The future of books

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I love books and reading. I have read perhaps five to ten books a week since I was perhaps seven years old.

Most of those books have come from the library although I have bought many thousands of books in my life.

Now I have a problem. Libraries are getting smaller and books are getting more expensive.

Let's say I like a modern fiction author. I would like to read his/her latest novel but I can read it in an hour or two and it will cost me $30. Is that good value? No. Can I afford it? No.

When I go to the library I might see "Book Three of the so and so trilogy" only to discover that the library has already gotten rid of books one and two.

I discovered Gutenberg.com but I hate reading books on my laptop screen.

At least on Gutenberg I can read all the novels of Rudyard Kipling. I can read all the Oz books and all the Tarzan books.

Please give me a good hand held book reader and allow me to buy new novels for one or two dollars.

This is the future of books, and if you're willing to be a bit dodgy, you can read books in PDF format on it for absolutely nothing.

I adore books. Those gadgets could never replace a real book.

Have you tried buying these books from Amazon? Both new and used copies are available. The last book I checked all the paperback copies started at the cost of $1.98. I'm positive some books are even cheaper than that. You could also check the Barnes & Noble website. The books are being sold by small stores.

Which books did you want to read?

irene

They will never take away my paperbacks! In fact, the whole concept of digitalizing everything hurts me. It makes things more expensive. DRM...I won't even go there.

My wife loves the Kindle I gave her for Christmas--it is much easier for her to read than printed books--her eyes get tired. It really is the future of books--at present, the taxes on inventory make it unprofitable to keep around books that sell just a few copies a year, even though they are "classics" that everyone should read. Electronic readers eliminate the stupid taxation issue, and allow publishers to publish books of all types, not the just bestsellers and awful pulp fiction titles that can be sold quickly.

First, if you don't like reading from a laptop screen STAY AWAY FROM IPADS AND NOOK COLORS!! !! They might be cool toys but they have all the same problems as a lap top display.

I recently got a kindle mainly to read free titles from Gutenberg and Manybooks and I couldn't be happier.

The kindle's e-ink display is fantastic. Also kindle seems to get the best marks for all e-ink readers on the market now.

My advice would be to get the wi-fi only model (unless you REALLY need 3G to buy books) and use the $50 you save for the leather case with the built in reading light.

You won't get current stuff for $2 on kindle, but you can get most current fiction for $5-$10.... That's about as good as you can do on Amazon for used books once you factor in the $3.99 shipping used booksellers are allowed to charge.

I have a first gen Kindle and I love it despite hating on Amazon so much these days. The e-ink display is just the best. I also use their Kindle for PC on both my laptop and netbook--my netbook in particular has that annoying "can't see a damn thing in sunlight" issue, but other than that, it's like have a second and third e-reader. Plus i have all my purchased books downloaded in multiple copies (amazon does allow you infinite downland of books you already purchased, as far as i can tell. They haven't stop me--some of the stuff I've downloaded over 5 times).

E-readers have certain significant problem that will likely not be able to be addressed effectively in my lifetime, at least, so there will still be a market for books, like anything to do with visuals, graphics, symbolic languages--anything that's just easier to print out than convert to an e-reader, many reference materials and textbooks are still far easily to use in book form than in e-reader form.

For academia, research, sciences and such areas, printed books will remain very important for some time yet, although online resources are competing to some degree. But for leisure reading, e-readers will likely continue to in in use and popularity. Not only are they convenient, user-friendly and likely to improve tech-wise in the coming years, they are sensible for avid readers looking to spend less, be eco-friendly and conserve living space.

I think books will come as a pill, nasal spray or suppository.

^^ "My favourite parks are car parks..."

I wonder if they'd ever somehow start putting ads in the ebooks (as you'd go to the next page or something)? It isn't too hard to see happening especially if there isn't easy access to the physical book. But I do remember I heard they wanted to do that on ipods or, mp3's, a few years ago and as far as I know it hasn't happened.

I like paper books. I've yet to see an ebook reader that is as good as a paper book. And they charge ridiculous prices for what is essentially a free commodity.

I have an iPad but I don't think I would really use it to read books. I downloaded some of the free ones from Apple or Amazon but haven't tried to read them yet. I don't think the display is really going to make me want to try to read hundreds of pages on it. I was tempted to buy a book or two and then that would motivate me to read it on the iPad but the cost seems a bit expensive. The cost of an ebook seems to be more than a paperback. For instance I just looked up on Amazon a favorite book - in paperback its $8.99, for Kindle its $10.99 Why? It seems absurd that it costs more to buy an electronic copy vs. a paperback copy that needs raw materials and needs to be manufactured / printed.

Books aren't free. There's at least the writer to consider, and electronic storage and delivery, though that must be very, very cheap.

I do agree that the prices on commercial ebooks are a bit cheeky. The ones I looked at tended to be only a quid or so less than the paper backs. I think I'd rather just buy the paperbacks, and use the 100 quid or whatever it would take to buy a kindle to defray the slight extra cost.

Last edited by Moog on 05 Jan 2011, 7:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Don't get the reference there Ambivalance, could you help me out?

if there was an e-library or e-book rental service i could subscribe to, that would be excellent. i am not willing to pay for a permanent digital copy that i will probably never read again, and cannot re-sell, loan, trade, or transfer in any way. except for some reference texts, i like to give away my books when i am done with them. i do not want to own books, i want to read them.

There are also these facts to consider:
-A Kindle may be slimmer than a paperback, but it's a valuable item for a thief to target, whereas a paperback - unless it's a rare collectible - isn't.
-Kindles cannot, for the time being, handle books that depend on complex-grayscale or color graphics for their content, which means that all of my artbooks, a lot of my art history books and most of my comics could never be imported to a Kindle.
-Even if one managed a Kindle-quality screen at perfect-rez color, the layout of current e-readers presumes that one is not reading a book that conveys much or any information through two-page spreads - trivial for most reading, but again, important for comics that were originally published as pamphlets, magazines or physical books.
-A book isn't just a bundle of information; it's an object, and it can be a beautiful object. With full digitization - which is probably inevitable - the beautiful book will probably be relegated to the status of exceedingly expensive objet d'art, which means that I and most other people will not be able to afford it.