I don't care how books smell either

[Worldwalker]

Some people get different senses involved in any experience. I'm one of the "smell" people. I do enjoy the way books smell -- and feel -- as part of my reading experience. It's not just books, of course. My clothing choices are influenced by the feel of the fabric on my skin. I buy pens that feel good to write with, with a strong preference for fountain pens. And yes, sometimes I miss vinyl records because there's something about sliding the album out of its cover, and then out of its sleeve, and putting it on the turntable, that's just not there when I push "play" on my Sansa.

Some people happily eat boring food day in, day out -- I have a friend who could probably live on nothing but bean burritos -- and some people are gourmets. Neither of them are wrong; it's just a difference in personal preference, in priorities, and in how much they rely on that particular sort of sensory input.

I like the smell of fresh ink on crisp new pages, and I like the smell of age on pages that many hands ... I always wonder whose ... have turned before me. I like the weight of a book, and the feel of it, the texture ... all of that. I also like my Sony PRS-505. Love, even. I wouldn't want to be without it. But it's a different thing. It's just words on a screen. All of those other sensations are missing.

I'm contemplating building a replacement for its tacky vinyl cover using bookcloth and some nice marbled endpapers, and maybe with a little space in the back to carry spare SD cards. I wonder if I could make it smell like a book?

[GA Russell]

I really love the smell of a brand new book, particularly a mass market paperback. That's one of the reasons I feel an eBook should cost less than the MMPB.

The absence of the aroma is by no means a deal breaker, but to me the smell of a new book, not an old book, is a special treat worth paying for.

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

I really love the smell of a brand new book, particularly a mass market paperback. That's one of the reasons I feel an eBook should cost less than the MMPB.

The absence of the aroma is by no means a deal breaker, but to me the smell of a new book, not an old book, is a special treat worth paying for.

Hmm... Perhaps "Glade" can be persuaded to come out with "New Book" and
"Old Book" fragrances. You can get "New Car" spray, how about a "Book
Smell" spray for eReaders that is activated by the heat from holding it?

It might even qualify as a new "Green" tech, and be eligible for some "Obama
Money".

Luck;
Ken

[riemann42]

I have a fairly sensitive nose. I dislike most odors. The smell of a new book (ink and pulp) is awful. The smell of an old book (mildew) is unbearable.

For the record, I also dislike new electronics smell, especially the smell of lubricants, thermal grease, etc.

[ardeegee]

Imagine the future arguments about these!

[TGS]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Imagine the future arguments about these!

As they say - if you can't tell the difference then the difference doesn't matter!

[Elfwreck]

[QUOTE=Michael J Hunt;856948]

(1) Am I being naive, but aren't all books published in both forms identical? Could this only be true for books that are published with the intention of their appearing in both forms? (2) Also, is it possible for unwanted errors to creep in during conversion from one format to another? (3) If this is so, surely the publisher should subject the final pdf version to a proof-read before he sells it.

1) The PDF looks the same (for some values of "same") as the printed version. Not all ebooks are released in PDF format, and the differences in appearance and functionality can be rather large.

This is especially true for technical books with charts & graphs, or image-heavy books, for some obvious and some less-than-obvious reasons. Obvious: a screen the size of your palm is obviously going to change the way a picture looks, and is going to be troublesome for a large complex chart. Less obvious: some formats have limitations on what kinds of images they can hold, or what digital size the images an be.

You can check out some of the differences by getting a couple of free ebook readers (Stanza, Calibre, Mobipocket Reader, the Firefox ePub plugin, etc.) and trying a few ebooks, both the same & different formats, on each of them. If you're like most people, your initial reaction will be, "huh. Yeah, they look a bit different, but they all work okay. I can see wanting the different background colors of this one, or the different menu options of that one, but so what?"

However, when those differences are translated to portable devices, it all changes. In order to fit ebooks on a 3" wide screen, the text has to either be very tiny--or involve a whole *lot* of page turns. In order to go to e-ink, the book is black-and-white (grayscale for images); there's no colored text. And all small screens have to choose between justified text with large gaps between words, or ragged right edges. Some make this choice for you; some allow you to decide.

To get a *bit* of a feel for how that works, open a PDF of your choice, and set the viewing window to a size of about 4"x6" on the computer screen. Then try reading in that.

PDF is only a good format for ebooks if the screen being read on is the same size (or bigger) than the page-size of the PDF.

2) errors--as mentioned, some errors creep in during conversion. Hyphenation and the occasional odd line-break problem are chief. Going to non-PDF forms, other common errors include bad formatting--no table of contents, no metadata (so the book shows up on a portable device as "Microsoft Word - OMOcaranorthARE.rtf" because nobody fixed it before PDF conversion), no page breaks between chapters. Sometimes all text formatting is stripped out; sometimes just quoted indents & other paragraph formatting are lost.

3) Bigger errors: however, those aren't the main errors people complain about. Most professional ebooks made from books more than ~5 years old are made by scanning & OCR'ing a physical book, because no digital copy exists anymore. And publishers are *terrible* about proofing those--often, they're sent through automatic software, with, as far as customers can tell, no human supervision before they're sold. So they have OCR errors, formatting errors, sometimes missing words, often missing all graphics... nobody proofreads them; nobody even runs a basic spellcheck on them.

The first professional release of Tolkien's books included one with a title page that said "Tha Hobbit."

We are aware, when we buy professional ebooks, that we're getting something of unknown quality, and if it's DRM'd, we can't even (easily, legally) edit it to fix the worst of the problems.

[Michael J Hunt]

Thank you, LDB. That explains it beautifully. Thank you very much.

MJ

[Lemurion]

I didn't like the smell of the last book I bought. It's a copy of Sherlock Holmes dating back to circa. 1900 and the odor did more to put me off than attract me.

As to the recurring formatting and layout issues like ligatures and proper justification, I find it always comes back to this: No matter how technically excellent the formatting and layout, if I can't read it comfortably it's not good formatting. Others may find it wonderful, but if I can't read it then it's a failure from my perspective.

I think we should focus on the basics - like getting all the right words in the right places - before worrying about things like ligatures and justification.

[leebase]

What I, one of my daughters and my wife miss about paper books, is the sense of size and "how much did I read" and seeing the book mark travel through the book. I do far prefer ebooks, but I do understand that there are tactical/sensual pleasures to paper books that are missing with ebooks.

I don't miss it enough to give up the advantages of ebooks.

Lee

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by leebase

What I, one of my daughters and my wife miss about paper books, is the sense of size and "how much did I read" and seeing the book mark travel through the book.

Lee, my jetBook Lite has at the top a running counter of the percentage of the book (to the second decimal point!) I have read. I'm sure that without that I would not enjoy the eBook as much.

I think this is related to a sense of accomplishment, akin to checking off something on a checklist.

Perhaps this desire to complete a task is counter to what authors have in mind, but for me it is real nonetheless.

[kdawnbyrd]

I'm a book collector from way back. I collect mostly children's series books, the older the better. I fought the ebook craze for a long time, afraid that ebooks might somehow threaten my wonderful print books. My first experience with ebooks came when I just HAD to read a certain book and it was available only in e. I downloaded it and haven't looked back. I no longer buy print books.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by kdawnbyrd

I collect mostly children's series books, the older the better.

How old are you referring to?

[Michael J Hunt]

Hello, Elfwreck,

I appreciate the tremendous trouble you have gone to in order to educate me. I still haven't decided whether I should invest in an e-reader, but I shall look at the choices available and re-visit your comments.

Many thanks,

MJ

[Kirtai]

It took me a while to change over to ebooks but they're pretty much all I buy nowadays.

The main exception is where the book itself is artwork; my most recent ones are the illustrated versions of "Wee Free Men" and "The Last Hero" by Pratchett.

The thing I miss most about pbooks is easy, convenient bookmarks. Bookmarking ebooks tends to be clumsy and you usually can't transfer them from one reader to another.