E-Books vs Printed Materials

What once used to be a niche market for travelling businessmen and women has now evolved into an industry of its own as retailers and publishing companies turn to technology in an effort to boost falling revenues. The advent of e-readers/tablet PCs in conjunction with electronically available reading material has become increasingly popular amongst household consumers, as seen by the 176% growth in e-book sales. (More industry figures)

With eBook sales becoming a larger and larger portion of retailers' revenues with each year, companies such as Barnes & Noble have begun to focus their efforts more on digital sales (see: B&N launches e-reader app, B&N digital publishing)

Fakku, what's your opinion? Do you think that retail sales for printed materials will ever recover? Have any of you purchased e-books? Are you the kind of consumer who prefers minimizing costs to the experience of reading with an actual book in hand? What do you think of the printing industry's future?

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Me personally, I'll be sticking to good ol' hard copies. I tried electronic textbooks last semester and absolutely hated it. Even though I was able to pseudo-highlight and sticky-note sections with the reader, something was still missing that irritated me to end. The cost was significantly less, $45 vs $120, but I won't be taking that route again. I will admit that reading newspapers electronically was convenient though. Using the e-reader was fine when I was simply scanning or reading short material, but for things that are 100+ pages? I just can't see myself making the switch.

It depends on what kind of product I'd be reading the items on.

If it was an Ipad, no - I wouldn't enjoy it. The screen is too bright, while something like the nook does look realistic to an actual page.

I prefer electronic, and I do see the market in physical books coming to an end in the future. While that'll really hurt the publishing companies, it does shine a light on less tree cutting (Not that I'm really a tree hugger, but environmentalists will stop bitching about something at least)

What I hate about text books is how bulky they can be, and sometimes when reading I physically do think "Good god, I wish I could fucking Ctrl + F this shit."

E-Books will replace physical books, just like Mp3 is replacing CD's. Soon we won't have any blu-ray disks either. I'd be willing to put a dollar on they'll come out with a device that can connect to a wireless internet where you can download all your movies and store in your device then plugged into your television. An E-movie collection

I rather read my stuff on paper. To me it has an appeal that no electronic reader can provide. As for the printing industry, it might come to an end, but not in the near future. At least I hope so.

That being said, most of the things I read, I do from my computer, since I'm an avid reader, and cant really afford to buy expensive books every other day. Not that the ones in my pc are bought either xD

I prefer books. I'm a sucker for physically holding things (Same goes for doujins and the like as well.) And there's just something timeless about books. Written media has been around forever, and why change what works?

I love books. I'll never stop buying the real thing.
The feel, the smell, the weight.. oh and of course the content.
Plus, you can't get USED ebooks for cheaper. ;p

Also, real books can't be taken from you without your knowledge. And they work anywhere, without batteries or the internet. :)

I prefer books but I sure love that e-books exist. I have a good number of e-books I've torrented and reading on my computer screen doesn't especially bother me. I just like being able read a book wherever I take it. I have a desktop and even if I had a laptop I wouldn't really want to carry it around everywhere. I also just like the feel of the book in my hands. Still I imagine in the future printed books won't exist as it's kind of a waste of paper if we have good tablets.

I can't read things on the comp for too long cause sadly i get eye problems and things related to it. I dont like teh idea of these ebooks cause i like what i can hold but for somethign like college its a bit understandable though really fucking annoying plus when ppl get shit taken over they can be deleted, hacked, or just destroy shit.

I didn't know books were already being pirated, geez lol. If that's the case then I guess digital sales will only be enjoying profits for a limited time. Just out of curiosity, how many users do you usually see downloading/seeding?

Perhaps companies will return to actual books and cease digital sales if piracy became as big as a problem as it did for the entertainment industry. Unlike movies/music/games, scanning novels for the sake of piracy would be a miserable waste of time. Then again... It's hard for me to even imagine piracy + books coming together on that kind of scale. ._.

I like books much more. Not just for literature either. Even at work I prefer printed dictionaries to electronic ones. Somehow I feel much more comfortable with a real book. Much easier to have two or three places in the book open at the same time, too.

Despite the advantage of e-books I still i prefer good ole smelling books, probably because it's much easier for me to immerse in it.

While i prefer real books , what i dont like it the fact you need to hold them open, say you let go then you lose the page your on, open the book up too much you could rip it.

Prefer Printed Material because at the very least my eyes can stand seeing it in long time (well, longer than seeing e-books)

if i use e-books or everything along the lines .. my focus will got distracted easily because it's on my computer who have games that i can play and seeing monitor at long time really bad for eyes

diff opinion if we talk about money ,
buying books here is really expensive ..
better download free (meh, paying for net monthly is okay) than buying books with a ridiculous price on it

That is what memorizing the page is for





I love books. I only read e-books when I can't buy it, like the last volumes of Animorphs and The volumes of Haruhi Suzumiya na yuutsu, Fate/Zero and others.

Books strains your eyes less than e-books can, since i'm pretty sure books don't give out radiation.

Plus, you can carry it anywhere if you're really immersed in it. I find it hard to believe you'd bring your laptop during an excavation to the top of Mt.Everest, when you could bring a simple pocketbook.

I think most of you who are stating you prefer the real deal because you can't stand looking at a bright screen haven't seen any of the e-books out there right now. As I said, if you buy something like the Ipad, you're going to have that bright screen, but if you buy something like the Nook - it doesn't light up, you have you have it in a lit room and it literally does appear like a normal page from a book.

So you don't have that 'bright LCD screen that makes your eyes tired,' you have what appears to be just like a real page. I was pretty impressed with it.

I think most people once they do some research about some e-readers, they'll be surprised at how real they feel before just saying "I'll never give up on my books." That's fine, you'll always have your real books, but there may be a time that the books do start going away and seeing more e-books available for people.

Most people do it now anyways, the newspaper is a dieing industry too, how many people read a newspaper regularly before looking at an online article, or checking out a news channel website?

can be true , if i have money to buy that ....
as per addition, it always need money and money .. and some people doesn't have enough money to buy that .. example Me
I don't even have enough money to buy "LCD screen that makes your eyes tired"



talk about my parent ?
in my country, we still caring about newspaper industry because oldies here cannot use comp and doesn't even want to learn about it ..

For conclusion, your solution can only avail to rich pants (in my country)

Another thing about e-books (bright screen or not), is their ability to have text-to-speech programs work with them. For people who are blind or dyslexic, or even those who are illiterate, that's a blessing I can fully understand and endorse.

However, you can't give your old e-books to a friend, can't put them on a shelf, re-sell them, or doodle in the margins (yet). Plus, without concrete bookstores, you might never run into a book you might have otherwise had the chance to browse through (or look at while finding another book).

What about getting any book on any device? from the tiny bit of reaserch* i've done, it appears to me that many of the ebooks are trying to have exclusive deals with publishers. that means that if you want a book from a publisher who doesn't have a deal with the company that supports your device, you're shit out of luck.




*[size=10]seriously, i've barely looked into it.[/h]

I can't say I'm fond of E-Books. I hate trying to read something on the computer for long durations of time. It quickly becomes uncomfortable and starts to hurt my eyes and my head not long afterwards. I have a feeling I'd feel similarly with an electronic reader as well.

Printed material works just fine for me, plus I think I would take a greater pride in it. I actually have a physical manifestation of a book that I want to take care of to make sure it doesn't get damaged, dirty, etc... An E-reader would probably just get tossed around by me.

E-readers are no more technologically difficult than a MP3 player. You select a title you want to read, download it, and then... You read it. Like Ziggy has said, I'd encourage you all to at least try out an e-reader that's out as a demo in stores. You'd be surprised by the actual experience. You are right though, it is a steep cost.



I did see a little of that, and I agree with you that it is a nasty trick they're pulling, but most stores are providing a PDF version as well. So as long as your device has a PDF reader, you can side-step that problem. What I don't like is how e-readers aren't really a global device. I don't know much about how distribution rights work, but why can't people purchase titles for their readers when they're not in the US?

I personally have never used a NOOK, Kindle or any of the other e-readers on the market but, I feel that I would enjoy the ability to carry few dozen E-books with me rather than lugging around several books but, I'm still a sucker for the physical book in my hand. Considering the type of books I read, if a search function existed on the e-readers then it would make it easier on me trying to cite the information from the book rather than flipping every page and skimming it or the footnotes looking for whatever.

Pro's: Ability to search a book for information or quotes. Ability to carry several books in the space of one.

Cons: Doesn't have the same feeling as a physical book which only really matters to the purists.

Edit: Additional Con, E-books might become difficult to move around. There is a risk of each individual e-reader being a "closed source". Nook will only play books from Barnes and Noble while the kindle will only play books from amazon,etc