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04:49 AM
How about the FACT that while hundreds, maybe thousands of talented writters get the boot from these bastards because they lack the fame or money to publish a book?
What about all those craptastic books written by all kind of skanky people? all those dumb, overproduced children books supposedly written by celebrities?
The iPod didn't kill the music industry, overprice and mediocrity did, and so will in the publishing industry.
01:05 AM
12/10/09
One of my favorite things to do is setting into bed or the bath with a nice Novel, something I don't often have the time to do.
Reading from a book has always felt more personal and relaxing. No batteries needed.
12/10/09
And take Sony out of the equation, please - they (and their DRM schemes) are the Mr. Burns of the tech world at the moment.
Your argument about cost of books is not really valid, either. I can buy plenty of books from the price of "free" to $14.99. Most of the books I buy are in the $0 to $4.99 range. And how often do you "buy" your mp3s? The same sort of arrangement is available for books, too, if you know where to look.
People will buy ereaders in increasing quantities for the following reasons:
1) Decreasing cost
2) Increasing presence in "real life" - people will be more apt to buy one if they've actually seen one
3) Mp3s and streaming Netflix have begun to train us to be more interested in the content itself rather than the package it arrives in. Books are no different.
Finally, here's a graphical representation of someone who might hate ereaders:
[www.marriedtothesea.com]
12/10/09
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12/10/09
There are 10,080 minutes in a week.
The most aggressive "sleep vs wake" time schedule that I've ever run into is the "Uberman" polyphasic sleep schedule where you nap for 30 minutes every 3.5 hours. So if you used this sleep schedule, you lose 1,260 of those minutes to sleep leaving 8,820 minutes left.
If you listened to average length songs (average length of the 6 gigs of music on my iPod is just about 5 minutes per song), that means that you have time to listen to 1,764 songs a week, if you listen non-stop with the most abusive sleep schedule possible while remaining healthy and sane.
Conversely, when I was younger and not seduced by the power of video games, dvd's and sleep. I would work my way through a book of Tolkien, McCaffery, or Heinlein length in a day. In fact, I would regularly cycle through my whole collection in half a year.
Hyperbole has it's place in discussions, but this isn't one of them.
Realistically, eReaders will come into their own once we have
A.) A standardized format or a well enough established company doing the 'publishing' that people feel like paying money for the eBook version isn't making a gamble that the book or the company will disappear in five years.
B.) We have eReaders which can actually display the books as well as paper (i.e. color, glare, and etc.)
12/10/09
12/10/09
You vastly over state the amount of music a typical person would listen to in a week. In reality, if you are an average audiophile with normal listening habits, you probably listen to about 20-40 albums worth of music in a week.
Similarly, you under state the average bibliophile's reading habits. If you are a neaderthal and don't read books, the yes for fucks sake, an eReader isn't for you.
On the other hand, if you are the sort of person who reads a book a day, and it isn't that hard or uncommon to, the value statement in having a single tablet sized gadget with a large portion of your collection available vs having to pick one or two 'favored' books out of your collection to carry around is the same one that launched the iPod and other MP3 players.
You attempt to make the argument that where this is valuable with your 'iPod', it's somehow worthless with a 'Kindle'. And you pull numbers out of your ass to support it. It isn't pretentious to call you on it, in fact I'm simply pointing out your own pretentious behavior in respect to this.
12/10/09
8+ hours a day I used to listen to my iPod, 7 days a week. That's 56 hours a week, 3,360 minutes. Average song length is ~3 minutes. That's about 1000 songs a week.
It's still far easier to carry 1-2 books with you in a day than it is to carry ten CDs, CD player, and batteries. Put iPod in pocket, go. Through book in bag, go. Same ease of use.
12/10/09
I bet you are so much fun at parties.
12/10/09
12/10/09
At the rate I read, it costs me more to buy actual books than it does for me to acquire digital copies.
If you don't read a lot, the Kindle is not for you, and yeah, you ARE better off buying books, because it would be a waste of money for you to buy an ereader.
The dude who buys only vinyl from the local record store has no need for an iPod, either, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. No math or insults are required.
The basic point of my post was that it's kinda silly to say that you hate ereaders WHEN YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE NO USE FOR THEM.
As content becomes increasingly digitized and more widely available outside the traditional format, people will put it on devices that are tailored for their favorite kind of content.
The Kindle works for me because it puts a solid chunk of change back in my wallet every month, it gets the iPod out of my pocket because the Kindle can play music, and I can check my Gmail, my feeds, etc.
I love books because of the stories they tell, not because of the paper. I have an emotional attachment to the WORDS, not the wood fiber.
12/10/09
12/10/09
"Paperbacks" are often from between $2 and $5 cheaper.
No shipping costs, either.
12/10/09
The devices don't matter as much as the media. There's still a lot of evolution left to occur for the media, particularly DRM and sharing ability. I for one would like to see the next step be that paper books are sold with a digital copy for your device, just like Disney Blu-Rays. They should let us have both for one price. Then we can enjoy the convenience of e-books and still have a traditional paper copy too.
12/10/09
I share the same angry reluctrance to give up books that you do. They work perfectly, and they're still the best reading experience, bar none. You can have my books when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
That said, I love my, um, Kindle. Cough.
12/10/09
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12/10/09
Uh-huh - I guess that the NY Subway and the PATH don't count? I see at least a couple on each almost every day. NYers tend to have higher disposable income, so it isn't a representative national sample, true.
NYers also tend to have small apartments, with limited room to store dead tree books.
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12/10/09
I like to buy the latest potboiler in physical form, but I like to catch up on the classics (Jules Verne, etc) on my ebook because I can get them for free from Project Gutenberg.
Who wants to lug a hardback around when you can have the collected works of Arthur Conan Doyle in your messenger bag?
12/10/09
12/10/09
Shameful. And you're damned right this is ad hominem.
12/10/09
And true, I'm much more inclined to write 10-second replies to people who are actually courteous and civil rather than to someone who calls me a "troll." That's no way to get my attention.
12/10/09
And you don't need to reply to everyone. Pretty much every complaint was the same. One would have sufficed. I was just curious what you think. Would it have taken you that long to answer my question, or was your article just not well thought-out enough?
Sorry, but you're just skipping around anyone who disagrees with you, apparently.
Also, we all have jobs, some of us have jobs and school.
12/10/09
In short, I'm the person e-book reader makers are targeting.
Do I have one now? No. Because I'm waiting for the tech to improve and provide better resolution and refresh rates. I would most definitely buy one in a year's time. I'd still buy the odd physical book that I really, really love, but most of my purchases would be electronic. I can guarantee you that.
I'm sorry Kat, if you think reading e-books on a phone or a tablet is perfectly fine, you clearly haven't flipped enough e-pages. Go on, give that damned Sony reader or a kindle a go. Read Mario Puzo's Godfather halfway on it. Now read the rest on an LCD equipped device. Then and only then would you appreciate the marvel that is e-ink.
...and I'm not even talking about battery life here.
Lastly, I'm staying away from the Betamax/ miniDisc argument in this thread. I answered those questions elsewhere on this site the other day and I don't want to derail this thread with that can of worms.
12/10/09
12/10/09
Have hundreds on books on my iPhone between the Kindle app and Stanza. Have read LOTR and Weber's entire Harringtion series on it. In short, I read constantly.
The iPhone's screen is bright and sharp and quick and high-contrast. The Kindle's is dull, fuzzy, slow, and (at 75% gray text on a 20% gray background) the very definition of low contrast.
In fact, the contrast is so bad that I had to bump up the font size to a point where the iPhone showed more words-per-page than did the Kindle. Not to mention that "hey-let's-flip-the-whole-page-black-just-to-turn-a-page" flicker.
The only marvel behind eInk is that people put up with it.
12/10/09
If you read my post again, it says I'm going to wait till the tech improves. But as of now, e-ink s still way easier on the eyes under a variety of lighting conditions than any cellphone display out there. Not to mention how e-readers last for close to a week on one charge while the phone crashes and burns by the end of the day with some spirited reading.
03:33 AM
Except low light. I read in a lot of restaurants and so on where the backlit screen is the only thing allowing me to do so. And low-light is where the two Kindles I had (and returned) bit the dust big time.
12/10/09
12/10/09
Just a friendly reminder:
This is pretty clearly an opinion column and Kat is entitled to her opinion as you are entitled to yours. To those who countered without ad hominem attacks, thank you.
But don't insult Kat. She called it as she saw it without pretense. So lay off of the hate.
Please.
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12/10/09
That Apple's actively courting news and magazine publishers while Sony et al are pissing about with novels and textbooks, suggests I'm not alone in this.
12/10/09
12/10/09
Begging your pardon, but Betamax and VHS were contemporaries. Is Giz telling us that there was no demand for home taping? MiniDisc pioneered the idea of "ripping" CD music to a skip-resistent, more portable format, which is similarly significant today and was a big selling point at the time. Their failures have nothing to do with market demand for their functions.
I'll note, for pedantry's sake, that you say few people "Still use" either of those. That's rather an absurd observation for any format, successful or failed, which was launched in the 1980s. Nobody still uses tapes, either.
While the rest of your argument is interesting, this bit is way off.
12/10/09
Not quite true, magnetic tape is still prominent in computing. We use tapes at work for making daily backups. You're right in that they're not used for audio much any more though.
There's a definite difference anyway. As you pointed out the notion that there was no market in home recording is an absurd one. As for MiniDiscs it's hard to compare those to eReaders. MD was Sonys attempt to advance the music format with it's own (sort of like how DVDs advanced the VHS). Ereaders though are an attempt to substitute a physical format with a digital one. Music is going to be largely the same whether it's on CD or minidisc but there's a profound difference between an ink and paper book and a plastic and metal ereader.
12/10/09
12/10/09
Oh I agree the content is the most important. But the other things like the interaction, the durability, no need to charge it, the feel of the thing. Those things make a difference that's more significant than the more subtle differences between vinyl and modern music formats. It's more than sentimentality, there's comfort, ease of use, longevity factors involved. While the content is the most important it doesn't mean the delivery should be ignored.
12/10/09
12/10/09
If Gob Bluth read a book, it'd definitely be on a Kindle.