Quote:
Originally Posted by Abecedary
Do you normally read trade paperbacks or mass market paperbacks? If mass market, then yes, an e-ink screen will usually be an improvement. If trade paperback, then the e-ink is a slight step down (IMHO, but it's a step down I'm willing to live with). That's because many mass market paperbacks use very low quality paper and ink whereas trade paperbacks tend to use slightly heavier stock and higher quality ink. Of course, this isn't a hard and fast rule, but rather a general one.
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I don't know about
usually an improvement, as most of the mass-market paperbacks on my shelf are a few solid steps above the e-reader in quality, even though they also have problems. Most of what's on my shelf nowadays is Harper-Collins stuff, and while the paper is usually a bit sickly of tone and printing density is a bit variable, at least there are legible serifs on nice typefaces that don't work at all on my Sony.
Of course, I also have some old poetry books that are cheap paperbacks and the ink has spread out and feathered into the paper during printing, so it looks pretty bad--fairly comparable to a reader device. Granted, I'm running at 8-10 point faces mostly so I can get enough text on a page to at least feel like I'm reading a book. In any event, many cheap paperbacks can handle Minion or Caslon or Garamond and still be legible...my reader cannot.
Unless the ink has feathered and bled significantly (which admittedly I have seen on some paperbacks), it is almost always an improvement over an e-ink screen. Perhaps I should buy more of those badly-printed books to help me better appreciate what I have.
