an article on ebooks in the Guardian today 22 February 2018

[HLS]

People that think ebooks are stupid seem to forget the fortune Amazon made on their ebooks and ereaders.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I had no qualms about buying new copies of physical books I loved and wore out (or lost), so I fail to see why I should be upset about needing to re-buy the rare ebook I loved enough to want to re-read some day and found I had "lost."

I have big qualms about buying copies of physical books... the only ones I have left are very large illustrated hardcover editions, some of which are out of print, and go for over €100 on the second hand market nowadays if you want to get a very good or even new old stock copy.

I never loan them to anyone. Heck, I've never loaned anyone a book, DVD, or any other physical media after I did so once (DVD) and got it back two days later, heavily scratched. I wouldn't be able to scratch it like that with sand paper, so I can't imagine what they'd done to it....

The loss of my entire ebook library wouldn't really trip me up at all. They've all been read already, and there's only a handful I would ever consider re-reading. I won't mind re-buying one of those when the time comes (if I have to). Or I'll grab it from the library.

That is where we differ.

You go by the premise that you will be able, at any one point, to procure the book you want to read. I go by the premise that I can't (not as an e-book at least, because of DRM), so I _haven't_ read most of my library.

I built my library and backup procedure to survive the digital apocalypse and tide me over until I die

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

You go by the premise that you will be able, at any one point, to procure the book you want to read.

Yes. Exactly. I see no reason to think otherwise. That's the way it's been my entire life.

I expect that books I want to read (or re-read) will always be available in some form or another to buy or borrow. If not ... there's millions more that will catch my fancy.

[4691mls]

I'm with DiapDealer on this one. With paper books there's always the possibility they could get lost, stolen, or damaged. I read a lot of library books so obviously I'm not keeping those, and most of the books I buy probably won't be re-read. I do keep copies on both my ereader and PC but I'm not going to bother with removing DRM. If there were any one book that I knew I really wanted to hang onto I would get it in both ebook and paper as a backup.

[darryl]

Both DiapDealer and Katsunami seem to have considered their options carefully and reached the solution best suited to them. Personally my view accords with Katsunami's, for various reasons relating to myself and my own reading habits. There is no right or wrong answer to this one. We will each do what we believe suits us.

[Philippe D.]

I am also in the "care about DRM and probably wouldn't buy ebooks if there was no convenient way to get rid of DRMs" boat - I only came to the ebook world two years ago, and by that time I had already heard a lot of good about Calibre.

As for the book-hoarding phenomenon... I am not the big reader in my home; my wife is, and she won't read on an e-reader. And she doesn't ever re-read a book, yet we have lots and lots of filled bookshelves. Anyone who comes to visit is likely to leave with a book that my wife recommended - and we give away a few boxes of books to charity once in a while. Still, the very fact of being surrounded by paper books is something that seems to be important to my wife - and the possibility of sharing, either by lending or giving away the book once read; this is certainly a part of why she won't switch to electronic reading, together with the "feel" of a "real book".

As for myself, I'm more of a hoarder - my paper books are a tiny fraction of the collection at home, but I won't give them away (I re-read a lot more). I'll lend books I liked, but I expect them back some day And I tend to do the same with ebooks now: I'd be upset if I couldn't keep my collection safe. Not sure why this is so, though.

[JSWolf]

I know there are times you have to pay again to get a new version or an upgraded version. For example, buying blu-ray of movies you have on VHS.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Philippe D.

I am also in the "care about DRM and probably wouldn't buy ebooks if there was no convenient way to get rid of DRMs" boat - I only came to the ebook world two years ago, and by that time I had already heard a lot of good about Calibre.

As for the book-hoarding phenomenon... I am not the big reader in my home; my wife is, and she won't read on an e-reader. And she doesn't ever re-read a book, yet we have lots and lots of filled bookshelves. Anyone who comes to visit is likely to leave with a book that my wife recommended - and we give away a few boxes of books to charity once in a while. Still, the very fact of being surrounded by paper books is something that seems to be important to my wife - and the possibility of sharing, either by lending or giving away the book once read; this is certainly a part of why she won't switch to electronic reading, together with the "feel" of a "real book".

As for myself, I'm more of a hoarder - my paper books are a tiny fraction of the collection at home, but I won't give them away (I re-read a lot more). I'll lend books I liked, but I expect them back some day And I tend to do the same with ebooks now: I'd be upset if I couldn't keep my collection safe. Not sure why this is so, though.

Kind of the same here. I never throw books away. I did give about a hundred hard books to one of the local libraries several years ago, but those were books that I had ebook copies of.

I do re-read books a fair amount. That's a good thing because the number of new books that I'm interested in has dropped quite a bit over the years. Some of that is favored authors production slowing down, already having the back list of those authors and the difficulty of discovering new authors that I like.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by darryl

There is no right or wrong answer to this one. We will each do what we believe suits us.

Agreed. Apologies if it seemed I was assigning extra "rightness" to my stance. That was not my intention.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Agreed. Apologies if it seemed I was assigning extra "rightness" to my stance. That was not my intention.

Thanks, but no need as I didn't take it that way at all.

[crossi]

I re read a lot. When I was buying paper about 1 in 10 books I bought would be keepers, the rest were library donations. I bought and read a lot too. I'd often read 10 books a week and go back to the books store for a fresh supply the next week. I had books stacked everywhere. Reading that fast, rereading was a necessity as well as a pleasure. I would really mind if my thousands of dollars of my e books suddenly became unavailable because of store closures and DRM. And there is no guarantee that even if I were willing to rebuy them for a few thousand more that they would be available. At least not all of them.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by crossi

I would really mind if my thousands of dollars of my e books suddenly became unavailable because of store closures and DRM.

I think that sentence really points out the difference between my point of view and others'.

I place no real monetary value on my collection of read ebooks (and they're all read; I don't buy until I'm ready to read). They've all been exhausted of their value by reading them. I pay for the experience of reading a book. And on average, I'm perfectly OK with the price I'm paying for the (primarily) one-time experience. In fact ... compared to movies, theater, dinner out, sporting events, concerts, etc..., I feel the hours of enjoyment I get from one novel are an absolute steal at the current prices. Even if I only ever read them once. *shrug*

[Richwood]

Ebooks dying is wishful thinking per many authors.

I did a post on a LGBT MM Authors and readers Facebook site asking their sales. The consensus is that printed books make up about 2% of their total sales, mostly at conventions where people want to get author autographed copies. What is cutting into pure ebook sales is increasing audio book sales for those authors who offer them.

Most of these authors are independents and sellers through Amazon and other ebook sellers of fiction books and the vast majority of their sales are ebooks. All report that their printed book sales percentage is between 0 and 3%. Claims of ebooks dying or decreasing in sales seems to be coming from traditional publishers and apparently does not include the independent and self publishing fiction book sellers that they tend to ignore. Looks to me like the articles are wishful thinking as they tend to ignore the large part of the market that they wish did not exist. Looks to me like a very short sighted attitude.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by darryl

Both DiapDealer and Katsunami seem to have considered their options carefully and reached the solution best suited to them. Personally my view accords with Katsunami's, for various reasons relating to myself and my own reading habits. There is no right or wrong answer to this one. We will each do what we believe suits us.

Of course there isn't a right or wrong.

With regard to books in the future (ones that haven't been released yet, or I don't own at this time), I will see what happens. The reason why I built as large a library as I could as soon as possible has been because of the threat of DRM being re-instated when retailers switch over to ADE 3.x or later. This might take some years yet, because of the millions or even hundreds of millions of e-readers in existence that cannot use these books, but in another 5 years, retailers may think them insignificant. (Assuming all newer readers released after ADE 3.x can use books delivered to that program.) I'm not a fan of KFX either, because it's an obfusticated format that is not (yet) well supported.

I'll see how it pans out, but if it turns out that, in another 5-10 years I can only read e-books through a subscription or buy them with unbreakable DRM, I won't ever buy an e-book again. (I possibly won't buy a book ever again in my entire life, paper or digital.)

Remember how I've been screaming for 5 years that streaming books are coming? Look at Kindle Unlimited, Scribd, the Kobo service, several competing services in the Netherlands for Dutch books... and many of them only work on phones and tablets, with proprietary format, for which you need to pay month after month to keep reading. I don't do this with music or games so I won't with books. The only exception would be movies, because they can be consumed in such a short time span (generally 1.5-2 hours), so I can watch a lot of them for the money. I don't read 10 books a month, but I can see 10 or even 20 movies a month.

[skb]

More here on The Conversation.

I particularly enjoyed the passing reference to one commenter apparently saying that they "were not interested in enhanced features or "gamified dancing baloney"" (my emphasis). I couldn't agree more.