Ebooks on the way out?

[Umbran]

I realize that right now, as a "practical" matter, it doesn't matter, but what about in a year? Two years? Twenty years?

I used to think that. Now, I wonder. My wife and I moved into a house a few years ago. We consolidated our collections, have a room that's a library, and it doesn't nearly hold all the books...

And, we find that the vast majority of them just *sit* there. Have not moved since we put them on the shelf 5 years ago. We are most certainly not rereading most of them at any rate of speed. And I have to think - how many books that I read 10 or 20 years ago have I reread recently? A couple? Most of my reading is new things, not old tings I've already read. We have a whole room holding paper for us that we never use!

Am I really supposed to be so worried about whether I'll still have it 20 years from now, if that's 20 years on a shelf, doing nobody any good anyway?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My take on that is this: it is my personal library. Some of the books I re-read, some I don't. Some I use as reference resources for gaming. I also loan them out.

 

[Elf Witch]

I used to be anti e book until I actually started reading them. I read on two devices my phone and a tablet that cost 55 dollars. Now granted my tablet only has four hours of battery life but since I read at home on it it is no big deal. My roommate has a Nook and she gets days of battery life.

There are many reasons for my liking e books. My eye sight has had issues. I just had cataract surgery so hopefully I will see some improvement but I do have aging eyes and I need bright direct light to read books . I have found that it is easier to read ebooks. I can enlarge the font and read in the dark. Since I am now sharing a room with someone who is easily disturbed by light and I am a night owl this has been helpful.

I have had to downsize my living arrangements and that meant weeding my huge collection of books simply because of lack of space. Having stuff on ebooks lets me keep more books. I did keep in hardback books I could not live without in dead tree format.

I also suffered a major fracture to my back in 2010 and I have found holding heavy books to be impossible for any length of time. Having the Pathfinder core book on PDF helped a lot the hardback is very heavy. I like the Pazio offers both. I like a hard copy of gaming books but find PDFs more portable and helpful when DMing.

I have both the Kindle and Nook App on my telephone and tablet and I download a lot of free books and very cheap books. It is also a good way to get a book you will only read once. My roommate loves Regency romance novels and she used to buy them then when finished donate them to the library or toss them. Now she can buy them and they don't take up room in the house.

We back up all our copies on our own systems so we won't lose them if Amazon or Barnes and Noble try and take them. We manage our ebook in Calibre a wonderful program that for examples converts Kindle books to Epub so they can be read on the Nook.

Yes you can have your reader damaged but that can happen to books too. I had the horrible job of helping my friends clean up after hurricane Andrew they lost every book they owned and they had a lot of first autographed science fiction and fantasy novels.

I hope dead tree books don't go anywhere but I do think ebooks serve a purpose and will stay around.

 

[Nellisir]

Am I really supposed to be so worried about whether I'll still have it 20 years from now, if that's 20 years on a shelf, doing nobody any good anyway?

The part you quoted was about the legal interpretations of own vs lease in ebooks, not actual duration of ownership. It's unlikely that in 20 years you won't be able to "own" physical books. It's quite possible that in 20 years the legal rights around ebooks will change.

And maybe you're OK with paying to lease 95% of your library for a year or two; that still leaves a few electronic shelves that you've got to renew every two years.

I'm really tired, so maybe it's still not clear - I'm just saying in 20 years, I will still know where I stand legally with a physical book. That's not true of ebooks.

 

[Nellisir]

I'm deleting this post so I can stop getting sucked back into this conversations.

 

[Elf Witch]

"Act of God" is always a zero-sum argument.
"You could step on your Kindle"
"Your books could burn up in a fire."
"We could lose the knowledge of electricity and not charge our ereaders."
"A tyrannosaurus could eat you so you can't read your book in its stomach because its too dark."

I'm done with this thread. I think ebooks are fine, I prefer physical books, I own both. I have thousands of dollars of pdfs in my gaming library, and thousands of dollars of paper in my shelf library.

It seems you are taking this way to personal. My point is the same as others that either can be lost. Though I think for me losing hardback books would be harder than losing an ebook. I would be devastated if I lost my autograph books.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I used to think that. Now, I wonder. My wife and I moved into a house a few years ago. We consolidated our collections, have a room that's a library, and it doesn't nearly hold all the books...

And, we find that the vast majority of them just *sit* there. Have not moved since we put them on the shelf 5 years ago. We are most certainly not rereading most of them at any rate of speed. And I have to think - how many books that I read 10 or 20 years ago have I reread recently? A couple? Most of my reading is new things, not old tings I've already read. We have a whole room holding paper for us that we never use!

Am I really supposed to be so worried about whether I'll still have it 20 years from now, if that's 20 years on a shelf, doing nobody any good anyway?

That's pretty much the state I've reached in the last few years: owning a thing (book) has no/small value in itself for me anymore.

When we re-organized our house two years ago we went through our library and decided what to keep and what to give or even throw away. While the first transfers to the give-away-pile felt painfull, I quickly got used to it and reduced my personal library to some 10% of its former size.

The fun is not in having/owning a book but in reading it. If I have to re-buy it or rent it again if I want to read it once more in a few years to come: so be it.

Notabene: I don't have an e-book reader and I hate reading larger PDFs on the monitor. If I buy such a device in the future I won't get all panicky that my precious contents may be not usable when I want to use it again. That I won't go the Amazon way of remote controlling my device and my reading habit is another matter, though.

 

[Alzrius]

eBooks aren't on their way out. You know how I know?

"Print is dead." - Egon Spengler, 1984

 

[Umbran]

I'm just saying in 20 years, I will still know where I stand legally with a physical book. That's not true of ebooks.

I don't argue that. I argue that I am not sure I *care*.

As you yourself noted, Acts of God are a zero sum argument. Same goes for nebulous worries about the future. It's a boogeyman. Maybe something bad could happen in the future! Oh noes!

That's why I remarked that, from the horde of physical books I already own, I reread only a handful. If I had to re-purchase every one that I reread, it would not be a major financial burden. Thus, if I were to create a collection of ebooks, and lose access to them, would this really have an impact on me? Setting aside "the principle of the thing" would it really matter in my day-to-day life? I am not convinced it'd be a big deal.

Thus, what might happen in 20 years doesn't really influence my choice of format today. I choose based off what I want in my experience *now*. If I'm buying a gaming product, it is in physical form if reasonably possible. If I'm intending to read it on my commute, it is probably in ebook format. If I'm intending to read it at home, it could be either. And so on.

 

[nerfherder]

The fun is not in having/owning a book but in reading it. If I have to re-buy it or rent it again if I want to read it once more in a few years to come: so be it.

That's the conclusion I came to, after moving house twice recently.

I feel the urge to collect and horde, but I try to fight it so that I have room for the things that I will use.

One side-effect of owning an e-reader has been that I have visited some of the classics that I never got round to previously - HG Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc. I know that I could pick them up from the library, but I just never got round to it. With my Kindle it's just so easy to get hold of them for free.

Then I've gotten books in sales - like the first 6 Game of Thrones for 99p each - so I've not actually spent much money beyond the initial outlay for the reader.

I find the format more comfortable and convenient, and once I'm drawn into the book, I don't notice the physical format.