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.

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.