Paper books still have an advantage

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Here in Canada, the outage of a major ISP a few months back managed to take down Interac.

Yes, not uncommon.

Another "Sword of Damocles" is a bad solar flare. They can take out satellites, power systems etc and also stupidly to save expense of a few hundred dollars at mobile masts and Digital TV/Radio masts they often use satellite GPS receivers. One as bad in the 19th C. will take out Musk's Starlink, Inmarsat, GPS, Sat TV etc till satellites are replaced as well as a load of more nothern power systems.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by fduniho

I just bought a Scribe with 64GB, and even before that, my 4GB Kindle Touch never ran out of space. Meanwhile, I have lots of physical books stored in boxes in another building, because I don't have the shelf space for them.

I think more people run out of shelf space then they do storage on a Reader.

[Hardboiled]

When I was partnered in a small independent imprint, it was felt that you weren't a real publisher unless you also produced physical print books too. Even though I started with eBooks, we soon set up for actual print, as well and that was very satisfying.

Despite a meteoric rise in eBook sales around 2010, print books now far outstrip their electronic equivalents in terms of sales - (https://blog.gitnux.com/amazon-book-sales-statistics/) for one such example. I'm not sure why that is, except that fewer people than we assume here have eReader devices. They have iPads and phones, always but I know very few of my friends who own an eReader.

Whilst I love the feel and look of a well produced printed book, eBooks have well and truly taken over for my reading, for at least the last 10 years or more:

Hundreds, thousands even, of eBooks can be stored on the one device; you can alter the size, look and layout of text; well formed eBooks now look as good as their print equivalents; You have a self contained experience, with integral lighting, often waterproofed (though I never read a book in the bath and reading by the pool/sea never destroyed one before either); you can manage, index, arrange your books into any library, you want; you have dictionaries and word look-up, at a fingertip, on the same device; you have a totally interactive reference system, for indexes and links, etc.

I still buy big technical and textbooks in print though and coloured coffee table eBooks are still some way off on E-Ink devices. Most people will be seeing those kind of books electronically on a laptop, PC etc. still for some time, mostly in PDF form.

But for the kind of reading, that paperbacks always involved, mostly pure words, eBooks are almost in everyway better to me, it's almost a no-brainer, for the all of the above, IMHV. So again I'm not sure why the physical ones have bounced back in such force, except, as I mentioned, for dedicated eReaders not being an obvious choice for many.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Hardboiled

...

Despite a meteoric rise in eBook sales around 2010, print books now far outstrip their electronic equivalents in terms of sales - (https://blog.gitnux.com/amazon-book-sales-statistics/) for one such example. I'm not sure why that is, ...

I thought this was interesting:

...
E-books make up 21% of Amazon’s total book sales by revenue
However, because they are significantly cheaper than print books, e-books actually make up 36% of sales in terms of total number of books sold ...

https://wordsrated.com/amazon-book-sales-statistics/

If you were to consider things Kindle Unlimited and Kobo Plus, how many ebooks are read vs pbooks.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by fduniho

I just bought a Scribe with 64GB, and even before that, my 4GB Kindle Touch never ran out of space. Meanwhile, I have lots of physical books stored in boxes in another building, because I don't have the shelf space for them.

My Kobo has way less than 64 and it is not 1/4 used.

I guess if I treated multi-media as 'books', I would have some need. Even an Audiobook is usually under a Gig

But other than that, WHY keep all your books (includes those read) on the device unless they are frequently used (academic or professional) references ?
I have Calibre for main storage and index (card catalog) for the bulk of my Library.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I think more people run out of shelf space then they do storage on a Reader.

Ain't that the truth. (looks at totes full of paperbacks Very few Hardbacks for same reasons)
OK, I could not fit 1/10 of my paper Library (if available in EPUB/PRC) on my original EZReader. But it also had a user SD card slot, so a large selection of those could be carried in a cover pocket and simply exchanged as desired.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by theducks

I guess if I treated multi-media as 'books', I would have some need. Even an Audiobook is usually under a Gig

But you can get phones or tablets with SD Card slots that take 256G. Maybe 1T. Full size SD cards can have two chips, hence are almost always up to twice micro SD card capacity.
Phones are better and more portable for music and audiobooks.
You can swap cards easily on some phones/tablets.

Certainly if you just put fiction epub (not including comics etc) on a 32G ereader you could have more ebooks than you could read. Maybe true even for some people and 8G.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I think more people run out of shelf space then they do storage on a Reader.

I was amused by the irony of one of the "paper books are better!" articles posted earlier in the thread mentioning "but you might run out of storage" a few paragraphs after a mention of overflowing shelves.

I once had a (shoddy, admittedly) shelf outright collapse from the weight of books. I stacked them up on a table for ages until I finally found a replacement.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I was amused by the irony of one of the "paper books are better!" articles posted earlier in the thread mentioning "but you might run out of storage" a few paragraphs after a mention of overflowing shelves.

I once had a (shoddy, admittedly) shelf outright collapse from the weight of books. I stacked them up on a table for ages until I finally found a replacement.

eBooks make a good replacement.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

eBooks make a good replacement.

Only if they're available as one. I have a lot of out-of-print books.

[Sarmat89]

A simple ditto list (block-centering, tab alignment) is beyond the HTML capabilities. You have to resort to pictures or DjVU/PDF, which are pain to zoom and scroll. We've been promised a revolution, but after 25 years we still have what is basically plain text files in ZIP archives. (You could do some layout stuff with real plain text, though, but not now)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

A simple ditto list (block-centering, tab alignment) is beyond the HTML capabilities. You have to resort to pictures or DjVU/PDF, which are pain to zoom and scroll. We've been promised a revolution, but after 25 years we still have what is basically plain text files in ZIP archives. (You could do some layout stuff with real plain text, though, but not now)

Interesting. I've seen several lists of that type in ebooks. Perhaps not exactly the same way of aligning text since most were built as tables but visual appearance is all that matters.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

... tab alignment ...

I hope that you're not advocating for "tab stops". Tables give a more contextual solution.

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

... is beyond the HTML capabilities.

I get that you're unhappy with the state of things but I don't know where you're going with this. Have you looked at EPUB 3?

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

We've been promised a revolution ...

I never take that stuff seriously. To address petty problems heavy-handed solutions are given that hardly offset whatever benefit they give.

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

... after 25 years we still have ...

But look on the bright side. The size of reader apps has grown enormously with negligible benefit. The Onyx kreader.apk weighs in at 175 MB and has 11 dexes.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I think more people run out of shelf space then they do storage on a Reader.

Stephen King posted this on Twitter recently:

No such thing as too many books.

[Hardboiled]

Part of the problem with eBooks, is there is no viable legal 2nd hand market in them. It's connected with the fact that we don't really own them (the individual copy that is, obviously not the copyright) in the first place. IMV, this has to change. The DRM technology could provide for this, in a similar way to how Overdrive works, i.e, if you sold your book, your device/s serial number access is removed.

Most people are casual readers, if they read at all, and perhaps might buy 2 or 3 physical books a year. For such people an eReader would not be very viable, nor would it really occur to them, as even a pc doesn't when they have a mobile smartphone and tablet, for most all their needs. But even they can see that a physical book may be an investment of a modest type. Whereas an eBook has no such value.

If digital copies had such a value and it was explicit in law, that we owned such a copy, for the right of individual and personal resale, then eBook sales (Or music and films too) would grow even faster. Notwithstanding we may still have to buy both an ePub and Amazon version, as we might buy a hardback and softback one.

The cost of printing adds considerably, to the publisher, especially POD, or small runs. This is why often the closeness in pricing between the eBook and physical ones, means the publishers get a much bigger mark up from eBooks but then the facility to pirate the former is infinitely higher too, so whilst it may seem unfair, the publisher knows they have the one crack at it really, if you'll excuse the pun. I believe, whilst not removing this occupational hazard a change in the law, for consumer ownership of digital copies, would in some way help.