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No one buys books

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Re: No one buys books

#121

Post by roughly »

WillAdams wrote: post #48

Turn it around: How much new information is there published in book form each year which the average person needs to (or wants to) read? How much leisure time does the average person choose to dedicate each year to reading? How do they decide which book(s) will be selected for this? Arguably the problem is that much of the purpose which books traditionally take up has been replaced by: - encyclopedias --- Wikipedia -…

> How much new information is there published in book form each year which the average person needs to (or wants to) read?

> How much leisure time does the average person choose to dedicate each year to reading? How do they decide which book(s) will be selected for this?

I mean, the thing is, people aren't reading books, they're reading instagram. We haven't substituted one knowledge-accumulating method for another, we've replaced books with social media. If you want to talk about which one generates or propagates more information-as-knowledge, that's an interesting conversation, but I think the effective mechanism here is someone figured out how to hypercharge the dopamine roller-coaster to a degree that books just can't compete.

Re: No one buys books

#122

Post by bombcar »

vundercind wrote: post #82
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 extend…

It’s also a highly effective sorting algorithm - anything still talked about ten years after it came out is probably worth some time.

I will say that it seems entirely possible to relatively quickly see all US animated kids movies …

Re: No one buys books

#123

Post by HenryBemis »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #113

I'm in a very heavy library family; we are checking out and reading a few hundred books per year between all of us. Yet we still buy a few books, and I bet that if we made an inventory of the books we currently own that are in the house, it would number in the hundreds. But... most were purchased secondhand. I take my daughter to the bookstore every few months; it is always busy. While she is browsing, I also look ar…

> book will run $15-20

Everybody needs to get paid, and everybody needs to make a profit.

The folks that store the books (think Wholesale), the movers/couriers, the retail that has to pay rent/employees/etc _and_ make a profit.

The consider that (depending on the country) there is a VAT on that book. It slowly adds up.

I remember in Brighton back in the 90s I had found a second hand bookstore, that had 5x the books per sqm comparing to the Barnes & Noble in the center of London. B&N had wide corridors, the shelves on the perimeter were all the way to the ceiling, but the non-walled ones were 1.5m high. And considering that they wanted the books to look cool, they were nicely spaced.

Now when you compare this to the second hand bookstore, where presentation is not 'a thing'.. you got many-many more books per sqm, and the authors/publishers don't need to get paid again. But still.. a second hand book will always been 1/3 to 1/4 of a new book (from own experience).

EDIT: I sometimes think that if my life takes a very dark turn, and for whatever reason I end up poor and alone, I will find the smallest/cheapest possible village that has a public library back to my country of origin, and I will be spending max amount of hours in that library.. free wifi, free heating/cooling, and ALL the books I can read(hey, my name is Henry Bemis after all!!)

Re: No one buys books

#125

Post by SubmarineClub »

iamacyborg wrote: post #68
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.…

Paper books are also just orders of magnitude easier to flip through and re-read specific chapters, paragraphs or sections. I can skim through a shelf full of books in a way that I’m just not able to with ebooks, even with stuff like full text search available in Calibre.

Another benefit to paper books, in my experience, is it's a lot easier to remember the rough location of a particular passage (towards the front, middle, near the end, etc.) than with digital

A progress bar really doesn't replace the context of the stack of pages behind and ahead of your current page.

Re: No one buys books

#127

Post by II2II »

lrvick wrote: post #81

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 r…

I am fairly certain that most, if not all, mass market ebooks use DRM tied to the software. If the servers go, the books will be fine for as long as the software continues to work.

There are also authors and publishers who offer books without DRM.

Please note: I do not like DRM. I simply view disinformation as a good way to loose good will from those who would otherwise support a cause.

Re: No one buys books

#128

Post by alexpetralia »

skydhash wrote: post #115
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.…

I use my iPad and my Kobo for digital reading. I have paper version of "important" books (stuff I'd like to read if I don't have power), but some are unwieldy (Algorithms by Cormen et Al). I prefer e-ink for reading, but it's too slow for my learning workflow. I highlight and mark interesting stuff, that I export later to condense and reflect upon. And that is cumbersome on an e-reader. There's also the matter of siz…

I recommend the Fujitsu Quaderno. Great for marking up textbooks on A4 size pages, and far lighter than a book itself.

Re: No one buys books

#129

Post by skydhash »

iamacyborg wrote: post #68
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.…

Paper books are also just orders of magnitude easier to flip through and re-read specific chapters, paragraphs or sections. I can skim through a shelf full of books in a way that I’m just not able to with ebooks, even with stuff like full text search available in Calibre.

I classify skimming as a "distracting" activity. I always ask myself: What information do I need? And then it's very easy to get to the relevant passage. And outlines are there for a reason (PDF Expert can edit them) so navigating between the same file is not that cumbersome for me. I do agree that the experience is more pleasant with a paper book, but in a focused session, the result is pretty much the same.

Skimming is great for building a mental map, but that is a separate activity than reading to learn. And it can be done digitally too, just differently.

Re: No one buys books

#130

Post by npilk »

lrvick wrote: post #81

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 r…

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

Well, technically there's a third option...

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