No real surprise. E-ink readers are still only available with black and white displays. Their screens are mostly shaped to fit a small paperback.
Physical books, in contrast, come in an infinite variety of shapes and sizes. Yes, tablets come in larger sizes and with high resolution colour screens, but they still aren't as comfortable to read as paper or even e-ink displays.
E-ink readers are a luxury, unfortunately. Where phone and tablets can be justified in most homes as being multipurpose, ereaders are fundamentally single-purpose. This is why their share of the market grows so slowly - it's limited to hardcore readers and the wealthy. We need eink to go beyond dedicated devices.
When discretionary spending is limited, multipurpose devices are easier to justify. This is why the number of readers on tablets and phones is growing at much faster pace, despite a poorer reading experience: people buy those devices for multiple purposes, including reading books.
Amazon should try giving away paperwhites for free.
"Amazon should try giving away paperwhites for free."
It would make sense in a lot of cases. Personally, I buy many times more books than I did before I got a Kindle but, I guess, they have calculated that this won't be the case for the majority?
The problem is that it's hard for them to compel people to keep buying content - unlike the way mobile operators give phones away in exchange for a binding, fixed term contract?
I guess so, but when the basic Kindle costs about the same as a full tank of gas, or just a little more than a newly released AAA video game, it's hard to say that it is really restricted to the wealthy.
The biggest appeal of the Kindle is that you can read it outside in the glare of the sun, and the battery lasts for months. I would agree, that for most people, the smartphone they have in their pocket already is good enough for reading ebooks.
> it's hard to say that it is really restricted to the wealthy.
Good point - eReaders aren't really all that expensive (I got my first one for 60€). What might be more important when considering the distribution of eReaders is the correlation wealthy <-> educated <-> reads a lot.
> for most people, the smartphone they have in their pocket already is good enough for reading ebooks
I can't imagine reading a full book on the tiny screen of a smartphone. Do people really do that? (As in, for serious reading.) And if so, how much?
I can't imagine reading anything technical or even most non-fiction on a phone, but for plain old entertainment-grade fiction it's doable. I read most of the Aubrey-Maturin series and The Expanse series on my phone last year.
Glad to hear it, even though I am not really surprised.
eBooks have several well-known advantages, but for all their worth and utility, there are some areas in which they just cannot match real books.
To name but one: multi-sensory input. Humans are designed to experience the world around them with as many senses as possible. Physical books can stimulate up to four of our five senses. Sight (obviously), hearing (the rustling of pages), touch (the feel of paper, the relative thickness of the part of the book you've already read vs. what is still unread) and (especially on older books) smell.
eBooks only really offer sight, and, to a very limited extent, touch. That this paucity of sensuous input does not satisfy us as much as a physical book should not come as a surprise.
Aside from sensory immersion etc, paper books are just easier to flip through, have higher resolution, and generally look nicer.
And there's the simple fact that sitting somewhere with a book makes you look pretty cool whereas sitting there with a Kindle makes you look like a dork.
Also, paper books can be shared, lent, given, and they exist as nice physical objects instead of as these weird ephemeral files that Amazon can probably delete at any time.
When I walk into a person's house and see a book shelf I look to see what titles are there. Or, I look to see who and what people are reading in a coffee shop. The reason is that I like to know what people are thinking. I don't get that from a Kindle.
That's true, ereaders don't broadcast your "intellectual worth" and interests as much as bookshelves do. It's also not a conversation starter ("a biography of John Major, really?").
I wonder if it's something that could be solved with some sort of integration with those "smart frames" that show your family pictures.
This said, I don't agree with ereaders making people "look like dorks" -- pretty much everyone in a coffee shop these days is glued to a screen; be it a laptop, phone, tablet or reader, the look is exactly the same (well, unless you're rocking some huge "portable 386" from 1995, in which case you look either nuts or "oh so retro").
The biggest problem I see with eBooks is that they are basically only useable with plain-text.
Once e-ink displays master color and formatting (probably pretty soon) I would not want to use a physical book anymore. Just a few benefits: adjust text size and zoom, flip pages easier, smaller and lighter, take all your books with you, read thousands of free books...
The killer feature for me is the built-in dictionary. If I've been using my kindle heavily for a while, when I switch back to a paper book, I find myself tapping on unknown words on the page, half expecting the definition to pop up...
Like I said, eBooks do have many advantages, and yes, I do love my own eReader. None of which means that I would want to miss out on my library of real books, though ;-)
A lot of the research papers linked in that sources of that article are comparing reading a book vs a computer screen, not specifically on a kindle like device. A kindle would given you more multi-sensory input just by the fact you're holding it like the book compared to a 80s computer monitors in the research papers.
(Found after a quick Google Scholar search, there's probably a lot more material out there.)
Although I still think eReaders are more limited than physical books as far as sensory input is concerned, it appears that the difference is small enough not to make a serious dent on learning.
My anecdata is that paper and eink are pretty similar, and definitely superior to screens and tablets. Then again, I grew up studying on paper; it might well be different for my kids.
It is nice to be able to buy used books. The problem with e-books is that they were designed to cut out those historical rights to lend and resell. Turns out: people don't like them as much that way. Oops.
My personal experience, from having been an e-book aficionado who eventually went back to almost entirely paper (cheap used hardcover when I can find it):
Ebook advantages:
- Cheap, no commitment, try before you buy
- Easy to transport, take 30+ books on vacation with no increase in weight
Dead-tree advantages:
- Higher retention of material (various cues for memory related to the physicality and layout of the book versus an indistinguisable smorgasbord of ebook pages)
- Greater tendency to actually read, since they sit around your house/living room taunting you, rather than being forgotten in some obscure folder of your device
Ebooks also have the killer feature that you can increase the font size. Maybe to people in their 20s and 30s that doesn't seem like a big deal, but trust me, as you get older that's a big deal.
True. I've had reading glasses for the past couple of years now and, aside from ingredients/cooking directions on food packets, I can manage just fine without them.
I'm with you on this. I need reading glasses for paper books but not for ebooks. Large-print paper editions are rarely available for the books I want to read, but every ebook is large-print and exactly the degree of largeness I want. With a paper book, larger print requires a larger book. With an ebook, a thousand large-print books fit in the space of a single, regular-print trade paperback.
That's not to say that I don't still love books on paper. I'm not going to drop my iPad Pro in the sand beside my beach chair to go play in the surf. Nobody will steal my paperback, the sand won't hurt it, I can see it clearly in bright sunlight, and I can run it however long I feel like reading it without ever thinking about the battery charge. I also like traveling with a lightweight paperback. For the cost of remembering my reading glasses, I can forget any worries about saving battery, toting a charger everywhere, finding places to plug in, theft, fragility, accidentally leaving it or the charger somewhere.... Nice.
I just wish more of the books I wanted to read were available as lightweight paperbacks with comfortable-sized print....
Your first dead tree advantage is fascinating. What might help - in part, definitely not totally - would be a compromise between the naff skeuomorphism of yesterday and the minimalist 'flat' design of today. You need a visual (obviously, not as good as visual and tactile) representation of your location within the book that doesn't get in your way: challenging.
Off topic: I understand your arguments, but every time I read something like "mostly cheap used hardcover", as an author myself I have to ask: You are aware that the creative behind the work you read does not get a dime from you?
I'll argue they do, although indirectly. Because the first sale, at whatever price it was, confers not only the right of the purchaser to read it, but also to resell it later (or lend it, or gift it).
Do you also think that Ford and GM should get more money when someone sells a used car, or that builders should get more money every time a house gets sold?
The difference is that with a house and a car, you pay for the physical object. With a book, you pay for the ideas contained therein - a subtle but (IMO) important difference.
Which isn't to say used-book sales should be illegal, but that if you can afford it, why not support the person behind the ideas you're profiting from?
"With a book, you pay for the ideas contained therein - a subtle but (IMO) important difference."
Not according to the law, you aren't.
Also, there are plenty of ideas involved in building cars and houses. They're not just random piles of wood, metal, and plastic, any more than a book is just ink smeared on paper.
I wondered at that statement too, but for a different reason. For me, a book is an investment for life, so I don't mind spending some money on it if it's worthing buying. (If I only want to read it once, I can usually get it through some library.) I would only consider second-hand books for something like a really expensive text book that I'm going to need repeatedly, but only for a limited period of time (e.g. for a thesis).
When I said "cheap," I meant in price. I'm averse to low-quality books, and would rather pay a few dollars more or hold out longer for a copy with clean pages and little wear. Especially highlighting is usually an immediate deal-breaker. Finding a fairly nice copy typically isn't a problem, though - low-price hardcover is often a more difficult request to meet.
I read a lot and don't have a ton of money. It's a tradeoff I'm willing to accept, and if I'm concerned about the author, I'd honestly rather donate to them directly than see it siphoned off by whatever deal they may have had with the publisher.
They do get a dime. When I buy a new hardcover book I remember that the book will have a resale value and account for that in what I am prepared to pay.
I still buy printed books because I refuse to pay for DRM enabled ebooks and I can't find a good source of DRM free books, other than project Gutemberg.
A printed book you can lend to others and will outlast any digital device or DRN platform.
Publishers of technical books usually publish DRM-free ebooks, like O'Reilly and Manning. And so for technical books I prefer them in eBook format, though for such books many people prefer them in print for other reasons.
Ebooks are great when you need to occasionally reference random parts or if you're performing a search for specific content.
But with physical books... It just feels better. I don't even know how to describe it. I think I just perform the action with different expectations.
On top of that, and this is probably a silly point, I love the sense of ownership you get when you hold the real book. It's hard for me to feel a strong sense of ownership over a PDF.
I don't know if this is a common sentiment or not, but I believe that upon purchasing a physical book you should be entitled to a digital copy as well.
I wonder how audiobooks stack up. I know that a couple friends of mine love listening to audiobooks, and I listen to around ~100 hours per month. Audiobooks are great when you have to commute, when you don't have anyone to share your meal with, or just when you're out for a run.
Something I've noticed is that I find it hard to consume certain kinds of books using specific mediums, depending on the scenario. For example, I would never be able to pick up a technical or serious topic with an audiobook, I basically only listen to scifi and fantasy. With technical books, if it's a topic where I'll be interacting heavily with the computer (e.g. by writing and trying lots of examples), it ends up feeling better to use a digital book. I think physical books are the best for when I'm reading about a topic that requires me to just sit and think about the specific topic.
Although, interestingly enough, my main method of consumption of random research papers is digital. I wonder if my retention and understanding would improve if I printed em out instead of reading off my laptop.
Luckily, I think all mediums can co-exists. I think they fill different niches.
While this indicates that there are lots of people who never read ebooks, it does not actually say whether more ebooks or print books are being sold and read. The Pew survey notes that the mean number of books read is 12, while the median is 4. This means that one-half of all readers surveyed read no more than 4 books a year, so the other half of all readers must average over 16 books a year. It's probably even more skewed than that, although numbers are hard to come by. This skewing of the book market probably accounts for the fact that ebooks are far greater than 28% of book sales, although accurate figures are hard to come by for several reasons (sales reports from industry groups don't include self-published authors, the fastest growing part of the business, for example). However, it looks like people who read fewer books are probably much less likely to switch to ebooks, possibly because the change costs time or money, possibly because people who read fewer books are probably on the whole less technologically adept than people who read more. Also, print books are still assigned from an early age in most schools, with ebooks being a secondary alternative in education, meaning that people still start with print books and that nearly everyone reads some print books unless they are very uneducated.
It's interesting to note that The Verge uses the word "prefer" in the title of their article but the underlying Pew Research report[1] does not have that word anywhere.
What Pew did was telephone some people asking them how often they read and also whether the format was ebook or paper. It seems logical to infer a "preference" from the answers to those questions. However, it's not that simple because a major reason people read "paper" is the higher cost of ebooks (which also includes the significant cost of a Kindle device.)
In other words, the economics of paper vs ebooks may be skewing why more people read hardcopy books instead of electronic ones. (E.g. If you telephone people asking them what car they drive, more will respond with Kia and Cheverolet but that does not mean people prefer them over Lexus and BMW.)
To extract a pure preference, it seems like you'd have to devise a marketing experiment which disguises the costs like this:
Choice A: $450 for 50 New York Times best sellers in paperback format.
Choice B: $450 for a Kindle preloaded with the same 50 ebooks.
Then you observe which package actually sells the most. We'd then see if more people value the paperback with the ability to resell, the tactile sensation, the simplicity of no batteries more than the e-reader with the minimal space & weight, the font size adjustability, the searchability, the ability to load more ebooks after the 50 preloaded ones, etc.
The above experiment may also have different outcomes depending on genre (fiction/novels, non-fiction/college textbooks) and age group (20-something, over-50, etc).
I will always prefer physical books. Way back in the 80s when I was in grade school, books were my only form of entertainment that didn't require me to leave my bedroom (extreme introvert speaking here).
Plus, there's the irresistible smell of the ink, glue, and bleached paper.
51 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 77.7 ms ] threadPhysical books, in contrast, come in an infinite variety of shapes and sizes. Yes, tablets come in larger sizes and with high resolution colour screens, but they still aren't as comfortable to read as paper or even e-ink displays.
Amazon should try giving away paperwhites for free.
It would make sense in a lot of cases. Personally, I buy many times more books than I did before I got a Kindle but, I guess, they have calculated that this won't be the case for the majority?
The problem is that it's hard for them to compel people to keep buying content - unlike the way mobile operators give phones away in exchange for a binding, fixed term contract?
The biggest appeal of the Kindle is that you can read it outside in the glare of the sun, and the battery lasts for months. I would agree, that for most people, the smartphone they have in their pocket already is good enough for reading ebooks.
Good point - eReaders aren't really all that expensive (I got my first one for 60€). What might be more important when considering the distribution of eReaders is the correlation wealthy <-> educated <-> reads a lot.
> for most people, the smartphone they have in their pocket already is good enough for reading ebooks
I can't imagine reading a full book on the tiny screen of a smartphone. Do people really do that? (As in, for serious reading.) And if so, how much?
eBooks have several well-known advantages, but for all their worth and utility, there are some areas in which they just cannot match real books.
To name but one: multi-sensory input. Humans are designed to experience the world around them with as many senses as possible. Physical books can stimulate up to four of our five senses. Sight (obviously), hearing (the rustling of pages), touch (the feel of paper, the relative thickness of the part of the book you've already read vs. what is still unread) and (especially on older books) smell.
eBooks only really offer sight, and, to a very limited extent, touch. That this paucity of sensuous input does not satisfy us as much as a physical book should not come as a surprise.
And there's the simple fact that sitting somewhere with a book makes you look pretty cool whereas sitting there with a Kindle makes you look like a dork.
Also, paper books can be shared, lent, given, and they exist as nice physical objects instead of as these weird ephemeral files that Amazon can probably delete at any time.
I wonder if it's something that could be solved with some sort of integration with those "smart frames" that show your family pictures.
This said, I don't agree with ereaders making people "look like dorks" -- pretty much everyone in a coffee shop these days is glued to a screen; be it a laptop, phone, tablet or reader, the look is exactly the same (well, unless you're rocking some huge "portable 386" from 1995, in which case you look either nuts or "oh so retro").
Once e-ink displays master color and formatting (probably pretty soon) I would not want to use a physical book anymore. Just a few benefits: adjust text size and zoom, flip pages easier, smaller and lighter, take all your books with you, read thousands of free books...
http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA289721760&si...
http://search.proquest.com/openview/f98bc7b7d8194ba66b948d94...
(Found after a quick Google Scholar search, there's probably a lot more material out there.)
Although I still think eReaders are more limited than physical books as far as sensory input is concerned, it appears that the difference is small enough not to make a serious dent on learning.
Ebook advantages:
- Cheap, no commitment, try before you buy
- Easy to transport, take 30+ books on vacation with no increase in weight
Dead-tree advantages:
- Higher retention of material (various cues for memory related to the physicality and layout of the book versus an indistinguisable smorgasbord of ebook pages)
- Greater tendency to actually read, since they sit around your house/living room taunting you, rather than being forgotten in some obscure folder of your device
That's not to say that I don't still love books on paper. I'm not going to drop my iPad Pro in the sand beside my beach chair to go play in the surf. Nobody will steal my paperback, the sand won't hurt it, I can see it clearly in bright sunlight, and I can run it however long I feel like reading it without ever thinking about the battery charge. I also like traveling with a lightweight paperback. For the cost of remembering my reading glasses, I can forget any worries about saving battery, toting a charger everywhere, finding places to plug in, theft, fragility, accidentally leaving it or the charger somewhere.... Nice.
I just wish more of the books I wanted to read were available as lightweight paperbacks with comfortable-sized print....
Which isn't to say used-book sales should be illegal, but that if you can afford it, why not support the person behind the ideas you're profiting from?
Not according to the law, you aren't.
Also, there are plenty of ideas involved in building cars and houses. They're not just random piles of wood, metal, and plastic, any more than a book is just ink smeared on paper.
A printed book you can lend to others and will outlast any digital device or DRN platform.
I was complaining about fiction.
Do a Google search for:
"Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited" site:amazon.com
(of course, add any additional keywords you want).
Ebooks are great when you need to occasionally reference random parts or if you're performing a search for specific content.
But with physical books... It just feels better. I don't even know how to describe it. I think I just perform the action with different expectations.
On top of that, and this is probably a silly point, I love the sense of ownership you get when you hold the real book. It's hard for me to feel a strong sense of ownership over a PDF.
I don't know if this is a common sentiment or not, but I believe that upon purchasing a physical book you should be entitled to a digital copy as well.
I wonder how audiobooks stack up. I know that a couple friends of mine love listening to audiobooks, and I listen to around ~100 hours per month. Audiobooks are great when you have to commute, when you don't have anyone to share your meal with, or just when you're out for a run.
Something I've noticed is that I find it hard to consume certain kinds of books using specific mediums, depending on the scenario. For example, I would never be able to pick up a technical or serious topic with an audiobook, I basically only listen to scifi and fantasy. With technical books, if it's a topic where I'll be interacting heavily with the computer (e.g. by writing and trying lots of examples), it ends up feeling better to use a digital book. I think physical books are the best for when I'm reading about a topic that requires me to just sit and think about the specific topic.
Although, interestingly enough, my main method of consumption of random research papers is digital. I wonder if my retention and understanding would improve if I printed em out instead of reading off my laptop.
Luckily, I think all mediums can co-exists. I think they fill different niches.
What Pew did was telephone some people asking them how often they read and also whether the format was ebook or paper. It seems logical to infer a "preference" from the answers to those questions. However, it's not that simple because a major reason people read "paper" is the higher cost of ebooks (which also includes the significant cost of a Kindle device.)
In other words, the economics of paper vs ebooks may be skewing why more people read hardcopy books instead of electronic ones. (E.g. If you telephone people asking them what car they drive, more will respond with Kia and Cheverolet but that does not mean people prefer them over Lexus and BMW.)
To extract a pure preference, it seems like you'd have to devise a marketing experiment which disguises the costs like this:
Choice A: $450 for 50 New York Times best sellers in paperback format.
Choice B: $450 for a Kindle preloaded with the same 50 ebooks.
Then you observe which package actually sells the most. We'd then see if more people value the paperback with the ability to resell, the tactile sensation, the simplicity of no batteries more than the e-reader with the minimal space & weight, the font size adjustability, the searchability, the ability to load more ebooks after the 50 preloaded ones, etc.
The above experiment may also have different outcomes depending on genre (fiction/novels, non-fiction/college textbooks) and age group (20-something, over-50, etc).
[1]Pew Research pdf downloadable here: http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016/#the...
(I was parked about a half mile away.)