NEWS: Everything Lame is New Again: E-Books Edition

CULTURE: Everything Lame is New Again: E-Books Edition

I really hoped we were collectively over the whole "e-book" thing. They are clunky to hold and stressful to look at, the screen glare makes them far from ideal for any sunny outdoor reading, and, once you get away from electrical outlets, their supposed convenience is really called into question. But I guess a lot of people honestly dig the concept, because several companies are giving it another shot.

First up to the plate is Britain's Orion Books, who are tying their first ever e-book in to a meta-tastic bonanza.

See what they did there? It's an e-book... about people who use the INTERNET! That is one snappy idea, and sure to sell lots of e-books because maybe it will appeal to the cyberpunk crowd and they must be connected with every type of technology possible! Mark Stay, Orion's key account manager, had some things to say on the subject, including an interesting aside toward textbooks:

I'm extremely conflicted on the prospect of All E-Textbooks, All The Time. On paper, it seems like it should save money. In real life, judging by the "academic savings" prices for software these days, I'm sure textbook companies will find a way to make your semester bills render you to a state of perpetual ramen-eating no matter how your books materialize. Not to mention that you can't exactly sell an e-book back. Or highlight on an e-book and attach sticky notes. Or draw mustaches on Cicero and blacken Pliny's teeth if you are so inclined. Ah, but I digress.

Speaking of textbooks, second up to the e-book plate is textbook staple MacMillan, who will be expanding their e-book repertoire with forty mainstream titles. Have you always wanted to read the Princess Diaries series, but just couldn't bear to look at ink printed on paper? Now's your chance!

Everyone seems so hesitant in these interviews with the "soft launch" and the "I don't think e-books are going to take off until...," as though they secretly want e-books to be successful but also don't want to look like optimistic old fools if the whole investment tanks.

Ms. Lloyd's speech does, however, segue us nicely into our final at-bat: book titan Amazon itself is rumored to be launching a delightful e-book device, called the Kindle. One can only speculate on whether the name is meant to suggest that real books shall soon be used for kindling, or if I'm just reading too much into it.

Either way, all I know is that while new technology is inherently novel and exciting, nothing really compares to the feeling of turning a page, and the satisfaction as they peel away until you reach the last. When the electronic revolution blows over once again and your books all short out and file-corrupt, I'll just be over here with my big wonderful stacks of old-fashioned paper. Only marginally gloating.


_DictionaryGirl_ is starting to feel like Andy goddamned Rooney. Get off her lawn!

Call me a Luddite but I actually like having my clunky paper books, I love the smell of paper when starting a new book or rustling the pages through my fingers. I enjoy having shelf after shelf of books in my room I can browse past when I'm in the mood to read an old favorite.

Books are more than just text, books are physical, I can't imagine reading about the hobbits leaving the Shire for the first time without feeling the weight of my book and the texture of the pages.

E-books are not necessarily worse, but they could change culture in very negative ways indirectly.

THE GOOD IDEA The e-book concept might work once some sort of electronic ink device is cheap and durable:

As someone who sometimes needs to read myself to sleep, I'd welcome an e-reader with a backlit option so I could indulge my habit without bothering my bedmate.

THE BAD: E-book culture would inject the intrusive meddling of digital culture, where everything is not owned but licensed and tracked, into reading.

Printed material are self-contained, one-time purchase objects which can loaned and used even in highly damaged states. They can be operated by anyone with light and eyes.

E-books are subject to all kinds Digital Rights Management limitations, and require additional purchases of devices, power sources, paying for providers and loss of privacy.

You can spend $50 on a stack of used books which are slightly warped from rain damage, or you can pay $50 to replace the digital reader you dropped in the rain and discover you have to pay a fee to replace the 100 data files you lost.

Let's be honest, if print goes the way of vinyl, it's going to have a major impact on the way a majority of incomes experience knowledge in this country - and not necessarily for the better.

My university put its entire course catalog online. Which made it infinitely harder to register for classes. You can't dog-ear, highlight or easily compare classes online.

The e-book idea is idiotic. If I'm gonna be reading anything for more than 30 minutes, I'd much rather look at a piece of paper than what is essentially a giant light bulb.

I'm a big proponent of both paper and e-book formats...except I don't want to grab some bulky ebook reader when my Treo can do just as well. Look up a little reader called Mobipocket Reader it's multiple OS compatible for most mobiles and they are quietly building an impressive library. Baen Free Library is a cool stop for some free books if you like insta-formula Sci-fi (guilty)... they also sell advance copies that aren't fully proofed and final editions in advance of book releases. Tor also recently entered in an agreement with Baen to sell their books on the site as well. It's really practical for me since I have packing restrictions when I deploy. a 1gb card can hold a hell of a lot of books...

I remember when they first came out with those things:



I did not buy one. IIRC, they were something like $300 for the hardware, and the price of a hard copy book for the actual e-books. No thank you.

I used a Palm Pilot and, later, a Pocket PC, and the only e-books I read were public domain, such as Shakespeare and Lovecraft.

E-books, so long as you put them on a Palm or Pocket PC, are a good idea. You can fit tonnes of them on a memory card, and you won't have to worry about being stuck in Concourse G of ORD because your flight to DFW got cancelled, along with every other flight to DFW, and the only flight you could get was leaving the next day out of La Guardia. I had to actually buy a book (Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, which includes Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and Queen of the Damned), because I no longer had any of my nifty PDAs.

Paper books are good for when you just want to curl up on a sofa or chair and lose yourself in another world. E-books are good for occupying down time when you are on the go.

When it comes to textbooks. I share _DictionaryGirl_'s opinion. My college bookstore anally rapes the students. I don't see that changing if we went to e-Books. They would just gouge us for the hardware and then for the books, and we wouldn't even be able to get some of our money back by selling them at the end of the semester (although you could probably find someone who was willing to buy it off you if you could get around DRM, and who would buy from you if you charged $50 less than the bookstore). I am one of those students who notates his textbooks and uses sticky notes to remind me of reading assignments...

I will read paper books until I die, trees be damned.

books are great, tactile experiences, reading an e-book is just somehow different.
but sometimes i'd kill to have my latest read in a format spotlight could pick through for me, be it for referencing for work or quoting in journals. i'd love my books to come with an e-book download, 'cause, well, i can't stick a book in my mac and have itunes rip it now, can i?

I'd love one of the extraordinarily expensive electronic ink ebook readers, but I don't have much of a problem reading off the screen of my ancient palm pilot. I like being able to carry around a small library on a memory card little bigger than a postage stamp.
Still, if someone wants to buy me an iLiad, I'd be their best friend.
It would be pretty nice if buying a paper book got you a free ebook copy, or something like that. It's not like it would cost a publishing company much money in bandwidth to do that, and it would make me a happy person. I hate having to resort to error ridden illegally downloaded copies.

I really don't see much of a difference between reading off a screen, or reading a book. It might be a little harder on the eyes on something like a palm, or on a computer monitor, but I read a book for the words in it, not for a brick of paper. The paper just isn't a part of the "experience" to me. They do smell nice though.

And like Solaris was saying, they are best for reading in bed. Pretty much all booklights are crap, and everything but smaller paper backs are hard to hold comfortably in bed. I am a fan of the ebook.

I'm a bookworm. I love the concept of saving trees but my absolute favorite books I love to touch and flip the pages and even stick my nose in them and smell.

love your spoilers Muhahaha!!!!!

as a collector of book's I only go to e-book's for titles I cant find in print, the experience is definitly not the same.

as for saving trees ,the magority of paper made in wisconsin now is made from trees planted by the paper companies. Northern Wi had whole areas devoid of trees 100 years ago that are now largely forested, thanks to reforestation projects of the paper and lumber industries.

i've been using ebooks for years, and actually bought the doohickey pictured above, and i love it. carying around 220 books at a time rocks, and the device is as easy to read as a sheet of paper. seriously, try it out

There are pocket pc type things that really should make an elecrtonic device just for books a little pointless, am I right? I don't know, I've never owned either...

Yet you socialize on the internet.

I like the experience of clunky paper books, sure, but if every physical book also came in e-book form, either as part of your purchase or as an inexpensive download, or if one could "rip" books into electronic format like you can music, well... I'd be tempted. One of the best things about computers of today is being able to store massive quantities of entertainment on one very small piece of hardware. Adding books to the list of things I could do that with would be very nice.

The problem I see is that e-books as they work now rule out libraries and secondhand bookstores and I love both to death. (Well, okay, I've been in libraries that offered a very few e-books for circulation, not sure exactly how it worked. But it's not common, and I'm not sure I see it becoming common.).

On the other hand, it could be a *wonderful* way to bring out of print books back into circulation.

I just saw an e-book reader at the Sony store in my local mall... I don't get it.

this is cool why?

Why is an iPod cool? Why is a DVR cool? Why is any technology that makes things smaller, lighter, more easily accessed and more portable cool?

Damn, and my eyes hurt from reading REAL books. This shit would cause me to go blind by the time i'm 30.
...These poor companies are assuming people read. HA!

(please don't add a bunch of "hey i read... i read... i read" replies to this. I read too. But here at SG we tend to be smarter than the average bear, don't we.)

Don't be too sure about that.

apparenlty not.... i said "don't we"??? What the fuck was i smoking... that's what pregnancy and lack of sleep with do to ya....

I'd say the biggest benefit of having eTextBooks would be that you wouldn't have to lug around a gigantic 40lb bag around campus.

I bet you they come up with some kind of tablet eBook device for students at one point. Like a scheduel/planner-notepad-textbook/reference library all in one thing.

Actually, that sounds fuckin' rad.

A few months ago, I held a copy of Historia Romana in my hands that belonged to Queen Elizabeth. The first one, mind you. It was in excellent shape and had a number of her annotations and marginalia. The hypothetical future me holding QEII's ebook reader in my hypothetical hand does not really have same impact. Besides, paper as an archival medium has yet to be bested, and I'd really hate to not be able to examine archives in the future because nobody bothered with the stewardship of long-dead DRM formats.

Hell, ebooks have utterly failed in libraries, the last bastion of holding on to outdated, ridiculous technology.

Not to mention smoking while pregnant.