will e-books ever take off?

[Xiahou]

E-book readers that I've looked at have quite nice, paper-like, displays. So for me, the display is no longer a problem. No, for me the problem is format portability. Paper books will never break down, be discontinued, run out of batteries or anything else of the sort.

I'm not going to drop $300 on a fancy e-reader and then lock myself into buying books that can only be read on that device. Maybe if they started including them with print-books as a value-add or in a more open format, then I might eventually take an interest.

[Lemur]

It's true, you can't beat the battery life and portability of a paperback.

Going back to my textbook theme ...

[JR-]

E-book readers that I've looked at have quite nice, paper-like, displays. So for me, the display is no longer a problem. No, for me the problem is format portability. Paper books will never break down, be discontinued, run out of batteries or anything else of the sort.

I'm not going to drop $300 on a fancy e-reader and then lock myself into buying books that can only be read on that device. Maybe if they started including them with print-books as a value-add or in a more open format, then I might eventually take an interest.

so the real answer is to provide ebooks in a portable and unencrypted pdf format, so you can read them on any device.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Maybe for college books, but other then that, I can't see myself using them.

[Cheetah]

Pergmanet will never replace marble and clay! It just does not feel the same. The weight of marble tablets, oh, the feel of carved letters! Never!!! ... Perhaps for my greek studies but only if they reduce the cost pergament!

ps. in few years time everyone and his grandmother -and I mean it seriously- will have an e-book.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Pergmanet will never replace marble and clay! It just does not feel the same. The weight of marble tablets, oh, the feel of carved letters! Never!!! ... Perhaps for my greek studies but only if they reduce the cost pergament!

ps. in few years time everyone and his grandmother -and I mean it seriously- will have an e-book.

Err no. I don't think so.

Pergament has an advance over marble: it is very light and doesn't need much space. Paper has and advance over pergament, it is much easier to produce, cheaper and easier to store.

E-books don't have an advantage over normal books. In fact they only have disadvantages: they are in different formats what makes it somewhat more difficult to read them. Reading them hurts your eyes. If you want to take them with you, you have to buy this e-book thingie. You need power supply for it. It will get broken after a couple years. And a paper book? Just read it. Or put it on your shelf and read it in 30 years. Will work without further ado. Try to use your e-book reading device in 30 years. Batteries lost their battery-liquid? Machine broken? Data vanished? There is such a huge amount of probable problems that indeed e-books will never be very much used. And last but not least: how do you want to show off to your friends what a clever educated guy you are without a bookshelf? Impossible.

[Cheetah]

Nah, pergament has no advantages over marble! A pergament can be torn, be eaten, be burned, do you really expect your pergaments to be intact in 30 years? A marble tablet on the other hand will be intact and readable not just in 30 but in 300 years! Do you really expect us to waste our money on pergament that will be a pile of rubbish in 30 years? Last but not least, how do you want to show off to your friends what a clever educated guy you are without a room full of marble tablets? Impossible. Do you really expect them to be impressed by a pile of stinking pergament?

[Ramses II CP]

Well, 'take off' is a relative term since publishing and writing themselves are in decline. Still, I put Stanza (http://www.lexcycle.com/) on my iPhone and I've read some of the free stuff off of it (Lovecraft mostly) when the idea of playing yet another 'tilt' game made me ill. Obviously I prefer print books, they're much easier to read, but the fact that these little apps are out there and being used puts e-books in the public mind at least.

I do not believe a dedicated e-book platform will ever be of much use, or popular. This isn't like music where you can cleanly rip and store all your current print books to review at will, and virtually no one is going to rebuy any significant part of their library just to have it 'on the go' all the time.

[frogbeastegg]

I'm book mad, truly completely book mad. Always have been; it's a common joke that my first word should have been "Book!". I own well over 1,000 books, I read an average of 11 a month, and when I enter a bookshop I always leave with books plural and never books singular. Heck, I'm the manager of a bookshop, that's how deep the love goes. I treat my books with the utmost loving care; I can read them many times over and they will still look brand new. I keep all of my books, except those which I have read and cannot envision myself ever touching again. It's a heart-breaking process, culling the stacks down several times a year. They may go to good causes but getting rid of books goes against a frog's nature. It's a necessity; I've already got books stored in every possible location. The tactile element of reading is important to me; I love the scent of the various inks, glues and papers, the feel of the pages, the turning of the page. I will never, ever live willingly without physical books. There's something immensely comforting about being surrounded by them.

I pre-ordered my Sony reader the day the announcement was made.

The reason I want a reader is very simple: if I can get books which I don't particularly care about keeping for the reader then I don't have to buy them, find space to keep them, and then find a way to dispose of them after I have finished reading.

There are side benefits. I don't buy hardbacks; they take up far too much space. Some of the authors I like get published in hardback, so either I wait a year or I queue up for a smelly, grotty library copy. No more! I'll download the ebook. Certain authors turn out books which are the very definition of bricks; my poor spindly wrists struggle to cope. I'll download the ebook. Not all books get published in the UK; buying an ebook will be easier and cheaper than importing - provided no regional restrictions are placed on them.

Out of print books? Yes, please! Paying many times the normal price for a badly battered manky old copy of an out of print book makes me cry.

The reader has support for PDF and other file formats. How many games come with the proper manual on PDF? Lots. It's unpleasant to read on the PC, costs a fortune to print, and is hard to reference during play. That has always irked me, and I have never found a satisfactory answer to it. The answer should be arriving in tomorrow's post - I'll transfer the manual to the reader so I can read in comfort and reference it during play. MS Word files are also supported; I do all of my writing in Word. It will be incredible to load up my own work and read it back in an environment different to that which I created it in. It will be an invaluable editing tool.

The e-ink display is a world away from a screen of any type.

I'm so excited I can't wait for mine to arrive!



I do disagree somewhat with the comments about standard books lasting for decades. That's true. Mostly. Sort of. However binding and paper quality is going down, down, deeper and down. I've got books which are less than 6 months old with yellow pages which smell unpleasant, and glue which is giving way so the outermost pages at front and back are falling out. The book I'm reading at the moment has ink which smudges like a newspaper!

At work it's not so unusual for us to unpack a week's delivery of books only to find one or two paperbacks which have the pages falling out. We've had a relatively high number of recalls on paperbacks lately too. Pages missing. Pages bound out of order. Shoddy binding on a wide scale. Upside down covers. Gold foil and other finishing effects on the cover missing. I've seen hardbacks that have been fastened into the hard cover upside down and then had the dust cover put on the wrong way up to cover for the mistake.

British published books used to be famous for being of high quality and more expensive, while American ones were a lot cheaper but poorly put together. Now British ones retain the high price and have quality that's nearly as low as the American mass market paperbacks.

If the binding and paper are of good quality, and the volume is cared for, then they can and do last for hundreds of years. Myself, I can't see my copy of Shogun lasting a decade.