View Single Post
Old 12-30-2011, 07:57 PM   #67
Elfwreck
Grand Sorcerer
Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.Elfwreck ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Elfwreck's Avatar
 
Posts: 5,187
Karma: 25133758
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: SF Bay Area, California, USA
Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3 (Past: Kobo Mini, PEZ, PRS-505, Clié)
There are types of books that don't transition well to digital: art books, coffee-table books, novelty books of various sorts (pocket books of quotes, 1" square tiny-text classics), many kinds of children's books (pop-ups, books with texture or cutouts), certain kinds of manuals and reference books. Workbooks. Memento books for tourists. Special-event books: convention schedule books with space available to have them signed by various authors. And so on. If everything else collapses, there'll still be demand for these kinds of books--the way that the saddle-and-riding-crop industry hasn't vanished; it's just gotten a lot smaller.

Some other books are currently best in print because ebook formatting hasn't caught up to their needs: many textbooks, poetry, hymnals and other songbooks, thesaurus & several other types of reference books, magazines--anything that needs either precision formatting or flipping back and forth a lot. I assume that eventually, these will work well on portable devices, but it'll take quite a while, and more large-screen devices that work as efficiently for ebooks as the current e-ink devices. For now, however, they're much better in print.

But for leisure reading... paper was used because it was the cheapest medium available. And it no longer is.

I am so glad my leisure-reading budget can now be squeezed as low as it needs to, and I can limit paper book-buying to those nonfiction items I either want as permanent reference works or to enjoy the art.
Elfwreck is offline   Reply With Quote