Quote:
Originally Posted by Enkidu of Abydos
The biggest surprise for me is that almost half of the voters are more comfortable holding / using e-readers then paper books. I've never felt paper books were a problem in that regard, except for their slightly irritating tendency to close on their own and stay not completely closed after you put them down if you've spread them too far... So I guess hooray for e-readers in that regard !
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I guess you never think about cracked spines and general wear and tear on your paper book? And perhaps you don't read long books either? (there's a significant difference between holding 200 g in your hands and 1 kg)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Enkidu of Abydos
One other important result is that almost one third of the voters admit that at least one of their reasons for getting an e-reader is reading free books downloaded from the Internet (and I don't mean "public domain" books), and that's on a forum which is dominated by Americans (or US citizens as our friend Pablo would say  ). In a truly international poll with more (say same number relative to their population sizes) people from for example Russia, China, or countries in eastern Europe or northern Europe the ratio might be 4/5 or at least 3/4. I'm just speculating here, of course people in those countries might not be able to afford an e-reader even if they do read books and desire one, and as the Americans here may not be aware but I am e-reader availability is very poor in many parts of the world outside of US/Japan/UK. For example in my country you can get pretty much any new smartphone or digital camera you can get in the US in stores or webshops easily, but not so with e-readers like Sony's line or Kindle (most people get them on eBay). That's because the e-reader target population is much, much smaller then the smartphone / digital camera target population.... |
I wasn't sure which one to tick here, as one of my original reasons for getting my first e-reader device was fan fiction, which is actually free but not pirated material. What I have noticed with regards pirated books is that the formatting is usually crap (much worse than the stuff I can buy) and I only want to put up with that if it's material that's so old it's otherwise unavailable as ebooks. Besides, when I can afford convenience, I pay for convenience - and I'm a fairly honest person living in a fairly honest culture - that might make a difference as well.
I can also tell you that the reason that ebooks and ebook readers are not yet so widely popular in Denmark is the lack of e-books available in Danish combined with the steep price of the reader devices. It's not so much the availability of the devices themselves that's a problem, it's content in Danish.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Enkidu of Abydos
Also I was a bit surprised / disappointed at the number of people who use e-readers for comics and other non-book-reading purposes, it seems there are more people who care about their device staying shiny and new !  And more people use it for work then for reading comics !? I always thought e-readers were perfect for comics (with a bit bigger screen and some necessary software features) |
What bigger screen? The comics I read have a large paper size (think French/Belgian comics) and often in colour. Do please recommend me an ebook colour reader with a large enough screen that is also comfortable and light (and relatively cheap) for me to read
Asterix on
