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#46 |
Guru
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Europe
Device: Pocketbook Basic 613
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No, I downloaded the free sample chapter and, based on that, decided not to purchase the book.
I have actually reason to believe that those same errors exist in the hardcover version as well. So, perhaps they are restricted to the preface? It was still enough to put me off it, so I might never know for sure. Last edited by rogue_librarian; 05-13-2011 at 10:57 AM. |
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#47 |
Ticats win 4th straight
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Raleigh, NC
Device: Paperwhite, Kindles 10 & 4 and jetBook Lite
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#48 |
Fanatic
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Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Boston :)
Device: Kindle, Kobo Aura H20, Pixel XL
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Publisher pricing on e-books has me boycotting some books that I would buy altogether.
If the e-book is not at least $1 less than the discounted paperback price, I pass. |
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#49 |
Star Gawker
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Karma: 6944314
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Spruce Grove, AB Canada
Device: Kindle Paperwhite
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#50 | |
Star Gawker
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Karma: 6944314
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Spruce Grove, AB Canada
Device: Kindle Paperwhite
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Quote:
Exactly the same words, in a more convenient package. Seems like the same quality to me. |
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#51 | |
Guru
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Karma: 3537194
Join Date: Feb 2009
Device: Kobo, Kindle 3, Paperwhite
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And I agree: that sample was painful to read. I can't imagine struggling through a whole book of that. It's like someone is sticking you with a pin every few sentences. |
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#52 | |
Grand Sorcerer
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Karma: 25133758
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: SF Bay Area, California, USA
Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3 (Past: Kobo Mini, PEZ, PRS-505, Clié)
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Quote:
Ebook version is often illegal to loan around to friends. Even if loaning is allowed, hard to casually flip to a page or two to show to a friend at dinner. Hard to annotate; even those programs that allow annotation, don't allow you to switch between underlining, post-its, and three different colors of highlighter for different types of notes. Pictures are lower-quality than is possible in print. Can't have a nice shelf of them to show off--either for status purposes, or to offer to friends. (Baen books are loanable, but there's no simple, convenient way to set up a digital viewing library. Opening Windows Explorer with view set to thumbnails is just not as good as an actual shelf to browse.) Can't easily organize & re-organize books by categories: favorites, nostalgic, not-yet-read, "I read these two the same week so their themes always get tangled in my head and I want them next to each other on the shelf." Ebooks are terrific for portability and searchability. The font size options are great for those who need them. (Which includes me, from time to time.) But there's plenty of traits of pbooks that are lost in an ebook, which ebook publishers & sellers all try to gloss over. For casual, read-once purposes, ebooks are superior. For long-term & repeated use, they've got some problems. |
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#53 |
Guru
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Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Seattle Wahington U.S.
Device: kindle
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Not exactly. In both formats you are buying the same words, but in the paper version you are also buying the paper and cover. It's sort of like buying coffee where they offer a discount if you bring your own cup. In both cases you are getting the same coffee you just are not also buying a cup as well.
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#54 |
Wizard
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Device: PRS505, 600, 350, 650, Nexus 7, Note III, iPad 4 etc
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It depends on the author but generally self-edited means the same as lawyers representing themselves... if edited by third party then fine... if the pub houses can't get editing, typo removal etc. correct than it is highly likely that a totally solo author effort will also be bad thus likely to be of "lower quality"
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#55 |
Wizard
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Device: Kindle Paperwhite
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Quality depends on the author. It's entirely possible for a lone author to produce high quality, well edited work. I'm sadly used to finding errors in "professionally" edited books from top publishers as well.
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#56 | |
Grand Master of Flowers
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Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Naptown
Device: Kindle PW, Kindle 3 (aka Keyboard), iPhone, iPad 3 (not for reading)
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Quote:
My school's rare book library had a Gutenberg bible in a special display case (they turned a page each day); it was less yellowed that paperbacks I bought in the 80's. However, there are a lot of other factors, especially humidity, that can affect old paper. |
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#57 | |
Evangelist
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Austria
Device: Inkbook Prime; Icarus Illumina;ImcoV6l;EB600;Kobo
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Quote:
In books, they must have the original - which should be digital one way or another, making a transition rather painless. So the only reason I can see to make an eBook worse than the pBook is that they don't care and want to minimize money spent. Which, IMO, is merely an initial investment - once you have a program that can do a good conversion, it doesn't evaporate. Of course, I'm assuming that the digital original contains actual semantic information. I would find it hard to believe that things like titles and quotes and that would not be specially marked in the master copy. |
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#58 | ||
Grand Sorcerer
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Karma: 7185064
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Linköpng, Sweden
Device: Kindle Voyage, Nexus 5, Kindle PW
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Quote:
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#59 | ||
Grand Sorcerer
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: SF Bay Area, California, USA
Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3 (Past: Kobo Mini, PEZ, PRS-505, Clié)
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Quote:
When the book fell out of print, they deleted the digital copy. At the latest, when their contract with that author was over, they deleted the copy. If they do happen to have a digital file, they may no longer have the software that opens it, or conversion to a modern format may destroy all the formatting. Expect any book more than 10 years old, and possibly more than 5, to need to be scanned & OCR'd for ebook production. Quote:
Until 10 years ago, all digital production worked that way, and changes have been very slow for most publishers. |
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#60 | |
Groupie
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Join Date: Jun 2009
Device: PRS 350
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