Thoughts on e-books

[bendk]

What are your thoughts on e-books?


A few things I would like to see happen:

Individual stories by authors past and present being made available for about a 99 cents each, similar to sales in the music biz.( I can think of six Robert Aickman stories I would buy immediately). And any new Ligotti story or essay would meet a similar fate.

Artists providing their interpretations of books. I have many different illustrated editions of Lewis Carroll's Alice books, for example. Artists could provide free samples of their work to entice a sale, and their continued success would depend on them. I would love to see Richard Sala or Mike Mignola illustrate the play Punch and Judy.

I see e-books as a very positive thing for the most part. I plan on downsizing my library considerably. There will always be books that I will keep as collectibles, but the convenience, freeing up of space, and the positive environmental impact of e-books is undeniable.

[Nemonymous]

My take on ebooks radiating over the last year:
Future-Nostalgically
I have real-time reviewed a number of ebooks in the meantime downloaded to my iPad.
des

[qcrisp]

Quote Originally Posted by bendk

... the positive environmental impact of e-books is undeniable.

Actually, it seems this is still under debate, with manufacturers of print books being more transparent about their carbon footprints than manufacturers of e-readers.

There's a round-up of articles on the issue here:

http://www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp

If e-books utimately promote diversity, then I think I would overcome my dislike of them, but I rather fear that they are a cultural spearhead for this kind of attitude:

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/201...#comment-99983

I suppose we'll see, but I'm preparing myself for a very culturally dreary world in the decades to come. I'm only too willing to be wrong.

[DoktorH]

I'm not terribly inclined to get electronic editions of books I already own, but when it comes to a new purchase, I prefer electronic over paper since downloads are a lot more convenient than mail-order or going to the store.

E-readers can wind up as hard-to-recycle e-waste (dead gadgets), but I get around this by installing e-reader software on other devices I already own (computer, iphone). I did some research on this for the recycling committee at my office - in the US, Goodwill works with Dell Reconnect to recycle e-waste if you do have any old gadgets that need safe disposal.

[Siderealpress]

Hi all,

though I do not own any 'e-books', I do have a number of PDFs of books in the public domain and various internet articles I have downloaded so in effect, I do.

Isn't the question really 'would I buy an e-book?'

As something of a, and I use the 'c' word here...collector, I bring a whole set of other criteria into play, but at the end of the day it is the text that counts.

So, if I really loved an author I would try to buy the book itself, but if that book where simply too expensive an e-book at a few pounds would be great.

A perfect example is the artist Vernon Hill here:

http://siderealpressxtras.blogspot.c...-overview.html

Wonderful images online, but I would also like to read texts that go with them, though at £600+ a copy I wont be.

I could also be in the market for some more 'academic' titles as e-books (they seem to have a special pricing structure of their own) not least as some of these take up a lot of shelf space and that is also a citeria. I may be tempted by e-books of Bronte novels to make space for those small press editions sitting in a heap on the floor.

I can also see myself on a plane with an e-reader and be glad the bag is empty for potential paper purchases in foreign. It seems perverse taking books on their own little holiday and an e-reader is (I believe) a good, easy to use, self contained storage facility.

Slightly off topic, I notice that some small press publishers are putting up sample stories from their single author collections for free. This is great but they could probably charge some token amount for this. As a reader I wouldn't really bedgrudge the odd 50pence here and there.

REGARDS!

J

[Gray House]

The only e-book I ever bought was Thomas Wiloch's Stigmata Junction (available at Barnes and Noble). I had just bought a copy of Wiloch's scarce Paper Mask and I didn't feel I could justify spending for the also scarce print edition of Stigmata Junction as well when the e-book was available so inexpensively. I do often read stories that can be freely read online, especially if they aren't very long, but I am usually willing to spend more on a print book of an author I like. I don't have a lot of extra money at any time, so I make my book-buying choices carefully. Being able to sample an author's prose is important. I am very focused on prose style. I occasionally buy a book by an author I haven't read before without being able to sample the prose, but the book's description, information about the author, and/or recommendations need to be very compelling.

[klarkash]

I would maybe consider buying a hard-to-find book as an e-book, for example Kubin's The Other Side:

Amazon.com: Other Side (Dedalus European Classics) (9781873982693): Alfred Kubin, Mike Mitchell: Books

 

Amazon.com: Other Side (Dedalus European Classics) (9781873982693): Alfred Kubin, Mike Mitchell: Books

Speaking of which... anyone have an extra physical copy of this they'd be willing to part with? My strong preference is always for the true book.

[Gray House]

Quote Originally Posted by klarkash

I would maybe consider buying a hard-to-find book as an e-book, for example Kubin's The Other Side

That book I think I would buy as an e-book if I hadn't already read a copy from a library.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

“Ownership� and other e-book fallacies » MobyLives

[Kevin]

Great article. It seems that most e-book readers are laboring under the delusions associated with a mistaken concept of ownership. Some of the comments in this thread seem to show this as well.

More interesting is the idea that the concept of owning things in itself may be passé. That this could happen has literally never occurred to me, although I'm not a college-educated twenty-something.

My position is that I like the book itself, for reasons we all know about. Further, I've always thought that owning things, whether in greater or lesser quantity, was basic to human behavior.

It will be interesting to find out if this element of behavior can be minimized or eliminated. Is it truly a behavioral basic, or not? My own feeling is that ownership is something that people will never really get rid of, that it's something that will re-assert itself over time. The vast majority of people like possessions and judge themselves and others by them. Who owns what has been basic to human existence for millennia, but it's fascinating to see that some choose to overturn this paradigm.