E-books are fast becoming tools of corporate surveillance

[haertig]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Physical bookmarks are better than digital ones, no one needs to search a book and flipping back to the Table of Contents is so much easier than a couple of taps on an ereader screen.

The last physical book I remember reading was "West of Eden" by Harry Harrison. I had to constantly flip to the zoology section in the back of the book until I finally learned all the names of the Yilane creatures. That was indeed much easier done with a physical bookmark than a digital one.

I do search eBooks on occasion. When a minor character reappears after a long absence I sometimes search for the first time they were mentioned to refresh my memory of who they are.

[Taubin]

Even if it was true, I doubt many would care. Just look at how many people share their progress on the likes of LibraryThing or Goodreads. If you someone is worried about it, there are always alternatives, like editing the ebook yourself, and self hosting if you want to track what you're reading with the likes of Jelu.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Considering how horrible the 'recommended for you' Kobo provides are, I'm not overly worried.

I've found the "top 3 X% match" " recs that I get in their emails are often appealing (some I've even already bought elsewhere), but that clicking on the recommendations tab on the website brings up dross that is utterly irrelevant

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I tend more to the click-bait theory.

Much like one article I read on how the ereader and ebooks are dead. Compared to holding a "real" book with it's accompanying smells, ebooks just are not desirable. Physical bookmarks are better than digital ones, no one needs to search a book and flipping back to the Table of Contents is so much easier than a couple of taps on an ereader screen.

Sure, go ahead and smell pBooks and don't forget the mold that may be on them.

[Deskisamess]

Even if true, which I highly doubt, I don't care. The world has many things to truly be alarmed by, and this isn't one of them.

[Sarmat89]

Originally Posted by DNSB

flipping back to the Table of Contents is so much easier than a couple of taps on an ereader screen.

Physical books with pictures work much better, because you can look at the text and a picture at the same time. Some books even had all figures in a separate volume for easier parallel reading. Most e-readers can't even put a picture in a separate window.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Nah, it's a machiavellian ploy by Big Print to scare people back to dead tree books

The thing is, ebooks benefit all. I know the publishers were scared, seeing what happened to the music industry. But now that the dust is settled and the publishers successfully colluded, everyone should endorse ebooks.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Much like one article I read on how the ereader and ebooks are dead. Compared to holding a "real" book with it's accompanying smells, ebooks just are not desirable...

One article? It felt like for a while there was an article a day published repeating this clickbait wisdom, published twice on Sundays.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

One article? It felt like for a while there was an article a day published repeating this clickbait wisdom, published twice on Sundays.

One of the more laughable 'reasons paper books are better' 've seen is... you could run out of room on your eReader. As opposed to having unlimited physical space for paper books.

Even better is that the same article mentioned overflowing shelves just a few paragraphs earlier.

[Renate]

Hasn't it been proven conclusively that Kindle log page turns and upload them?

For me, the consideration is more wasting my bandwidth on endless analytics.
I just keep my readers offline.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

One article? It felt like for a while there was an article a day published repeating this clickbait wisdom, published twice on Sundays.

The article I mentioned stood out for me since the author was so in love with the smell of books. Not the typography, not the binding, not not having to recharge the battery. The smell alone was enough to make them state that ebooks are not worth reading.

[Frogm4n]

Originally Posted by Renate

Hasn't it been proven conclusively that Kindle log page turns and upload them?

For me, the consideration is more wasting my bandwidth on endless analytics.
I just keep my readers offline.

Of course they do. That's how progress sync has to work. I don't know why people act like it's a surprise. Even if it wasn't Amazon, what ever sync service you use has to do the same or similar.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Frogm4n

Even if it wasn't Amazon, what ever sync service you use has to do the same or similar.

Well, it has to keep track of what page you are on, but it doesn't need to know that you spent 5 minutes on page 173 where the heroine met the ambidextrous aliens.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Frogm4n

Of course they do. That's how progress sync has to work. I don't know why people act like it's a surprise. Even if it wasn't Amazon, what ever sync service you use has to do the same or similar.

From what I've seen on the data sent to Kobo before they started encrypting it, the data sent is the length of time reading and pages flipped within that block. When a book is finished or started, that information is also sent but does not include the book information for sideloaded epubs.

The amount of time reading is important since that is how they pay authors in Kobo Plus much like the page count and time spent reading is important for paying authors in Kindle Unlimited.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The amount of time reading is important since that is how they pay authors in Kobo Plus much like the page count and time spent reading is important for paying authors in Kindle Unlimited.

"But we have to snoop on you so we can pay our authors!" is not a compelling reason for me to open myself up to their monitoring and analyzing of what I read and how I read it. Because I have a feeling they are not doing this just for the altruistic purposes of paying authors. They are doing it to increase their profits with enhanced advertising and targeted marketing based on data they glean from me. I choose not to supply them with that data.