Jonathan Franzen: e-books are damaging society

[MichelleR]

I got into a short discussion with someone over at HP on this topic. Short, because I realized the whole thing was futile. His stance was that people who use e-readers are not real readers or are in some way lesser.

I asked him how about all the writers who do love ebooks and are happy to publish in that format. He asked for names. I realized that he could argue any name I could give him as being a bad or inferior writer, and so what was the point?

It's not that these writers are any such thing, but that this poster made it clear he wasn't looking for a real discussion. If he could write off readers over a preferred format, he could certainly do the same thing with readers.

I often point out that if two people met up and discovered they'd read the same book, one in hardcover and one on a Kindle, would the latter person be hampered? Was there experience any less real, other than the fall-back argument about book-smelling-yummy?

There are a lot of people who are adamant that the format and the readers of said format are inferior, but they can't tell you why.

[speakingtohe]

Books only smell yummy covered with food. I find it distracting myself.

Helen

[tompe]

Originally Posted by MichelleR

I often point out that if two people met up and discovered they'd read the same book, one in hardcover and one on a Kindle, would the latter person be hampered? Was there experience any less real, other than the fall-back argument about book-smelling-yummy?

Yes, the Kindle reader would not have seen the cover image as much as the hardback reader or seen it at all since annoyingly enough the cover image is often missing from Kindle books.

[speakingtohe]

'You can't tell a book by it's cover'

Sorry, just had to type that

Helen

[LuvReadin]

Originally Posted by tompe

This bother me also. I read The Three Musketeers as an MR ebook and it was annoying not knowing which edition you read or if you read a combination of editions. Or if it was changed in any other way..

That is rather annoying. I'm not keen on the fact that on Project Gutenberg, for example, books may be an amalgamation of several editions. according to them - I'd prefer if each of the different editions was separate. I'd also prefer if the original scan was available as a PDF (i.e. a straightforward facsimile, not the OCR'd version); although I totally see the logic behind the preference of PG (and many of the other hosting sites) for epub, most ereaders are now able to handle PDFs - to some extent at least - and it would be nice to have the ability to see what the text looked like in the original book, which is what Google Books and some of the major library sites provide.

Still, at least these books are out there, rather than hoping for someone to dig them out from a dusty attic.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by LuvReadin

That is rather annoying. I'm not keen on the fact that on Project Gutenberg, for example, books may be an amalgamation of several editions.

Welcome to public domain.

Of course, as long as those editions are in PD, and you are willing to put in the time and effort, you could either fix some of those yourself or round people up to work with you on it.

But I expect most PD readers don't particularly care about editions or even the quality of the translation. They just want free stuff, and most aren't fussy about the quality.

Originally Posted by LuvReadin

I'd also prefer if the original scan was available as a PDF

blech

No reflow, font will likely look like crap, if it isn't OCR'ed anyway you can't search. Having more fonts in ebooks would be handy, but it's not that important, and I for one don't need the illusion that I'm reading a paper book. I'll take legible over old-timey any day.

[LuvReadin]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Welcome to public domain.

Well yes, and as I pointed out, better this than have them stuck somewhere mouldering away

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Of course, as long as those editions are in PD, and you are willing to put in the time and effort, you could either fix some of those yourself .

Did, and offered the corrected file to them - they weren't interested.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

But I expect most PD readers don't particularly care about editions or even the quality of the translation. They just want free stuff, and most aren't fussy about the quality.

Well, quite. And it matters little for many books. OTOH, it is an issue with some, and it would be good to have a definitive version available to check.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

No reflow, font will likely look like crap, if it isn't OCR'ed anyway you can't search. Having more fonts in ebooks would be handy, but it's not that important, and I for one don't need the illusion that I'm reading a paper book. I'll take legible over old-timey any day.

Similar reflow and font problems can happen with epubs - I've had books with sentences split in two, massive gaps between paragraphs, and text apparently missing (the latter two can sometimes be resolved by changing font size, but not always). Searching is immaterial for me -I would just like to be able to check how the paragraphs etc should look, whether there is any emphasis missing (got one book the other day where italics had been rendered by putting double quotes round the word/phrase) and whether the well-meaning provider hasn't updated 'unacceptable' language. Unless someone's typed it, the book will have existed as an image file at some stage, therefore it shouldn't be that big a problem to provide the image file as well.

[QuantumIguana]

Some people will pay for books for PD books if the seller offers added value, such as cleaning up the OCR errors, putting in the original pictures, putting in the cover, or offering an interactive table of contents.

Others will decide that they can live with the occasional OCR error, and stick with the Project Gutenberg version.

I don't like the scanned PDF versions at all. They are very hard to read. I'm in the process of converting a scanned PDF file into a text file, and it is a lot of work. I ran it through an OCR program but there are a lot of errors. I go through it, comparing the PDF with the OCR version to figure out what the text is supposed to be. I work on it now and then when I get a little bit of time. It's a quite obscure book on sports history that might be of interest to some.