81–90 of 163 posts
I didn't know libraries lent ebooks. Seems kind of strange.
Some (many?) libraries lend out WiFi hot spots so people can have free internet at home. When I lived in New Jersey, the library lent out power tools. The Chicago Public library lends out museum passes. Libraries are about knowledge, not books.
It seems to me as though an interlibrary alliance could pool resources to create their own digitizations of print-version books. They already pay extra for the library edition of a print book. For that higher price, they are supposed to get more durable covers and paper. For a more expensive e-book, what do they get? Self-destructing DRM. Why would anyone agree to that--especially a library? If it is legal to lend ou…
I'm pretty sure the fact that digital lending necessarily makes tons of copies of the work—consider live server disk, backups (possibly many copies there), copies in cache across who knows how many devices on the Internet, the copy on the user's device, copies in RAM all over the place, et c., such that there might well be twenty copies of a book before it reaches the eyes of a borrowing reader—is why publishers are able to put license terms on ebook lending in the first place, since technically the whole process, practically speaking, involves copying the book a bunch of times.
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You make a good point: There surely is a difference between someone like Donald Knuth writing a book that is relatively niche, and a best-seller. For one, I can imagine that a page of mathematics requires more expertise and time to write than a page of fiction. However, there are dozens of free e-books on the web, written by respectable and knowledgeable professors, and this tells me that the only real cost involved…
Reacting to this: "I can imagine that a page of mathematics requires more expertise and time to write than a page of fiction." I cannot say exactly how much time it takes to write a page of math, but I do know that many underestimate the time it takes to write a page of fiction. Sure Dan Brown probably knocks out a page of pulpy prose in an hour. But that's not exactly equivalent to critical reviewed, prize winning,…
To write a page of math, write a paragraph of math, illustrate it or insert the proof, typeset in LATEX, and leave the rest as an exercise for the readers. The readers will probably be your students, that bought your book because you required it for the course, and will make revision suggestions during class or office hours. Get a colleague to proofread for you, as you will proofread their math. Collect your pay for teaching and/or researching math while writing the math.
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But such a back and forth that could go on forever. Many e-books vendors frequently reduce their value by limiting access to a specific app/reader, or limit how useful the functionality you describe can be. For example, search is very much restricted within Kindle (e.g. I can't search for words across my entire library, I have to go into a specific book). And whilst it is true that some people are limited in how much…
I'm not claiming they're equal, I'm pointing out that the GP's "since I'm getting so much less, why should I pay the same price" point is subjective, and not a statement of fact. Sure, some people prefer hardcopies, good for them. But claiming that e-books being priced similarly is some market failure is taking it too far, for some of us it seems perfectly reasonable. If e-books were priced higher (even as much as 50…
A market that had more than one way to "publish" books online would be a different ballgame than the one we're playing now
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Physical books last at least ~50 years. That is longer than any physical computer lasts and longer than any of the companies that offer cloud services (IBM doesn't offer e-Books yet) have existed. There is a good chance that some of them will go bankrupt over this time.
which is why you should get your e-books as drm-free local files
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which is why you should get your e-books as drm-free local files
And store those files where? Do you own any working digital media from 1969? I know my carefully curated collection of 5.25" floppy discs are all corrupt and unreadable today.
As usual, RMS is right about DRM.
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And store those files where? Do you own any working digital media from 1969? I know my carefully curated collection of 5.25" floppy discs are all corrupt and unreadable today.
Temperature variation? What was their advertised lifetime?
The point is that it's actually fairly hard to beat acid-free paper for archival storage.
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> I often re-read or consult books (or chapters) I've read on a whim. If I had to e.g. take my library on vacations to do the same thing I can trivially do on a Kindle I'd need to travel with a minivan full of books. Isn't that a FOMO argument, though ? As a consumer the advantage of e-books are: ease of organization and ease of buying, no page flipping sounds in bed, ease of transportation. But what I really want ?…
> A real, thick book, with something like 200-400 sheets made up of magical e-ink so I can have a physical map of the book I am reading. The value provided by a physical map of a book is knowing how far along you are in the book, yet that's also available in a visual form in an ebook as well. You can even riffle through pages on most e-readers as well, seeing a preview of the page as you move quickly forward or backw…
My point is that it's not a conscious process, so the book/map isn't replaced by a simple location indicator. The experience of a book isn't reducible in this way.
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> A real, thick book, with something like 200-400 sheets made up of magical e-ink so I can have a physical map of the book I am reading. The value provided by a physical map of a book is knowing how far along you are in the book, yet that's also available in a visual form in an ebook as well. You can even riffle through pages on most e-readers as well, seeing a preview of the page as you move quickly forward or backw…
> The value provided by a physical map of a book is knowing how far along you are in the book No, it provides more. Actually your brain maps physical properties of the book to actual content, creating an overlay map over the story or the content (and our brain is really good at mentally mapping things). This is that map that is being used to know where in the book a particular piece of information is. Reading on e-re…
Any resources detailing this? It's the first I've heard of it.
> Besides, no e-reader today can let your riffle through pages as fast as paper book.
True, though the iPad is actually somewhat faster than a physical book, in my experience.
> you have to wait for visual feedback (screen refreshing).
At least in my experience, the time required to flip a page is at least identical to (greater than, in most cases) that of a modern e-reader showing the next page.
> With paper books things are at the tip of your fingers.
> E-reader have more friction.
I simply can't agree with this. A well indexed ebook is easy to follow cross references in (such as footnotes), you can do an actual search on the content, and the lack of weight is something that can't be understated.
A specific example: I went through the "Physically Based Rendering" book a few years back. I simply can't understate how painful it was to deal with the physical book. It was the size of a large text book (it was a large textbook), heavy enough it never left my desk. More specifically, it was always flat on the desk, making it difficult to read.
It also had glossy pages that, to this day, want to stick together (not to mention being challenging to write on). Finding content in it that wasn't a chapter title included going to a glossary with a ton of page numbers, and flipping back and forth constantly (see comment about sticky pages) to see if page N was the one I was looking for.
There was no 'proprioception' between myself and the book, there was no convenience, there was only inconvenience. Even the authors recognized this, providing a digital copy of most of the code so you wouldn't spend all day typing code.
An e-reader version of the book could only have provided a better experience.