First the bookstore, now the book?

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I already buy most of my books online rather than going to a store. Will I be downloading my books soon and skipping the physical distribution altogether?

Is anyone else convinced that books are a dying medium? Now before anyone raises their hackles over this, I’d like to mention that I’m a dyed-in-the-wool bibliophile with more books than places to put them, and a designer with a love of good typography to boot, so this isn’t an attack on anyone’s favorite past time or anything.

It’s just that this e-ink thing is finally starting to take shape (after years of promises) and we finally have an electronic display medium that possesses all of these traits:
  1. High resolution - It looks as good as the printed page – really, it does. It’s hard to describe how good this stuff looks in person. It’s like someone printed the text on top of the screen. I’ve seen people swear that it was paper until after they see the image change before their eyes.
  2. Lightweight and small
  3. Low power requirements so the devices that use it don’t have to be much larger than the display itself.
There are now two devices out there that use this technology, the Sony Librie and the new Hanlin eBook Model V2.

The Librie is cool and it looks like a million bucks (the device as well as the screen), but the DRM built into it essentially makes it the world’s most expensive electronic paperweight (stupid Sony never learned their lesson from Betamax). Now, there’s this Chinese device from Hanlin without the DRM restrictions (further illustrating the pointlessness of DRM as a business model), that has the same display technology without the mindnumbingly stupid copyright “protection” technology.

Add to this the fact that a paperback novel can be produced on demand, complete with color cover, in a few hours for about a dollar a copy and it’s pretty easy to see a world where the distribution of paper with words on it is a dead business. Why buy a book when you can just download one and read it on your incredibly cool e-ink reader or just go to the corner vending machine at your local 7-11 and have that latest John Grisham novel printed on demand while you pump your gas?

The technology for the first option already exists and the technology for the second option is just over the horizon with some books already being printed on demand for sellers like Amazon (they have a few thousand titles that aren’t warehoused anywhere, just printed one copy at a time as orders come in). As William Gibson once wrote, “The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet”.

I for one will always have some books in my home simply for what they bring to a space that can’t really be replicated with anything else. And those large format coffee table books with lots of pictures are still going to require real printing methods for a while longer (but not much longer, it’s only a matter of time before they become easy and cheap as well, progress marches onward after all).

How long before we start owning books as fetish items rather than as tools for information? Expensive binding techniques will always be around for those who want a status symbol or a fetish item to decorate their home, but the vast majority of books produced now are poorly made and frankly, who would notice if we just went to automated distribution? Is anyone else kind of looking forward to having a single pocket-sized reader that contains a library of information? I already do this to some degree with my Palm, but the display is terrible. E-ink devices will change that (I’ve seen the Librie in person, and frankly, I like it more than reading from a book now that the display looks as good as paper, wish I could afford one). Who else sees this as great news for authors, readers and publishers but terrible news for booksellers?

Is anybody else chomping at the bit here or is it just me?
 
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MEP:
I already buy most of my books online rather than going to a store. Will I be downloading my books soon and skipping the physical distribution altogether?

Is anyone else convinced that books are a dying medium?
Nope.
Nothing will ever replace real, live books. Cyberbooks in some form or other will no doubt gain increasing market share over coming years. But books and bookstores will always have their place. Maybe eventually a large part of bookstores’ business will be downloading books to customers’ devices for those who don’t have web access or credit cards – or simply don’t want to leave tracks online of what they are reading.
I’ve started doing a little of my book shopping online and I find the “recommendations” obnoxious as well as the “other people who bought this book also bought . . .”. Well, bully for them. Tell your #%&!! algorithm to quit trying to categorise me. I’ve gone back to my local bookstore where I can ask Bill what he’s gotten in lately.

The biggest drawback of ALL these nifty cyberbooks is that once I finally buy one and get my whole library stored on it, it will become obsolete and they’ll introduce something new, allegedly better, that will necessitate converting all my files into new formats.
No, thanks. I have bound books that have been perfectly faithful to me through four or five generations of IT “revolutions” (since the DOS age & 5.25" floppies).
 
I’m not in any hurry for bound, printed books to go away, and for several reasons:
  1. I hate reading from a screen – it’s no fun for my eyes, and I find the sitting-upright-looking-at-a-screen position extremely uncomfortable. Yes, I use PCs at work, and read from those screens, but that isn’t a matter of reading page after page after page – and my PC screens at work are BIG.
  2. VERY KEY POINT: Any electronic device that has a screen large enough for me to be able to read from it, even briefly, is going to be way too large for me to want to carry it around (pocket-size isn’t good enough; I never buy those tiny pocket-size mass market paperbacks – the print in them is way too small for me).
  3. I can’t write in a book that only appears on a screen. Nor can I put post-it notes in it.
  4. Flipping through a book’s pages to find something is a whole lot faster and easier than scrolling through zillions of pages on a screen – even with a search feature.
  5. I can read a book without needing electricity, and without having to worry about batteries running down.
  6. I don’t have internet service on my home PC, nor can I afford it at the moment (yes, I know there are some providers of free internet services, but that only gets you a few hours a month. I’ll be durned if I’ll have my reading limited by the whims of an ISP. The public library has PCs with internet access, but they aren’t open during the hours I like to read).
  7. I like the way books look.
  8. I like the way books feel.
  9. I like the way books smell.
  10. I have no desire to spend lots of money on a device to read books. God already gave me a perfectly good device to use in reading – eyes.
  11. I don’t want to be tethered to any more machines than I absolutely have to be. Even if I could have a book downloaded to print format – that’s a messy pile of paper, not a book. If I have to pay somebody to bind it for me, why not just buy a book in the first place? 😉
If the day comes when books are no longer being made, I will content myself with the ones in the public library, and in my own personal library. There’s enough reading there to last through my lifetime. 🙂

Crazy Internet Junkies Society
Carrier of the Angelic Sparkles Sprinkle Bag
 
The problem with cyber-book is that, unless you want to print them off, you have to read them from a compute. Kind of makes it hard when you want to read on a sofa, recliner, or bed.

PF
 
Analog (printed word) has been around for thousands of years

Digital (electronic) formats seem to be obsoleted every 3 years

Nothing like a good book, a glass of wine and a warm fire in the fireplace!
 
I agree with BillFL and CarolAnnSFO!

There’s nothing like holding a book, flipping the pages, smelling the paper, being able to highlight and write notes in the margins, all while curled up on the sofa in front of the fireplace with a glass of wine (or for me, hot tea or cider!). Or when I’m researching something, to have several books open at different places helping me to make sense of something I didn’t understand before! It’s like a visual of what’s going on in my brain (which, at times, can be rather scarey!).
 
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Didi:
Or when I’m researching something, to have several books open at different places helping me to make sense of something I didn’t understand before! It’s like a visual of what’s going on in my brain (which, at times, can be rather scarey!).
I didn’t even think of that (probably because it’s been so long 😃 ), but I can remember researching things for school and having to have several books open at once. I suppose I could buy an armload of these electronic book-reader devices and turn them all on at once – nah, I don’t think so. 😃

**Crazy Internet Junkies Society
**Carrier of the Angelic Sparkles Sprinkle Bag
 
Right now, I have old, familiar books where I can find passages lightning-fast. Scrolling on a screen or using a find feature will never be as fast. However, computer search functions help compensate for poorly organized authors and no index. The CCC is enhanced by having a search function on it.

It will be like records. I already own so many albums and songs, yet for some reason, if I want to listen to them, I have to purchase copies of them in new formats. I refuse to keep buying new copies of my books.

However, I have needed to replace actual books for wearing out. Electronic copies don’t wear out in that way. Nor are they subject to that musty smell.

Moby-Dick cannot be read in electronic medium, I swear. I’m sure it would ruin the book, and it is the greatest book in the English language. 🙂
 
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WanderAimlessly:
The problem with cyber-book is that, unless you want to print them off, you have to read them from a compute. Kind of makes it hard when you want to read on a sofa, recliner, or bed.

PF
Or in the bathtub.
 
Society and civilization is getting worse and worse. People are getting stupider and sillier and more dogmatic. It wouldn’t surprise me if some day someone tries to outlaw books. I know there’s no reason for it now, but who knows what they’ll come up with. Some busybody will find some reason to ban them.

I know a few years ago in Spain Bill Gates (who I never liked in the first place, and really don’t like now), announced his plans to make books obsolete and unnecessary.

And people don’t read as much as they used to. Most peoplewho do read read popular best-seller garbage they can buy at the grocery store or Wal-Mart. And the rest get their stuff from the major chain stores who are staffed with people who often know nothing about books. The aggressive business tactics of the chains and the buying habits of the public have been killing off the independent stores that are staffed by people who actually know something about books.

If all you read is Danielle Steel, John Gresham, Stephen King, or Tom Clancy, or stuff like that, you probably just regard the books as disposable anyway–you read them once and toss them, sell them, or give them to someone else. If you read less mainstream stuff or actually collect books, you might find these developments in e-books alarming.

Nothing will replace the sensual pleasure of a book. I only hope the extremists and busybodies of this world don’t try to prevent us from enjoying those pleasures. If you’ve ever read “Fahrenheit 451” you’ll remember that books got banned because they contained unpopular ideas that society didn’t like, ideas that would now be deemed as “politically incorrect.” The PC is trying to rewrite history, and it’s already succeeded to a large degree in raping and gutting the language, so why should we be surprised if they go after books next?
 
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seeker63:
If all you read is Danielle Steel, John Gresham, Stephen King, or Tom Clancy, or stuff like that, you probably just regard the books as disposable anyway–you read them once and toss them, sell them, or give them to someone else. If you read less mainstream stuff or actually collect books, you might find these developments in e-books alarming.
The people who read “junk” books often reread them and have shelves of books at home. I know romance readers do this. Of course, as any used bookstore owner knows, SciFi people hoard books. I don’t know anyone who just reads Danielle Steel, though.:hmmm:They’ll have to speak up as to what they do.
 
I was speaking based on family experience. My parents mostly read popular fiction and seemed like they couldn’t wait to get rid of it. They don’t understand the idea of reading a book or seeing a movie more than once and think the idea of building a collection wasteful and silly. No one in my family understands why I have large collections of books and movies.
 
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seeker63:
No one in my family understands why I have large collections of books and movies.
Come adopt my family! We all read excessively. We even pack up a box of books for a sick member in another state and mail it to them for hospital reading material. Many of the books on my uncle’s shelves have been read by six or seven other family members, especially books by Dick Francis and mystery writers.

Your family must be weird.😉
 
Yeah, I sometimes wonder if I was adopted or found on the side of the road. For some reason my bookishness has always aroused the ire of my family, which has naturally made me buy more and more books. They even tried to have an intervention once when I had about 3000 books, but I’m over 10,000 now. Oh well…
 
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seeker63:
They even tried to have an intervention once when I had about 3000 books, but I’m over 10,000 now. Oh well…
:rotfl:This reminds me of my mother trying to get me to turn in some of my precious science fiction to the used bookstore so we could get other books with the credits. I refused. As a result, the books became untouchable. I have never gotten rid of them. They are in a box (okay, a bunch of boxes, alphabetical) in my attic. My spouse sold a few for credit at a used bookstore when I wasn’t on the ball, but that went over very poorly, shall we say.

A few choice morsels are in my bedroom instead of the attic.

Note, my mom was usually quite sensible about books, so this was an aberration for her. Don’t think poorly of her.🙂
 
Books I am happy to say will never be obsolete. Although I’m sure that these electronics “books” could have their uses (reference material comes to mind, could you imagine having a ton of dictionaries, thesauruses, ect all in one light weight package?) they will never, ever, ever entirely replace the printed.

Seriously, who is this for? For non-readers, well, they don’t read. For casual readers they probably aren’t going to spend a bunch of money to buy a device that they will only casually use. And for the heavy readers, it just won’t sell. When I look at a book it just feels warm. Somehow a screen just isn’t the same…
 
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