On Books

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/09/26/On-Books

by wglb • 16 years ago

40 25 16 years ago

lzw• 16 years ago

Everyone in our house gets to read all the iPad books.... First off most of them are drm free books from orielly and pragmatic programmers or PDFs that can be emailed. But even the ones from the AppStore are just in iTunes and itunes syncs our book libraries, so if she adds one to hers i get it immediately on mine. ITunes supports sharing of drm encumbered media this way. Also it means we have a backup in case one of e laptops dies.

suhit• 16 years ago

Thats a very interesting point about books as apps and sharing them. Amazon allows upto 5 devices too. So other people in the family can use the same registered device ID and share all the books.

It is not the best solution though.

Tichy2• 16 years ago

I see a new definition of family emerge - are you in my Apple home network?

ajg1977• 16 years ago

The lack of sharing (or even giving) is the biggest barrier to my total plunge into ebooks. As Tim notes, the fact that ebooks are barely cheaper than paperbacks, regardless of zero printing costs and no opportunity for resale, doesn't help. I can't help but feel I'm getting a raw deal.

As it stands If i know a book is just for me and/or my wife, I'll pick it up on the Kindle, otherwise it's the dead tree route.

I really hope that one of the major ebook makers will at least add the ability to 'gift' books to others, but I think it's unlikely. They have little to gain and I'm sure publishers would put up a hell of a fight. The best we're likely to get is the nook's crippled lending function, or something similar that publishers have the option of disabling, and thus do so for every title (much the same way as most books now have the Kindle's text to speech feature disabled).

cageface2• 16 years ago

This is definitely a downside but the major upside of a digital library is that I have it with me wherever I go. If I'm somewhere where I only have my Droid or my laptop I have all my books. If my Kindle falls in the sink or is lost I lose nothing. Most importantly, I don't have to lug around 20 heavy boxes of books every time I move.

On the whole the tradeoffs lean to ebooks for me, and this will be even more the case if the price of the digital versions come down a bit more.

xtho• 16 years ago

Since this is a prominent argument may I humbly ask, why would you want to take a library with you? You can only read one book at once. The only use-case for a portable library would be writing a scientific paper at the restaurant or coffee shop. I have my doubts though that this would improve the quality of the paper.

Tichy2• 16 years ago

In most cases I have found paper books to be a lot cheaper than ebooks, especially when using Amazon Marketplace.

Also, what DRM people should understand: if I can not give away or sell the product, it is only worth half. In former times, I could assume that I could sell the book/game/CD after growing tired for it, recouping about 50% of the costs.

danielnicollet• 16 years ago

The whole sharing issue is major in my opinion. If a new technology brings new benefits but takes away some key benefits of the paper medium, I would bet that the users community will quickly question the future of e-books with some serious hacks and p2p challenges to the publishers and distributors.

jsz0• 16 years ago

I think the publishers are probably factoring in the effects of piracy. In the past they couldn't stop people from lending/sharing printed books but they could stop mass produced counterfeit printings. Now it's the exact opposite. They can't control the digital counterfeits in the form of piracy but they can stop digital lending/sharing. Maybe they hope to break even in the end. I can see from their perspective that having both sources of lost revenue combined is a nightmare scenario. I think as readers we probably need to accept that $10 or $15 for a book that is going to bring you many hours of enjoyment isn't a bad deal. We have the Internet to research books, fairly generous samples to read, social networking to spread the word.

wazoox• 16 years ago

But we have the pirate bay. Piracy just will be widespread, like it was for software for 35 years, and for music for 12 years, and movies for almost as long.

nl2• 16 years ago

He didn't address what the screen is like for reading on (compared to an eInk reader like Kindle etc).

I have a Kobo Reader, and it's pretty good. The DRM is a hassle, so here's my workflow for buying a new ebook (and yes, the fact I have workflow to buy a new ebook sucks, and says a lot about where my time goes):

Prerequisite:

You'll need Adobe-eBook-DRM-shit-whtaever it is called installed before you begin. Otherwise you'll download the book and won't be able to use it. OTOH, it does run on Linux, so that's something.

1) Find the book you like. I find http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ because they have a good range and good prices on ePub books, and give you 3 copies

2) Download the book.

3) Using the following search, find the python scripts to remove the DRM: http://www.google.com/search?q=python+remove+epub+drm+script

4) Use http://calibre-ebook.com/ or the KoboBulkFixer program to remove fixed font sizes from any styles (the Kobo won't scale those, so everything appears in about 8pt writing)

5) Put my eBook in dropbox so I don't have to do this again

6) Copy the eBook to my Kobo.

I should note that I need to remove DRM to fix the font problem.

Like I said, this sucks. But OTOH, ebooks are good.

pmcginn• 16 years ago

But given the current arrangements, I’m being charged just a little bit less than I pay for paper and getting a whole lot less, and it just doesn’t feel like a good deal.

Speaking as someone who's moved more times that he'd like to count, I enjoy getting a whole lot less--less weight, fewer boxes, less room taken up in my home. My Kindle's lighter than a thick magazine and takes up way less room in my bag. When you compare it to a hardcover (especially a fantasy hardcover) the difference is amazing. Try reading a Wheel of Time book one-handed for an entire afternoon in paperback or hardcover. Then try flipping the pages one handed, too.

For me it's a question of convenience, and I'll take my convenience over that of my friends in this case. If they don't trust my recommendation enough to track a book down in a library (or download the free sample from Amazon, if they've got a Kindle), then I really don't care what they're reading.

ascuttlefish• 16 years ago

I love ebooks, but I prefer to read paper books. The haptic and olfactory experience of reading a book is something that I've enjoyed as long as I can remember, and I won't give it up lightly. However, all those classics I've neglected to read are now a few clicks away and available for free. The cost of building my library of paper books versus the wide availability of free ebooks has made me a happy ebook adopter. There is one other problem, however.

I use linux at home and so cannot use Adobe Digital Editions or other DRM system. So, I have to rely on freely available, DRM-free files that I find on the Internet. Legally, many classics are available; illegally, many more. The upside to this is that not being encumbered by DRM, I'm free to share my collection. The downside is that it's been all too easy for me to become a criminal in the eyes of the law.

agentultra• 16 years ago

Books are still better, IMO.

I can lend one to a friend. They don't need a $300 compatible reader. I can lend it to as many friends as I want. I can leave it on a park bench and share it with a complete stranger.

I own the copy. I can sell it. Burn it. Press leaves in it. I can scribble in the margins. Fold the corners. Donate it to a library.

I can have two pages open at once. I can flip to indexes, important tables, and chapters without fiddling with buttons and menus. I don't have to recharge my book or replace batteries. If I drop it or get it wet, it's probably going to be fine. I know that in 50 years I'll be able to read the thing.

I've come to be of the opinion that unless I own a physical product, I don't own anything. Digital goods are meaningless and ephemeral. They come with digital locks and stupid restrictions that I don't really care to bother with. I don't want to pay a subscription or find some hack to work-around their limitations. Books are cheap and work just fine. And I get to own them.

zacharypinter• 16 years ago

Now that there are several options for reading digital books comfortably, I think the publishing industry is going to face tons of problems with piracy. A book that takes hours to consume can be downloaded in minutes. Furthermore, we're already seeing torrent files of hundreds of DRM-free best sellers, making it easy to download first, decide later.

In the short term, the best solution seems to make the official process more convenient than pirating (Amazon does this quite well). In the long term, the best solution will probably be to combine the convenience with a subscription model. Lending books becomes a non-issue if all your friends have a $10/month subscription to Amazon's entire catalogue.

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