w/ mp3 its like yes well you always need some sort of player for audio or video but with books you never needed like an extra thing (unless you count like "light" and reading glasses)

i mean there are obviously pros and cons. i think talking about these things not having souls is kindof unhelpful. just think how nostalgic people will be for these rudimentary gizmos in a few decades.

Xp you know there's a whole load of legit free out-of-copyright ebooks out there.

oh yeah i'm sure. its kindof stupid to posit this as a straight binary but like what if you're really into sci-fi and you can just constantly pick up a barrage of cheap paperbacks. kindle requires this upfront investment that other reading doesnt and if the books are not super cheap its not like you make that money back. i just assumed ebooks were gonna be super cheap when i first heard of them. it was a surprise to me that they were gonna be priced as though they were, like, books.

i mean people who want one should buy one. i just keep thinking of this guy i know who bought one and then spent about a month reading some lame indie magazine off it and he kept talking about how it was free but i was like really you have to divide the price of the machine across the number of books you read on it and people who don't really actually read that much are paying proportionally higher. like i get that if you are planning on reading a lot of 19th century literature it might make sense and its a fun gadget but like

Speaking of sci-fi, the sf gateway seems to be about as cheap as buying the used paperback for those old out-of-print classics.

That lame indie reader's analysis reminds me of this discussion:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/an-sdjDJt4b2h7b4/the_lonely_guy_1984_talk_about_hair/

Have y'll been fronting on not seeing this BBC documentary on this very subject? It's kinda rambly but really quite interesting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01871m9/hd/Imagine_Winter_2011_Books_The_Last_Chapter/

I'd watch it if it was available in my country.

I use the US version of this software to watch US TV stuff despite being in the UK. Only turn it on when you're actually watching something cos browsing with it on is supremely annoying, but it's good for what it does.

http://download.cnet.com/Expat-Shield/3000-2092_4-75211377.html

That's a slick little thing. Sadly, I'm on a Mac.

the states are a different country, and you can never BookMac

lol @ "switch on a whole fucking machine" - like that's harder these days than "open a whole fucking book at the last page I was reading"

― mortified of ILX (onimo)

So I got a kindle and it turns out that, as I thought, you press one (1) button and the whole fucking machine starts up at the last page you were reading in less than 2 (two) seconds.

I've read one and a bit ebooks since Christmas and it feels like... reading. I don't feel I'm really missing any tactile or sensual experience, but then I usually read cheap/used paperbacks.

I agree with some of the concerns upthread about spacing/justification but it hasn't bothered me too much - I'm used to seeing a similar thing in newspapers.

"switch on a whole fucking machine"

Indeed. There are thousands of circuits and valves and tubes. How can the average man be expected to learn how to make them work?

/trying to switch on a dead horse

quick question as i've just got one of them machines. i have a couple of books in rtf format that i need to convert to epub. so i downloaded calibre. is there anything to set up in the options before converting to a new format or do i just click on convert and hope for the best?

forget if i've already posted this but while ebook prices are usually too high to make any sense (on amazon they are often higher than the price of the physical book), plug project gutenberg into one of these and the world changes.

Given my penchant for used books and hole-and-corner odd books, I would not consider an ebook reader at all, if it weren't for free book sources like Project Gutenberg and the growing number of ebooks at the public library.

Though I've seen some books on Amazon where the Kindle and physical prices were the same, I don't think I've run across any where the Kindle version was more than the physical book. Being able to rent a textbook on the Kindle for a class I was taking (~$24 for 6 months) vs. buying the physical book (for ~$180) was interesting.

Holy crap, that's a game changer. I am going to be back in school pretty soon and I hope like hell I can rent my textbooks!

"often" was probably untrue because it's not like i've done a survey but it's happened to me more than once! most recently here vs here and here vs here.

textbook rental is a beautiful thing yeah.

I had no idea that was possible. And I've only been out of the textbook market for less than a year.

i have two copies of 'postwar' if you want one

i ended up making it part of my annual book-raid on my parents' house (along with two volumes of robert a. caro's a song of ice and johnson; the plane home was the first time in my life i've struggled w/ the overhead bins). much thx tho!

(did you like postwar?)

yes v much so

me too.

wait there's textbook rental??? swoon

Amazon UK is doing a '12 days of kindle' with lots of good, cheap (99p) titles: http://www.amazon.co.uk/b?ie=UTF8&node=1503253031
I looked to see if Amazon.com is doing the same but it seems not - I could only find a list of '$3.99 or below' titles that all looked shit.

You can rent physical text books, too - http://www.bookrenter.com/

I've rented text books. I've also sold text books I've found in dumpsters. Protip for all the hobos out there, untapped market.

I just want a cheap source of 60's scifi stuff. Tho, this format seems to work with all the classic short-story collections put out back then.

i picked up the entire wheel of time series for free, that was pretty economical imo

jibe i had to convert those, fwiw- i used an online converter but can't remember what it was called so i'm not actually any use to you but there you go

me too.

have you read 'ill fares the land'? i cant recommend it highly enough tbh

ha thanks darragh. i'll see how those books come out without any settings modified.

thanks to the democratization of publishing my friend who is way better at writing lots and lots of words than he is at writing good ones now has a bunch of ebooks in the kindle store. I don't recommend spending yr money.

unless you want to read his self-insert fantasies about managing a rock band or being a computer hacker and dating large-breasted women

have you read 'ill fares the land'? i cant recommend it highly enough tbh

― є(٥_ ٥)э, Thursday, December 29, 2011 6:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Permalink

yeah i read this in like two hours and immediately donated my copy to the occupy portland library; as a (very personal and rightly so) manifesto against The Problem it's sterling.