> On Sun, Mar 01, 2009 at 09:54:03AM -0000, Bob W scripsit:
> > That last sentence is completely vacuous. 'Bringing the
> benefits...'.
> > Alright, what are they?
>
> Well, there's:
>
> - annotation (including bookmarks that can't fall out)
nothing that conventional books don't have already, and do better
and more easily. If and when ebooks become better at this than conventional
books, it won't be enough on it's own to bring about the end of conventional
books
> - search (where was? is this a Shakespeare quote?)
I can search with any internet device. I don't need a crippled,
single-purpose device when I already have a general purpose device.
> - ease of purchase (anywhere with a net connection),
books are already easy to purchase, even over the net
> - speed of distribution (Hot New Book becomes available; three
> minutes later, you have a copy, potentially *automatically* you
> have a copy;
irrelevant to me and probably most other booklovers. We like
browsing bookshops and we don't have to wait as long as 3 minutes to pick a
book off the shelf.
> consider what fraction of Harry Potter
> fans would have
> turned that down for books six and seven...)
I thought about the Harry Potter phenomenon in this respect last
night, and although a large number of children would have downloaded it
immediately, much of the fun of those events (and I was part of them with a
couple of children) was in staying up till midnight, the excitement of being
with other children waiting, and the triumph of at last having the book
itself in their hands, ready to start reading. I seriously doubt that a
Kindle could kindle that kind of experience for the kinderlings and their
kin.
> - variability of presentation (what's _your_ favourite font, font
> size, leading, and initial capital style?)
irrelevant. Who's clamouring for that? No-one?
> - ancillary material, including hypertext (a zoomable
> Baggins family
> tree with hot links, say, or the essays on where Forrester
> departed from actual history; because the printing cost
> is close to
> fixed, extra material doesn't cost more paper, so it
> becomes a way to
> attract readers, rather than an expense to be ruthlessly
> suppressed.)
> - compactness (reader with one book and reader with one thousand
> books is the same size thing to carry)
irrelevant. People don't want to carry all their books with them,
but booklovers like to be surrounded by books.
> - lightness (current "out soon" reader designs are around 200
> grammes. They stay that size even when the content
> includes massive
> reference tomes for work, the complete works of William
> Shakespeare,
> all 22 Aubrey and Maturin novels, and what would have
> been four shelf
> feet of penny dreadfuls courtesy of Project Gutenberg.)
irrelevant. People don't carry books like that around with them, and
book lovers like to be surrounded by their reference works, complete works
of Shakey & co.
> - backups; if the heavily annotated professional copy of something
> gets lost with your luggage, you still have it because
> the backup
> didn't travel.
As long as you have backups. Not enough of a benefit to make me buy
one. I have never lost anything that important because I don't put it at
that kind of risk.
>
> - cost per book *ought* to be a benefit, too (the material costs
> drop by an order of magnitude), but I wouldn't bet on
> seeing that
> one quickly.
irrelevant anyway. Book lovers love books and the rituals that
surround them as part of the experience of reading. I would rather pay £30-
for a good edition of Candide than pay £1- to read it on an ebook (which
costs £250-).
>
> - paper is better than screens right now for shipped devices,
> legibility wise; that's not true for the lab bench stuff, so it
> won't be true for shipped devices in five years or so at the
> outside.
>
there is no problem with the current legibility of conventional
books. Who is clamouring for books to be made more legible? No-one. It's a
made-up 'benefit' posing as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
> There remains nothing at all that says you can't get a tactilely
> pleasant leather cover for the ebook reader, either.
>
That's not a benefit, that's a poor attempt to make up for a shortcoming.
Bob
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