ebooks vs treebooks: the definitive poll

Voted paper 4 lyfe for now but expect to change my mind somewhere down the line.

Kindle Paperwhite unless paper is the only option; iPad if there are pictures and stuff.

personally I'm a kindle convert (having been v sceptical) and yet and yet I do have an attachment to paper

there is also the question of availability which means that most of us will probably never be able to read exclusively one or the other but let's imagine that this isn't the case

i still theoretically have <3 for paper, but i've read 8 out of my last 10 books on my phone (including long ones like The Instructions), so.

paper for lyfe or gtfo

paper preferred, but will read ebooks because (1) a lot of free public domain classics and (2) reading on my iphone, while not ideal, is great for bed and public transit

papaaaaaahhhhhhh

I don't own an ebook reader or a smartphone that could sub for one, and i won't read on my desktop computer. I mostly buy used books, so it isn't as if I am killing trees that weren't dead a long time before I ever got involved. So, "paper for lyfe" was the most applicable.

There's a fair chance I'll end up with an ereader some day, but it is not a cinch, given my current habits and how hard habits are to change.

i was surprised to find how easy the move to digital was. doesn't seem to mess with my eyes at all but its sometimes a pain to hold but so are a lot of 'treebooks'. also im not the read a book then display it for lyfe type so its cut down on recycling a bunch.

library books!!

once i get through my backlog of paper books i can see myself never buying one again, but for now voted 'read both but prefer ebooks'

prefer ebooks

libraries scare me because the only thing i ever hear about them is how much people jerk off to free porn in them. i don't know. these days im too easily grossed out to touch something 1000 other people have touched tbh.

it's true, the copy of Olaf Stapledon's Starmaker that I was waiting for from the library was just caked in semen

I like minimizing my encounters with silverfish

I am already sorry I made that post

btw it's 2013, libraries have e-books now

Not much of a selection, last time I looked.

i 'lend' from amazon but theyre usually crappy true crime books which btw i love

I checked out their selection of books about music and it was basically just Sammy Hagar's autobiography.

I have hundreds of used books. I think one of the main reasons I will never go fully digital is that I love going to charity shops so much.

I have a lingering preference for paper when I'm reading pictureless text, but am sort of surprised at how willing I was to toss aside paper in my comics reading, so I'll probably go all-pixels before I kick it. It's nice, as my eyesight craps out over the years, to be able to increase text size as needed.

you say that like you can't just move an inch away from the comic, i mean cmon man

gf's kindle arrives tomorrow. another convert rah

wouldn't moving an inch away from the comic decrease the text size?

to an inch away, TO an inch away

that would have made perfect sense to another mayo person tbrr, you wouldn't believe the language filters i engage just to get half my meaning across

what are you on about

;-)

no no no ffs you don't wink after snark

these newbies are determined to drag us back to cuddlestein

fuck all of you

otm

it wasn't a wink it was a grimace fix yr eyesight fuck

dmac, I have monitor glasses, out-in-the-world glasses, and multiple magnifying glasses and printers' loupes to be able to see what I need to see. Bugger off with your good eyesight.

i dont like reading text extensively on ipads, i will maybe borrow an ipad mini to test for a while but suspect likewise

reading on laptops is fine tho

l1bg3n forever

if i like an ebook i usually wind up buying a physical copy also so i can have it around to randomly thumb through if the urge takes me (also i am sort of a compulsive book hoarder.) so dud.

it wasn't a wink it was a grimace fix yr eyesight fuck

― "LOL is other people" - Jean-Paul Snarktre (wins), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 9:45 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dmac, I have monitor glasses, out-in-the-world glasses, and multiple magnifying glasses and printers' loupes to be able to see what I need to see. Bugger off with your good eyesight.

― Thirty-Six Views of ILX, by Mari3sa (WilliamC), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 9:51 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

make y'alls minds up

tbf there was a consensus on "bugger off"

fair

paper, this is something i feel strongly about. feel like i have a space in my brain for tactile and visual memory with books.... like, i'll recall where on the page i read a particular passage (left or right page, upper middle bottom etc.) which is p useful in looking up quotes and passages. knowing how many pages you have left is very important to me too. i know there's a status bar but i can't. also i love the smell of old books.

guess.

if ur a robot nerd from the future ur playing a helluva long game

last year i tried reading a book and gave up 2/3 through because (a) bulk (b) needing two hands (c) gentle breezes constantly turning pages on my behalf

paper will do if i don't have a choice, otherwise treebooks can gtfo

i rarely use my kindle but i read more articles/books on my laptop than on paper (but i prefer paper if all things -- aka PRICE -- are equal*)

* (some used books are cheaper than buying the kindle file!)

(c) gentle breezes constantly turning pages on my behalf

plz tell me you literally raised your fist and yelled at a cloud

i started to, but then matlock came on

i just won a kindle today, so i guess i'll be doing most of my reading on that from now on.

i just read stephen king's 11/22/63 in hardcover and it was the WORST - so heavy and poorly bound, the text block ripped right out of the covers. i guess i just don't see much of a use for non-digital books anymore, unless the actual physicality of the book is tied to the content, eg we have a pretty extensive book collection, but probably 99% is collectible stuff - art books, photography books, signed, limited, deluxe editions, hand made stuff.

It's somewhat ridiculous how easily distracted I am, so the ability to read in a completely dark room has been amazing for me.

paper will do if i don't have a choice, otherwise treebooks can gtfo

I'll live w/out reading one-handed cept for the occasional newspaper on a SRO train

these are the same ppl who put movies on for "background," rite?

the other thing about ebooks is that i read them much, much more quickly than treebooks

xp

ya, sure

how's that wind-up tv workin for ya

ebooks, being oddly terrible at random page flipping, encourage a rigidly linear mode of reading that's almost the reverse of digital music.

'treebooks' is not good

'treebooks' has made me laugh like five times this week

I read both but prefer paper.

To me the only real positive of the eReader is the cost. I don't have a lot to spend on books, so only if my library doesn't have something, and I can't find it second hand, will I get the eBook.

Portability would have been a huge plus for me if I were still commuting, but since I'm not, it's only a peripheral benefit.

you're wrong, they're also much easier to read while you're driving

I get so many ebooks from the library, it's ridiculous.

Fuck an ebook imo. I read to relax, not look at a screen like i do the other 16 hours I'm awake.

ebook readers sure are gonna feel silly when the power grid goes out in the post-apocalyptic near-future.

(honest answer: i have never read an ebook, but there are a lot of cheap and free ebooks that are cool and it dos seem practical in some respects; i don't have enough shelf space to store all the books we have sitting around tbh and i RARELY re-read a book.)

Today technology is everywhere and we are surrounded as a result by more and more screens. So much is this the case that many marketing departments around the world are currently looking into how they can take advantage of these 'background' screens that are constantly on.

The worry of course is that screens are not completely good for our eyes, and they can cause a little eye strain. At the same time more and more features on these screens – such as greater brightness and 3D depth perception – are taking their toll on our eyes and making it even harder for them to maintain focus. This then is why the Kindle was such a breath of fresh air – a screen that was actually good for the eyes and that you could read to your heart's content without worrying about eye strain. Then at the same time it's also very good for the environment and for your energy bill. But how does this work? Why don't we see more screens like it? And are they really that much better than 'normal' monitors?

Why Monitors Cause Eye Strain

The main reason that monitors cause eye strain is that they cause your eyes to have to constantly adjust to different levels of brightness. Your eye achieves this by using tiny muscles to change the size of the pupil and thereby let in more or less light, and normally this occurs gradually throughout the day. The problem occurs when you watch TV or play computer games – particularly in the dark – because the brightness coming off of the television continually changes and thereby forces your eyes to have to adjust to the different levels of light. Rapid editing makes this worse as the scenes swap from dark to light and it can leave you with quite a headache. Of course TVs and computers need to use light to create the images however as this is how the pixels work – they are essentially all tiny bulbs.

The other problem is glare and this is something that makes using computers a problem. This happens when you position the screen in front of a window or another light source and it reflects off of the screen. As you move around that glare changes and you end up again adjusting to different levels of lighting. At the same time though as you are trying to read text over a bright spot of light this then means you are forced to look directly into the light which can cause eye strain too.

To prevent the problems then you would need a screen that didn't reflect light and that didn't emit it either – and that is where the Kindle screen is so useful.

How the Kindle Screen Works

The great thing about the Kindle screen is that it doesn't use light to light up the pixels, but rather ink, or 'e-ink' as Amazon call it (hence why the screens are called 'e-ink' screens). The ink is then simply arranged on the screen where the pixels are and this creates the image.

The reason this is so good is that it doesn't require any light in order to light up – and that means that there are no changes in contrast that your eyes have to adjust to. At the same time there's no glass and the material of the screen is different and less reflective.

But the added bonus is that once the ink is arranged on the screen it doesn't require any energy to maintain. Because there is no light coming out of the screen there is no change in contrast when the content changes and because there's no glass there's no glare or reflection. This all then means that reading a Kindle screen is actually just the same as reading from normal paper. Of course there's no light coming from behind so that does have the slight downside of meaning that you can't read in the dark, but then again you can get around this by simply using a reading light – just as you would with any normal book. At the same time it means that no energy is being used and this is why the Kindle can be used for days without running out of battery – it's only changing the image that requires power and the internet connection.

E-Ink Screens on Other Devices

Other e-readers such as the Kobo also use e-ink technology in their screens, but it will be a while before we start to see e-ink computers and other devices. The reason for this? Well as well as not creating its own light, the e-ink screens also have two other slight drawbacks – one is that they take a long time to change screen and this means that there is no way they could (currently) support video or computer games. The other problem is that they are currently only in black and white – and most people would opt to use a color device and perhaps face a little eyestrain for the majority of their tasks.

looking at screens:

- eink is effectively the same as paper, unless you've got the glowlight on
- screens being too bright is user error most of the time

like back when old people used to ram the colour up to full blast on crt tvs, and all the colours were hypersaturated and everyone's skin was somewhere between orange and dark red

just stop it

yet to get a papercut from my kindle just sayin

I have no issues reading on my iPad and vastly prefer it to paper.

Bought a Kindle, expected to be one of those people who instantly stopped buying paper books and went 100% device, but in fact find that I read some on screen and some on paper but like paper books better. To be honest, I haven't yet finished a single book on the Kindle, but have read one whole book on the iPad and several on the iPhone (via Kindle App.)

Voted paper 4 lyfe for now but expect to change my mind somewhere down the line.

This. But I'll probably change back after I inevitably drop the damn thing in the pool.

then your book would be trashed but you could just download your ebook again

Put it in a Ziploc bag and dropping a kindle in the water's no problem.

instant ethereal availability of humanity's entire pre-mickey-mouse canon is a lifechanger but i still like paper better. the part that isn't just about fetishism is mostly about the random-access.

first thing i bought on kindle was the complete works of h.p. lovecraft for $2.99 and the experience has been 100% downhill since then. but what a start!

ziploc bag is otm and honestly a necessity for beach kindling unless you either 1) don't give a fuck or 2) give way more of one than me

I still only buy books because I can't get used to not feeling a book and not feeling how much I have left to read.

I feel like with ebooks it is so random and abstract, since it depends on the font size. I think it's psychological for me.

But at one point I will have to start using an ereader because I'm a bit of a nomad, and moving books around is hell and extremely pricey.

Also, I don't think they've sorted the whole readability (screen brightness) issue straining your eye under sunlight. It seems like those with backlight or whatever strain your eyes, and those without it don't, but then you can't read outside under the sun.

Haha nilmarzinho I expected to catch more flak for "treebooks" honestly

Imagine if everyone started calling them that

last year i tried reading a book and gave up 2/3 through because (a) bulk (b) needing two hands (c) gentle breezes constantly turning pages on my behalf

poor wee lad

it's sad

i downloaded moby dick on my phone.

i feel like ebooks, apart from lacking certain aesthetic qualities or tactile pleasures... part of the experience of reading, for me, is hunting down the book, coming across books. i found a copy of ian frazier's great plains on a greyhound bus stop station bench in nanaimo. i carried a copy of rainbow stories across the pacific ocean to give to a friend. there were books i wanted to read and came across mentions of them in other books and thought about them again and waited years before finally having the book in my hand. i remember the chore that was carrying imperial back and forth with me to school on the skytrain. i borrowed a book of faulkner short stories from the library this afternoon and i haven't started reading it but on the walk home i enjoyed flipping it open, seeing the old card pouch in the front, The publishers will be pleased to send, upon request, an illustrated folder listing each volume in THE MODERN LIBRARY, an old price tag ($2.45). i like libraries and bookstores and i think that if we have less of them the world will be a worse place.

ebooks are cool if they allow wider distribution of things, allow more people access to a variety of books and allow writers to publish and share things broadly, and i think they do. there will be a perfect system for sharing and stumbling across them someday or maybe there already is. but i hate reading things on a screen and, for some reason, i resent ebook evangelism.

yeah, there's little more personal or touching than being given a read book. but the same could be said for vinyl, dvds etc.

now, see, i think i love music but i don't own any cds or vinyl or other physical holders of music. so, i can understand the opposite point of view.

i'm taking a hybrid approach right now with all this

music i'm all digital

video i'm all digital

my big exception to digital is chinese stuff. my bag is full of chinese textbooks, magazines &c.

why?

because uni gives out paper for some reason; i tend to pick up cheap magazines in chinatown; and i can make quick notes with a pencil. i could do all that with digital but it's fiddly.

also i focus on language better when i can't flick to another app

the built in compression of chinese texts make them easier for me to digest in digital form. also, massive chinese ereadership + certain characteristics of chinese online culture means huge amounts of contemporary chinese fiction and academic stuff sitting around for free online. and have you ever been to a library in china?

xpost

ah, cool. thanks for answering!

and have you ever been to a library in china?

no. i haven't been to china period

:) xp

the built in compression of chinese texts make them easier for me to digest in digital form. also, massive chinese ereadership + certain characteristics of chinese online culture means huge amounts of contemporary chinese fiction and academic stuff sitting around for free online.

i have plenty of chinese stuff in digital (books, magazines etc), but the only paper stuff i carry is in chinese

and have you ever been to a library in china?

closest i've been to that is page one bookshops in hong kong

also reading chinese text on a substandard screen (200 dpi or less) drives me up the wall

i've got an ereader and its prob one of my most beloved xmas gifts ever as i live abroad and in places where the bookshops are, to say the least, poorly stocked. being able to obtain so many books at the click of a mouse was much appreciated, as was the fact that a lot of it was free (i'm ashamed that i'm now getting all my books for free, even the recent ones). however, the selection in my native language still leaves a lot to be desired, most new novels not getting an ebook release (which seems extremely idiotic to me on the publisher's part but i'm not the one working there so what do i know) and those that do costing about as much as the actual treebook version, which really makes me feel like i'm being taken for a fool. it is starting to change slowly though, so we'll see. i still do like to hold a real book in my hands but i'm fine with ebooks too.

since I do a lot of my reading on public transportation, I definitely prefer ebooks. I've had way too many bad experiences trying to read a paper book with one hand on a crowded subway.

at the end of a day w lots of electronics and screens it's nice to chill out with some paper tbqf. Ebook evangelism is a little disconcerting to me as well but to each their own I guess.

ebooks are a great disciplinary tool. a lot harder to skip around and spoil endings etc...

random access is kind of the reason i do prefer paper though.

i never skip around in books anyway.

i think part of the appeal of reading books on my phone (kindle app) is that it feels so fast, you're flipping pages a few times per minute so there's a sense of momentum. also it gives page numbers, unlike my actual kindle.

yeah like george costanza i tend to read books from beginning to end, in that order!

Haha nilmarzinho I expected to catch more flak for "treebooks" honestly

― "LOL is other people" - Jean-Paul Snarktre (wins), Wednesday, April 17, 2013 1:58 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Imagine if everyone started calling them that

― "LOL is other people" - Jean-Paul Snarktre (wins), Wednesday, April 17, 2013 1:59 AM (12 hours ago)

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=67847

you guys don't skip around even in anthologies?

i guess but that's pretty easy to do in ebooks (much harder to flip through and scan for a specific page if you don't remember exactly where it is, or didn't mark it somehow).

I used to be agnostic, leaning towards paper for academic stuff because of the ease of comparing texts side-by-side. But I have been basically quadriplegic for the past couple of years, can't pull a paper book off the shelf or turn its pages. Hard to overstate the importance of ebooks in my life these days.

yeah that's much much easier to do in ebook. finding and referring to notes much easier also. tbh if you just wanted to flip to random page and start reading you could do that pretty easily also w/ scrollbar, it's not quite as random as flipping to random page but neither are truly random obv.

xpost

i mean random more in the sense of being able to flip quickly to and through a set of pages that might strike your fancy. there isn't yet a flipbook mode on ebooks that let you riffle through (i think). i wonder if there's a training mode on newer ebook readers that scold you if you don't read a set number of pages a day.

i have never flipped thru a book until i've found a page that strikes my fancy. are you talking about porn?

close enough: Year's Best SF anthologies

haha indeed, do you actually just flip to random pages and read or go to each story and check it out. cuz for anthologies the latter is very easy but w/ the former i take yr point.

As a reader, I prefer ebooks. As a librarian, I'm of two minds -- a lot of our students are low income and aren't comfortable using ebooks yet. Otoh, at the conference I was at last week there were findings that all of the related costs to print books (cataloging, processing, facilities to store them at, etc.) make them much less cost effective than ebooks. To a ridiculous degree.

At the end of a long day of working under a roof i like to relax on a park bench for the night

there's lots of flipping triggers: "oh man this story's getting to be a slog -- flip"
"wait who is this author again? -- finger placeholder, flip to short author bio, flip back"
"oh i've read this before -- flip"
"huh? wait what happened? -- flips back 3 pages"

usually in flipping you catch sight of other pages/stories you might want to flip to later.

conversely, word search in ebooks has been nice, like if i can't remember who the fuck a certain character is and want to find the first time they were mentioned.

ha, when i read russian novels i'll use as a bookmark a sheet of paper with characters' names and brief descriptions

much less cost effective than ebooks

curious if carbon costs were figured in here, have always wondered about this

It's dumb, but e-reading has made me less inclined to read multiple books at once. I just read The Guns of August and I'm reading Antifragile now and normally I'd be reading some kind of fiction alongside but with the Kindle I feel compelled to stick to the one book - it's there when I open the cover/etc..

Reading on the iPhone has been great for waiting in line and such, but only for lighter nonfiction like collections of magazine essays. It's hard to get enveloped in a book on such a small screen.

I would think that a single copy of a physical book would need to be read several hundred times before it would match the carbon cost of an ebook. The papermaking, printing and transport cost of a paper book runs up a pretty hefty carbon debt compared to the electricity needed to d/l and read an ebook.

there was some kind of calculation making the rounds that you needed to read at least x amount of ebooks before it offset the environmental damage in producing the reader. I think x was something like 13 or 30.

I have a poor vocabulary, so the dictionary look up in ebooks is great.

the electricity needed to d/l and read an ebook

what about the battery/screen etc I'm assuming like most hi-tech gadgets rare earth metals are involved etc

It's dumb, but e-reading has made me less inclined to read multiple books at once. I just read The Guns of August and I'm reading Antifragile now and normally I'd be reading some kind of fiction alongside but with the Kindle I feel compelled to stick to the one book - it's there when I open the cover/etc..

It's been the opposite for me. I'm always reading about 3-4 books at once on my kindle, since it takes no extra effort to carry around extra books.

same

Me too.

The study I mentioned didn't look at the environmental/carbon costs, since it was primarily looking at the cost to library budgets.

yeah same w/ me, the ease to have several books plus weeks of new yorkers and other magazines plus whatever i've dled w/ pocket, instapaper, etc.

and, i'm sure as a result, i read far more books than i did immediately before w/ treebooks

ive got £50 in book tokens that i havent used because i tend to buy used hardbacks from alibris etc

u can get good condition hardbacks for £3 delivered then throw away the shitty old dustcovers, even vintage stuff for quite good prices like £25 for a fairly sound 1930s edition of the sleepwalkers

Used books are getting p damn cheap in today's market.

you got to throw away the dust covers at the VERY LEAST

Used to the various conveniences of ebooks now but definitely miss the flipping random access spatial memory feature of tree books. Find that I can do a tolerable approximation if I load something up on my laptop. Used to really drive me crazy with first generation Kindle with tiny amount of displayed content per page and slow page turn and search functions.

seeing actual books lying around at least gives me a healthy sense of shame for never reading them

Yeah, that too.

a different kind of shame, but the shame of picking up a kindle to find it had been so long you used it that it had baby sipped all the battery to zero.

what was the 77 thread k3vin linked in response to my post?

another good thing about ebooks is something we were talking about on ilb recently: GIANT BOOKS. I own a copy of the recognitions that I may never read because it's just too impractical to carry that monster around. although I mostly blame dalkey archive press for this, I mean I have a paperback volume of the complete works of shakespeare that weighs less than their edition of this novel

what was the 77 thread k3vin linked in response to my post?

― "LOL is other people" - Jean-Paul Snarktre (wins), Wednesday, April 17, 2013 7:01 PM (31 minutes ago)

oh it was about retronyms (like "treebooks")

sixty days

having books as physical objects in the world is truly excellent. I love browsing. I love their durability. I like the form of books & dislike the notion of books as content. mb there will eventually be e-readers that inspire more enthusiasm.

What about when there are extreme weather power cuts or societies collapsing? We have got to keep real books alive, you need em' for candlelight salvation.

If that happens, the last thing I'm going to worry about is if I have enough books to read.

I'm going to worry about finishing whatever tv show I'm watching on DVD.

i do:
physical books if it's about music/music related
ebooks for almost anything else

why the split?

http://shrapnel.tumblr.com/image/30099943857

markers brings the tough questions

If it's something like fiction or a big non-fiction thing like the Columbine book, chances are I'll only read it once. I don't need it sitting in my house taking up space. For music books, sometimes when I'm writing or thinking about what to listen to, I'll want to go back and consult things or find a quote or re-read an argument. It's comforting to have them on hand to flip through to look something up.

we still talk about all these things like there's binary "right and wrong" arguments about format.

Some things are better as ebooks, and others as paper. Some things I'll stream on my laptop and other things I'll want to have Netflix send me a Blu-Ray. Some things are better as CD or vinyl or tape or MP3 or Spotify and its PERFECTLY OK to approach them all on a case-by-case basis depending on what you're going to read or watch or listen to

thanks for answering.

and kev, i always bring the tough questions

I'll usually use whatever format where it is immediately available.

Want media NOW.

What if books like idk got et by termites omg gotta choose ebooks because of this

i still prefer reading treebooks, but after a big move (and a subsequent re-carpeting that forced me to stack all my books in the bathtub until it was done), i'm no longer inclined to accumulate physical copies. now i'll either download ebooks or check physical books out from the library, and if i really like something i'll buy the hard copy for my shelves.

your books fit in the bathtub?

something that doesn't reeeeeally cop enough analysis is the fact that books are really horribly designed things. by necessity they're bound at one end, and commonly they're thick and reasonably heavy.

what ebooks has done is rip the content out of paper binding and considered how people might consume books more easily and more comfortably. ebook readers can only get easier to use and hold, and lighter and more portable, while paper binding is yer lot.

and then there's accessibility. people with physical limitations can do things with ebooks that they could never do before.

Just got an iPad mini for my birthday; gonna be the former more than ever!!

ebook with epaper but proper ipad style touchscreen, ie fast refresh and swiping for page turning, would swing me strongly towards the "prefer ebooks", at the mo the treebook ui wins hands down. ebooks unbeatable for quantity over quality though, unlimited holiday reading is fantastic.

oh I completely forgot audiobooks, feel free to fold that into "ebooks" for the purposes of this poll if you're visually impaired or simply prefer them

I'll read either, but I like ebooks much better. The Kindle Paperwhite is really an amazing device.

Some things are better as ebooks, and others as paper. Some things I'll stream on my laptop and other things I'll want to have Netflix send me a Blu-Ray. Some things are better as CD or vinyl or tape or MP3 or Spotify and its PERFECTLY OK to approach them all on a case-by-case basis depending on what you're going to read or watch or listen to

http://24.media.tumblr.com/6237a862ddadd3863a51f61959f9e60b/tumblr_mldl6rvLWU1qdmmiqo1_500.gif
Whiney otm

^^^ def

a different kind of shame, but the shame of picking up a kindle to find it had been so long you used it that it had baby sipped all the battery to zero.

― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, April 17, 2013 5:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf this can happen in as little as 48 hours ime

Huh? Mine lasts a month on a charge

My first battery charge lasted a month so I was all "this is amazing!!1" and totally ashamed the first few times I picked it up and it needed charging despite getting charged before the previous reading, but now I just accept that it will always need charging, and go and read a paper book instead

(I always turn it off - or at least get it to turn the screen off, maybe it's never actually "off" - too and it still drains the battery within, eh, less than the 3-4 days minimum I take to get back to whatever I was reading. I've got an old Kindle DX.)

oh well mines always on so thats probably why.

oh I completely forgot audiobooks, feel free to fold that into "ebooks" for the purposes of this poll if you're visually impaired or simply prefer them

― "LOL is other people" - Jean-Paul Snarktre (wins), Thursday, April 18, 2013 7:00 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i listen to audiobooks for a good 6 hours a day on weekdays. I recently got 'conspiracy of fools' w/ whispersync. havent tried it out yet but the concept is pretty much perfect for me since i can only listen at work and can only read at home.

3G will drain the battery quickly, leaving Wi-Fi on doesn't seem to affect battery life much (on the Paperwhite).

Yeah, I feel like I charge my Paperwhite maybe once a month and it gets daily use.

Ive got the keyboard, wifi always on, 3g never on.

hmmm. well i dont know. my kindle fire drains super quick and no 3g

Fire is a tablet, tho, not an ereader. Screen is backlit

yeah it's only e-paper that doesn't drain the battery - afaik it only uses power when turning pages, not when the display is static.

eh my old Kindle is an e-paper reader (DX not Fire) which drains the battery when left unattended even if I hold the power button in so it turns the screen off instead of going into screensaver/standby mode. maybe 3G is on, I never use it - I'll check.

but it is a v old model so I'd like to think they've fixed that now. been tempted to buy a smaller model, if I thought it wouldn't have the same battery problems I'd be a lot more likely do so

I'm going to start sounding like a commercial, but seriously - Paperwhite. It has a backlight option that you can turn off to ease battery drain, it's small and light. I seriously love that thing.

I wasnt impressed with the evenness of the light tbh

aps, def check 3g first, mine lasts about a day with it on so it sounds likely?

yeah yeah. 48 hours sounds normal for a tablet. didnt know there were read only versions

my vote was for paper only, but tbf Whiney is v otm about taking media on a case-by-case basis. I do download stuff on my kindle app from time to time, and it's usually stuff that I know I'm only going to read once, that I'm just sort of reading for curiosity but don't have a huge investment in owning. but stuff I anticipate heavily, ie authors I really dig, I usually buy the physical copy.

Mr Veg and my MiL are big kindle-heads, so I can borrow stuff from them on their account too if I read it fast enough.

the only thing i hate about ebooks is when i tell a friend about something i've read and they say, "oh, that sounds amazing, can i borrow it?", and i have to say "nope, you sure can't."

You can give them the torrent link tho

Or email them a copy. As long as they promise to delete it afterwards of course...

jordan totally otm re: giving or loaning old books. either i can go 'just read this book you HAVE to read. it's available on amazon' or i can give them an illegal copy, which i don't feel too guilty about considering the pricing of ebooks but still's it's an issue and i can't imagine it will ever change.

your books fit in the bathtub?

it's one of those bath/shower combos. i wish i had taken a picture, the books stacked up almost to the rod for the shower curtain. hauling them in there and back out again compelled me to finally get rid of all the books i didn't like. "boo you fuckin books, you were tedious to read and now you've made my back hurt, gtfo."

Or email them a copy. As long as they promise to delete it afterwards of course...

is this possible with books you get from amazon?

there's a plugin you can d/l for calibre which makes it possible. I've never actually emailed a book to anyone but I have the plugin installed anyway cause I like to be able to do whatever the fuck I want with files I have paid a stupid amount of money for.

i had basically this thread as a conversation at lunch yesterday. the main sticking point for people who have not yet tried ebooks is not knowing whether the book they bought will still be theirs in five years

"people who don't primary read ebooks" <> "people who have not yet tried ebooks"

there's no weekend warriors on the d

i'm a fan of both. i love owning books, and shopping for ebooks will never be as much fun as going to the library, but there's something undeniably awesome about being able to make an impulse buy at midnight and start reading it 15 seconds later. the only catch is that i make way too many impulse buys -- i've got like 10 things on my kindle i need to start.

It's curious: I listen to the majority of my music on physical media (vinyl and cassettes), and wouldn't dream of switching to primarily digital. Many of the same arguments for LPs can be made for physical books (the object itself as a thing of beauty, etc.) yet I had no problem switching from paper books to ebooks, despite loving physical books and, for instance, seeking out editions of favorites that had more attractive covers. I'm not sure I've been able to articulate myself why I would stick to analog in one medium but convert in another.

I do still prefer paper for larger history books, so I can highlight and flip back. I know one can do so on the Kindle as well, but I feel I retain information better when physically doing so.

Tell me about it. I've got so much stuff on there now I'm not 100% of what I own. Sometimes I think I need to buy something and get one of these

Instant Order Update

Our records show that you already purchased A Scanner Darkly on October 7, 2012.

You can find this title under Archived Items on your Amazon Kindle or Kindle reading application, or the Manage Your Kindle page.

Whereas with treebooks I have the visual memory palace on the shelves, that can be broken into Italo Calvino-type categories: Favorite Books, Books by Favorite Authors, Books I Might Want To Read Again, Reference Books, Books That I Need To Dip Into Now and Again, Books That I Would Like To Read Soon, Books That I Want To Read Someday, Books That I Will In All Likelihood Never Read And Perhaps Should Give To The Library, Books That I Am Not Going To Read But Whose Purchase Showed The Kind Of Person I Was At A Certain Point In My Life When I Bought Them Thinking I Wanted To Read Them, etc.

"people who don't primary read ebooks" <> "people who have not yet tried ebooks"

what the hell is this

there's no weekend warriors on the d

― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour)

what the hell is this

sorry, that came out garbled, just meant to say that the class of people who don't use e-books as their primary reading device is not the same as the class of people who haven't yet tried e-books

the main sticking point for people who have not yet tried ebooks is not knowing whether the book they bought will still be theirs in five years

consider the likelihood that amazon.com will predecease you

i got a kindle recently. i prefer treebooks bc i like paper and cover design and texture and stuff but i have too many. my public library kind of sucks. also now i can read in bed without my hands getting cold. i have fewer dumb excuses not to read i guess.

Wait what? Idg the cold hands thing at all, what do you mean by that?

verycoldmom

haha. because books are heavier i have to have more of my hands outside the covers, and holding them up makes them colder. also you can read paperwhite completely under the covers if you want to.

obv, i mean what's the prob here

Because libraries are responsible for most of my reading, I often deal with cumbersome new hardcovers, which turn into real pains in the ass during air travel. If I succumb to Kindle or whatever, this'll be why.

I've got so much stuff on there now I'm not 100% of what I own.

so infuriating. folders! tags! anything at all!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Yeah, the "Collections" that reside locally on some of the devices don't quite do it.

sorry, that came out garbled, just meant to say that the class of people who don't use e-books as their primary reading device is not the same as the class of people who haven't yet tried e-books

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, 21 April 2013 00:16 (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah sorry, it came across as snark unfortunately. the people i was talking to have never used an ebook and didn't understand how the concept worked.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/8987760a3be302a8d51bd59dd4f44b40/tumblr_ml0v1ebPRB1s8t3eao2_250.gif

http://www.sanfords.net/Spots_free_graphics/Wizards/wizard14.gif

i actually have stuff to say about this topic, so give me a little while to conjure something up here.

eye of newt, toe of frog

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

http://poorlydrawnlines.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/e-reader.jpg

wow, not expecting this result, wonder how many lurkers are reading printouts of these threads and mailing in answers on postcards

No surprise at all. You nerds are still clinging to you 8-tracks too.

yeah, that's exactly the same thing

So who is my fellow robot nerd??

voted for fucking an ebook, but if i had one, i'd probably come to prefer it. brick & mortar books look cool, give off that have-a-thing glow, but are a pain in the ass and wasteful besides. i'm not curating a chunk of durable culture to endure the epocalypse, i'm just trying to read some words.

no one asked you to fuck books tbh

threads in which ilx proves to be a wall of hipsters

easier to pirate an ebook than shoplift a treebook

threads in which you become ia

xo

i pirated a couple ebooks but i can't get the formatting right when converting to mobi. kinda gets messed up. tips pls

*sues u*

it's the public library's fault they don't have anything good. i'm forced to steal.

hmm tell it to the judge

also btw information wants to be free

let the record show we have an anarchist your honor

As i suspected, ilx is now basically reactionary with a bias towards 2002

more like approx 1981-1985, irrc

*iirc

Ya

Expected treebooks to win this obv but the outright rejection of ebooks by so many is surprising

This wasn't a poll it was a tantrum

you can't handle the treeth

no Rice Paper Book no credibility

e-readers are for capitalist running dogs, treebooks are for the people

will a "physical vs mp3 music" poll have the same results?

Music hall vs television

That's what's surprising, I mean this is a site where you have people like lex going ROFL WHAT'S A CD IS IT SOMETHING OLD FROM HISTORY TIMES, and others get clowned for lolstalgic reveries of prelapsarian physical music paradise where music meant something and nobody locked their doors & the queen mum could kick a turntable down the street. I know a lot of people have expressed preference for vinyl or cd, but I suspect a music poll would see a lot more going whiney's "depends on the context" route rather than the NO DIGITAL MEDIA EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES route that nearly half the voters here have chosen.

People have a weird fetish for paper I guess idk

books get all stinky

Books smell amazing. Old books, new books.

OM NOM NOM MY KINDLE IS SOOOO DELICIOUS

You sick fetishy sonsabitches can ye hear yerselves

"[...] the class of people who don't use e-books as their primary reading device is not the same as the class of people who haven't yet tried e-books

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, April 20, 2013 9:16 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"class"

"class" in the sense of "set," not "class" in the sense of "socioeconomic stratum," obviously

<i>This wasn't a poll it was a tantrum

― the gowls are not what they seem (darraghmac)</i>

</alan_alda>

oh damn I was so excited about my stupid alan alda joke I fucked up the bbcode.

People have a weird fetish for paper I guess idk

I have a weird fetish for buying things cheap and then being able to resell them, sometimes at a large profit, if I don't want them anymore.

it's also hard to avoid the sense that you're being massively ripped off when you pay the same price for the infinitely reproducible (and essentially costless) data contained in a complex & costly physical object as you would pay for the data AND the physical object together.

i mean, the companies and creators involved obviously have to charge a price for what they offer, but afaic, that price should be about what you'd pay for a book or album minus the cost of physical object production, distribution, storage and retail. anything much more than that feels like a scam, especially given that you're getting a hell of a lot less in the exchange.

yeah pricing is really fucked up for a lot of ebooks. You can get cheap ones tho! And hundreds of free ones!

resale isn't something that occurred to me cause I keep my books. If I really really hate them I give them away.

aesthetically books are dope, though I guess the future will be ebooks with quirky etsy sheaths rather than colorful cover art.

I keep mine too but it's nice to know that they're worth something if I do decide to get rid of them. I rarely read novels anymore though, and I mostly buy things like art books which don't really work on an ebook reader.

I still buy hardcover (antique or ornamental) copies of the books i love, or as presents, tbf

Here's a recent book I bought http://amzn.com/0471299766
$70 list price, $50 on Amazon, $47.50 on Kindle!!!. I chose to buy a used copy which ended up being $20 with shipping. It's not an appealing physical object. I just wanted the information inside and would have considered an ebook version if it was in the $10 range maybe.

No option in poll for "I am mildly curious about ebooks, but haven't yet taken any steps to gratifty that curiosity." The sarcastic option "it's all music maaaan" was unfit to associate oneself with.

yeah sorry man this poll is only for people who have tried both :-(

I Am Curious (Literate)

e-curious

http://www.pornokitsch.com/2013/06/has-samsung-given-us-the-greatest-fantasy-story-of-all-time.html

can't stand apps that pretend to actually turn a page.

Yes. Stupid fucking stupid.

about speedreading-app startups like 'spritz':

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/reading-to-have-read/284391/

In today’s attention economy, reading materials (we call it “content” now) have ceased to be created and disseminated for understanding. Instead, they exist first (and primarily) for mere encounter. This condition doesn’t necessarily signal the degradation of reading; it also arises from the surplus of content we are invited and even expected to read. But it’s a Sisyphean task. We can no longer reasonably hope to read all our emails, let alone our friends’ Facebook updates or tweets or blog posts, let alone the hundreds of daily articles and listicles and quizzes and the like. Longreads may offer stories that are best enjoyed away from your desk, but what good are such moments when the #longreads queue is so full? Like books bought to be shelved, articles are saved for a later that never comes.

With so much so-called content, “consuming” it by means of comprehension is becoming impossible. And while we might lament such an outcome along with Dr. Henderson, it stands to reason that the technology and media companies might want to compress more and more interactions with content (let’s not mistake them for reading) into a smaller and smaller amount of time. Think of it as an attentional version of data compression: the faster we can be force fed material, the larger volume of such matter we can attach to our user profiles and accounts as data to be stored, sold, and bartered.

figures that it's bogost

yuck

Are we talking about spritz anywhere?

i haven't even read all of the text in this thread since the last update, but there are some of these on ios. readquick comes to mind i think? idk. i'm not gonna use them

Oh wait that revive was about spritz lol

I read it too quick

I think those things are really cool and actually work well, the words are flying hr and yet you still manage to take it all in. I can't see myself ever using it either tho

perhaps i'm too traditional when it comes to this shit, but idgi

Huh, that is pretty interesting. I'd like to try reading a book that way.

I think I have a tendency to read in a non-linear fashion, so I get the gist of something but will miss details so I like the idea of training myself to read differently. It might come in handy for reading boring legal crap that I need to comprehend.

On their demo, I started getting lost at 350 wpm. I don't know how much of that is because I'm at exhaustion level: zombie rn though.

I shrink from the idea of speed-reading in general, I mean of course I skim stuff that I'm not really bothered about or bothering with, but stuff I actually want to take in (for whatever reason) I'll just take the time to read properly.

Weirdly reminded of Bob Brown's 1930 "readies" project:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/books/review/Schuessler-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://cnx.org/content/m31518/latest/
http://www.readies.org/manual.html

(should point out that not having done uni or had a job that involved specialist academic knowledge, I've never needed to learn to read quickly or well, it's something I pursue in my own time at my own pace, ymmv)

ugh this is gross

lol scribner is partnering with scribd, it's kinda piratically awesome how many internet-era business models are basically, become thriving by saying fuck that to copyright laws, so that eventually copyright-holding corporations have to shell out so they stop missing their paydays

http://www.roughtype.com/?p=4630

N. Carr, Digital Book Conference at Book Expo America talk

how many of you have borrowed books from the library on your ereaders?
do libraries have to pay for it each time you checkout an ebook?
so weird!

my mom does that all the time

I do it a lot! I don't know how the licensing works.

Borrowing from the library is the main utility of the e-reader for me! The system used to be absolutely impossible, but now works quite well.

I don't know exactly how the licensing works, but they pay by the copy (not retail, a higher price), not by use. This is why libraries have to treat each ebook like a thing that can't be used by more than one person at a time instead of a digital file that could be used by an infinite number of people at the same time.

eship v. treeship: the definitive poll

fuckit, words outta my emouth

libraries don't just have to pay more for an ecopy but only get access for a limited time.

from the american library association:

What is the status of these major publishers selling to libraries?

While they are sometimes lumped together, the large publishers vary widely in their approaches to selling e-book titles to libraries, and conditions continue to shift as publishers change prices or restrictions and undertake pilots. As of October 14, 2013, this is the status of relations between large publishers and U.S. libraries (additional detail may also be found here):

Hachette announced on May 1, 2013, that it will immediately begin offering all of its e-book titles to libraries simultaneously with print editions and with unlimited single-user-at-a-time circulations. The initial price will be three times the highest-price edition then in print. One year after publication, the purchase price will drop to 1.5 times the highest-price print edition.

HarperCollins has always offered e-book titles to libraries. In February 2011, the company announced that new titles licensed from library e-book vendors would be able to circulate only 26 times before the license expires.

Macmillan announced on January 24, 2013, that a small group of its e-book titles would be available for the first time to libraries before the end of March 2013. Working with multiple distributors, Macmillan offers over 1,200 backlist e-books from its Minotaur Books mystery and crime fiction imprint. Once purchased by a library, the titles will be available to them to lend for two years or 52 lends, whichever comes first. In August 2013, the company added Entangled Publishing titles to its e-lending pilot. Among their most popular e-book titles still denied to U.S. libraries are: “Killing Kennedy” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard and “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel.

Penguin Random House’s models of working with libraries right now maintain pre-merger characteristics. Penguin’s titles currently are available to libraries with a one-year expiration date on e-books licensed to libraries, and library pricing is similar to what is offered to individual consumers.

Like HarperCollins, Random House always offered its e-book titles to libraries. In March 2012, the company dramatically increased prices for libraries beyond what individual consumers pay. Random House offers perpetual licenses to libraries.

Simon & Schuster announced on April 15, 2013, that it would begin a one-year pilot with New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library and Queens Public Library. Simon & Schuster is providing access to all of its titles for one year, using 3M as the distributor for New York and Brooklyn and Baker & Taylor for Queens. Among their most popular e-book titles denied to most U.S. libraries are: “Bruce” by Peter Ames Carlin and “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

If libraries didn't exist, they would NEVER even be considered as something that the government should provide, were they proposed today.

The way that e-Books work with libraries is hilarious. All this DRM and convoluted sales models just to try and replicate the worst parts of physical books (that they wear out and can't be copied)!

Yeah I often wonder how the GOP hasn't killed libraries like twenty years ago already.

26 times?? like, 26 lends? why would a library even buy that?

well, for an item you are reasonably confident will be checked out every six months for the next 13 years (but with no associated storage cost or physical handling) it is a bargain vs paper

ebooks are terrible otherwise, there is some other thread where i was right about it

I've noticed that with some ebooks I only get the option to have them 14 days vs 21. I'm not sure if this from a certain publisher or if it was because it was new release.