Scott Thorne, a retailer, comments on recent events

[Dice4Hire]

Browsing books is a great way to sell books, and bookstores have been using that fact for a long time. With pdfs, the back blurb is good, but books have that also. And the back blurb rarely sells anything to me.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I absolutely agree. I'm not talking about a paperless society.

Neither am I. There are just too many things that paper does well and cheaply that we can't quite replicate with electronic equivalents.

And as I've pointed out elsewhere, there are all kinds of economic and environmental factors linked to the infrastructure of electronic media that are still not where we need them to be for mass adoption. We need to be able to make plastics out of something other than petrochemicals, for instance, and to be more efficient about recycling and refining the metals and other elements used in the manufacture of electronic devices and their batteries.

 

[BryonD]

Browsing books is a great way to sell books, and bookstores have been using that fact for a long time. With pdfs, the back blurb is good, but books have that also. And the back blurb rarely sells anything to me.

I think Amazon would tell you that people will buy books after simply looking at the on-line write up. The brick and mortars where people browse actual books are in self preservation mode.

It is true that Amazon still sells more dead tree books. But the browsing aspect is irrelevant to format for any on-line retailer.

 

[BryonD]

Neither am I. There are just too many things that paper does well and cheaply that we can't quite replicate with electronic equivalents.

And as I've pointed out elsewhere, there are all kinds of economic and environmental factors linked to the infrastructure of electronic media that are still not where we need them to be for mass adoption. We need to be able to make plastics out of something other than petrochemicals, for instance, and to be more efficient about recycling and refining the metals and other elements used in the manufacture of electronic devices and their batteries.

I agree. To elaborate a bit on the above, my degrees are in chemical and environmental engineering. I know, and agree, with what you are saying.

But if we just focus on gaming, kindles and IPads already exist, and are doing quite well. Competition and technological progress will do nothing but improve them, while books just keep being books.

Right now kindles pretty much suck for most gaming books. IPads work well, but are a bit over the top for now. But you can see the future with no required significant innovations, just minor tweaks and getting over the hump of the cost curve.

Once gamers start being able to have entire collections of books in instantly searchable formats, all in one coat pocket, managing a shelf of pages of paper will seem as obsolete as having a wall dedicated to vinyl discs.

But yeah, for broader application there are huge issues still ahead.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Right now kindles pretty much suck for most gaming books. IPads work well, but are a bit over the top for now. But you can see the future with no required significant innovations, just minor tweaks and getting over the hump of the cost curve.

That's good to know...I've been thinking about some kind of e-reader or tablet.

 

[BryonD]

I have a kindle and I really like it for reading. And pdfs do work fine on it.

But game book formatting tends to be a hassle.

I do not have an IPad. But I can't get my mind around spending that cash for a game book storage device. Whenever I do eventually buy a tablet type device, I'm certain my game pdf collection will be there in short order.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Were I to buy a tablet, its ability to handle gaming stuff would be but one consideration...partly because I own no gaming pdf and have no expectations of buying any.

However, the ability to make a multimedia character sheet appeals to me...