Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
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E-Book Readers

Tags: cyberspace theory, networking, reading, shopping
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  • 4 comments
dichroic

dichroic

December 14 2009, 06:10:41 UTC 11 years ago

There is one line in there that I find both very silly and very ubiquitous: "The bottom line is that there is no easy way to move from a physical book collection to a digital one, you are expected to purchase every book again."

Um, no. Why would I? If I have a physical book, then I have the book; I have no need to purchase it again. I have and love a Kindle, and as an expat who travels a *lot* and the majority of whose books have been in storage for three years now, I probably depend on my Kindle more than almost anyone you'll meet. And yet, the only cases in which I've bought a digital copy of a book I already owned, are the same sort of case in which you might buy a second physical copy. Example: I bought a second (physical) copy of Howl's Moving Castle and the third Chrestomanci collection because I'd made a bad choice about what to leave behind and I couldn't bear to be parted from it any longer; I'd have gotten those on Kindle if they'd been available. I bought e-copies of the Paksenarrion books and His Majesty's Dragon because I missed my copies and I saw those for free or cheap; I bought an e-copy of Jane Austen's works because my physical copy (also of all of her books together) is very large and I wanted a more portable one.

But I don't ever expect to live in a house not lined with books. The hundreds I already have would prevent that (about 1700 at last check) even if I didn't keep buying more - when they're not available in electronic format.
ysabetwordsmith

Well...

ysabetwordsmith

December 14 2009, 07:15:10 UTC 11 years ago

The main attraction for me to a midrange civilization like this is that I can line my house in cheap paperback books, which cannot be done in any other environment. However, not everyone has a big house in which to store a library's worth of books; for someone who desperately needs to save the space, transfer could be appealing.

I have to admit, when I looked at the storage capacity on one reader, I laughed. I think it was like 200 books. That's not a library. I probably have more cookbooks than that.
dichroic

Re: Well...

dichroic

December 14 2009, 08:03:13 UTC 11 years ago

That's the Kindle 1. But I have more than that already; it stores 200 on the device itself, then stores a thousand or so more on a 4GB SD card, which is replaceable. So its storage is effectively infinite. The K2 does not have a replaceable memory card, but can store 1200 or so natively. (One reason for not upgrading yet!)
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Well...

ysabetwordsmith

December 14 2009, 18:06:44 UTC 11 years ago

Last time we counted, there were about 10,000 books in this house. That was some years ago; there are probably several thousand more by now.

I love Amazon's idea of making it possible to buy books anywhere, anytime as long as there is a wireless connection. That would make my research much easier.

I do like the idea of being able to store some books compactly.

But I completely refuse to have a collection that someone else can rob at their pleasure; Amazon killed my interest with that stunt. I'm not impressed by the slow function rate, barely legible displays, and clunky handling of any ebook reader I've seen; and the battery life is laughably pathetic compared to the many hours I spend reading. Those are technical concerns that will probably be solved. I'd want a reader that could store some books for current use, with an offloadable library that could be kept on secure hard storage elsewhere to prevent data loss.

So far, paper books tremendously outperform ebooks for me personally. I'll keep an eye on ebook readers to see if they move closer to my usability range, though.