62% of 16 To 24-Year-Olds Prefer Printed Books Over eBooks 331
assertation writes "According to The Guardian, 62% of readers between the age of 16 and 24 prefer physical copies of books over ebooks. Reasons given were the feel of 'real books,' a perceived unfairly high cost for eBooks, and the ease of sharing printed books. 'On questions of ebook pricing, 28% think that ebooks should be half their current price, while just 8% say that ebook pricing is right.' The preference for physical copies was in contrast to other forms of media, such as games, movies, and music, where a majority preferred the digital version."
Burn an Ebook? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Burn an Ebook? (Score:5, Insightful)
Voluntary payments work in smaller ecosystems. However as things get bigger, the tragedy of the commons starts happening. This is why an honor system peach stand in the middle of Maine works, while one near a busy city likely will be relieved of its fruit and cash box... perhaps just removed completely.
Re:Burn an Ebook? (Score:4, Insightful)
Humans build morality based on sacramental associations. Book burning is an activity only bad people do. Deleting ebooks is an activity both good and bad people do. Ergo: book burning is likely a bad thing while deleting ebooks morally neutral.
That seems like a sensible analysis where one is appealing to sociology for the determination of good vs. evil.
Re:Burn an Ebook? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a big difference between going to the library and burning books you don't want others to read and deleting a ebook off of your device to make room to download more ebooks from a large repository of ebooks {you've not deleted it from the repository just your device you can still download it again}.
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Re:Burn an Ebook? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can easily re-download an ebook. Deleting an ebook is closer to putting a book in a bookshelf than to burning it.
Wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask them if it's OK to delete the last copy of an eBook and see what response you get.
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Now, when Amazon mass-deletes books from devices remotely, that'd be considered closer to an old-fashioned book burning, I'd guess.
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It's entirely different because people don't burn books just because they are done with them and are trying to reduce clutter. It is always done as an act of censorship, too prevent others from being able to read the books. Removing books on a public source such as project Gutenberg or a library server maybe would be closer to what book burning was about.
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I posed a question on social media recently asking if deleting an Ebook is akin to book burning.
Another good reason to stay away from "social media" sites.
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The reason they would not burn a book but were ok with deleting an Ebook? Not for the preservation of knowledge, not for passing on history, not for any other archeological reason. Just because they had a sentimental connection via their senses, the touch, the smell.
Aren't you hypothesizing there? I think the aversion to burning a book is more likely to be tied to the fact that, historically, book burning is one of the first symptoms of oppression. It's often followed by imprisonment or slaughter of the people associated with the doomed books. So book burning is an act that carries emotional baggage. The same can't be said of file deletion.
Picard Syndrome (Score:2)
There's already a name for this - Jean Luc Picard Syndrome.
what about the other 38% (Score:2)
At first glance I was shocked at the acceptance of ebooks this implies. On further thought however (and without reading the article) this could as well mean that 38% don't read at all. Or have a more complex opinion than can be stated as a preference.
I refuse to believe that 38% of any population actually prefers those slow to flip through ebooks.
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I refuse to believe that 38% of any population actually prefers those slow to flip through ebooks.
That's a problem with the reader software, not the media. If they would stop locking ebooks down and instead just produce ePubs or whatnot, you could use whatever reader you wanted. An ePub is just a specially organized zipfile with metadata files in it, HTML, and CSS.
It doesn't need to be any more difficult to read than a static website.
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At first glance I was shocked at the acceptance of ebooks this implies. On further thought however (and without reading the article) this could as well mean that 38% don't read at all. Or have a more complex opinion than can be stated as a preference.
I refuse to believe that 38% of any population actually prefers those slow to flip through ebooks.
Without more details on their testing methodology, the survey may mean nothing more than any other "online survey". Were the participants chosen at random, or were they self-selected (maybe people that prefer paper books are more likely to answer a survey about paper vs ebooks)? Were participants really a random sampling, or were they all in the same demographic (i.e. were they all wealthy white college students?). Were the answers randomized, or was the first answer always "I prefer paper books" meaning t
Sample Bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Half of the respondents were sourced through student moneysaving website Studentbeans.com, and half through a broader youth research panel.
You ask people at a money saving web site and they will choose the cheeper thing. Used books are way cheaper than ebooks. If you asked Amazon shoppers you would get a different answer.
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That's okay (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That's okay (Score:4, Funny)
Books have more value (Score:3)
With a physical book, I can loan it out easily. If it doesn't come back, I'm out no more than the cost of the book.
With a physical book, I can use it for component materials (burn it if I'm cold, prop up a table leg).
Physical books are "scarce", a first edition Harry Potter e-book will never be worth more than list price. Unknown how much a signed eBook goes for.
The point is, physical books have more value, thus should cost more. The price points for physical books is about right. So that means eBooks are overpriced. If I had to pay equal amounts for a book or an eBook, I'd pick the book every time. An eBook is worth about as much as a used book (1/2 to 1/10th original price). That's the price the books settle in at over the long term when the supply exceeds demand, which is the initial case with eBooks, as supply is infinite.
Im older but... (Score:3)
Real books are much easier to reference/tag pagers and skim, easier to get a general idea of where information is, etc.. Electronic media fails totally on teh easy mental image of where information is.
depends on the purpose of the book (Score:2)
It's price. (Score:2)
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You perpetuate the common myth that the cost of the printed book is what it is because of the physical media. It is not. A print on demand soft runs about $3 and a hard cover about $5-10 depending on a few options. The price you see on books is one which primarily goes to compensate authors, editors and (if not self published) the publisher. There is no inherent reason why any e-book should cost significantly less than the printed version especially when you factor in the cost of maintaining the comput
I don't think these stats are going to last. (Score:2)
Anyone that knows how to use ebooks and has a decent reader is going to probably prefer them.
The people that I've seen that prefer regular books either are very anti technology... either by age or inclination... or have never tried a quality reader.
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Agreed, but 16 - 24 year olds are usually the people who are least likely to be luddites, the most open to change and the most likely to be all over new technology.
Greed (Score:2)
ebooks are too expensive by far. Excessive DRM is used to enforce. The reason is greed. Much of it influenced (forced) by the big players and publishing houses.
I know there was already an author (forget the name), who has already show that he could make more money by selling many more copies at a much reduced rate.
I will stick to my paper books thank you, and used when I can. Unless I go someplace where space is a premium and you can't easily find books. Like Space or possibly the Arctic/Antarctica, however
I prefer digital Games, Movies and Music (Score:2)
As opposed to the paper versions...
They reversed the age numerals (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm 61, not 16, and I prefer my eBook reader (my Android phone) for light fiction, especially when I'm trying to fall asleep or in a waiting room or eating a light meal in a coffee shop.
The price of Ebooks -- yes, way too high -- doesn't directly affect me, since my local library loans me eBooks. And then there's that huge public domain Gutenberg collection and others like it.
I'll pay for eBooks when they're half the price of mass-market paperbacks. Until then, I'll only read titles I can get for free.
Better to have, not better to read (Score:2)
Why do people keep so many books? (Score:2)
Thanks goodness for that... (Score:3)
The Not-So-Green Generation (Score:2)
I expected more from this age group. With all of the awareness of shrinking natural resources, why anyone would choose printed books and their inherent danger to the environment. But, who cares that trees are cut down, thus adding to global warming, as long as I can have the feel and smell in my hands.
I expected more of this new generation.
This does not bode well for ebooks (Score:3)
Tech is often driven by the youth market. If you lose the young, you lose.
Re:price (Score:5, Insightful)
The article was about 16 - 24 year olds. They probably already know how to pirate. Ease of sharing was also another issue. Prices can be reduced, but the business model of eBooks seems to be based on reducing sharing, so that road block isn't going away.
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If ease of sharing is an issue, then perhaps they aren't so skilled at piracy. Same can be said of price.
Re:price (Score:5, Interesting)
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Frankly, ebooks are a pain. When I'm reading, I frequently flip back to previous material that I've read for reference. Or I flip to a topic I am looking for. With physical media, this is relatively painless. With ebooks, you get lost.
Yep, PDF readers need a flip function. Something like a bar that you can put your finger one as a representation of how far through the book, but instead of jumping to where your finger is, it starts flipping pages. SLow for the first few then speeding up to fast, but still slow enough to scan the page. If going through a lot of pages, the middle parts between the beginning and end flip past be too fast to scan, but then as you get near your finger the flipping slows down again.
Re:price (Score:5, Insightful)
The article was about 16 - 24 year olds. They probably already know how to pirate. Ease of sharing was also another issue. Prices can be reduced, but the business model of eBooks seems to be based on reducing sharing, so that road block isn't going away.
My own kids put it differently. It's the feel and smell and convenience of a book that counts. Above all, it's the feel of the paper as the pages are turned.
Having to use an ebook reader would probably diminish their liking for books (we're all bookworms). They have little or no interest in ebooks, although we have a good number of PDF books on topics which interest them. So accessing books with file-sharing tools is also not an issue. Also, the cost is irrelevant; we give them books whenever they want, and they also get lots of books based on their marks at school (this turns out a bit pricey, but it's worth it for the motivating effect).
Re:price (Score:5, Insightful)
As for convenient, I find the ability to carry around as many books as I want, browse, sample and buy more in any location at any time, to be much more convenient than paper books.
And this from a guy who enjoyed trekking into Manhattan from Queens as a lad to go to the big bookstores, the only place I could find all the s.f. I craved in the 70's.
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Having a preference does not necessarily mean the exclusion of the other. I fall into the prefer printed book category (though for a different age demographic) but I own a good number of both. I prefer printed books but I have been working on reducing the size of my physical library because ebooks take up less space and I want fewer physical possessions to worry about.
Despite my preference for one, I use the other more but use both quite a lot.
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I'm with you. I strongly prefer printed books due to lots of small reasons, like being virtually mug-free, not running out of batteries, providing conversation material (even when sitting on a bookshelf) etc. However, space has been a problem. My shelves are packed and nowadays I think none of us apartment dwellers has enough space for a proper library. So now I'm considering biting the bullet and getting Pynchon's latest novel on ebook form.
Re:price and sharability (Score:5, Interesting)
I buy e-books from companies who expect me to treat them like physical books. If I lend a colleague a copy, I tell him if he likes it he should buy one. General speaking, (s)he does. Sometimes electronic, sometimes paper.
One publisher puts a "bookplate" in that says "This electronic copy of <title> belongs to David Collier-Brown, davecb@spamcop.net", in the top half of a page that contains a simplified set of terms and conditions, which explicitly says "treat me like a hardcover book".
I could remove it easily enough, it's just epub, but I don't care to. I agree with the publisher, and I want borrowers to know who they borrowed the book from, so they'll tell me if they buy their own. I expect most of my friends could pirate the book as well, and that they don't care to.
The publishers know I can pirate the book, but that I bought it. They take a risk that I may lend a copy to someone who "won't give it back", in the sense that he will keep it and won't buy his own copy. That tends to make me reluctant to lend him either electronic or physical books, just like I would if he didn't return a hardcover he borrowed.
In short, they expect most people are honest, can pirate and will buy books they like. See any of my postings about O'Reilly's Using Samba for proof that people did exactly that.
--dave
Re:price and sharability (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the language you used are why the young people who were polled prefer print.
They can hand a printed book off to someone without the word "pirate" being potentially used.
Re:price (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:price (Score:5, Insightful)
They probably already know how to pirate.
I think you'd be surprised at how horrendously incompetent most people are. I'd say young people are nowhere near as 'tech savvy' as some people like to claim they are, to the point where they have difficulty doing much beyond accessing their Facebook pages and using a few specific programs.
Re:price (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's not only about price. It's about the fact that the book can be read anywhere, without needing a battery charge or anything. Even many kids think about that. It's also less stressful for the eyes than looking at a screen.
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citation ?
I want to see a real study about this supposed eye stress people keep mentioning.
Anecdote, data, and all that, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
citation ?
I want to see a real study about this supposed eye stress people keep mentioning.
A real study would be good. At the same time, I haven't run across anyone in my personal life who doesn't prefer reading a dead-tree book over an ebook. Ebooks are certainly more convenient in many ways, especially once you factor in portability. But many (most?) ebook readers these days that I see around me are backlit (as they tend to be tablets), which does lead to a certain amount of eyestrain and can cause circadian imbalance.
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Any citation for that?
I want to see a proper double blind study done of this.
I look at an LCD all day, then sometimes some more at home. I do not suffer from any eyestrain I can detect.
Re:Anecdote, data, and all that, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to see a proper double blind study done of this.
How do you do a double-blind study on screens?
"You will be looking at either a back-lit screen or a book--we won't tell you which until after the study--and then we will ask you questions and examine your eyes to determine the effects."
Re:Anecdote, data, and all that, but... (Score:5, Funny)
How do you do a double-blind study on screens?
Maybe he meant force people to use either one or the other and see who goes blind?
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I was more thinking tricks with lighting in the room to hide it as much as possible.
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"You will be looking at either a back-lit screen or a book--we won't tell you which until after the study--and then we will ask you questions and examine your eyes to determine the effects."
I take it you haven't actually seen a real e-book reader. They don't use back-lit screens [wikipedia.org], for all of the reasons given in this thread.
Re:Anecdote, data, and all that, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
You could (sort of) do it by masking the true test.
We're doing a study on eye strain as related to age. Please read these instructions (either screen based or paper instructions), and complete the attached (paper) quiz.
The participant believes the quiz is designed to evoke the eye strain, whereas it's just masking the true test - the instructions.
There are probably better ways to do this, it's the first idea I thought of....
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Re:Anecdote, data, and all that, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Any citation for that?
Nope; as noted, "I haven't run across anyone in my personal life...", so this would fall under the "anecdote" category. :)
I want to see a proper double blind study done of this.
I look at an LCD all day, then sometimes some more at home. I do not suffer from any eyestrain I can detect.
Similar to the anecdote/data duality is the fact that not everyone is affected by things the same way. You may be one of the lucky few or lucky many who aren't negatively impacted by looking at an LCD all day. I know that my nearsightedness is markedly worse at the end of any workweek where I've been staring at the monitor all the time, and that my eyesight is noticeably improved after spending several days not staring at something only a couple feet away. YMMV, and all that.
The impact of backlit screens on circadian rhythms has been studied, if memory serves. Some quick googling [google.com] pulls up a goodly number of hits, including a couple actual [nih.gov] studies [chronobiology.ch] just in the first page of hits. Changing from regular web-wide Google to Google Scholar produces more hits for studies [google.com].
And more specific to eye strain are these hits [google.com]. I haven't waded through, but the number of hits (524) and the titles of the first page of hits suggests that this is an area of study. This one in particular sounds like what you might be looking for: Comparison of eye fatigue among readings on conventional book and two typical electronic books equipped with electrophoretic display and LC display [ingentaconnect.com]. This link to the paper is paywalled, unfortunately, but you might be able to ferret out an open copy of it somewhere.
Cheers,
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which does lead to a certain amount of eyestrain and can cause circadian imbalance.
Any night-time illumination can potentially cause circadian imbalances. There's nothing special about back-lit LCD displays. Shift-work and outdoor light pollution have also been implicated in circadian disorders. Plenty of citations if you Google.
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No, it's not only about price. It's about the fact that the book can be read anywhere, without needing a battery charge or anything. Even many kids think about that. It's also less stressful for the eyes than looking at a screen.
I like reading regular books because I can arrange several of them on my desk or sit on the floor, arrange them around me and easy to flip back and forth inside any individual book or instantly context switch between books. With e-books flipping and switching from book to book is way more clumsy to do. However, e-books can be searched which is a huge bonus and I can even search for all books that contain a certain word of phrase using Spotlight on OS X/iOS. The biggest plus with e-books IMHO is portability.
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I like reading regular books because I can arrange several of them on my desk or sit on the floor, arrange them around me and easy to flip back and forth inside any individual book or instantly context switch between books. With e-books flipping and switching from book to book is way more clumsy to do.
You just need more e-book readers.
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Depends on what you are using to read on. If I use my phone or tablet I get eye strain after a long read. If I read on my kindle 2 I don't have any issues at all with eye strain. I can read it almost anywhere I read a regular book as well(took it in the bath one time felt nervous the whole time). Real issue with it is the battery, which lasts forever if I have wireless turned off.
The real big thing I dislike about the ebook is the pricing is crappy and I can't really share my books easily(US has a way to
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Ebook pricing has gradually been coming down though. I think the early market (people who could afford tablets and readers when they were new expensive toys) just wasn't very price sensitive.
Ultimately, I think we'll see eBooks settle down to the same price as "real" books, before shipping. The per-unit cost of printing a book and shipping it in bulk to a distributer is a trivial portion of the price of a book. Most of the cost is in fixed costs (not per-book) that are the same regardless of media: copy-
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I'd make arguments for it being more environmentally friendly. No materials to work, and nothing to ship.
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I have the opposite take - without the need for all that paper, all the land used for tree farms would likely be used for something far less environmentally friendly.
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Like feeding people?
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The world has a net surplus of food production as it is (and in America farming is very unfriendly to the nearby environment). Distribution is a different matter. Forests in America have been gradually reclaiming farmland for many decades now - you just don't need much land any more.
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Well, there are special cases for everything in life. If you want to grow mint it's all about funding land that won't be overrun by kudzu for as long as possible, which is pretty random. But there's no shortage of arable land, in general, nor shortage of food (i.e., calories and protein to keep us from starving).
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Tree farms are very environmentally friendly as farming goes - they don't involve intense fertilization or ever-higher-dose insecticides the way, say, corn does (or for that matter, a golf course). And since those trees spend a lot of time growing before the harvest, they do the nice things trees do for the atmosphere. I'm not so sure about the soil, as that's all about the tree-fungus symbiosis, and I'm, not sure haw fast that happens.
Or were you under the false impression that paper was made from old-gro
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I'd make arguments for it being more environmentally friendly. No materials to work, and nothing to ship.
All the devices and infrastructure necessary to deliver and read them have an environmental cost, e.g., batteries, rare earth elements, waste from devices tossed when broken / upgraded.
Re:price (Score:5, Insightful)
I found one breakdown of printed book cost analysis analysis [ireaderreview.com] that put printing and distribution at 20% of a book's cover price, and retailer's markup at 40%. A lot of that retailer's markup is inventory cost--what it costs the retailer to store and display copies of the book. Even though the actual *printing* cost is only 10% of the book's price, you then have to pay for dealing with the physical form and getting it to the customer, which is much tougher than getting a computer file to the customer. At a guess, I'd say that 30% to 40% of the cost of a physical book is tied to paying for its physical aspects. Not so trivial.
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Ah, but that's inventory management at brick-and-mortar stores, which Amazon doesn't deal with (i.e., that's the reason the time of brick-and-mortar stores has largely passed). The per-book cost of a pallet of 1000 books delivered to Amazon has a different breakdown than the retail side.
Re:price breakdown (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes: one of my customers is a major publisher, and the printing costs, warehousing and transport are indeed a huge part of the cost of a book, certainly on the order of 40%. Some of this can avoided by the publisher, by having a retailer warehouse the books, but the retailer still has to pay for the warehouse, and therefor adds that cost into the price.
There ain't no free lunch (;-))
--dave
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Still too much (Score:3)
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Well, you can make up whatever price you want to for the IRS, but my used book-club hardbacks are worth about 10 cents each. Other than books-by-the-yard, used bookstores have little interest. Have you tried actually selling these books, or are you going by made-up numbers (honest question)?
I don't know anyone who counts resale price of used books in their book buying decisions - it's mostly "bring in a box of old books for one new one, now what else do I buy while I'm here".
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Ultimately, I think we'll see eBooks settle down to the same price as "real" books, before shipping.
eBooks have settled down to that price, and often much cheaper, but it's still far too high.
First, with effectively zero cost for reproduction, every bit of the price should end up in the hands of people who did real work on the book (mostly the authors, with some for editors and middleman sales). If that happens, then a $4.00 price should be more than enough, as even best-selling authors don't get more than about $2/book sold. And yet, we still have many eBooks selling for $12. Sure, that's a deal compa
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I have a couple book reading apps on my phone. I can lug around many books all the time and read them whenever I have a spare minute. I'd much rather have an ebook than a printed one.
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most of my classes in early 80s did not require the textbook to be present, has something changed?
I sold the textbooks of subjects for which I did not care, and have a couple dozen of the useful ones in bookshelf three feet to my left
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Most of the pirating going on is due to "region-encoding" or attempts to censor works or not distribute them in certain countries.
If that were true, you wouldn't see high levels of downloading of US cable shows, movies, and music in the US. Really, MOST pirating/copyright infringement/illegal downloading/whatever term you want to use is driven by a desire to get the content without paying for it. Certainly, there are cases where people use illegal/infringing methods to get content because it's not otherwise offered in their region, but that's not the primary driver. http://www.fastcompany.com/3001351/us-tops-league-bittorrent-users [fastcompany.com]
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I know a few people who although they pay plenty of good money to the cable company still download tv shows that air on the services they pay for. Why do they do it? Out of convenience I imagine such as two tv shows that air at the same time or shows they missed.
Personally I use either the on demand feature or the networks website when I miss my show. {I've noticed recently that all my favorite shows are available at the networks website the day after they air this hasn't always been the case}
Re:Printed books (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't fit 500+ printed books in my pocket. For me, that's the big deal right there. I have limited physical storage space in my house, and I read about 2 books a week.
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Nevermind all that pollution and energy/resource consumption involved in producing and shipping those books...
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You mean the multipurpose device I have that does far more than just read books? I see nothing wrong with using an existing computing device to do my reading on, too.
Re:Printed books (Score:4, Insightful)
To give some arguments that I don't see:
Printed books don't break when shoved into luggage.
My 4 year old kindle (with keyboard) has been shoved in luggage countless times and hasn't broken. I replaced it with a paperwhite kindle a few months ago because I wanted a backlight, but I still use the old one from time to time. An eBook reader may be more fragile than a paper book, but it can withstand the rigors of daily life just fine.
The kindle is especially nice for reading at the beach or hot tub -- I just put it in a ziplock baggy to keep out the sand and water, and can read with ease. If I drop it in the water, it floats on the surface -- no need to wait days to dry it before continuing to read (if it's possible at all, and the pages aren't stuck together)
Printed books have infinite "battery life".
I'm still averaging a month of battery life on my kindle, and I can read while charging. It's not infinite, but it may as well be.
Printed books don't get stolen like electronic devices.
Someone broke into my car once and took my backpack with several books (and dirty gym clothes), they rifled through the glove compartment, but they didn't take the kindle that was tucked into a door side pocket. I'm not aware of any anti-theft devices built-in to books, so they can get stolen like everything else. Admittedly if I left the kindle on the seat next to a book, they'd likely have taken the kindle before the book.
I break a book, I just lost that particular book - well, no. I can still read it. I lose it, all I lost is one book - not an electronic device and all the other books on it.
I buy most of my books through sources other than Amazon, and I have a backup copy of all of them, if my kindle breaks or someone steals it, I don't lose any books, not even the one I was currently reading. And Amazon can have a replacement kindle at my door in 2 days.... or I can run the Kindle app on my phone and pick up right where I left off.
At least some poor slobs (printers, packagers, truckers, etc
Why do you think that you're not paying to support the entire print industry when you purchase a book? Where do you think the money comes from to pay them if it's not built-in to the price of a book?
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I replaced it with a paperwhite kindle a few months ago because I wanted a backlight
Joke's on you, you got a frontlight! :P
Personally I read my books on 4 different devices... a laptop, galaxy s2, nexus 7, and a kindle paperwhite. It's very rare I'm not within 10ft of one of these.
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I replaced it with a paperwhite kindle a few months ago because I wanted a backlight
Joke's on you, you got a frontlight! :P
Yeah, you've got me there, it is a frontlight, but it acts like a backlight in that I can read in bed without my clip-on booklight disturbing my partner.
Personally I read my books on 4 different devices... a laptop, galaxy s2, nexus 7, and a kindle paperwhite. It's very rare I'm not within 10ft of one of these.
Back when I was commuting by train/bus, I read a lot on my cellphone (which was convenient for one handed reading while standing), but now that I do most of my reading where I can sit down, I much prefer the kindle.
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Nor does my Kindle. It's travelled all over the world.
Printed books have infinite "battery life".
My 3 year old Kindle 3 still holds a month or more of charge.
Printed books don't get stolen like electronic devices.
Fair enough, but I doubt a Kindle has great resell value.
I break a book, I just lost that particular book - well, no. I can still read it. I lose it, all I lost is one book - not an electronic device and all the other books on it.
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The last time I traveled to India, I brought 4 kilos of textbooks with me. I would love to have had ebook versions and not have to have portaged those pulped trees across three continents, but part of the presentation was unveiling the stack of books to say "this is what we need to work on". Showing someone a menu of book covers that subtotal to 10MB doesn't quite deliver the same effect.
Oh, and printed books do tear, their spines break, and pages come loose fairly often out of a well-read reference book.
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Sure, battery life in a ebook reader is finite, but it last literally weeks. Unless you are shipwrecked in a deserted island, thats a non-issue for most of us.
Don't forget solar chargers for low-powered usb devices are in the ~$40 range, last I checked, in case you want to take your whole library on a cross-country camping trip or whatever. :)
Re:This is why Kindle Matchbook is a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish this was a general practice among book publishers. Buy the dead tree version, and on the inside is a card one can scratch off, scan a QR code, and download the eBook version. Best of both worlds -- a paper copy for the bookshelf, and a copy on the E-reader.
Of course, this means standardizing on a DRM process, rather than iBook/Kindle/Nook/Kobo/Google/etc. having their own systems... or even better, no DRM at all.
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It is also the age bracket that will inherit the world. If they don't like eBooks, eBooks will not make it