Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
They get checked out the most at least in part because they’re short, quick reads. One Harlequin-type romance could be borrowed, read and returned 10 times in the time it takes to read the latest Walter Isaacson or Simon Schama, say.
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When it comes to physical books I liked what one library did. They set up a shelf where their patrons could dump read romances and obtain unread romances. The shelf was never empty and not unfrequently overflowing with a constantly changing selection of romances without costing the library more then shelf space. Not something possible with ebooks unfortunately.
As for the ebook section of the podcast I think that the reasons given for the ebook particularly appealing to readers of genre fiction are not particularly snobbish. The speaker believes that narrative works are easier to read as ebooks then nonnarrative works (which appears to be true for many people), and he notes that many readers of romances are finished with a book once read and ready for the next one which leads to the desire for cheap and readily disposable books. And if that wasn't true, the romance shelf trading system wouldn't have worked as well as it did.
Otherwise it appears to be a value-neutral assessment of the current state of ebooks being published by mainstream publishers. The speaker did note that this left out a very important chunk of the ebook market.
The term 'serious readers' was nowhere to be found although there was an earlier discussion of book-lovers on tik-tok (booktokers ?) who prefer physical books, presumably for display purposes. I don't think that quite counts as saying that 'serious' or 'true' readers dislike ebooks, rather that people who want to show off what they are reading prefer physical books.