ebooks | I Got Cranky

Entry tags:

I Got Cranky

So, I read a blog called Get Rich Slowly which I generally enjoy. However, today, he made a post entitled "Are E-Books Cost Effective? The Pros and Cons of E-Books". It made me cranky because he wasn't reviewing the cost-effectiveness of ebooks. He was reviewing the cost-effectiveness of Amazon's ebooks and using a Kindle. He didn't look at any of the other ereaders out there nor did he examine how people might be getting their ebooks if they hadn't been buying them at Amazon's prices. I have yet to spend a total of $20US on ebooks. Of course, I've only had my ereader since October and I don't tend to read new books that show up on the NYT Bestsellers list but I expect that I will eventually spend more than $20 on ebooks. However, that is going to take a while. Baen has hooked me up. Not only through their free library but they also give ebooks to disabled readers for free and I was approved for that program. Plus, the number of books that I've read and loved that are now in the public domain is quite large.

So, I've gone from "ereaders - meh" to writing long missives when someone tries to generalize the entire ebook experience based on Kindle.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I see that a lot, people basing their anti-ebook decisions on the kindle or sometimes the iPad. I want to ask them if they think all cell phones are iPhones, too. There are tons and tons of places to get free or low cost ebooks. Why don't people realize this? It's like arguing that books aren't cost effective by supposing that people only buy new hardcovers and haven't heard of libraries.

It's like arguing that books aren't cost effective by supposing that people only buy new hardcovers and haven't heard of libraries.

Exactly. I would agree that only buying brand-new hardcovers wouldn't be a cost-effective way of spending your reading money. But this guy would argue that you can get used hardcovers, if you really want hardcovers, at a used bookstore or through BookMooch or through a library book sale. He talks about buying his clothing at thrift stores. Yet, his entire ebook budget seems to go to Amazon.

Quite a few commenters have pointed out that library e-books can be downloaded onto other e-reader devices for free, so, yay!

I suppose I could argue that it still cost me the $105 for the Sony Reader vs $0 for not buying one, but since buying it I have spent the same on ebooks as I have on real actual books, which is $0. I pretty much exclusively get books from the library other than reference type books which I want to have on hand all the time forever.

I am actually spending less on ebooks than I was spending on pbooks back when I could still read pbooks. So, while I spent way more than $105 for my Sony, I think overall, I'm still going to end up coming out ahead.

There's a great many people who think "ebook" means "Kindle." Amazon's not going to do *anything* to convince them otherwise. (The people who've recently bought Kindles are sometimes quite surprised to discover that dedicated ebook readers go back more than 10 years.)

The Kindle's inability to get (Overdrive ADE) library books is one of its major drawbacks, and that's going to be more troublesome as more people start reading ebooks. Amazon could get around that by setting up Kindles to read ePub, but they'd also have to deal with Adobe's DRM, and that opens a can of contractual worms they don't want to go near. I think they're hoping that the non-Kindle ebook market just kind of fizzles out.

I think they're hoping that the non-Kindle ebook market just kind of fizzles out.

Not going to happen. Nook is really taking off, from what I can tell, and while I don't like the Kobo, Borders is selling around a half dozen different ereaders alongside the Kobo. I don't think any one brand of ereader is going to top the market at this point. Sure, some will fall by the wayside but I think there is enough healthy competition now that Amazon isn't ever going to have the type of perceived monopoly that they had a few years ago.

I'm still not sold on ebooks, but I got frustrated with that blog a while back, and I find those arguments unconvincing. True, if/when I get an ebook reader, I'm going to be using it for a) free public domain classics (the proofread kind), b) Baen Free Library, and c) my public library's ebook checkout program, and I'll still be using the public library to check out paper copies of new releases, etc. It will likely change my reading, but I don't have a problem with that. If I read a bunch of free classics instead of some cheap thrillers next time I go on a trip, I save money. And since I plan to get a cheaper ereader, don't upgrade devices constantly, and read quickly, I expect I could pay for a $120 ereader in a few years.

I have already written off the Kindle as a possibility because of its many limitations, so...yeah.

Yeah, I think it's wishful thinking on Amazon's part. They wanted to be the only player in the market--they were hoping to capture the kind of one-store loyalty that previous devices had to put up with, and it's not going to happen. Too many other devices, too many other ebookstores, too many small publishers willing to find out how this market can work for them.

The anti-DRM explosion will hit when a critical mass of people have bought one device and then switched to another and realize their "books" are really "Kindle widgets" or "Nook widgets." (Which, given the popularity of ithing apps, wouldn't necessarily bother them--until they figure out that some ebooks *will* transfer from one device to the next, and all the DRM ebook stores try to gloss over that.)

In a few years, $120 should get you a middle-to-good ebook reader; right now, it'll get last year's model of various types. Like computers, I expect actual prices to drop very slowly but tech to keep improving at the same dollar amount.

I wasn't sold on ereaders until just recently. It took a while to be convinced that it was something that I needed. However, it has changed my life for the better. It makes me teary-eyed when I think about it too much. I have no words to express what a difference it has made in my quality of life.

I look forward to the anti-DRM revolution. I would be spending so much more money on books if I didn't have to research each one I wanted to find a non-DRM version of it. If I knew that all books that I bought from Borders didn't have DRM, I'd stop shopping in other places. Since I don't get that guarantee from any major (or minor) bookstore, mostly I just look for stuff to read that is free. It is too much hassle to do otherwise.

I often wonder how the tech will improve. I really love my reader and I think the only thing tech-wise that I would change is additional battery life. I'm charging it weekly right now. I would like some software changes (organize books by author in addition to collection is one) but the tech itself makes me feel like I'm living in the future.

Tech improvements:
Better support for groups/categories/tags, to allow easy use of the six zillion book library that most ebook readers can hold, but not usefully navigate.

Easy ability to flip between 2 or 3 books at a time, for academic research.

Better annotation/notes export support.

Better bookmark support--"tagged" bookmarks, like color-coded post-its. ("Show me just the starred (*) bookmarks. Now just the circle (.) bookmarks. Now the cross (+) and straight-line (|) bookmarks together.")

Shared annotations among a group of readers.

Better zoom support for pictures & charts. Better support for tables.

Right now, ebook readers are *terrific* for leisure reading, but fairly poor for academic use. The tech improvements that need to happen are almost all in that area--and hardware designers are dragging their feet, because it's a lot easier to pitch wifi and video support, even though those aren't remotely what ebooks need.

Would the first 3 or 4 be workable with software changes? I suppose the first one would need better processors as well.

The current processors are probably fine (and they'll be working on those anyway; they *want* color e-ink video); the rest is software issues. They're not minor software issues; there are *no* great ebook library programs yet because moving from "stack similar books together on a physical shelf" and "show similar books together in a digital list" is not a simple fix. (Physical books contain a *lot* of metadata, just by looking at them, that we have no easy way to translate to digital.)

Calibre's good, but has glitches, and is still working to be effective with libraries of several thousand ebooks, especially ones designed to share. And it doesn't work on the ebook reading devices.

None of the reading devices, AFAIK, have software that's any good with over 500, much less over 3000, ebooks.

Plenty of room for improvement! They've finally gotten the "reads okay" part down, and can now put serious effort into the "personal library management" part.

I would like better personal library management. I can look at a collection of books on my shelves and know immediately which one I want to read based on a number of factors. Since I read a lot of series, knowing which one is next in the series on my ereader is impossible. Being able to find a book by so-and-so is challenging. I'm using the tools I have to organize as best I can but I have some very large collections that are just broad collections and which would be on my physical bookshelf on that shelf that holds all the books that don't fit elsewhere.

Yep. I want ebook software that lets me sort by fiction & nonfic, poetry & prose, word count, series, multi-series (like Darkover or Valdemar), first publication date, copyright status, and put the fanfic in the same cluster as the canon books. (I made a PDF of Shards of Honor with a text box at the end of one chapter that says "Insert Fanfic Here;" I'd found a new story that happened in the gap between two chapters and wanted to read it in order.)

And some of that is metadata I can add through the various programs, but some requires sorting abilities that just aren't there yet.

Don't get me started on comic books and manga. My brain just gets twitchy.

I have no problem with last year's model. :)

That is awesome.

I have a Nook, and I like it. I can read it on planes where even my cell phone on "airplane mode" must be turned off. (Apparently the Nook's "airplane mode" is okay except for takeoff and landing so yay.) I've downloaded a few books from te Nook Store (fast downloads), but mostly I just transfer PDF and Word and EPUB files of stuff I want to read from my computer to the device and read those. The formatting is iffy but since I'm going to have to learn how to get by with less stuff (junior enlisted wife who didn't get the memo about not owning 1000+ books :P), it works for me.

Apparently the Kindle's battery lasts longer, but I like the wider range of formats the Nook will read.

Ooh, I didn't know about the Baen Free Library before, so thanks for that! I sure miss (LJ)ebooks_crack or I'd recommend that. I've gotten a lot of great ebooks from there (it made the purchase of a Nook more than worth it), most of which I intend to buy in hardcover when I can afford to anyway since I like having durable copies of my favorite books around and want to have an Archive of books to leave my eventual kids as a legacy. You know, the books they won't be allowed to touch until they're fifteen. ;P

So having ebooks and paperbacks around to be read and not "mess up" the Archive...very convenient, that.

I hope that made some sense. Sorry if it didn't.

Easy ability to flip between 2 or 3 books at a time, for academic research.
Better annotation/notes export support.

I know I'll never get the latter on my Sony Pocket because there's no way to type on it, but those are my two to-die-fors. Give me the ability to highlight something and email it to myself with the citation attached, for "academic" purposes, and I will be a happy boy.

(What I want is a thin, light, Sony Pocket-sized e-ink iPad-esque device that gives me my books and my notetaking ap and my calendar and my email and my SMS and my podcasts and my occasional web browsing session, with a tiny bluetooth headset that both played my podcasts and took subvocal dictation. I would never need anything else. But that's a lot further off, even if there are readers that do a lot of those things, so I'll settle for note-and-citation export.)

I looked at the Nook when I was shopping for my ereader. It was very full of shiny. Unfortunately, the page turns triggered a migraine. If it hadn't, it would have been a hard decision between it and the Sony Touch.

Do you know about calibre? I don't know what the Nook software is like for managing books but the Sony is supposedly not-so-great so I use calibre for my library management and conversion of files.

Eek! Well that's no good. My only complaint about the Nook (and the Kindle app on my Blackberry and most e-readers, it seems) is that I can't just scroll down. I'd much rather scroll than "turn pages."

I'd heard of that before, but that was before I had a bunch of ebooks to organize. Thanks for reminding me! That'll be useful. :)

Do you have the 300? I have a little e-keyboard on my 650 which, while not easy to type on, is very convenient. So far, I've used it to make notes when I think of a book I want when it is not convenient to get on my computer and start searching.

I nearly bought last year's model but Border's had run out of them and I wasn't willing to chase it all over the city trying to find one and couldn't find one sufficiently reduced online. However, I was buying during perhaps the worst part of the year. New Sony models had just come out about a week prior. Since then, I've seen last year's model much cheaper online.

If you haven't seen this wonderful post by

elf, you should check it out. She lists other ebook resources.

Checking it out now. Thanks! :D

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I Got Cranky

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject