Stick to paper October 5, 2009
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Miscellany , trackbackHere’s why I won’t be turning to e-books any time soon.
Right now, on Waterstones.co.uk, the e-book of Iain Banks’ Transition is £14.09. The hardback is a mere £13.99. And the paperback is only £9.09.
Prices for Iain Banks Transition at Waterstones
I love my books, but they’ve completely outgrown my capacity to shelve them. Particularly for textbooks, I’ll be happy to give EBooks a go when, and only when
- They are a lot cheaper than paper books - about 50-60% of the hardback price.
- I can make notes on them
- I can be absolutely sure that, once I’ve bought an ebook, noone would try to take it back, as happened recently with Amazon’s Kindle.
- There’s an easy way to back them up so I don’t lose the books if I lose the device my reader
- Publishers promise a free upgrade path for my books if they decide to stop supporting the device or format I’ve bought.
In my naive 20s, I paid to upgrade my LPs to CD. I’ve put up with all the clever little software licencing rorts over the years, but with books, that’s enough.
Comments»
I couldn’t agree with your argument more. Aside from that cosy feeling of paper, ebooks have plenty advantages on their side if only publishers, authors and the like would be willing to embrace them. They’re eminently more portable, far easier to search and skip through, easier to produce and distribute, and arguably better for the environment. (The latter depends on whether you view paperbooks as a viable carbon sink or not!)
But you’re absolutely right that there’s little of appeal to date. Even though the readers might be gradually improving, there are no guarantees with format switches, there are risks as regards backups, the titles aren’t competitively priced, and the whole advantage of an electronic book form hasn’t really been embraced, for example as you mentioned with the ability to make notes on your copies. The recent Amazon Kindle fiasco has only helped set back any realistic adoption of ebook alternatives a few more years.
Should these things change though, would you find yourself only tempted by ebooks over their paper equivalents, or would you continue to buy both?
[...] this post recently, I found myself asking why ebooks haven’t really taken off as a medium. Certainly [...]
If all those things were fixed, I’d certainly use them. As I said, particularly for textbooks, but probably for most things. I have a very small flat, and am faced with a major investment to get enough space to fit the books I have now. I also have about 1000 in storage back in NZ.