I'm on the pretty luddite end of the scale on this topic. I don't have an ebook reading device.
I agree with a lot of what SS and other quasi-luddites have said. On the other hand, I sell books books I've written (novel, novellas), and they're basically all ebooks. Selling paper books is just too hard for a self-published person. (Generally speaking. Much more can be said on this topic). Also, I worked as part of the engineering team at Zola Books for 14 months. Zola's a retailer of ebooks & makes a "social reading" app. I learned a lot about the whole e-reading, social-reading phenomenon while there. In fact, I very much enjoyed working at Zola & would still be working there today were they not located so far away from my home & paying mostly in stock options. Zola has been a bit in the news this week. It will be interesting to see where this all goes. http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/06/zola-books-snaps-up-bookish-to-power-up-its-literary-recommendations/ jrs P.S. If Techcrunch serves you the same page it serves me (& you're reading on a wide screen), you'll see an image of a firefighter in the left side of the screen. That's a link to a profile of yours truly. On Jan 7, 2014, at 11:04 PM, SS wrote: > On Sun, 2014-01-05 at 20:26 -0800, Mahesh Murthy wrote: >> As a sideways punt on the topic, has anyone noticed how quickly Google >> Play >> Books has become a real contender to Kindle? >> >> Books here are almost always cheaper (often 50% or more) than on >> Amazon >> Kindle, and the Google magazine newsstand has begun to rock. > > The point someone made about space available for regular books is valid. > But disk space only encourages electronic collections of trash. > > None of my (or anyone else's) whines about e-books is going to make them > go away, but they are, IMO, changing the way people handle reading > material. > > Less than a decade ago, my brother and sister in law, both prolific > readers, would have books lying about that someone else could simply > pick up and flip through and get a sense of what was in there. Now they > sit with their noses stuck to an electronic screen and any interesting > thing being read can only be discussed, if at all. No question of > "flipping through" - an impossibility with e books. Both people are now > more detached from their surroundings and people around them - with > their precious i-this and i-that which cannot safely be left in a toilet > or perched precariously on the corner of a full dining table. > > No one lends e books to others. Like an idly, or a sandwich, you get > your own. Its about me and what's mine. > > Has anyone ever comprehensively reviewed an e book? Someone must have > done that. I have reviewed a few (paper) books related to the military > and aviation. I find it necessary to make a pen/pencil mark on a page, > sentence or paragraph and then go back (or forward) to a blank page and > note the page number with a remark or reminder. When I read a book for > review - I end up with at least a 100 or 150 remarks+annotations that > fill up all the bank/white space at the beginning or end of a book. > These remarks serve as a guide for me to either review the book - or > reminders of important points that may come up later if I am writing > something. I can sometimes keep 2 or 3 separate books by my side and > consult the annotations I have made in all 3 books if they are related > to the subject I am writing about. This would be an impossible feat > using an electronic book reader. > > That apart, I sometimes remember something I read in a book as a > paragraph that was in the top left corner about 1/3rd of the way into > the book. This sort of interaction between mental memory and muscle > memory is useful to find information when one is doing some serious > reading and has failed to annotate (or cannot annotate as the book > belongs to someone else or a library). This is again an impossibility > with an e book. Of course a word search is possible - but for that one > has to remember key words. > > Napster, which was discussed at length on Silk, was generally hailed as > a great achievement that broke the back of greedy recording companies. > But sound copyright owners have fought back. Books were primarily shared > resources, and resources that would last a century or more with ease. > That is being killed by e books. It is more of a loss than a gain, IMO. > > shiv > > > > >
