The Atlantic: Ebooks Are an Abomination

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

It constantly amuses/amazes me that people keep harping on and on and on about ereaders' limitations when it comes to PDFs. Lovers of dead tree books have no problem at all accepting that they come in different sizes, but apparently ereaders are terrible because they are not "one size fits all". If I need to read a PDF, I'll read it on my 10.1 tablet, or if bigger than that, my 31.5 inch monitor. Just as I would not expect a coffee table book to fit in a paperback, why should I expect a 7-8 inch ereader to deliver the optimal reading experience for all 'printed' material? As for "faster search", I just searched an ebook that in paper is 984 pages and found all instances of the word I searched for in 3 seconds. That's fast enough for me, and a helluva lot faster than my fingers flicking through pages. It's also faster than my first Kindle some 9-10 years ago

There's still a place for PDFs. A lot of math monographs for example have page sizes not much bigger than an 8 inch reader but ePubs/Kindle formats handle such books insanely poorly as 95% of the time its blurry images that are too low res for every single equation and diagram. Imagine if every 10th line in your novel being a non-resizable blurry jpg. I imagine you'd rather read the PDF then too. And there's still a lot of content like academic journal articles only available on PDF. I can't imagine there isn't other content that doesn't quite fit into the ePub paradigm. For novels and leisure non-fiction its fine but I don't think it's quite there for other content.

How long does it take for your Kindle to index books? How well would it handle something like a fuzzy search when you can't remember the exact phrase? They haven't made any real SoC changes for years. It's the same 1GHz chip with 512mb of RAM over and over. Extra power can open new doors is my point.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

And from the article:


Here are the current top sellers on the New York Times hardcover fiction list:
A SLOW FIRE BURNING by Paula Hawkins
Kindle: $14.99
Hardcover: $16.80

BILLY SUMMERS by Stephen King
Kindle: $14.99
Hardcover: $17.98

THE MADNESS OF CROWDS by Louise Penny
Kindle: $14.99
Hardcover: $17.39

THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY by Matt Haig
Kindle: $10.99
Hardcover: $13.29

THE NOISE by James Patterson and J.D. Barker
Kindle: $14.99
Hardcover: $16.91

I gave up after five, because, hey, I have work to do.

Moving to ebooks has saved me inordinate sums of money. I don't understand the argument that ebooks are more expensive.

Anecdotal cases can be highlighted. But for the overall, it just ain't true.

Do most people buy hardcovers or paperback? I'd argue the latter. Let's take a look at The NY Times paperback best seller list and the corresponding prices on Amazon.com

It Ends with Us: A Novel
Paperback: $9.86
Kindle: $11.99

THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO
Paperback: $13.40
Kindle: $13.99

Where the Crawdads Sing
Paperback: $9.98
Kindle: $12.99

The Song of Achilles
Paperback: Amazon doesn't have it new right now, camelcamelcamel says it was $10.35
Kindle: $10.49

People we meet on Vacation
Paperback: $9.98
Kindle: $9.99

[issybird]

I suppose a rant doesn’t have to be entirely factual, but the Atlantic doesn’t need yet another hit to its credibility. “Authors-making-up-stuff” has become a thing for it lately; at some point, it won’t be taken seriously any longer. It’s a loss.

[Quoth]

Generally here (Ireland) the kindle titles are cheaper than paperbacks, except paperbacks bought in the supermarket.
But I've noticed that Amazon UK and DE have now got more expensive for some recent paperback titles than our local physical bookshop (an independent with one shop!). Monopoly? Amazon has bought up Abe, Book Depository and others.
Also now with Brexit it's cheaper to buy from Amazon DE + shipping (maybe €5) than Amazon UK with "free" shipping.
I have two Kindle accounts, one is on UK and the other is on USA. You can transfer an Irish Address Kindle account to USA for Kindle, but then can't buy UK only titles. Also ALL your kindles are "moved". Hence having two accounts. I buy USA Amazon gift cards using my UK account (which works for everything EXCEPT ebooks on DE) and email to the USA Account for the USA Kindle.


Some Kindle ebooks are a lot more expensive than paperback and some are a lot cheaper.

I've also recently found that BluRay is no longer automatically dearer than DVD, sometimes a lot cheaper, but I now only buy Amazon DVD/BluRay from DE because of UK-Ireland Customs. Many titles are just different language covers on DE vs UK-IRL version. It's the same region for BD. I don't care about DVD region, except I try to avoid NTSC format DVDs as they are 480 lines vs 576 for PAL regions. Some USA titles are even stupidly 3:2 pull down instead of progressive on the disc which creates comb artefacts with pans or horizontal movement. PAL DVDs NEVER have transfer artefacts.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

There's still a place for PDFs. A lot of math monographs for example have page sizes not much bigger than an 8 inch reader but ePubs/Kindle formats handle such books insanely poorly as 95% of the time its blurry images that are too low res for every single equation and diagram. Imagine if every 10th line in your novel being a non-resizable blurry jpg. I imagine you'd rather read the PDF then too. And there's still a lot of content like academic journal articles only available on PDF. I can't imagine there isn't other content that doesn't quite fit into the ePub paradigm. For novels and leisure non-fiction its fine but I don't think it's quite there for other content.

How long does it take for your Kindle to index books? How well would it handle something like a fuzzy search when you can't remember the exact phrase? They haven't made any real SoC changes for years. It's the same 1GHz chip with 512mb of RAM over and over. Extra power can open new doors is my point.

I don't have a Kindle, I have a Kobo, so no onboard indexing at all. And I I never said there wasn't a a place for PDFs, just that that place is not my eink reader. Different tools for different tasks

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Do most people buy hardcovers or paperback? I'd argue the latter.

You'd be guessing, and not actually arguing. People buy at the price they're willing to pay for the format they prefer (whether that's an ebook format or a physical format), at the time they're ready to buy. There is no consensus.

As I've mentioned countless times in endless parades of threads like this: I don't even compare the price of a format I prefer to buy with price of a format I have zero intention of buying. It's irrelevant. If the price of the format I'm going to buy is currently too high for my comfort, I just wait until it's not any more. Same as it ever was.

The problem with all the "ebooks are too expensive" diatribes is that they're all predicated on everyone believing that ebooks are somehow inherently less valuable than their paper counterparts. But everyone doesn't believe that. Ebooks are inherently more valuable to me than their paper counterparts. The fact that I nearly always pay less for the ebook format of a title than the current available paper version of the same title is just icing on the cake.

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by tomsem

And it’s not really an easy claim to substantiate. Amazon would have sales numbers, and some idea of how many ebooks get read, but they are never going to share that publicly.

In the past, Amazon has released that data as a "special report" whose cost was in the mid five digit range. Other players in that field have released similar reports.

Print books go into circulation, but there’s no way to know how many of them get read, or how many people read a given book. A book sold is not a book read, whether it is analog or digital.

Way back in the 1920s, librarians started research into how often a book is read, how much of a book is read, and how many sales were spurred by reading a book. Turns out different formats have very different answers to those questions. Over time, the research was refined, albeit still guesstimates.

With ebooks, it is possible to determine exactly how much of a book is read, and how frequently books are read --- if the individual doesn't consistently take active measures to prevent the device manufacturer, and/or software developer from obtaining that information.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Fiat_Lux

In the past, Amazon has released that data as a "special report" whose cost was in the mid five digit range. Other players in that field have released similar reports.



Way back in the 1920s, librarians started research into how often a book is read, how much of a book is read, and how many sales were spurred by reading a book. Turns out different formats have very different answers to those questions. Over time, the research was refined, albeit still guesstimates.

With ebooks, it is possible to determine exactly how much of a book is read, and how frequently books are read --- if the individual doesn't consistently take active measures to prevent the device manufacturer, and/or software developer from obtaining that information.

Interesting about the reports. Both print and digital? And probably NDA-ed?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Do most people buy hardcovers or paperback? I'd argue the latter. Let's take a look at The NY Times paperback best seller list and the corresponding prices on Amazon.com

I don't know. The hardcovers tend to be the big new releases, available at places like Target and on big pallets at Costco. When I went to physical bookstores, I remember displays of the bestselling hardcovers.

But, when it comes to paperback:

It Ends with Us: A Novel
Paperback: $9.86
Kindle: $11.99

THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO
Paperback: $13.40
Kindle: $13.99

Where the Crawdads Sing
Paperback: $9.98
Kindle: $12.99

The Song of Achilles
Paperback: Amazon doesn't have it new right now, camelcamelcamel says it was $10.35
Kindle: $10.49

People we meet on Vacation
Paperback: $9.98
Kindle: $9.99

The only one I'm familiar with (and have purchased) is Song of Achilles, which I picked up for $0.99. (And Amazon does show that they have the book available in paperback.)

I'm not surprised that Amazon drops the prices on bestselling paperbacks as much as they can. A luxury they do not have with ebooks, where the price is set by the publisher.

But funny enough, your list stops at five. Here are the next five:
NINE PERFECT STRANGERS by Liane Moriarty
Kindle: $ 9.99
Paperback: $11.39

THE RETURN by Nicholas Sparks
Kindle: $11.99
Paperback: $13.99

UGLY LOVE by Colleen Hoover
Kindle: $10.99
Paperback: $10.19

VERITY by Colleen Hoover
Kindle: $5.99
Paperback: $11.99

THE GUEST LIST by Lucy Foley
Kindle: $11.99
Paperback: $13.58

And then there's the vast majority of what people read: backlist. For the most part, ebooks are going to be cheaper than their paper counterpart. If you find a good sale, they will be significantly cheaper. But in general, they are usually a bit cheaper.

And the real question here is: Who is Colleen Hoover? Two books on the bestseller list and they have been there for multiple weeks. Good for her.

[Calenorn]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Moving to ebooks has saved me inordinate sums of money.

And when you move, you'll be spared those heavy boxes of books. Electrons are practically weightless!

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Interesting about the reports. Both print and digital? And probably NDA-ed?

IIRC, it was only distributed in PDF format.

I don't know if there was an NDA. The creators of these types of reports tend to be extremely willing to sue first, and ask questions later, considering any quotation to be a a major breach of copyright. No such thing as Fair Use, as far as the report creators are concerned. Any publicity is treated as bad publicity.

As I understand it, the report was more or less along the lines of:
"In category ω, average number of pages is χ, average penetration of ψ% and is opened/read ζ times," with some outliers included as anecdotal examples.

[Fiat_Lux]

Originally Posted by Calenorn

And when you move, you'll be spared those heavy boxes of books. Electrons are practically weightless!

Says those who consider a BackBlaze Storage Pod is too small for their digital content. (CF https://www.backblaze.com/blog/open-...torage-server/ )

[leebase]

I think he has a point. There is definitely a thing "bookiness". My daughter, who would rather read a paper book, has long said the same thing - albeit with different words.

She misses the feel of progress, the book mark making it's way through the book. Sure, an ebook tells you that you are 33.6% through - but it's not meeting the same visceral feel. I agree with her. I love ebooks, but I miss the sense of the size of a book and the progress of the bookmark.

I love a good leather bible with gilded edges and red letters. The smell of the leather, the heft, the "this is holy" sense of the physical item.

Now, I can list the many advantages of an ebook and reading an ebook. It is far and away my favorite way to read. But I can understand why someone could value "bookiness".

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Do most people buy hardcovers or paperback?

I think most people rarely buy either and that library borrowing is more than both both combined.

Am I sure? No, because I can't find national total library circulation numbers. But here's some raw U.S. data consistent with my idea:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...ook-sales-usa/

https://libguides.ala.org/libraryfac...apper-17302562

Originally Posted by ekbell

And of course there are art books and the like which work best in paper form.

It is not just art books. I mostly read narrative non-fiction and do lose something with eInk. Photographs are hard to see. And many of the books I read have one or two poorly rendered charts. History titles often include a list of characters. It is harder to pop back and forth to those than with a paper book, where I might use bookmarks.

I mobile read anyway because of weight, bigger fonts, and not having to travel to libraries. But just because I mostly read on eInk doesn't make critics wrong. As I wrote before, screens destroyed local journalism, having, I think, a terrible effect on positive civic engagement. I wonder if some committed mobile readers read non-fiction less because they would lose a bit of the content. If so, this is a genuine negative to society (although nothing like the decline of general interest newspapers and magazines).

[Sirtel]

Eh I dunno. I don't miss anything about paper books. Nothing at all, including the smell and the weight. Or bookmarks. Or page turning.

It's something I don't just get.

Paper books have their place. Books with many pictures and photos are better as paper, imo. But general text? No way.