The Atlantic: Ebooks Are an Abomination

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by rcentros

About a month ago I bought the 7 Chronicles of Narnia books in one eBook for $4.99. There are thousands of "out of print" eBooks available for free. There a thousands of eBooks for sale cheaply that would have never been reprinted on paper because it would have too expensive for a limited market. And, in opposition to the article, a lot of the books I've bought cheaply are non-fiction written in the late 1800s or early 1900s. These simply would not have been available at a cost I could afford if not for eReaders.

Not out of print. Out of copyright. There are thousands of out of print books that are completely unavailable as ebooks too. In my country the Chronicles of Narnia are already public domain and are available free online since C.S Lewis died 50+ years ago.

My rant was about the big publishers mainly and was also about the quality of what you get. Not just the price! I don't feel that the ebook should have glaring typos or other issues that don't exist in the paper copy when I'm paying the same or more.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Not out of print. Out of copyright. There are thousands of out of print books that are completely unavailable as ebooks too. In my country the Chronicles of Narnia are already public domain and are available free online since C.S Lewis died 50+ years ago.

In the U.S. the Chronicles of Narnia are still under copyright. I realize there are a lot of books that aren't available, but I've got over a hundred that are available. And I got them the out of print (and out of copyright) books from Amazon for 99¢ or $1.99 or $2.99. I figure the small cost is well worth it for me as I don't have to create a decent copy for myself. And, no they're not always perfect, but from certain publishers they're pretty good.

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

My rant was about the big publishers mainly and was also about the quality of what you get. Not just the price! I don't feel that the ebook should have glaring typos or other issues that don't exist in the paper copy when I'm paying the same or more.

I agree with you there. If the eBook is from a major publisher and they're charging full price for it, it should be well edited and well formatted. There's really no excuse for it to be slip-shod production in that case.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rcentros

I agree with you there. If the eBook is from a major publisher and they're charging full price for it, it should be well edited and well formatted. There's really no excuse for it to be slip-shod production in that case.

The problem is that most eBooks are shoddily made and that includes the full price ones from major publishers. But some of the worst ones I've seen are self-published on Amazon or from a small publisher.

Why do they use programs such a Vellum or Pages or other awful programs to make eBooks?

And then there is the formatting that's not good even if the code is not too bad.

[DiapDealer]

Well THAT was fairly predictable.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Why can't people just stop at "I prefer physical books"?

Because that wouldn't make much of an Atlantic article

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Because that wouldn't make much of an Atlantic article

To be fair, it wasn't much an article as written, either.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem is that most eBooks are shoddily made and that includes the full price ones from major publishers. But some of the worst ones I've seen are self-published on Amazon or from a small publisher.

Why do they use programs such a Vellum or Pages or other awful programs to make eBooks?

And then there is the formatting that's not good even if the code is not too bad.

To be honest, I haven't seen a really badly formatted ebook from a major publisher or an indie publisher in years.

Now I did buy a self-published ebook a couple of weeks ago that is a mess. The text was monotype, looked like typewritten pages, no table of contents.

But on the other hand, it's a reprint of a long out of print book from 1983. One of those ones where Amazon lists the paperback at $269.07. So I'm happy the ebook exists.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

To be honest, I haven't seen a really badly formatted ebook from a major publisher or an indie publisher in years.

Now I did buy a self-published ebook a couple of weeks ago that is a mess. The text was monotype, looked like typewritten pages, no table of contents.

But on the other hand, it's a reprint of a long out of print book from 1983. One of those ones where Amazon lists the paperback at $269.07. So I'm happy the ebook exists.

Are you sure that the eBook copy you purchased it legit?

[DiapDealer]

Take your detective cap off, Jon.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

To be honest, I haven't seen a really badly formatted ebook from a major publisher or an indie publisher in years.

Nor have I. Similarly, I have to disagree with this:

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I'm happy Gutenberg exists, but the files are a mess.

There was a time when this was true for some Gutenberg books, but it’s also been years since I downloaded a Gutenberg book that wasn’t just fine.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Are you sure that the eBook copy you purchased it legit?

Yes

[haertig]

I don't think ebooks can be beat for convenience when reading a novel. You don't have to worry about the book closing on you. You don't require the physical space that paper books take. I will admit that I enjoy looking at my paper books on the shelf. Most I have re-aquired in ebook form, but I still have the paper copies because I like looking at them. Weird, huh? I can't explain it. On a recent trip where I was on an airplane for 8 hours flight time each way, my ereader was invaluable. Try being crammed into a crowded plane trying to read a paper book (two hands to hold it open usually, and a bit of a pain to handle around the highly spill-able plastic cups they give you with your pretzels). Another bonus for ebooks is the speed with which you can get them. Near instantaneous ordering one over the internet. Rarely do I need to get a book this fast, but sometimes I want instant gratification and don't want to wait a day or two for Amazon to get it here. And for library books, the convenience of download over driving to the library is great.

But for technical books, textbooks, cookbooks, etc. a paper book can't be beat. I don't care what anybody else says, but PDF's on a Kindle just plain suck. Better on a tablet, if it's a larger tablet, but still not as good as their paper equivalent.

I like both kinds of book, for different purposes. Since I read more novels than technical books these days, I use an ereader much more frequently than a paper book. For a frequently used technical book - I'm thinking something like "The C Programming Language" from back in my work days - I can find the required spot in the book in a heartbeat just by fanning through the pages noting page layouts that I recognize. I could find the same spot in an ebook using the search feature or scrolling, but that would be much slower. Even finding the spot with an ebookmark would be slower than what I can do with a paper book that I know well.

So it's a YES to both book types from me. You choose the type based on what's best for your current need.

[hollowpoint]

Author is correct. Ebooks do suck. There has to be some reasons why Ebooks as a % of total books sales is low, and flat or declining. My kids' generation--the folks 30 and under--are mostly going back to paper books. They tell me there's a few very simple reasons: because of screen fatigue, and because they want something REAL to interact with during their leisure time.

When it comes to ebooks, I have to admit I've been into them partly because I'm a tech geek, and I LIKE all the farting around it takes to buy, manage, decrypt, convert, tag, and distribute them to devices. But.....all that farting around. The idiotic decryption and downloads and hardware and firmware and versions and plugins and sideloading and metadata and and and and....

It just sucks. When I want to read, I want to pick up the damned book and start reading. And when I buy something I want to OWN it forever, be able to loan it to people, and not have it become inaccessible due to software and hardware becoming outdated.

Ok rant off. But there's some truth to the article. Now I'll probably still keep all my books, kindle, Ipad, etc. But I've been buying more of the keeper category of books in paper lately.

[DiapDealer]

I buy the ebook, read the ebook, buy the next ebook. No farting around required. *shrug*

[Calenorn]

Originally Posted by hollowpoint

My kids' generation--the folks 30 and under--are mostly going back to paper books.

Baloney.