Funny article about the future of paper books

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Format C:

And that's why audiobooks won't never replace printed books, too: they rely only on the sense of hearing.

I actually think that audio books give a different experience in experiencing the text then reading it so I think that in this case it two totally different way enjoying the text. Your other examples was additional values.

Hopefully the readers will become better so they also give the additional functionality. For example I really like to see the cover of a book when I pick it up for reading. And that should be implementable in readers but it has to be a reader with a color screen.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by Format C:

When it comes to book vs ebooks, the thing is completely different: they don't give comparable experiences to the users.

Yes they do.

The only stimulus they can give in common is the visual one.

You know what's funny? That's the one people care about most. And, for the majority of readers at least, the only one they care about. Books printed on paper are superior in terms of quality of display: not only for black and white text, where the gap is rapidly narrowing with dedicated devices, but also for color photos etc. But that's a technical hurdle. The day will come when these devices will be as good if not better than printed paper. In many cases they're good enough already for many purposes.

A paper book cannot be replaced by an epub file when it comes to the senses of touch, smell and hearing.

Hearing? Let's be serious here. Smell can be nice, but I don't read to derive any olfactory pleasure from it.

Many of your arguments could be made in favor of traditional photography and yet it's already been relegated to the art shops of this world.

So, while people more sensible to visual stimuli like I am can easily switch from paper to devices, the ones who rather lean on other senses cannot and won't.

There'll always people developing their own black & white photos, but they have become an insignificant minority.

[HistoryWes]

Very funny and well done.

BTW, I love your user name. I am a huge Tom Swift fan.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Format C:

I think a big point is missing, here.
Digital reading gives the user totally different stimuli than paper print (and audiobook)...

When it comes to book vs ebooks, the thing is completely different: they don't give comparable experiences to the users. The only stimulus they can give in common is the visual one.
A paper book cannot be replaced by an epub file when it comes to the senses of touch, smell and hearing.

Typewriter:
Yeah! People won't give up on the satisfying finger-punches that kick up my keys, the soothing tacka-tacka-tacka-tacka-tack! of my rhythms, the regular slapping of the carriage return, and the smudges of carbon paper on their fingers, either! Computer keyboards will never replace all that!

(And what about the smell of wite-out? Mmmm...)

[dmaul1114]

I'm actually going to read a print book for leisure for the first time since getting a Kindle last week.

Have a book I bought right before getting it and haven't got around to reading.

That said, I do a TON of reading of paper books and printouts of PDFs for work. Just no current substitute for study/research related reading where I need to be able to mark stuff up very quickly, able to quickly flip through and find relevant passages when writing an article, have multiple articles (tables of findings etc.) spread out in front of me on my desk.

A good tablet will solve some of that for me, but I figure I'll be using paper books/printouts to some degree for most all of my career.

[Jaime_Astorga]

I second the people who have met the claim that eBooks cannot replace physical books due to some irreplaceable property of the latter with skepticism. Cory Doctorow argues against the idea in Content as follows:

There's one thing that every new art business-model had in common: it embraced the medium it lived in.

This is the overweening characteristic of every single successful new medium: it is true to itself. The Luther Bible didn't succeed on the axes that made a hand-copied monk Bible valuable: they were ugly, they weren't in Church Latin, they weren't read aloud by someone who could interpret it for his lay audience, they didn't represent years of devoted-with-a-capital-D labor by someone who had given his life over to God. The thing that made the Luther Bible a success was its scalability: it was more popular because it was more proliferate: all success factors for a new medium pale beside its profligacy. The most successful organisms on earth are those that reproduce the most: bugs and bacteria, nematodes and virii. Reproduction is the best of all survival strategies.

...

Today we hear ebook publishers tell each other and anyone who'll listen that the barrier to ebooks is screen resolution. It's bollocks, and so is the whole sermonette about how nice a book looks on your bookcase and how nice it smells and how easy it is to slip into the tub. These are obvious and untrue things, like the idea that radio will catch on once they figure out how to sell you hotdogs during the intermission, or that movies will really hit their stride when we can figure out how to bring the actors out for an encore when the film's run out. Or that what the Protestant Reformation really needs is Luther Bibles with facsimile illumination in the margin and a rent-a-priest to read aloud from your personal Word of God.

New media don't succeed because they're like the old media, only better: they succeed because they're worse than the old media at the stuff the old media is good at, and better at the stuff the old media are bad at. Books are good at being paperwhite, high-resolution, low-infrastructure, cheap and disposable. Ebooks are good at being everywhere in the world at the same time for free in a form that is so malleable that you can just pastebomb it into your IM session or turn it into a page-a-day mailing list.

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Typewriter:
Yeah! People won't give up on the satisfying finger-punches that kick up my keys, the soothing tacka-tacka-tacka-tacka-tack! of my rhythms, the regular slapping of the carriage return, and the smudges of carbon paper on their fingers, either! Computer keyboards will never replace all that!

(And what about the smell of wite-out? Mmmm...)

Wait.
Typewriter is an instrument to get a job done.
A novel is not.

Maybe there are a few typemaniacs who type gibberish for hours for the fun of it, I don't know.
But you can't compare it.
Every person I know who loves to ride horses uses cars or trains to commute. No one of them uses buses for fun, they ride horses.
And yes, cars have replaced horses and saddlecoaches as means of transportation.

I'm not talking about the better way to have a job done: no matter how much you like the sound of it, a Waterman is better than a plume.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Format C:

Wait.
Typewriter is an instrument to get a job done.
A novel is not...

You might've missed my point...

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Yes they do.

No, they don't.

If they did, no paper books would be printed anymore.
No used market; no book crossing; no lending books each other; Easier distribution; complete control over every single copy; ability to delete already purchased book with one mouse click; ability to limit the total number of times one single copy is read; fast obsolescence. It's publisher's heaven.
Who on earth would chose to artificially lower his income?

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

You know what's funny? That's the one people care about most. And, for the majority of readers at least, the only one they care about. Books printed on paper are superior in terms of quality of display: not only for black and white text, where the gap is rapidly narrowing with dedicated devices, but also for color photos etc. But that's a technical hurdle. The day will come when these devices will be as good if not better than printed paper. In many cases they're good enough already for many purposes.

I'm not sure they're the majority. But I'm sure visual people are not 100% of entire population.
Try to spend a few hours in a car salon: you'll notice three kind of potential buyers.
The ones who go straight to the salesman and just listen to what he says, giving a quick glance to the car and demanding to hear the sount of the engine;
The ones who sit in the car, try levers and steering wheel, clicking buttons, lowering windows, testing the seat and going around touching almost everything;
The ones who stare at the car for a long time, looking at it form every angle, lowering themeselves to have the hood at eye level, they walk around, rarely touching the car, and mostly not listening to what the salesman is saying.

The first ones will listen audiobooks with pleasure.
The second ones will stick to printed books: they're the ones who enjoy to feel a book.
The third ones will be pleased with ebooks. But they'll likely complain when the formatting is poor.

Of course all those three groups can read ebook with pleasure. But just go around on blogs and count how many people miss the tactile, auditive and olfattive stimuli that come with p-books.

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Hearing? Let's be serious here. Smell can be nice, but I don't read to derive any olfactory pleasure from it.

You don't.
Does it mean that nobody does?
And I'm not saying people read just to hear the sound of pages turning. I'm saying there are people who rather read paper books for it.
A friend of mine reads books one page at a time. tearing them apart, I mean.
How can he be satisfied by an ebook device?

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Many of your arguments could be made in favor of traditional photography and yet it's already been relegated to the art shops of this world.

There'll always people developing their own black & white photos, but they have become an insignificant minority.

Get a copy of the National Geographics magazine and count how many photos in it are digital.

[Format C:]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

You might've missed my point...

And what's the point?

I said: "there are people different than me and you who like the smell, weight and sound of paper who won't switch completely to ebooks because they'll miss all that pleasure".

You replied: "computer keyboard replaced typewriters".

So, what's your point?

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by Format C:

Every person I know who loves to ride horses uses cars or trains to commute. No one of them uses buses for fun, they ride horses.
And yes, cars have replaced horses and saddlecoaches as means of transportation.

And that is precisely the point. Yes, there's a niche market for horses (more than that even, perhaps) but as a means of transportation they are no longer relevant. Printed paper books won't go completely away, either, they just won't be used for the bulk of our reading material in the future.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by Format C:

No, they don't.

Do, too But let's not be childish here. I personally think they already offer a "comparable experience", and the gap is narrowing at an astonishing rate.

If they did, no paper books would be printed anymore.

It's early days yet. I don't think books as we know them are obsolete quite yet. I don't think they ever will be, completely, but the analog printing industry as we know it today certainly won't survive in the long term.

No used market; no book crossing; no lending books each other;

That's true to some extent -- some of these problems can be solved technically, others might simply not matter in the grand scheme of things.

complete control over every single copy; ability to delete already purchased book with one mouse click; ability to limit the total number of times one single copy is read; fast obsolescence. It's publisher's heaven.

Again, valid concerns that you raise and that need to be addressed, but no unsurmountable obstacles. Early days, as I've said.

You don't. Does it mean that nobody does?

Probably not. Let them get their books the old-fashioned way, then.

Get a copy of the National Geographics magazine and count how many photos in it are digital.

I was talking about the taking of pictures, obvsiouly. I'd be surprised to learn that a significant percentage of photo journalists has not switched to digital yet.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Format C:

And what's the point?

I said: "there are people different than me and you who like the smell, weight and sound of paper who won't switch completely to ebooks because they'll miss all that pleasure".

You replied: "computer keyboard replaced typewriters".

So, what's your point?

The point is: It's not that much of a pleasure... it's just something they're used to. And once they've gone without for a while, and discover the benefits of buying instantaneously, choosing readers, controlling displays, and storing entire collections in their palm, the vast majority of them won't even remember what the big deal was about touching, feeling and smelling paper, and more than car drivers reminisce about hand-cranking their cars. They'll get over it, as people continue to demonstrate in other areas of development and technological advancement... this will be no different.

[TallMomof2]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Typewriter:
Yeah! People won't give up on the satisfying finger-punches that kick up my keys, the soothing tacka-tacka-tacka-tacka-tack! of my rhythms, the regular slapping of the carriage return, and the smudges of carbon paper on their fingers, either! Computer keyboards will never replace all that!

(And what about the smell of wite-out? Mmmm...)

And don't forget your MDS for your Wite-Out. Seriously I had to keep an MDS sheet for Wite-Out in my office because of the flammability and explosion problems. Apparently, back in the 80's you could make a little bottle of Wite-Out explode by heating it and then throwing the heated glass bottle hard against a hard surface.

My slide rule rests comfortably in a drawer with my drawing tools.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

And don't forget your MDS for your Wite-Out. Seriously I had to keep an MDS sheet for Wite-Out in my office because of the flammability and explosion problems. Apparently, back in the 80's you could make a little bottle of Wite-Out explode by heating it and then throwing the heated glass bottle hard against a hard surface.

Those were the days, huh?

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

My slide rule rests comfortably in a drawer with my drawing tools.

Straight one or round one?

This is by my desk: