E-reading

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Article on the Sony Reader in the Guardian tech section today.

Could you ever imagine reading e-books with one of these things?

In the past I have always taken the fogey-traditionalist line that books are already a perfect technology, you can read them in the bath, you don't need to charge them, etc etc.

But I feel so liberated after getting rid of all my cds after getting an iPod, that these days I'm not so sure. The idea of instantly being able to search my entire library to find that elusive quote - especially when a deadline is rushing towards me - is very appealing. As is the idea of the reduction of printing costs being passed onto the reader (£13 for an 87 page book of poetry, Mr Faber?!). As is the idea of reclaiming all that shelf space.

There's still some residual aura around the idea of the book, but let's be honest: many books, especially ones made in the UK, are ugly, shoddily made things, that fall apart within a couple of years.

Does ILB L e-Bs?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 6 April 2006 12:43 (nineteen years ago)

Whoops - I don't suppose a passing Mod could fix my errant end tag could they?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 6 April 2006 12:45 (nineteen years ago)

I think that once the e-book reader experience gets close enough to the experience of reading actual paper books (ie., no eye strain, high resolution, no glare, ease of portability, form factor, ergonomics, long battery life) and once e-book readers and e-books get cheap enough that there is a meaningful economic advantage to e-books over paper, then I think people will start to switch over. However, it could take a while for this to happen. I think the idea of being able to carry all your books on one device is not going to be a selling point for most people - since most people only read one book at a time anyway. This is totally different than the case of listening to music, because people like being able to call up a variety of songs at any moment. However, eventually, once we're able to download our favorite magazines, the latest news, our favorite blogs, the book we're reading, and so on, to one device, that may start being a factor. However, that's probably even further away. So I expect that paper books will be with us for some time.

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 6 April 2006 13:14 (nineteen years ago)

I suspect printing costs are already quite a small fraction of the price of a book.

― Ray (Ray), Thursday, 6 April 2006 13:37 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, but it's not just the printing costs that are saved with e-books: it's also the transportation, distribution and storage costs. In the brave e-book future, when you can download books directly from the author's website to your reader (and thereby eliminate publisher, distributor, bookstore, etc.) there are significant cost savings to be realized.

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 6 April 2006 13:51 (nineteen years ago)

You got rid of all your CDs?

I would quite like one of these, but not for £200.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller 68), Thursday, 6 April 2006 14:44 (nineteen years ago)

Wait until the technology moves on and books are beamed straight into your brain.

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Thursday, 6 April 2006 14:54 (nineteen years ago)

How much cheaper is it to download an album than to buy it on CD?

― Ray (Ray), Thursday, 6 April 2006 15:15 (nineteen years ago)

10 tracks for 79p each on iTunes = £7.99 for an album. Which might cost up to £15 new in a shop... depending where you buy it?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 6 April 2006 15:18 (nineteen years ago)

Yes, I got rid of all my cds, PJ... Although PR companies now send them to me & I once again have mountains of the buggers that I am constantly failing to take down the R&TE or put on Amazon marketplace.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 6 April 2006 15:20 (nineteen years ago)

I think 'depending on where you buy it' is important. Random example - the latest Belle and Sebastian album - 12 tracks, £7.99 on Amazon. I'm sure there are some albums that are cheaper on iTunes, but others that are cheaper to buy physically. It's not the case that downloaded albums are always cheaper because there's no physical production per unit involved, and I don't see that it will be any different for books.

I mean, to go back to the original example, it's not the case that it costs Faber & Faber some huge amount to print a book of poetry. It costs a lot because sales are low, so the total project costs are divided by a low number. An e-book will have the same advances and editing costs, and the same low readership...

― Ray (Ray), Thursday, 6 April 2006 15:58 (nineteen years ago)

Well I think also Faber do a smaller print run on poetry; put it out in hardback; print it on "nice" paper; &c &c... It's marketed as a luxury item, kind of - they charge what they think the market will bear. (Ha, I would love to be able pick and choose individual poems to dowload for 79p rather than stump up for stodgy collections.)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 6 April 2006 16:42 (nineteen years ago)

o.nate said it all, really.

(Also, HTML fixed.)

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 6 April 2006 20:18 (nineteen years ago)

People are obsessed with their book collections in the same way as they used to be obsessed with their records, but you don't need expensive and bulky machinery to play your books. No-one ever fell in love with CDs as a format, so jettisoning them in favour of sleek little iPods was no problem.

Having said that, I would like an eBook reader for holidays and for commuting, and also because when I want something, I want it NOW.
I could so see me buying physical books and then downloading the same books.

I've often thought that when you download albums through the innernet, the record company should give you a money-off voucher if you decide to go and buy a physical copy of the album as well. That would be sweet.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 7 April 2006 09:06 (nineteen years ago)

"Used to be"?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 7 April 2006 15:03 (nineteen years ago)

"Used to be"?

Indeed!

I enjoy the presence of books too much to see any advantage to e-books. Also, my recent experience with an electronic sudoko game has proven I am a paper addict.

― Jaq (Jaq), Friday, 7 April 2006 15:23 (nineteen years ago)

No-one ever fell in love with CDs as a format

Also, no one ever had a direct, tactile relationship with CDs they way they do with books. A CD is just something you put in a player and forget about. A book is a companion, a fashion accessory, a security blanket, something to fondle, fold, or throw across the room.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 7 April 2006 15:45 (nineteen years ago)

for research + ref purposes, the immense amount of spatial and tactile memory surrounding a book is hard to replace -- post it notes, folded corners, an intuitive sense of how far in *feels* like the right area, pages books naturally fold open to, etc.

i can't see any sort of e-bookmarking feature being nearly as intuitive and natural. then there's the immense spatial memory bank of *organizing* books in the first place -- being able to know just the right book (not by title or author even, but by rough subject matter) and just what shelf to find it on.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 7 April 2006 17:46 (nineteen years ago)

If you look at some of the specs for the new Sony device (or similiar ones being released this month) they seem to pretty much match o. nate's requests... battery lasts for 7,500 page turns, about the size / weight of a paperback book, and you can load PDF files on there or RSS feeds (your "favorite" blogs etc).

I'd like to see one in person before making any kind of judgement...

― Jeff LeVine (Jeff LeVine), Friday, 7 April 2006 19:28 (nineteen years ago)

I appreciate Sterling's tactile concerns, but... for the last two years I have been trying to track down a reference that I am sure is somewhere in Barthes about... the difficulty of... eradicating... or supressing?... a sense of the... sacred?

And I still haven't run it to ground.

If I could simply search all of Barthes for the word "sacred" the matter would be a... trifle.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Friday, 7 April 2006 21:37 (nineteen years ago)

Have you tried Amazon's search inside the book thing? Could it be this, "... , in the same way as a ritual language of priests. Other writers have thought that they could exorcize this sacred writing only by dislocating it. They have therefore undermined literary language, they have ceaselessly exploded the ever-renewed husk of clichés, ..."

from this page

― Jeff LeVine (Jeff LeVine), Friday, 7 April 2006 22:01 (nineteen years ago)

jerry i agree that e-texts are incredibly useful too, but in a different way. like you note -- more for a specific phrase or concept, especially when we're talking about a whole corpus instead of just one or another book. (of course, well indexed and footnoted academic texts in a nice library are essentially as good + in a large library there's always the immense capacity for discovery through associative browsing, which online article services can sorta but not rilly duplicate)

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Friday, 7 April 2006 23:19 (nineteen years ago)

Three in the morning, the second to the last page, your battery runs out.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Saturday, 8 April 2006 00:16 (nineteen years ago)

Downer: You can't lend your books to anyone.

I suppose that could be an upper too.

Speaking of which, Jerry, have you still got those jobhunting books I lent you? I can feel a surge of jobhunting coming on, so I need to remind myself how to lie effectively.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller 68), Monday, 10 April 2006 07:14 (nineteen years ago)

Indeed I do. Perhaps we should have a Robotic pint some time this week so I can hand them back to you?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 10 April 2006 08:55 (nineteen years ago)

That is a good idea. I can't do Tuesday though. Mooro expressed an interest in "going out" too because the holidays are a complete doos for him at his job. I think that's what he said anyway. Should we combine with the sticker swaps massive, or keep well out of it? Perhaps we should discuss it on Robots.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller 68), Monday, 10 April 2006 10:28 (nineteen years ago)

Much as I would love to sit and chat with the Sticker Straightlords, I am going to see The Organ on Wednesday. Maybe Thursday?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 10 April 2006 10:34 (nineteen years ago)

Is that a coded masturbation expression?

― Mikey G (Mikey G), Monday, 10 April 2006 13:41 (nineteen years ago)

Sterling OTM. I -- and I guess lots of you too -- seem to have this knack of remembering where in a book certain events happened. So, reading fiction, I can pop very quickly back to such-and-such a scene to refresh if required. I'm surprised both at how fast I can do the search, and also how often I do it.

When I read e-Books this is a big drawback. Text search isn't even close, because I can find the scene in the paper book without even articulating any words from it, I just go "there".

― stet (stet), Monday, 10 April 2006 16:36 (nineteen years ago)

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