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No one buys books

elysian.press

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Re: No one buys books

#81

Post by lrvick »

Most books today are sold with DRM and when the DRM servers are deactivated the books stop working.

This happened with the Microsoft ebooks store and has happened with countless other DRM media.

Sometimes books are automatically revised, or censored. Sometimes accounts holding DRM licenses are deleted or deactivated by mistake.

The only way to actually own a book these days is to buy it on paper, or from one of the rare few publishers that do not use DRM.

If you want a DRM free e-book collection you will need a book scanner or send it to a scanning service.

Re: No one buys books

#82

Post by vundercind »

bombcar wrote: post #25

The entire book industry rides on the backs of bibles, hobbits, and extremely ravenous caterpillars. Seems almost poetic, somehow.

I gotta admit: I rarely make time for any recent fiction. Too busy catching up on the last 5,000 years. I don’t expect that to change before I die.

Film has a similar problem—there are plausibly low-thousands existing films worth my time, a whole lot of them 30+ years old. I could never watch a film made after 2000 and not run out of good entertainment in my lifetime. They’re damn lucky the Mouse got copyright extended to a century or more.

Re: No one buys books

#85

Post by mbbbackus »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #70
joshuamcginnis wrote: post #38

I'm currently writing a book about independent thinking and I have zero expectations that it will sell even a single copy. However, the net gain I will get from having completed the goal of writing the book is invaluable to me personally.

I had this idea for a hard science fiction story that I have been thinking about for years. Nobody else is going to write it, so I started. 20 000 words in my beta readers say it is good, so I think I will continue. And I don’t expect to sell it, but I want to know what happens and so do the beta readers. So on we go.

Currently in the same boat! When you say beta readers, do you mean other friends/writers or like people on twitter

Re: No one buys books

#88

Post by ethbr1 »

echelon_musk wrote: post #72
yreg wrote: post #51

I recently started buying paper books. Yes, it's not particularly ecological, but I found that I'm able to focus at the text much better this way. My Kindle (despite plenty of obvious advantages) just doesn't really work for me. It took me years to realize this, but I always start to tinker with the brightness settings, switch pages back and forth, go into the book library and back, play with highlighting words, etc.…

The older I get the less I trust myself to know how to administer or even to care how to work any current or future reading e-device. A printed book requires light as just about it's only dependency! I definitely agree with you about the distractions of digital devices. Switching to a book is a focused mode.

When I'm on vacation, I always read paper books.

Because I want minimal complexity. (Usually in the tropics, often with rum and a hammock)

Dead tree books' short term failure modes are water and fire, and once failure is confined to emergencies-that-are-already-emergencies they impose no additional cognitive burden.

Also, I suspect the physical friction involved in "swiping away from" paper books helps reset my dopamine baseline / memory, but that's just suspicion from having lived pre-smartphone.

PS: Also, re: environmental impact. eBay and Amazon sell tons of used books. Sure you're shipping them around, but I really buy new these days.

Re: No one buys books

#90

Post by yreg »

keyle wrote: post #50

The same could be said about the game industry and the music industry. 1% of the industry thrives while the rest is a sinking stone. That said I bought three books this week, but it's a rare occurrence... and I'm pretty sure they're re-printed by Amazon.

Aren't people buying more indie and early-access games than ever?

Or do you mean boardgames? Those seem to be doing alright as well though.

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