E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead • Hacker News Board

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#151

Post by viraptor » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 5:22 AM UTC

pasbesoin wrote: post #43

Nav_Panel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hold fairly different opinions, though I agree that digital reading sources can make sense for completely new books read for pleasure. As a longtime physical product, paper has a lot of benefits. My dad can give me a book he read in college, just grab it off the shelf. I can go buy books extremely cheaply secondhand, sometimes free. I can't imagine paying $10 for an ebook when I can go to a used bookstore and pay $…

Additionally, human beings depend strongly upon spatial orientation. Printed materials dovetail with this. Many recount being able to recall information in part based upon its location within a printed text. IIRC, there was... I think it was a lengthy New Yorker piece, a number of years ago, that went into this. Including the "messy" professor's/researcher's office, until one has a conversation there with them and ob…

That sounds like poor man's tagging solution where location=tag. A better solution would be a global index: say "standard c99" and you'll get the document you want. It's better than physical location, because additional tags can narrow down the results to specific pages.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#152

Post by NoahTheDuke » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 5:48 AM UTC

skillachie wrote: post #136

harshreality wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ebooks I buy are immediately stripped of drm and dumped into calibre. It's not the prettiest software in the world, but it works and the ebooks are mine forever no matter what happens to amazon, google, apple, or kobo, and they're trivially transferable. I will not buy ebooks from a store that uses DRM that's not immediately removable.

We are developing a platform that can be used as a Calibre alternative to organize, read, make highlights, bookmarks and notes and have them synced across all devices. Check us out at https://bookfusion.com/ . We will be releasing an updated Android app and our IOS app soon. Feel free to send us some feedback at dc@bookfusion.com

My Calibre library is 2 gigs. Do you really want me to upload 2 gigs?

Is there an offline mode? How do I access my books if there isn't?

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#153

Post by nhebb » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 5:58 AM UTC

One of the reasons that I don't buy more e-books is because my Kindle's battery charge is often depleted. Somewhere along the line, Amazon changed airplane mode such that ads are still displayed all the time.

I haven't been an avid reader for the last year or two, and when I do get the urge, I pick up my Kindle only to find the battery is dead. While it's charging, I find something else to do. By the time I get the urge to read again, the battery is depleted again.

When you're an avid reader who remembers to charge his device regularly, the Kindle is great. When you're an intermittent reader, it just another electronic brick.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#154

Post by bhntr3 » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:25 AM UTC

Nav_Panel wrote: post #22

TheGRS wrote: post #15

I hope this isn't the trend going forward. I don't get the traditionalist love of paperback books most of the time. Like the sort of people who go on and on about exploring book stores or the smell of new paper. I love my Kindle and I really hope to be able to use it as my primary reading source, its just so convenient, light, portable and unobtrusive (especially with that newer back-light option). But the price of n…

I hold fairly different opinions, though I agree that digital reading sources can make sense for completely new books read for pleasure. As a longtime physical product, paper has a lot of benefits. My dad can give me a book he read in college, just grab it off the shelf. I can go buy books extremely cheaply secondhand, sometimes free. I can't imagine paying $10 for an ebook when I can go to a used bookstore and pay $…

I just wish I could put my e-books on a shelf to show how smart and well read I am. And how seriously people should take my opinion. Maybe I could just get a digital e-bookshelf for hacker news actually.

Anyway, this is basically the blessing and curse of digital products. It started out as "Whoah! Copying is free. Distribution is cheap. Storage is practically infinite."

Then we started to see the downsides. It's so easy to make copies and distribute them that publishers won't let us. There's no incentive to move inventory to free up space so there's limited depreciation. Digital interactions are still frustrating straightjackets that artificially trap our creativity in a box invented by a designer who never really got us in the first place and thinks designing for the lowest common denominator is the essence of simplicity.

So we start to miss writing in the margins and flipping through discount record bins and handing down our movie collection to our children. I guess that last one was never likely. . . remember boxes of VHS tapes?

Anyway, it's not really the product's fault. It's really the market that's changed.

Well, it might partly be that designer's fault. I bet that guy was all into skeuomorphism til someone told him it was stupid. Jerk.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#155

Post by JupiterMoon » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:41 AM UTC

6502nerdface wrote: post #61

bduerst wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The marketplace is getting worse for e-books, not better. Amazon has been pushing the "Kindle Unlimited" subscription model and changed how authors get paid for those consumers, which favors shorter stories. Authors have taken to breaking out a book's chapters and releasing them individually [1] to capitalize on this model. Conversely, this gives them more shelf space in Amazon's recommendations, and because they are…

> Authors have taken to breaking out a book's chapters and releasing them individually [1] to capitalize on this model. This is exactly how many classic novels and other long works of literature were originally published in the Victorian and Edwardian periods [1]. For genres like SF and Fantasy, this remained a common model well into the twentieth century. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a modern…

And serialization lead to many 'classic' 19th century novels being the dreary slow repetitive reads that they are. When an author releases a whole book they can read the whole thing back to themselves first and streamline it so that it flows as a whole. It's like the difference between a TV soap and films.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#156

Post by JupiterMoon » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:54 AM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #117

saint_fiasco wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably because if you don't, other publishers might, and they will get your customers. For some weird reason, no publisher decided to do that. Except pirates, but they always do that.

Publishers may be okay at the moment, but I still think they're doomed. There's literally no barrier to entry in the publishing business, which is eventually going to break their pricing cartel.

As a reader without unlimited time the publishing industry acts as a barrier to entry which filters out the worst books... We need a robust reviewing system which filters out shill reviews.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#157

Post by JupiterMoon » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:56 AM UTC

FranOntanaya wrote: post #8

grishas wrote: post #3

One word: price. E-book prices have soared! Almost everything on Amazon is over $10 these days. They're often going for more than the paperback price, and certainly more than the prices you'd find at a discount bookseller.

I imagine the ebook is the one both providing greater value, and having a harder time competing for production resources -- while paper may be overcapacity now.

Clearly the ebook is not providing greater value if demand is slack compared to paper books..

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#158

Post by brandonmenc » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 6:58 AM UTC

Nav_Panel wrote: post #22

TheGRS wrote: post #15

I hope this isn't the trend going forward. I don't get the traditionalist love of paperback books most of the time. Like the sort of people who go on and on about exploring book stores or the smell of new paper. I love my Kindle and I really hope to be able to use it as my primary reading source, its just so convenient, light, portable and unobtrusive (especially with that newer back-light option). But the price of n…

I hold fairly different opinions, though I agree that digital reading sources can make sense for completely new books read for pleasure. As a longtime physical product, paper has a lot of benefits. My dad can give me a book he read in college, just grab it off the shelf. I can go buy books extremely cheaply secondhand, sometimes free. I can't imagine paying $10 for an ebook when I can go to a used bookstore and pay $…

> My dad can give me a book he read in college

My dad is in his 60s and lends me books Kindle-to-Kindle.

Easy long-distance sharing, and talking about those books while he's alive, is more meaningful than looking at the dusty old one-of-identical-millions copy of Dune I jacked from his bookshelf.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#159

Post by chipsy » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:00 AM UTC

TheGRS wrote: post #15

I hope this isn't the trend going forward. I don't get the traditionalist love of paperback books most of the time. Like the sort of people who go on and on about exploring book stores or the smell of new paper. I love my Kindle and I really hope to be able to use it as my primary reading source, its just so convenient, light, portable and unobtrusive (especially with that newer back-light option). But the price of n…

It's predicted by the market for vinyl and cassette, not by magical thinking about books - a decline, then a rebound. The actual information content is correctly priced to approach zero. The leftover value goes to people who want something premium in their collection, people buying from a local store based on their recommendations, etc. The creators no longer solely derive monetary benefit from product sales, instead using a mix of crowdfunding, performance, and derivative license deals, as well as premium product.

The new world of media isn't ideal, but it offers a lot more flexibility than the old one. You'll be able to get free information, while traditionalists will retain their outlet.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#160

Post by JupiterMoon » Thu, Sep 24, 2015, 7:06 AM UTC

Multiple reasons why as a keen reader (a whale to the print publishing industry) I don't use ebooks.

- DRM: When I pay for a book I want it on any of my devices my whole life and I don't want to have to strip some crappy DRM first.

- price: I can't justify how much more ebooks cost.

- battery life: I get bored having to keep my existing devices charged I don't need another one to keep charged.

- First sale: one has the right to lend physical books to friends and family, to me this social aspect is part of the reading experience.

- Tracking: I like that I can buy a book for cash and no one counts how many pages I read and when I read it. Books are partly about intellectual freedom and tracking is the enemy of intellectual freedom.

- Difficult to keep my place: For technical books I can look stuff up in books I know based upon rough location very quickly. E-reader devicies (in my opinion) need more skeumorphism.