No one buys books • Hacker News Board

simonblack wrote: post #142

Paper Books for random-access Technical Reference. Electronic Books for General 'Beginning-to-End', or 'Story-Telling' reading. In general, though most books can be either paper or electronic depending on personal convenience at the time. It's not a 'Black and White', 'One Thing or the Other' choice. Both formats are as good as the other if need be. I use both. "Works for Me."

Weird, I have the exact opposite preference. I do like looking things up in paper reference books, but a lot of the time I remember context well enough that I can type a key phrase and have it instantly. I prefer learning from paper, so if it's a scientific paper that's too complex/deep to just skim and longer than 10-15 pages I'll often print it.

Reading for pleasure on the other hand, I will only do on paper. The physicality of the book, down to the wrinkles and texture of the paper, are part of the enjoyment.

Re: No one buys books

#208

Post by karaterobot » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 11:19 PM UTC

Counterpoint: after taking a big hit during the pandemic years of 2020-2022, global book sales are climbing again. Sales are down compared to the years before 2019, but the trend recently has been positive, especially for audio and e-books.

https://wordsrated.com/global-book-sales-statistics/

Re: No one buys books

#209

Post by johnloeber » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 11:20 PM UTC

roughly wrote: post #114

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 do the same - I far prefer paper books for reading, and mostly because it makes an enormous difference in my ability to focus. Re: the ecological side - I'm not actually convinced that a paperback book is markedly more of an ecological burden than an e-reader and the rest of the associated infrastructure. I think it's possible the e-reader pencils out in the long term, but I think a full lifecycle accounting of the…

Worrying about the environmental impact of books is misguided. You use far more paper products in the course of your everyday life: paper bags, cardboard packaging, paper towels, etc. etc. Even for an avid reader, the impact is negligible.

Re: No one buys books

#210

Post by joe5150 » Mon, Apr 22, 2024, 11:20 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #101

Can't help but feel for the publishing industry considering how shafted they got by tech. You distribute books all over the country? Amazon can do it better and cheaper. You print books? Well we have e-books now. You have a massive back catalog? Google just scanned all of it. You do marketing? Authors now have their own followings on social media and can reach them directly. You give cash advances? Fans on Kickstarte…

I can't think of any publishers that are also in the business of printing and distribution. Those are entirely separate industries. There is almost no way for publishers to lose money because of tech that makes it cheaper and easier than ever to get books to consumers while retaining unprecedented control over pricing (fixed, never discounted or remaindered), resale (prohibited), and lending (also prohibited). Publishers sell eBooks for the same price as print books but pay almost nothing to produce them. That's a big bump in profits.

I don't see how any publisher is losing money on their back catalog due to scanning by Google, either. Google doesn't sell or even offer access to the full text of most books they scan, certainly not any that are under copyright and still being sold by publishers. Out of print books are by definition not earning money for publishers, so it wouldn't make any difference there.