Thread: It is the Worst of Times for Reading EBooks
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Old 06-07-2019, 09:39 PM   #26
davidfor
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Originally Posted by leebase View Post
It is the worst of times....

Looking back over ten years of participating on this forum, I think it is the worst of times for reading ebooks. IMHO.

eInk innovation has all but come to a stop. Where are the large eInk readers with pen input and worklow?
It escapes me, why do I need an ereader with pen input? I can't for the life of me work out how that would improve my reading. Annotations? Only if you want to draw or use handwriting. And, I don't think that is enough of a use case to make them any company produce them. Though, Sony does.
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There are no more independant eInk devices to speak of. Surely not of the quality of the Sony line. Pretty much "eco system" plays like Amazon, Kobo and Nook are all that's left. And only Amazon has a healthy business.
Wasn't Sony an "eco system" device? I never used one, but they did have a store and their own application to get books on them. Sounds exactly like what the the three companies you mention do.
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Fictionwise and many many other beloved ebook stores are gone and are never coming back. Along with them are the special pricing deals that so many of us loved.
And from my viewpoint, bricks & mortar book shops came and went before ereading started to take over. Why do you expect it to be different for on-line stores?
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The rise of audio books is a detriment to actual reading. It's bad enough with the twitters, face place, and insta-whosit's of the world destroying people's attention spans....now folks are too lazy to learn to read and are counting listening to a book as if it's reading.
Personally, I don't do audio books, I'd probably fall asleep. And I choose music if I am going to be listening in all those places that people say are great for audiobooks. But, I think it is a perfectly valid way of absorbing literature and the ideas, feelings, etc. contained within. Just as watching videos, attending lectures, classes etc are all ways to learn.

As to attention spans, over the years, I have watched my sons play various computer games. They have a much longer attention span than I have for all my years of reading.
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