My Newest Ebook Reader- The Printed Page

[corona]

Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore

Am I weird or is this more common than I imagine[?]

I'm guessing maybe to the first question, and no, I'm guessing probably not, to the second.

[Sweetpea]

The advantage of ebooks is that you don't have a physical copy... Why would you want to create one?

I could understand if you'd print a certain part, for instance a map or schema that you would want to keep beside you at all times (a dual screener would be handy at times!), but not the entire book...

[Juliette]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

The advantage of ebooks is that you don't have a physical copy... Why would you want to create one?

I could understand if you'd print a certain part, for instance a map or schema that you would want to keep beside you at all times (a dual screener would be handy at times!), but not the entire book...

Exactly. No physical copy, no space to allocate (and no need to rearrange books when your shelves simply explode).

[luqmaninbmore]

The funny thing is I got the idea from an essay in Corey Doctorow's "Content." Apparently this was a more common practice back before the beginning of the present e-reader fad. Teleread even has a primer on how to print ebooks effectively:

http://www.teleread.com/2010/01/24/h...oks-from-home/

And here's another one on how to bind them:

http://curbly.com/diy-maven/posts/82...avorite-ebooks

Luqman

[luqmaninbmore]

And, of course, what will happen to our precious ebooks when we get hit by a massive Electromagnetic Pulse. Or when electricity becomes a luxury (although I have a solar charger, so this may not be as much of a problem as it seems). Of course, there is the problem of inheritance. I guess I could leave a note that my ebooks are backed up on so and so devices. In all seriousness, I do think that a shift to digital consumption of literature will have long reaching effects that have not been thoroughly thought out.

[Druid_Elf]

Printing out the entire ebook seems indeed a bit pointless as you might as well buy it (unless the book is no longer being published than you have no alternative).
I sometimes print chapters of certain IT books, makes it a bit easier to make annotation for the specific task you are doing.

But luqmaninbmore has a point. Storing everything electronical seems fine, but what if the sun starts acting up (predicted in 30-40 years) and EM distortion reaches earth ?
Then it's bye bye electronical gadgets.

[Elfwreck]

I've printed sections of ebooks for reading. Problem is, I read a lot more than is practical to print.

I regularly read 15,000-word fanfic during my lunch break. It takes me a couple of days' leisure reading to get through a 115k-word novel (fanfic or otherwise)... I'm certainly not going to print that out.

I did print out copies of Little Brother and For the Win for my daughter to read. (And to get signed. Someday, we're gonna have to figure out how to do author booksignings for digital books.) Little Brother comes out to 300 half-letter sized, cut in half & GBC comb bound pages with 10-pt text; that's 75 sheets of paper, with a bit more than an hour's formatting time. I could make the text smaller but then the lines get annoyingly long.

I've printed some books in 8-pt type, 3 columns with .35" spaces between them; that works okay. But it's still a lot of paper to waste.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Donnageddon

I find it works pretty well for format shifting. I print out the Mobi ebook using Calibre, then use a scanner with a top notch OCR program to scan the printed pages. Load the resulting txt file into Calibre and format to whatever format type I desire.

Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to just convert from Mobi to another format via software?

[AlbertaCowboy]

Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore

And, of course, what will happen to our precious ebooks when we get hit by a massive Electromagnetic Pulse. Or when electricity becomes a luxury

At this point, I'll be too busy fighting against the zombie army Red Dawn style from my secret base in the Rockies to worry overmuch.

[BexBits]

Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore

In all seriousness, I do think that a shift to digital consumption of literature will have long reaching effects that have not been thoroughly thought out.

My reading habits were profoundly influenced by roaming at will through my parents' bookshelves when I was younger. To the extent that what I read may be simply files in my personal reading device that opportunity will never happen for my kids. Even the chance for another adult to catch sight of a book in my livingroom and find a series that she may also love is gone.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Druid_Elf

Storing everything electronical seems fine, but what if the sun starts acting up (predicted in 30-40 years) and EM distortion reaches earth ?
Then it's bye bye electronical gadgets.

I'll probably be dead by then so methinks I shall not worry upon it.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by BexBits

My reading habits were profoundly influenced by roaming at will through my parents' bookshelves when I was younger. To the extent that what I read may be simply files in my personal reading device that opportunity will never happen for my kids. Even the chance for another adult to catch sight of a book in my livingroom and find a series that she may also love is gone.

That's one of the features ebooks *really* need to work on. (Goes with "ebooks need a method for sharing between people.") The inability to easily browse someone's collection & borrow a book will keep them in the niche of "nifty tech toy" instead of real books.

Real books are social. Pixels vs printed is not nearly as big a divide as private vs public.

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore

And, of course, what will happen to our precious ebooks when we get hit by a massive Electromagnetic Pulse. Or when electricity becomes a luxury (although I have a solar charger, so this may not be as much of a problem as it seems). Of course, there is the problem of inheritance. I guess I could leave a note that my ebooks are backed up on so and so devices. In all seriousness, I do think that a shift to digital consumption of literature will have long reaching effects that have not been thoroughly thought out.

Somehow, I don't think finding something to read will be our biggest problem at that point. As it happens, I still buy print books, too. I just don't print them out myself. Many books I want still aren't being digitized.

Once I die, I won't care what happens to my books.

[vaughnmr]

This has GOT to be the strangest thread I've ever read about ebooks. The OP needs to, well, to put it politely, stop and think about what he's doing. Seriously.

[luqmaninbmore]

I view my library as an inheritance to be passed on to my descendants and to the community. While I am alive I can share my ebooks with my family. After I pass on I would like to make sure that these books can still be accessed.