Funny article about the future of paper books

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by omk3

What is a "complete and better experience" in your mind?
Do you want ebooks or ebook readers to smell of paper? To become yellow and musty with age? Do you want them to play a sound when you turn a page? Do you want to be able to rip them apart? To change their weight according to the size of the book? To make it easy to accidentally turn two pages at once (I do it with paper books all the time, and wonder why the continuity suddenly doesn't make sense). To give you paper-cuts on demand? To be awkward to hold open when you reach the middle of a thick book?

Don't forget the joy of turning a page and finding a squashed fly that you have to scrape off with your fingernails before you can read the words underneath.

[omk3]

I had forgotten that! And a good thing too, some things should stay forgotten!

[tompe]

Originally Posted by maxbookworm

This discussion compels me to quote from my favorite e-reading article: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/...ure-e-book.ars

The difference is that horses are very expensive and inefficient. A paper book is very efficient and cheap.

[omk3]

Cheap? Yes. Compared to ebooks? The price is more or less the same, and in actual fact ebooks should be cheaper, but that's a different discussion.

Efficient? Not really, if you compare them to ebooks. You can't seach the text, you can't instantly copy a passage and paste it elsewhere for reference, you can't have your book filled with bookmarks and notes and still be pristine as the day you bought it, you can't have bookmarks in ten places at the same time without them falling off all the time, or making the book awkwardly thick, you can't instantly look up a word, you can't change the font size, or even the font, for a better reading experience suited to your needs. All these things I now miss every time I try to read a paper book.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Format C:

When ebooks will give the tactile, olfattive and auditive feeling that books do, they'll completely replace printed books.
Not now.
Not in the next decade.

At the risk of sounding blunt: Wrong.

When ebooks are cheaper, easier to get, easier to use and more convenient than printed books overall, and when most people have any electronic device at all to read them on, people will respond to convenience and give up the desire to buy bulky, expensive items for the sole reason of preserving secondary inputs... they will replace printed books with digital books, for all uses save boutique gifts and specialty items... there will be no more "mass market book."

And yes, I give it less than 20 years. I'd give it less than 10 if the overall publishing industry wasn't still stubbornly dragging its heels over the whole matter.

The establishment of a default format (ePub) will largely accomplish this. Just as standardized photo hardware, software and formats led to the inclusion of cameras in many portable devices, and the slow extinction of film camera, so ePub readers will be included in more personal devices, allowing people to read books on almost anything with a screen--and they will get used to various screen sizes, whatever best suits them, or is most convenient. Most importantly, they will get used to carrying their library with them at all times, just as they can with their music now, always ready to be accessed for information or for pleasure.

Eventually, the benefits of digital will far outweigh the tactile and olfactory aspects of paper, and we can start leaving all that pulp on the trees where it belongs.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by Format C:

Are you saying that people who enjoy the physical feeling of books do not exist?

Do you have to try very hard to misunderstand me constantly? Yes, they exist, but your claim that they form the majority is simply not backed up by empirical data. My experience tells me that, in fact, only a minority of readers is interested in anything but the words.

When ebooks will give the tactile, olfattive and auditive feeling that books do, they'll completely replace printed books.

They'll never do that, and they don't have to.

Not now. Not in the next decade.

Oh, brother. Well, let's just wait and see.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by tompe

The difference is that horses are very expensive and inefficient. A paper book is very efficient and cheap.

There's nothing "efficient" about a paper book. It forces us to cut down forests, it consumes huge amounts of energy to be produced, shipped and stored, it takes up valuable space, it rots, and it eventually gets landfilled, adding to our carbon load. And each copy costs the same as the last to produce.

The only reason it's "cheap" is that the costs of the environmental damage and cleanup are put into your taxes, not added to the cost of the book.

[maxbookworm]

Originally Posted by tompe

The difference is that horses are very expensive and inefficient. A paper book is very efficient and cheap.

Hmmm... I guess that depends on how you define "efficient." I guess once the book has been manufactured, you could say it's "efficient" in that you don't need to power it with electricity in order to read it.

But I also define efficiency in these ways:

Storage-efficiency: it takes a lot of space to store paper books. E-books, not so much.

Packing-efficiency: whether I'm packing 10 books to take on vacation, or just carrying around my current book in my purse, it is easier to take my reader loaded with e-books with me

Acquisition-efficiency: I can get the book I want without leaving the house. This is both time- and fuel-efficient.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Format C:

That's why I thing present ebook technology cannot replace printed books.

Great, they can buy a leather cover for their ereader. Next.


rogue_librarian - Actually, no. What do you think is inside those cash registers, ATM's and POS terminals? 90%+ are still dot matrix-based. Banks still use them, many industries use them for label printing, industrial settings often prefer them (they don't die of there's a bit of dust in the air...) and they're still superior for both continuious and rarely-used applications data logging at one end, and emergency roster printouts on the other...

(And they're still cheaper per-sheet than inkjets and lasers)

So they're still heavily used. They're just no longer used by home users - they're not in the same category as many of the other technologies listed.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by omk3

Cheap? Yes. Compared to ebooks? The price is more or less the same, and in actual fact ebooks should be cheaper, but that's a different discussion.

Compared to a horse. The argument was that the horse example was irrelevant

Efficient? Not really, if you compare them to ebooks. You can't seach the text, you can't instantly copy a passage and paste it elsewhere for reference, you can't have your book filled with bookmarks and notes and still be pristine as the day you bought it, you can't have bookmarks in ten places at the same time without them falling off all the time, or making the book awkwardly thick, you can't instantly look up a word, you can't change the font size, or even the font, for a better reading experience suited to your needs. All these things I now miss every time I try to read a paper book.

I meant efficient for what it do (communicate text). A horse is very inefficient for transporting things.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

There's nothing "efficient" about a paper book. It forces us to cut down forests, it consumes huge amounts of energy to be produced, shipped and stored, it takes up valuable space, it rots, and it eventually gets landfilled, adding to our carbon load. And each copy costs the same as the last to produce.

The only reason it's "cheap" is that the costs of the environmental damage and cleanup are put into your taxes, not added to the cost of the book.

I know you are well read on these things but are you really sure? I thought books was renewable and not at all environmentally expensive. How much energy to produce one book? My intuition think it is not huge.

[omk3]

Originally Posted by tompe

Compared to a horse. The argument was that the horse example was irrelevant

A paper book is more efficient than a horse?

Originally Posted by tompe

I meant efficient for what it do (communicate text). A horse is very inefficient for transporting things.

No it's not. It's very inefficient for transporting things compared to a car. There was a time when the horse was the most efficient means of transport. But we moved on. That was exactly my point.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by omk3

No it's not. It's very inefficient for transporting things compared to a car.

It's "inefficient" only when there is an infrastructure which supports the use of the car, and when you start costing THAT...

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

And yes, I give it less than 20 years. I'd give it less than 10 if the overall publishing industry wasn't still stubbornly dragging its heels over the whole matter.

I don't think it will be the publishers that drive the move to ebooks. Like with music, it will be piracy that drives the demand for dedicated ebook readers, and demand for legitimate ebooks won't really take off until that happens.

[omk3]

Very true. It was the availability of public domain books and ocr'ed books that made me first look for a way to comfortably read them. And that led to lots of ebook buying.