the elibrary revisited

[jazzfish]

Given: Bookshelf space is a serious consideration for housing. We got unbelievably lucky with the place we're in right now but it's bloody expensive, and we may not be so fortunate in the next place.

Also, books are the great majority of the physical objects I own. If I'm looking to reduce the amount of Stuff in my life (and I usually am; the "do not have any attachments" pattern is locked in eternal conflict with the "might be useful someday" pattern), books are a place to start.

Hence: the possibility of going over to ebooks for the small portion of the library available in that format plus anything new that comes out.

The imminent release of the new iPad is doubtless a small factor in pondering this possibility.

Pros: Less space, obviously. Being able to buy books immediately as I want to read them may (may) curtail the need to Buy All The Books whether or not I have time to read them. (Case in point: acquired "Throne of the Crescent Moon" this weekend, but gord only knows when it'll slot into the stack.) Not as much having to haul a giant hardback around because it's what I'm in the middle of (e.g., Anathem). Ereading is likely to lend itself to reading more online magazines & contemporary short stories.

Cons: Love of the physical experience of reading a paper book. Fear of lost data. The visible library is a defining feature of Home. Another %&$ device that needs to be plugged in. Can't loan ebooks to people who don't have an ereader. Many older works are unavailable as ebooks, leading to frustration. Need to find an ereader acceptable to uilos as well as one for me, otherwise she'll just buy dead-tree copies of anything I pick up in ebook that she wants to read too.

Unknowns: The biggest factor is how well I'll like reading on an ereader / tablet / what have you. (Already known: how well I like reading on the Device, that being "not very," but that's a function of the tiny screen.) How much of a problem the confusion of "do i have that in ebook or dead-tree" will be. How much of a problem DRM will be, though I anticipate "not much."

Thoughts?

Comments

[notyourwendy]

I am quite afraid that the Christmas present my mother refused to ship to me is a Kindle.

[jazzfish]

Well, as long as it's not a Kindle Fire.

[notyourwendy]

Um, yeah, about that...

[rbandrews]

What's wrong with the Kindle Fire? (sincere question)

[jazzfish]

I can't speak for E but the only tablet-like device I've any interest in is an iPad. The Fire has more bells and whistles, and hence less battery life, than I want. I also believe that the 16x9 screen is the work of the devil.

For normal books I'd rather have the opportunity to try out a new e-ink device, see if the page-turn delay has improved enough. For comics I'd rather have an iPad. (I do believe that tablets are going to be the savior of comics as a medium, eventually, and I would dearly love to replace much of my three shelves of very heavy graphic novels with an iPad.)

[rbandrews]

The iPad is quite nice. I don't really know anything about the Fire other than that it's Android.

I've got a Nook Touch that I'll probably bring to Wiscon if you want to see it. The page turn delay is definitely noticeable but it's otherwise great. Small, battery lasts for weeks, it's not picky about putting books on it.

I love that I can carry one really light thing and have all of Sandman and Lucifer and The Maxx and whatever else right there. I'm kinda guilty about the fact that those are all pirated, although I do own them all on paper as well (Sandman as Absolute editions even). And the page turn delay matters a LOT to me for programming books, because I don't read them so much as flip around to the section that tells me how to use this class, or whatever. So for both those the iPad totally wins.

I've read two books on the Nook: The Colour of Magic, and the back half of REAMDE (yes, that counts as two complete books). It worked totally great. The fact that I don't use it much is less to do with any failings in the Nook and more to do with me not reading long-form fiction any more.

Heavy comics.... Eh. Yeah, they're heavy, but I dunno. I feel bad about this, but I derive enjoyment just from looking at the shelf (okay, shelves at this point) of comics and thinking "I own all those". I like reading them on the pad better (no worries about spilling something on them or breaking the spines or getting finger grease on glossy paper) but I still like buying them in paper. And while moving them sucks, I can just hire burly men with trucks.

[jazzfish]

Honestly the only reason I'm hesitating on the iPad is that it may be just too big to read comfortably with. So I should totally try one out at some point.

I do appreciate having the Wall O'Comics, in the same way I appreciate having the Wall O'Books. It's just... at some point I may have to make the choice between enjoying having the Wall O'Comics/Books and living someplace that fits all my other criteria (price, size, view, location, etc).

[rbandrews]

I really like the largeness. Anything smaller wouldn't be usable for comics; you'd have to scroll to see a full page. It's a mite heavy; there are definitely some positions that work and some that don't.

Yeah, I have kind of the same feeling about books sometimes. I have the "you own too many things" voice nagging me, my things inconvenience other people and waste money that I should save for the day everyone starts hating me again.

I like DVDs. I have a lot of DVDs, but they still fit in about four boxes and they're all pretty light.

[notyourwendy]

For me, it's that my parents got them for each other and if they got me one my dad's going to want to 'help' 'teach' me about it.

(edited for bad stray apostrophe)

[rbandrews]

Wow. That is a totally valid reason. :) Sorry, I was just curious, thought I had missed something.

[notyourwendy]

Yeah, it's a totally personal thing, which is why I haven't been weighing in on the platform discussions.

[rbandrews]

I haven't used boh platforms enough to have an opinion, really. I have a Nook Color and I didn't think it was as good as the iPad, but I didn't use it as much so maybe I missed something. I only got it to make apps for (which went the way my projects usually go).

Cassie's father asked everyone to get him Amazon gift cards for christmas so he could get a Kindle Fire. He seemed really excited about it. I don't know if he ever actually got one or how it is though.

[shanaqui]

I love my Kindle very much, but I don't have it primarily for the problem of space. I still love reading dead tree books and still buy dead tree books, so I can't say it's really helped me in that sense. It is great for travelling, though: in first year I used to travel back to my parents' house with a bag full of nine or ten books to tide me through a week's holiday. Now I just grab my Kindle: significantly less space taken up by that!

[jazzfish]

I keep thinking I ought to get such a thing for travelling... but I'm doing less travelling than I used to. :(

I'm kind of interested to see what I end up buying in ebook vs dead-tree, too. Particularly since my book-buying habits have plunged since moving and no longer having easy access to a) known awesome used-bookstores and b) the three warehouses of remainders at Green Valley Book Fair.

[rbandrews]

I've found the iPad to be absolutely wonderful for comics and programming books: comics are expensive (and I'm not being cheap; my comic budget is higher than I probably deserve) and if I want a programming book I want instant gratification.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

Reading on an LCD screen (like iPad) is no more pleasant than on a laptop, and just as difficult in bright light. Reading on a dedicated e-reader (like Kindle, Nook, etc.) is a pleasant and bright-light-tolerant experience, but needs a book light in the dark, just like paper.

DRM is crackable and has already been cracked, AFAIK, for all major formats. Lending is still an issue.

[jazzfish]

Yeah, I figure DRM is more of an inconvenience than an actual barrier.

I don't really object to reading for long periods of time on an LCD screen. (The no-bright-light thing might be a hassle.) And I'm not terribly thrilled by the e-ink flicker of Kindle/Nook/etc.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

What flicker is that? E-ink should be a fully stable image unless you're changing pages..

[jazzfish]

The page-turn delay, yeah.

[blaisepascal]

It's better than it used to be. It's faster than the time it takes to turn a physical page and my mind blanks out the inter-page time anyway.

[jazzfish]

Hm, okay. It was noticeable enough to be irritating with the first-generation Kindle, and I've not seen anything since then. Will take a look.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I figure it's no greater -- less, probably -- than flipping a physical page, and it is actual, physical particles migrating between charged plates, rather than LEDs changed electronic state... doesn't bother me, anyhow. :)

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

Honestly I didn't think reading an ipad screen would matter, but... it does. There's usually a moment or two needed to refocus when I'm done that I don't need for paper or nook/kindle. So for the moment I'm sticking with paper for pleasure reading or books I may want to go back and reread later.

[jazzfish]

Hmm. Maybe the retina display is an improvement? Eh. Will see eventually.

[merseine.livejournal.com]

I use "My Book Droid" as a way to track what I've got in what format. Easy to use - it scans the ISBN and does a remote look up for you. If you get a device that is at all Droid friendly, I'd suggest that program as one of the top "must haves" of your machine.

I'm not an iPerson, so I don't know what is analogous to that system.

In eReader stuff, I've got the Nook, the Kindle, Google Reader, an Office-type program (for .doc reading) and a PDF reader on my Android phone, but my go-to reading app is FBReader - Free Book Reader. It reads epub documents, which usually are DRM free, and I find that I can get most of what I want to read in that format. Except of course of things that I buy on Amazon or B&N...sigh. I especially like that I can shop on Baen.com for books - both from their free library and from their normal shop - and download in epub with no problem.

As it is, I read on my phone ALL the time. I find that I prefer it for most things. It's always with me and because it's backlit I can read at night (insomnia is sometimes an issue) and not bother my husband while he's sleeping.

My suggestion - find people you know who already own various readers in various forms and try them out for an hour or so. See what you like and don't like about 'em.

[jazzfish]

In practice remembering whether I've got something in hardback/trade or mass-market hasn't been an issue, so I figure it won't be for dead-tree vs ebook either.

I've read a couple of novels on the Device. It was ... a not overly pleasant experience. Part of it was that I thought the novels weren't so great, but also the tiny amount of text per screen just made it difficult to keep focused on the book.

Yeah, borrowing a reader (or two) to try out is probably best.

[candle.livejournal.com]

I'm doing the same thing, though I've started down the eBook path. A few test runs that showed that it's acceptable for most books for me. I'm at least vaguely contemplating moving to the West coast and the biggest pain will be dealing with the library I've accumulated. It still makes me twitchy and for anything like a technical manual that I need to flip back and forth searching for stuff, dead trees still win.

If you need to transcode formats, Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) will be your friend. It's user interface is pretty bad from what I hear.

If you're comfortable dealing with the sometimes evil corporation that is Amazon, they make eBooks pretty painless. Buy it and they'll make it appear on any number of devices. They're happy to sell you a Kindle, but they'll also support iWhatever and Android as well and you can have one "book" on several devices.

eInk (what the non-Fire versions of the Kindle use) is much nicer to read when you have light and can be read outside in sunlight. I've found that a 7" backlit tablet is really nice for reading in bed while cuddling - I can hold and turn "pages" with one hand while snuggling with the other.

[jazzfish]

I'm definitely not looking to move my whole library over. For one thing, a lot of it isn't and won't be available in ebook format.

I didn't realise Calibre had a bad interface. Although now that I think of it I've heard that it's clunky and difficult, so, yeah.

Amazon does seem to have it together better than most with their ebook software. I haven't quite decided what path to take there; they're annoying me enough that I don't want to get locked into their ecosystem, but they're also more convenient. Eh. Will work that out eventually.

[blairmacg.livejournal.com]

I love my Kindle. I am buying and reading more fiction now than I have in years. (My nearest bookstore is almost an hour from home.) It's convenient, makes carrying books around easy, and lets me read anywhere I can read a paperback. The fact it isn't LCD is a huge plus for me.

Most non-fiction, though, I'll still buy in paper. When putting a project together, I like having four or five books open on the table at one time. Can't do that with an ereader.

I let go of thousands of books some years ago, when life circumstances required I sell/donate them. After the initial pain of loss, I found I didn't miss them nearly as much as I thought I would.

I don't at all mind buying from Amazon. Sure, they tick me off now and then, but so does my local grocery store, my credit card company, my computer repair shop, and my cable TV provider. ;-) If I ever decide to abandon Amazon, I'll at least have an easy-to-organize list of ebooks--on my Kindle--that I may want to purchase in paper, so I don't see myself as being locked in to Amazon so much as making a changeable decision right now.

[jazzfish]

You don't mind the page-turning flicker/delay? That (and the contrast not as high as I'd like) are the things that have made me sceptical of trying one.

It's entirely possible that if and when I have to leave two-thirds of my books, after six months I won't miss them so much. I mean, we half decimated the library (literally; about five percent went away) before the move, and I didn't miss those at all.

Amazon... is turning into the Wal-mart of the online world, and that aggravates me. Also there have been reports of people having their purchased ebooks revoked (& refunded) when Amazon decides/realises it doesn't have the rights to sell them. Which makes me wonder whether the next salvo in the Amazon wars is not only yanking all of a publisher's books from sale, but also from having ever been for sale. Paranoia, I expect, but the technology is clearly there.

[blairmacg.livejournal.com]

The delay was a little irksome for the first day or so, but now I don't think of it any more than I would think of having to turn the page. Now what bugs me is when I accidentally tuck it in my purse, thinking I've turned it off, and multiple pages get "turned." On the other hand, I guess it's no different than my bookmark falling out. ;-)

[jazzfish]

*laugh* This is true.

Do you happen to know how old your Kindle is? As in, what generation?

[blairmacg.livejournal.com]

Device Info says it's version 5.0.1.

(I realized, too, that my impressions may be more rosy than others because I really, really wanted an ereader. I wanted the convenience, and I wanted to read a bunch of self-published material. And when we really want something, we tend accept what is otherwise irksome.)

[jazzfish]

Ah, okay. Fairly recent, then. Cool.

(That makes a lot of sense. I'm... not sure how much I really really want one.)