Eva
Member
*raises hand* Card-carrying member already.
-
Welcome
to BookAndReader! We LOVE books and hope you'll join us in sharing your favorites and experiences along with your love of reading with our community. Registering for our site is free and easy, just CLICK HERE!
Already a member and forgot your password? Click here.
The new economy of book publishing
- Thread starter SFG75
- Start date
Biblophilia is not a crime!
Libra
Active Member
I was pleasantly surprised and shocked when I last went to my local predominantly French bookstore and saw that they had brought all Penguin Classics in their own stand. There is a different "feeling" of sitting down with a book. I hope there are always people who prefer books to e-books or kindles etc.
Robert
Active Member
I like the idea of digital books. It's going to take some adjustment, but I don't see a problem. I'm going to purchase a new touring bike in the near future and I'll spend weeks at a time touring the country, and I'll bet Kindle will fit in the saddle bags much easier then a stack of books.
Proofreader
New Member
I remember a period when the in-thing was microfiche. We were all going to have microfiche readers and the book was going to become redundant. As one passionate devotee suggested, we could read in bed by projecting the pages onto the ceiling.
:whistling:
:whistling:
Robert
Active Member
That's funn! I don't remember seeing anything about replacing books with microfiche.
There's a world of difference between microfiche and something like Kindle.
Robert
Active Member
I suppose that's important to some people.
I'm happy if I'm comfortable when I'm reading so I can enjoy the author's voice.
steffee
Active Member
Well I'm all for increased choices.
As long as people still want real, paper books, then how can the ebook totally replace them? Surely CDs replaced LPs because they were better, and the demand for LPs diminished. The same with VHS. VHS sales dwindled before films became released on DVD only. And the DVD was out for ten years before the VHS became obsolete. This Blu-Ray thing has already been out for a couple of years.
If the new Kimble/whatever is good, better than real, paper books, then it will take off, and ultimately, paper book sales will decrease.
I can't see it, though. Technology is incredibly slow, in real terms. The Internet was invented in something like 1989. Schools installed it 10 years after that. Even now, many people don't use the internet regularly, and have no inclination to.
Young people don't read (as much). If electronic forms of books will encourage the young ones to read, then who are we to say that's a bad thing. The typical reader, though, isn't ready/doesn't want electronic reading devices, so the paper books have a while yet, I reckon.
As long as people still want real, paper books, then how can the ebook totally replace them? Surely CDs replaced LPs because they were better, and the demand for LPs diminished. The same with VHS. VHS sales dwindled before films became released on DVD only. And the DVD was out for ten years before the VHS became obsolete. This Blu-Ray thing has already been out for a couple of years.
If the new Kimble/whatever is good, better than real, paper books, then it will take off, and ultimately, paper book sales will decrease.
I can't see it, though. Technology is incredibly slow, in real terms. The Internet was invented in something like 1989. Schools installed it 10 years after that. Even now, many people don't use the internet regularly, and have no inclination to.
Young people don't read (as much). If electronic forms of books will encourage the young ones to read, then who are we to say that's a bad thing. The typical reader, though, isn't ready/doesn't want electronic reading devices, so the paper books have a while yet, I reckon.
Robert
Active Member
Technology is not slow. Technology enjoys an exponential growth rate. Compare how long it took to go from radio using tubes, to radio using transistiors, to radios using microchips. The more technology is developed, the faster things change. How about television sets? The technology in my fathers first color television set was good for about ten years. The technology in my HDTV was obsolete less then one year after I purchased it.
As for using technology, I would point out that each generation is more technologically savvy then the last. My own children were comfortable with pc technology the minute they were big enough to pull a chair up to the computer. The first computer I used was a mainframe in high school that used terminals that saved your programs to paper tape.
I think the e-books are the future if only to rescue trees from printers ink. There is no doubt that In the not to distant future, kids attending college will use this technolgy for text books.
There will always be a place for paper and ink just are there is a market today for records.
I really don't think technology will gets more people to read. Availability isn't a problem. I think the fact that it takes time to digest a book when everything else around us demands instant this or that. Reading takes time and patience and I think patience is of itself a lost art.
Jut my opinion.
beer good
Well-Known Member
Exactly. Do you want to replace your entire book collection every 5 or 10 years? (Of course, it would probably be cheap since the publishers would willingly be walking straight into the same downloading issues that the music and film industries have spent the last 10 years trying to get away from, but still.)
On the other hand, you need e-book readers which, as you say, will have to be replaced fairly often and which, unlike paper, are non-biodegradable and made from a non-renewable material.
Robert
Active Member
I would hope that we would be able to archive ebooks on a cd or dvd or something.
Why would they have to be replaced often? I would think the life of one of those things would exceed ten years. I have an electronic dictionary that I picked up in Orlando in the mid 90s, and it still works just fine.
Why would they have to be replaced often? I would think the life of one of those things would exceed ten years. I have an electronic dictionary that I picked up in Orlando in the mid 90s, and it still works just fine.
You should be checking anything you have backed up to CD/DVD every year to make sure the data is still readable and you should be making copies of your CD/DVD backups every 18-24 months. I have CDs I have saved data to that are 4 years old and are now unreadable.
beer good
Well-Known Member
Sure. You can keep a computer, a cell phone, or an MP3 player alive for ten years or more too (well, not all of them; some aren't meant to last that long). Very few people do, though, since it's much easier (and sexier) to update to a new model every two or three years. Like you said, technology enjoys an exponential growth rate and most people want if not the latest model, then at least one that's reasonably up to speed. Surely Amazon haven't planned on selling the exact same Kindle for the next 10 years?
And of course, your ability to store or transfer old e-books you bought ten years ago to your new Kindle Excelsior 7.0 depends both on the DRM and on whether your new reader can even read the old format. Ever try opening up an old MS Works document in the latest version of MS Word, or playing your old DOS games on a Vista machine? Backwards compatibility - especially if the market is flooded with different formats - is a pain in the ass, and why bother when you can just sell people the same books over again?
Robert
Active Member
Different formats is a concern, but like you said, data files are typically bakewards campatable. The devices that are currently on the market will read a number of different formats, so it may or may not be a problem. I believe Kindle uses it's own format, so that would might be an issue.
We'll just have to see how the market develops.
Robert
Active Member
One other thing to consider how book can accumulate. If you average only 80 books in a year then that's 1600 books over the next twenty years; assuming that you purchase all or most of your books. If you have a souse that reads and he or she don't always read the same books, then the books will accumulate even faster.
impalpable
New Member
Actually, LPs are making a serious come back. Music collectors still like to buy LPs and they are readily available if you know where to look. Putting a New Spin on Vinyl Records : NPR Most people are surprised when I tell them that I buy new vinyl at the store because they are sure it is obsolete, but that is simply not true! In the same way that I love to hear that little bit of crackle that you just don't get from a CD, I love to turn a page in a book and no one can make me trade in my books for some the simplicity of a device. If I'm carrying a large book like The Infinite Jest around in my bag, I want people to know! :lol:
Robert
Active Member
The claim is that music from LPs is warmer then the digitial recordings. It's a claim that I find difficult to dismiss.