eBooks and the future of publishing

[hskinn]

If you are an eBook author, you often find yourself promoting, or (depending on how you look at it) defending the medium just as much as you do your work itself. It gets old, honestly, and many people I know in the biz tend to go in one of these two directions

Comments

[rayla_]

I don't think ebooks will ever replace hard printed copies. There's nothing like picking up a book and leafing through the pages. I'm old fashioned: I like having a pencil and ruler and annotating my books in my hand. I like the smell and feel of a bound novel.

When I was an undergraduate, I'd cometimes sit for almost 7 hours at once reading a novel. I remember I had this fellow student who couldn't get a hard copy of an American text shipped to the UK in time, and had to read the whole thing on her PC. Her eyes looked like sore voids the next day in class!

[hskinn]

That's part of my point though - no one wants to read a whole book on a PC, anymore than they want to drag their whole hard drive along to listen to an mp3. A dedicated reader is what you want for an eBook title, and both print and eFormats have their place.

[rayla_]

Oh totally! I wasn't disagreeing if I came across that way, I was agreeing with you, and rambling...!

[uberreiniger]

I still maintain the arguments that books and cd's don't crash :) I've never bought music online in my life and don't have any plans to. I just like cd's, they're my preferred format. I don't feel like I really "own" a thing like that until it's a three dimensional object I can carry around

[hskinn]

I think you absolutely hit it on the head, Tyree. Reading for extended periods on a PC is a pain in ass, er, eyes. A good dedicated reader that people are mad for is a must. I'll give you an example, because for a long time, Mr K was one of those "but I love the feel of a book!" people.

Well, he and I took a vaca to the beach a year or so ago, and he brought a book, and I brought my Palm. He ran out of reading material. I took pity, and loaned him my Palm, which had some sci-fi he likes on it. He was hooked. He curled into bed beside me and read, just like he would any book, and when we got home, he bought himself a Tungsten. He uses the Palm for work things too, actually, so he got a double good deal out of it.

Speaking of Palms and desktops, my Tungsten has the exact same amount of memory that my first desktop PC held. O.o

Were I a gambling woman, I'd lay odds on your prediction of the desktops going bye-bye. LOL.

[uberreiniger]

The only thing stopping me from buying an e-reader immediately is that I'm saving to get a laptop first... and when I have that I can already guarantee reading e-books is going to be a lot more easy, frequent, and fun! Maybe it's not desktop computer technology that's in need of an overhaul so much as it is the office chairs in which we sit while using them. Seriously, does anybody like those things?

Were I a gambling woman, I'd lay odds on your prediction of the desktops going bye-bye. LOL.

We could win so much money on that bet you'd be able to get AA on the NYSE and bankroll a Carribean getaway for all the authors beside! Unfortunately, I don't think we'd have much luck finding someone willing to bet that much money *against* the prediction.

[mandlebars]

Amen.

If only I could finish my play for next years BBC submissions, and I still plan on writing something for Apples

[theguernica]

Agreed.

I prefer hard copy, because I can take it into places where electronic devices aren't allowed. Plus, my relatives get pissy if I have a music player/video device with me. So books help in that sense.

However, I can find nearly anything I want in eBooks and it saves a lot of time browsing the bookshelves at a store or asking the lady to find 'that book that's supposed to be under fiction but isn't'. Just download and go!

My college has a library database on the internet where I can view entire texts and it helps tremendously for my work/papers. It's much easier to go through the database than go to the library and run down a copy.

[erastes]

I'm an old fogey I guess but I'll never be converted to ebooks - I do buy them, but that's only because I want to review the few gay historicals out there. What I hate about them is that they (for dial up users) they take ages to download, in general you can't print them - and when I do work out a sneaky way of printing them they just disintergrate and make a bloody mess.

And they are ephemeral. I don't gravitate towards teh PC when I want something to read - I wander up and down in front of my bookshelves with a thoughtful finger.

I like to read in bed, I like to fall asleep with the book in my hands, not worry that I'll squash a delicate piece of equipment. I like to read in the bath and that would be right out.

I just can't get my head around ebooks, I've tried, but I'll have to remain a fogey.