How do you like them books?
September 15, 2021 9:26 PM Subscribe

eBooks vs Printed Books: Which are better?

The history of the book starts with the development of writing, paper and printing.

Now there's an ongoing debate over which is better - e-books or paper books.

1. Experience:

Ebooks Are an Abomination
How Reading ebooks Changes Our Perception (and Reviews)
Paper Books vs eBooks Statistics, Trends and Facts [2021]
This survey shows that people prefer printed books – even in the digital age

2. Cost:

8 Reasons Physical Books Are Way Better Than eBooks
E-Books vs. Print Books: What's the Difference?

3. ????

4. Profit:
Anyone buy both digital and paper copies of the same book?

posted by bendy (163 comments total) 34 users marked this as a favorite

That writoscope link is setting off alarms on my iPad.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:30 PM on September 15, 2021 [8 favorites]

I just want to say that I cannot imagine reading House Of Leaves in an electronic version. I don't read e-books at all, and while I have been a voracious book reader in the past I have not been for a while now for various reasons none of which have to do with my not loving reading.

But House Of Leaves. That is, to me, a print object, pure and simple.

I've never used to many bookmarks in a single book before.
posted by hippybear at 9:55 PM on September 15, 2021 [7 favorites]

That writoscope link is setting off alarms on my iPad.

Yeah... the link says https but it still redirects to an http. I'll message a mod and ask them to add a warning.

Meanwhile I'm looking for a better link.
posted by bendy at 9:59 PM on September 15, 2021

Main link will be replaced ASAP.
posted by bendy at 10:07 PM on September 15, 2021

As a sort-of industry person, we thought the rise of the popularity in e-books would continue more or less exponentially until it crushed paper entirely, and then it suddenly just levelled off.

Anecdotally, most people i know have gone through a burst of ebook use and then more or less reverted to paper, while ironically i find i use e more. But then I get sad when i love a book and want to lend someone a copy.

Off to read through the links now. Great post.
posted by ominous_paws at 10:13 PM on September 15, 2021 [6 favorites]

Unrepentant ebook reader (originally Kindle, now Kobo) who as near as I can tell has never experienced any of these purported cognitive lessenings as opposed to reading paper books, but does experience the cognitive and emotional benefits of simply being able to read more books than I could before. Postscript: it bugs me that so much discussion of this seemingly conflates studies or observations on reading on a computer, a tablet, and an ereader as if the only relevancy is “the text is electronic” as opposed to being on paper. One of the links I followed from one of the links above actually said that it’s a problem that on an ereader you can pause to look up the definition of a word right on the device, because I guess all those people who keep dictionaries around when they read aren’t also getting “distracted”?
posted by bixfrankonis at 10:20 PM on September 15, 2021 [42 favorites]

So here's the thing about ebooks. I like physical books too, but as my eyesight has deteriorated, the only books I can really read comfortably for long periods are large print. That's fine, but large print books are not always easy to come by. But on my ereader, I can change the text to be any size I want. I find I read a lot more books on my ereader now, because I can turn any book into large print, and my eyes don't get nearly as fatigued.

When my dad had an accident and injured his hands, for a long time he couldn't hold a paper book and turn the pages. However, I put a bunch of ebooks on an ipad for him, and he was able to "turn the pages" of the ebooks by just tapping on the right or left side of the screen. Prior to that, my mom or I would have to read out loud to him sitting by his hospital bed. He liked that too, but at least with the ipad and ebooks, he could have some independence and read by himself when we were not there.

I understand why people want to defend paper books, but before they start slamming ebooks, I would also like them to stop and think about what they mean in terms of accessibility. Some of this scoffing at ebooks strikes me as ableist. For my dad and me, ebooks mean we can still enjoy reading even though parts of our bodies are not working they way they used to. I mean, don't use ebooks if you don't like them, and we can certainly talk about predatory pricing for libraries--that bothers me too, and there was a really good post about that the other day--but understand that for some people they make it possible to read comfortably. Or at all.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:22 PM on September 15, 2021 [106 favorites]

Whatever gets people reading. I like the UI of regular books, myself. Others may like ebooks. Whatever it takes to keep literacy going.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:28 PM on September 15, 2021 [20 favorites]

From the 8 Reasons Physical Books Are Way Better Than eBooks by Megan Holstein:

Also, the people you find in bookstores are lovely. They are the kind of people …

Pfffft! There are lots of different people in bookstores! You can’t just reduce individuals to a short description, Holstein.

… who would rather talk about the Roman third century crisis than talk about the latest fashions.

Yes. Got me in one there, Holstein.
posted by Kattullus at 10:35 PM on September 15, 2021 [13 favorites]

This isn't something that should be even debated. What's the right way to read a book? However the damn hell you want to. Someone telling you you're reading wrong is peak internet.

I personally didn't even try an ebook for ages, but switched basically 100% some years ago. Exceptions for books with beautiful art and design that is integral to the content; but mostly that's not what I read--it's about the text on the page.

I was going to make some points specifically in response to the "8 reasons . . " article as my experience doesn't match. But, like I said, this isn't a debate. It's a preference.

FWIW my personal reasons: Like hurdy gurdy girl, I get to keep reading despite poor eyesight. I like being able to take a library with me when I travel, I like not having to store physical books in my postage stamp of a house, I like being able to binge read if I finish a book at 8 PM and want to start another one that night, I like looking up words with one click, I like easy highlighting and retrieving of highlights.
posted by mark k at 10:38 PM on September 15, 2021 [51 favorites]

The Wayback Machine has a copy of the writoscope article, and it looks like the https cert expired.

While I'm at it, here's the Wayback copy for The Atlantic's Ebooks Are an Abomination article. No captcha.
posted by Pronoiac at 10:43 PM on September 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

I wonder whether things would have been different if the industry had celebrated e-ink with appropriate enthusiasm. "Let's make an e-reader that's 90% less pleasant to read, has 5% of the battery life, is 20% cheaper, and can also be a really shitty web browser" isn't the way to compete with paper books.

(I'm also not entirely convinced hand annotation is actually a real thing people do. It's something I see in films from the '30s but have never encountered in real life. Like those mail-order footprint cutouts you can place on the floor in order to learn to dance.)
posted by eotvos at 10:44 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

Speaking of annotation, I was initially repulsed by but now sort of enjoy how the kindle system shows you what passages are being frequently highlighted by other users, so the most honkingly obvious paragraphs of fridge magnet pablum are always underlined. Like Dark Souls invasions but for books.
posted by ominous_paws at 10:54 PM on September 15, 2021 [13 favorites]

Separately, books vs ebooks:
Positives of ebooks:
I've mostly been happier with ebooks lately. A friend's written his own epub ebooks, and I've generated some myself.
Proofreading and annotation are much nicer with ebooks - highlighting and adding notes, quick turnaround and quick revisions.
(I use an iPad instead of a Kindle, and I stopped reading one of the anti-ebook articles when I figured the author just had a crappy reader.)
It was lovely to checkout ebooks from the library, when the doors were closed due to COVID. Even before that, though, I would get new books from bed late at night, after the library branches were all closed.

(In books, my annotations were usually done in notebooks or on wikis, though.)

As negatives:
The electronic copy of XX by Rian Hughes, a book with interesting graphic imagery, like fliers, that I borrowed, has very tiny versions of some of those. Boo.
Ebooks won't stick around for posterity nearly as easily.
posted by Pronoiac at 10:57 PM on September 15, 2021 [4 favorites]

One thing that people don’t appreciate about physical books is that the paper codex is an incredibly highly developed technology. Our modern book is the product of two thousand years of innovations and refinements.

I read ebooks as text-files in the 90s, and now I have an iPad mini with a dedicated ebook app that has become my go-to for certain kinds of reading, especially academic essays where being able to look things up quickly is a boon and not a distraction.

Ebooks are about fifty years old, they’ve got a lot of catching up to do. But the upside of that is that e-books are improving year-by-year.
posted by Kattullus at 10:58 PM on September 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

I feel a bit dumb, reading an article I posted a working link for, and realizing it covered some of the points I made in another comment. *shrug*
posted by Pronoiac at 11:03 PM on September 15, 2021

First link replaced at OP's request.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 11:06 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

While I'm at it, here's the Wayback copy for The Atlantic's Ebooks Are an Abomination article. No captcha

The link I posted is from archive.today my new favorite site - no paywall, no captcha.
posted by bendy at 11:09 PM on September 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

I prefer paper books, but my partner and I each have a kobo and that has, more than once, meant the difference between checking a bag and just having carry-on, so for travel ebooks absolutely win.

Remember travel? I remember travel...
posted by pompomtom at 11:10 PM on September 15, 2021 [10 favorites]

I think the either/or framing is silly. Actually several of those links highlight the fact that paper and e-books both have advantages and disadvantages. I have been using a Kindle (now a Kobo, which is slightly better) for years and it's my favorite gadget, ever. If my Kobo breaks today, I'm going out tomorrow to get another one.

Off the top of my head e-readers have four advantages: one, storage. I have about 50 or so books on my reader that I rotate in and out. Fifty books! I have Ulysses, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, the Bible, and the New Penguin History of the World. And that's just four of the fifty! So there is no contest when it comes to portability.

Two, the backlight. Kindle Paperwhite and Kobo Glo, among others, make for the perfect reading machine. You're not dependent on making your own light, or going to the right room or sitting at the best angle as with paper books; wherever you want to be, no matter the lighting situation, is fine.

Thirdly, e-ink is, in terms of eyestrain, the functional equivalent as paper books. As in, there is no eyestrain, or you'll have as much as you have with paper books. The real advantage here is over phones and tablets. It boggles my mind why you'd use an iPad or the Kindle Fire to read a book, as those non-e-ink screens are the same as a TV or computer. Fourth, maybe a minor point, but the dictionary function is fantastic. Press and hold a word and voila! Now I know what "cromulent" means. Of course I could do it the old-fashioned way, but who's got the time for that?

As for the downsides to e-readers, there are certainly a few. Footnotes and references are a real pain most of the time. Ebook publishers have not figured out, it seems, a simple popup window with footnotes when you press on a link. And the links are often a teeny superscript number or single letter, too small for even my pinky. I often read SF and fantasy, and poring over maps can be frustrating: hard to zoom, crappy resolution, etc. Basically any kind of reference material is poorly laid out on a typical ebook, but again, hopefully a genius sees the light to fix this going forward.
posted by zardoz at 11:11 PM on September 15, 2021 [12 favorites]

My main problem with ebooks is the cost to buy in relation to their zero cost of production, and the authors not seeing much of the action.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 11:19 PM on September 15, 2021 [13 favorites]

Personally I've always loved spending hours in a bookstore, indie or corporate, library book sales, used book stores , thrift stores, flea markets, looking for paper books to bring home.

After moving to a city for the first time I realized that I never want to not live in a city and that I won't be able to afford a big place in a city. So now when I look for a book that has a digital version I always grab it that way. I've been trying to work with calibre for the desktop and marvin on mobile as well. I want to sync them across devices and pump up the font size and especially own less stuff.

Recently I've wanted some books that don't have digital versions:

- When the Kissing Had to Stop
- A paperback that includes both Two For the Seesaw and The Seesaw Log
- Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member
- Do or Die - I lost my copy a long time ago.

I'm starting to feel like this nerd at the library sale again.
posted by bendy at 11:49 PM on September 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

Another vote for ebooks for accessibility reasons here. I filled an ereader with classics for my 91yo great aunt and she is delighted to be able to set the size of characters.
In my case: I love real books, but when reading to learn Japanese you can't just skip words you don't know and guess their meaning. Well, you can, and the kanji will help, but you often won't be able to guess the pronunciation, so it's nice to be able to check.
posted by anzen-dai-ichi at 11:58 PM on September 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

I'm a big fan of both but the problem with this debate is that the two are only partially comparable.

There is no print equivalent of the search capabilities of an ereader, nor its ability to enlarge type for, as has been said, the partially sighted. That's such a huge boon it seems almost trivial to say that at the same time ebooks have "lost" the page as a design unit. Fixed-layout epubs don't really replace the ability to design a page (or rather the double-page spread) as a whole. I may want choice in my typography, but I may also enjoy a page that's been laid out skilfully and with care.

Win some, lose some.
posted by GeorgeBickham at 12:02 AM on September 16, 2021 [8 favorites]

I like e-books because I can pack a whole holiday's reading onto a device I'd be taking with me anyway.

I like paperbacks because particularly awful ones can be happily drowned in the bath without leaving me out the cost of an expensive electronic device.

And I like hardbacks because there's nothing quite like the feeling of being curled up in a sunny nook with a great big heavy book sitting in my lap.
posted by flabdablet at 12:13 AM on September 16, 2021 [8 favorites]

Kindle books used to have "X-Ray" where you could click on a character's name and see all the places they'd been mentioned including when they were introduced. Now I have to take notes on paper about who all the characters are. It could be so much better.

The first time I read Dostoevsky's The Idiot back in the 80's, I had pages and pages of notes on the characters and their relationships which were absolutely essential to grasping the magnificence of this classic.

What I wouldn't have given for X-Ray back in the day.
posted by fairmettle at 12:22 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Now I have to take notes on paper about who all the characters are. It could be so much better.

I miss the old habit of novelists including a Dramatis Personae page listing all their story's characters with a one-line description of each to jog readers' memories. Maybe it's my memory declining with age, but more and more that's something I'd find useful in any big, complicated print novel.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:54 AM on September 16, 2021 [6 favorites]

One unexpected effect of e-books has been to change my attitude to bookshelves. I used to sort of gloat over having rows and rows of books: now I mildly resent the way they take up space, given that most of the books may never be read again, and few more than a couple of times.
posted by Phanx at 12:56 AM on September 16, 2021 [12 favorites]

Youthful Phanx: ‘If only I’d known how computer technology was going to develop, I would never have spent all that money on the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I’d just have hung on and bought Encarta.’
posted by Phanx at 1:00 AM on September 16, 2021 [5 favorites]

Ctrl+F: 'index'. Phrase not found

Yeah
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 1:08 AM on September 16, 2021 [5 favorites]

I mostly read books when I'm in bed and it's much easier to hold my kindle than some door stopper paperback.
posted by Pendragon at 1:16 AM on September 16, 2021 [6 favorites]

There is no print equivalent of the search capabilities of an ereader, nor its ability to enlarge type for, as has been said, the partially sighted.

I'm a nerd about accessibility and being able to enlarge type and successfully use screen readers is an advantage that ebooks have over paper books.
posted by bendy at 1:18 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Books I read for entertainment I prefer as ebooks. Installs nicely on the iDevicce and I can carry a ton of them around.

Books I use for reference I prefer physical copies. I can leave them open without any particular attention and they will stay that way until I close them, without using any battery.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 1:21 AM on September 16, 2021 [13 favorites]

Being a creation of the world of technology, ebooks require connectivity at all times for readers to access ebooks (From the the first link)

This can't be true? It's certainly not true for my Kobo and I can't imagine it's correct with Kindle either. I leave my WiFi off to save battery and only turn it on for a few minutes at a time to download.

Upon consideration, this may tie into the claim that charging is needed "frequently." I charge maybe once a month I'd guess.
posted by mark k at 1:39 AM on September 16, 2021 [15 favorites]

I’ve yet to find an ebook that doesn’t make a hash of footnotes, but that’s not that significant. Usually.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:21 AM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

I prefer reading paper books, but I'm not going to make a big issue of it.

Ebooks have a clear win on accessibility.

I think it's more possible for an ebook to be completely lost than a paper book.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:34 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

I prefer reading paper books, but I'm not going to make a big issue of it.

Surely, if you are making big issues, it’s a journal, not a book….
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:45 AM on September 16, 2021 [7 favorites]

It's certainly not true for my Kobo and I can't imagine it's correct with Kindle either.

No, it's not true for kindles either. Leaving it connected does mean that you can switch more easily between devices as you can keep your progress synced, but it's not necessary to read a book.

I don't (yet) need the ability to increase the font, but I generally read ebooks for a lot of the reasons given above. The ability to carry a whole library with me at all times is amazing, and something I would have loved as a kid. I also find it much easier to read on a phone, or ereader when standing on a train or bus.

I do still read paper books on occasion, but it's pretty rare.
posted by scorbet at 2:48 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

I find the text on physical books too small to read and the cost of large text physical books to be bordering on price gouging.

Weirdly, YA tends to have larger text, which makes no sense to me, since deterioration of eyesight skews older. This meant that my 99 year old grandmother became a devoted fan of YA, her favorites being Nancy Drew (especially the newer ones) and the Starcatcher series (Peter Pan) by Dave Barry.

So, yes. I'd love to buy more physical books, but my eyes won't let me.
posted by Beholder at 3:00 AM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

I still buy 2-3 books a month, but now my book budget goes to books where the format of the book matters. I have these beautiful hardcovers where the layout and type and illustrations enhance the reading and the meaning of the book - oh and children's books are so much better printed because they rely on the illustrations and the dimensions of the page.

I know there is a word for this, tip of my tongue - that Jane Austen's Persuasion is largely the same book when it's a pulp paperback, a heavy ornate hardback or digital ink on a screen, and yet other books MUST be in a specific format to keep their meaning - cookbooks for me are way worse somehow as ebooks.

Space and money are significant issues. I cannot afford to read as much as I do or have enough space to store them. I remember travelling and very very carefully picking doorstopper books so I could eke out enough to read where I couldn't buy English books easily. The kobo and libraries are like MAGIC, an ocean of books.

And I can remember sitting in a tree as a child with a book, wishing intensely that I had a machine of some sort that could hold many books inside it so I wouldn't have to keep climbing up and down. My youngest reads on the kobo and iPad about as much as in print, often the same series of books, without any apparent preference.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:13 AM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

On a very specialized note, I'm the book review editor for a small academic journal, and review editors in general have been struggling against the move by academic presses (both university and commercial) to make all review copies electronic. E-review copies often have security limitations that require them, for example, to be read online rather than downloaded; have time limits (meaning that the reviewer doesn't own the book, which is the only compensation anyone ever gets for this form of academic labor); and may require clunky publisher-specific interfaces instead of ye olde PDF or something similar. Nor do they accommodate the needs of many potential reviewers with disabilities who cannot use either computers or tablets for an extended length of time.

As a professor, I find ebooks to be a nightmare to teach with. Unless the books have stable pagination, there is no way to get thirty-odd students with wildly varying readers (tablets, phones, kindles, their laptops...) onto the literal same page. And flipping back and forth during discussion is far more time-consuming.

As just me, I don't mind ebooks at all for personal use; generally, I buy ebooks when I wouldn't normally keep the hardcopy. For academic use, they can be more tricky, especially given, once again, non-stable pagination--many journals won't accept loc. cit. format and insist that you hunt down the hardcopy for page numbers...
posted by thomas j wise at 3:27 AM on September 16, 2021 [16 favorites]

Only mildly on-topic, but my new favourite thing is using Microsoft Natural Voices to read ebooks aloud. It's a neural network based text-to-speech agent that's finally developed to the point where I find it more than tolerable for storytelling.

If you have a Windows machine, convert an ebook to PDF, open it using the Edge browser, then press the "Read Aloud" button. You can choose different voices from the Voice Options, and you should try "Microsoft Mia - United Kingdom" voice, which sounds like a black schoolteacher from North London in full reading-to-class mode.

There's a web demo here, if you just want to play around with some of the other "Natural" voices.
posted by Eleven at 3:31 AM on September 16, 2021 [7 favorites]

Anyone else have completely arbitrary categories of authors whose work you will or won't purchase electronically?

I can't imagine getting John le Carré's final novel later this year as an ebook but I'm about two-thirds through Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle on my Kobo.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 3:45 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

I know Amazon is problematic, but I love my Kindle so much. I'm one of those much-maligned figures, a genre reader. Mostly mysteries, a little sci-fi. Over the past month I've bought and read nine books. I love it because I can carry it everywhere and I can read in bed without turning on a light. To me books are mostly word-containers and the Kindle is just a much more convenient way of getting at the same thing. The only things I won't buy in Kindle are cookbooks (which I like to be able to browse rather than read from start to finish) and stuff with pictures. The only hardback I've bought this year is Alison Bechdel's The Secret To Superhuman Strength. Everything else has been Kindle.
posted by Daily Alice at 4:02 AM on September 16, 2021 [10 favorites]

I have not been home for over a month after suddenly having to drop everything to deal with my mom's health crisis.

The only help my distant sibling could offer was to send me a e-reader; something that I have never explored because I use my library for my reading habit.

I am surprised at how readable it is compared to phone or computer screens. Being able to access decent reading material is such a relief. The major downside is that my library system has a 6 month wait list for books in the different series that I was reading.

Being able to have something to read is a mind-saver.
posted by mightshould at 4:05 AM on September 16, 2021 [8 favorites]

I was "on-the-fence" for many years with early "green-backlit" e-ink Kobo's. At that time, I would read about as much on them as I did on an iPad or an iPhone - or a physical book. (Which is still preferred for anything graphical or technical)

... But then, about 5-years ago - I got a paperwhite, large-screen Kobo. Which is also waterproof... I can reach in a bath or on the beach... And, I can load it up with sooooo many books - I never run out of anything to read.

Only complaints I have are; swiping to change pages sometimes doesn't work - takes multiple attempts. Sometimes, even after marking my page and closing the cover (which is supposed to put it to sleep), the touchscreen is still sensitive - so later when I start reading again - the current page has moved. (Problem number one would be fixed with a new device, which now features the return of actual buttons...)

Oh - and the fact that the whole borrowing from my public library (or any in Ontario) is limited and the single online partner/provide sucks - and new release aquisitions in the categories I like are minimal.
posted by rozcakj at 4:07 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

The decision point on e-book versus bound volume for me is: is this a temporary purchase, or something that I want to hang onto for a while? I associate e-book with temporary, and physical books with permanent.

The thing is--I tend to tell myself that everything is something that I'd want to hang onto, even if it really isn't. Some books, yes, I want to have in my personal collection. After a few decades.....you find yourself weeding. Maybe I didn't need a forever copy of that particular item for the rest of my life after all.
posted by gimonca at 4:17 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Travel books in electronic format are at least a partial nope for me. I don't like the added dependency and worry of breakage, theft, possible need for wifi, access and time considerations for charging, and so on. At least some of my info must be in paper format.
posted by gimonca at 4:22 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I use my iPhone 7 Plus (the bigger iPhone and my 7 has given me ZERO problems for years and years now... the battery is still in great shape!—no plan to upgrade) as my ebook reader. I set the background to black and the text to whitish (it's dimmable, of course). I even own a Kindle Paperwhite, which is great... but I don't always take it with me, and I certainly don't just throw it in my pocket.

I have no eye strain problems with this method, and I can read almost anywhere... I can't read in full sun outside, but I don't really find myself wanting to read in the full sun outside. Any bit of shade makes reading perfectly fine for me. I can read for hours on my phone without an issue. I love reading in bed in a dark room, too. I really disliked the trend that started about 20 years ago when almost all paperbacks became oversized to justify their higher prices. I don't find bulky paperbacks easy to hold, read or transport.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:22 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Ebooks are a godssend to anyone who reads in a language that isn't their country's dominant one. Sure, there were a few English bookshops in Warsaw in the 2000s, but they stocked bestsellers, textbooks and maybe a few thousand titles per store, and there was exactly one English library at the British Council with classics only. International shipping only gets more and more expensive, so I save about $5 per book or more these days - combined with the average discounts on ebooks vs print, that doubles my book budget. Not to mention not having to find room for all these books in a decidedly non-US-sized apartment.

I also don't miss packing books. On holiday, I can read a book in two days, and that adds up fast.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 4:35 AM on September 16, 2021 [8 favorites]

Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent ... needs?

I like the heft of physical books, and I am one of those elusive marginalia people (*waves at eotvos*). Typed marginalia is awful, but a sharp #2 pencil is the sign of a sharp mind. (Especially the times where you write "foreshadowing?" in the corner of page 90, and then days later go back and add "see page 280!!")

BUT I do not like lugging physical copies everywhere, especially for the sorts of lighter reads I'm apt to take on vacation. And through Libby I have easy access to several libraries' e-books, without needing to do Interlibrary Loan or anything. It's become my primary way of interacting with the library, especially now that I don't live within walking distance of one. My first-gen iPad mini is a fantastic e-reader in that regard, and is more pleasant to use than the e-ink proprietary readers.
posted by basalganglia at 4:39 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

I buy e-books from Amazon. I read them on my Kindle, tablet or phone, whichever is more convenient at the time for whatever reason, and it keeps my place automatically.
posted by signal at 4:42 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

What's the right way to read a book? However the damn hell you want to. Someone telling you you're reading wrong is peak internet.

Particularly considering that the book is just the container the text comes in. This entire discussion feels like we’re debating your favourite burger joint and only talking about the bags they serve the food in.
posted by mhoye at 5:08 AM on September 16, 2021 [9 favorites]

My experience has been that I am far more apt to finish a book than I am an ebook.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:16 AM on September 16, 2021 [5 favorites]

I found that when I first started reading ebooks, my recall was a lot worse than with paper -- almost alarmingly so! But over time, as I used the ereader more -- my recall improved a LOT. I assume that with practice, my brain learned new tricks for stashing ebook info.

For example, when I read paper books, my recall is always heavily related to WHERE on the page something is, and whether it's near the front or back of the codex. But with e-readers, this kinesthetic-ish recall is totally useless; the text repaginates and you don't get physical feedback from the book itself. For a long time my brain kept trying to recall ebook info with that kinesthetic memory, and couldn't ever find it. But that's faded! Now my ebook recall is more linked to distinctive words, like, "didn't that character first appear right before the bees abandon the hive?" and I can search for "hive" to find the scene. But I don't really need to anymore because that "keyword" memory joggles my brain into remembering the character's intro scene.

I'm not confident I'd want to take a college class and rely on an e-textbook -- my study skills were all developed and honed on print textbooks. I assume that over time I would adjust, like I did with narrative texts, and develop study skills more suited to an e-book format. But I feel like there'd be some flailing first.

Anyway, I became an e-book devotee when breastfeeding, when being able to hold a book in one hand and turn the pages and have it backlit for 2:00 a.m. feedings made the ebook the greatest invention in the history of the world. I do most of my reading on a Kindle now. Like other people, I buy children's books, art books, cookbooks, and certain other books whose emotional qualities seem to require print for reasons I cannot explain in the traditional codex format. But for my day-to-day wolfing down of novels and narrative nonfiction, ebooks all the way! Ebooks with library extension installed on your browser, even better, because when I look up a book I can immediately see if I can borrow that specific book from my library.

We got my two oldest Kindle e-readers last Christmas, they are 10 and 12, starting to read longer novels, starting to have favorite books they want to reread, and it seemed like a good time to make that available. They both prefer to do their bedtime reading on Kindles now, because they can get into bed, turn off the lights, and then just read on the self lit kindle until they get tired. More of their daytime reading still involves physical books, but I think that is slowly shifting as they become more interested in novels and narrative nonfiction, and less interested in those great DK books with the beautiful illustrations and text blocks that you can get for whatever subject your child is currently obsessed with.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:21 AM on September 16, 2021 [12 favorites]

My local libraries have shortened their hours, and my workday has lengthened to the point that picking up a physical copy is a minor scheduling challenge. I have to look up which days of the week they open early enough that I could possibly stop in on my way to work, then set a reminder and get myself out of the house earlier than usual. Having time to putter around in the stacks browsing is a distant memory. E-books, when they’re available, are just so much more convenient that paper is starting to feel aspirational.
posted by jon1270 at 5:23 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

During the pandemic, ebooks have been very nice for checking out things from the library while staying at home.

This is more about my lack of organization, but when I want to reread an ebook I can find it immediately. When I want to reread a paperback, there are five bookshelves in three different rooms and two boxes in another room where it might be.

Ebook readers can be propped against something without being actively held, unlike paperbacks -- nice for reading while eating, which I like to do during lunch breaks.

Books on paper don't have to be recharged.

For things like maps, photos, illustrations, and graphic novels it's hard to beat a well-printed book. Maps in paperbacks are awkward. Ebooks vary widely... sometimes a great experience, sometimes awful.

I don't tend to enjoy reading electronic versions of magazines, because there's a lot of zooming and scrolling required. But they're much less wasteful than something on glossy paper that I'm probably going to enjoy for a few minutes to a couple of hours and then toss out, and subscriptions tend to be a lot less.
posted by Foosnark at 5:43 AM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

Our family is a mix.

My wife reads relatively slowly. (Reading makes her tired, so she can’t read long in one sitting.) Back when she was riding a bus daily, she really began to like her Kindle because no one could tell what she was reading, which made her far less self-conscious about the fact that it would take her longer to read a book than other people. As a result if we want to get a book that she will read, we prefer to get an ebook.

My son loves paper. He has a bookshelf in his room brimming with books and a stack of 5-6 on his bedside table. He’s behind me right now, eating breakfast, with a Redwall novel open in front of him. We’ve given him my old Paperwhite, and while he does take it on trips or camping he very seldom opens it up just to read.

I’m in the middle. I do love a nice edition of a good book. If it’s something I plan to keep a long time, or a series from an author I know I’ll re-read multiple times, I like to buy paper. But at the same time, I feel like reading sci-fi on an electronic device just makes sense. On my bedside table is a half-finished 3.5” thick, beautifully-illustrated doorstopper fantasy anthology and my Kindle. Which one I’m reading on a daily basis depends on how I’m feeling that day. The Kindle is nice for instant gratification (hey I can read the next book in the series RIGHT NOW) and it saves my bookshelves from being stocked with the kind of guilty pleasure novels I consider to be “junk food reading”. But while it is easy to share these books within a family (I added the Murderbot series to my son’s Kindle, thinking he might enjoy them) it’s not like I can give them away or loan them to someone else…
posted by caution live frogs at 5:47 AM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

Myself, I only read text that has been painstakingly hand-transcribed by ascetic monks laboring by candlelight in the monastery. Sure there's the odd transcription error, and there are precious few copies to be found, but I find works produced by this perfidious "printing press" to be crass and unaesthetic.
posted by Mayor West at 5:55 AM on September 16, 2021 [14 favorites]

I am closing in on twenty years since I went digital for music, about fifteen for video. It's about eight or nine years since I stopped hoarding hard drives full of digital files and went streaming/cloud with music and about five or six for video.

And I will read digitally... for news/magazine/journal content. but periodicals/print? Those are for starting my grill. I read journalism online like a person. (I do support journalism, buy subscriptions, etc. I just don't need a damp hunk of newsprint in a bag on my lawn or a glossy magazine that will end up dusty under an end table or worse yet, on the toilet.)

I fucking resent it when someone tries to get me to buy an individual thing I will have to deal with to get their work.

But geez louise, I cannot abide e-books. Having an electronic device in my hand leaves me open to the kind of "hey, I could go on a tangent into anything right now!" madness that I count on reading books to help me escape.

Paired with my aversion to physical media, this effectively means that if you visit my house and express any interest in a book I own and have already read, I will press it into your hands and insist you take it, because I simply must fight like hell against the accumulation of physical stuff. When the world isn't ending, I'm simply a devoted library person and that works well enough. But even so, books always accumulate.

If you are a person of similar convictions who has gone over to e-books, please advise me on what platform/device you use that makes this palatable. I haven't tried e-readers in a few years and am open to the idea that I might hate the newer stuff less.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:56 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

It's also problematic for me that, for instance, when I want to support a musician I like and I refuse to buy CDs/vinyl, I can buy a shirt and they will get more money from that anyway.

I honestly have little to no knowledge of how digital compensation works for print. Is it as negligible as it is for music? If I want to support an author, are they paid fairly on e-books? Do they count equally toward their sales as print copies? I dutifully order print copies of books from authors I love (from indie bookstores) trying to support their work, but even the ones I savor are likely to be pressed into someone's hands at a dinner party, ostensibly under the guise of generosity, but more truthfully as a way to rid me of another object before it claims another slice of my office and starts collecting dust.

I want to make sure Jami Attenberg gets her money from me, but like, she doesn't sell t-shirts, so I have limited options. Maybe her publisher could just set it up so I could send a bottle of wine.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:03 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I prefer ebooks in terms of reading experience, and yet I prefer ebooks for many small reasons and one big one: I keep moving, and books are a hassle to move, and a hassle to get rid of if you don't want to move them. (I am frankly too bad at managing my holds and overdues to make better use of libraries than I do). Also, I lived for three years in Ames when the only bookstore it had was Books-a-Million, which is more a collectible shop for tweenagers than a bookstore - now it has a very fine independent bookstore but I live 45 minutes away in a small town with no bookstore at all.

And ebooks are especially nice when you know you're going to be spending a lot of time waiting but you're not quite sure what kind of mood you'll be in or how much attention you'll be able to give your reading.

But I hate that when I buy print books, I can support a fine independent bookstore, and when I buy ebooks I'm supporting Amazon. I should probably be looking at alternatives to the Kindle ecosystem.
posted by Jeanne at 6:12 AM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

During the pandemic, I've managed to run out of shelf space again, and so will soon be doing the most dreadful project, picking out 50-100 books to go to the secondhand store. Which I hate doing. On the other hand, I keep accumulating books faster than I can read them, and Something Must Be Done. (Something other than reading them, I mean--nothing makes me lose interest in a book faster than having bought it.) Ebooks would make so much sense for me. No taking up shelf space! Less cost! Bigger print! (I just got glasses because my eyes decided to grow old, and I'm still not quite used to holding my books just the right distance away so I can see them clearly.)

But I'm firmly in the don't-like-ebooks camp. Not necessarily for any snobbish reason. Everyone else is free to fill up their Kindles and Kobeaux and iPads with my blessings. But I keep coming back to the physicality of them. Reading Eyebrow's comment above, a little light went on in my head, because knowing where something is in a book has always been part of the reading experience for me. I'm reading a book from the early 1990s right now, and it's reminding me of another book I read about thirty years ago, and I can see myself reading that one, at a restaurant with my parents, in the porch swing outside. I feel like if I picked this book back up after not having seen it for decades, I'd still instantly orient myself to where everything was in it.

But ebooks? I don't know where I am. I get lost. I press a button and I'm a chapter ahead. I can't easily flick back when I realize I've zoned out. I can't go back two chapters to remind myself of a point. It's kind of shameful, but there's some essential skill in reading an ebook that I'm missing.

I have all these Kindle points I've earned recently where I can get a discount on an ebook, and the thought fills me with a little bit of dread, like I'm going to waste those points on a book I fundamentally can't read. It'll join all those mobis and PDFs slowly decaying on my hard drive. Which for some reason seems sadder than all the paperbacks on my shelves slowly decaying, maybe because there's something lost about an electronic file you never look at, while a book you're not reading can still sit on the shelf and inspire?
posted by mittens at 6:16 AM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

I was gifted with a lovely hefty used copy of The Last Samurai, but I'm having trouble reading it -- whoever owned it before must have kept it inside a heavily perfumed sachet or something, this weird sickly sweet smell wafts out whenever I open it. There's a slogan for you: Ebooks -- They Never Smell!!
posted by JanetLand at 6:21 AM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

I would like to back away from the idea that anything bound as a codex is used in remotely the same way.

I sometimes read linear genre fiction: all text, very little flipping back and forth. As far as I can tell, every ebook vendor is laser-focused on this model, which is the bulk of their business. E-readers are great for this.

I also read nonfiction in which I often have to consult an index; e-readers haven't figured this out yet. Often I'll read textbooks with solutions to problems at the back, which means I'm flipping back and forth constantly. Until recently most e-readers didnt do this gracefully; reMarkable just put out an update a couple of weeks ago which handles it reasonably well.

But then I read, say, geometry or engineering texts, and they're just useless. This is a fault I can lay at the feet of both the publishers and the e-reader manufacturers; the latter for not providing a standard, sensible way of embedding diagrams and illustrations in their texts, and the former for just reducing complex diagrams to tiny fixed-sized JPGs and calling it a day.

And then there's glossy magazines, reference materials... we can't keep treating these as the same medium.

While I'm at it, a special Fuck You Award to Cambridge University Press, who sold me an expensive electronic edition of The Art of Electronics without any notice that I would only be able to read it on my slow eink reader or my tiny phone screen but not my laptop, which would have been the only reasonable way to read it other than paper.
posted by phooky at 6:24 AM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

I mean obviously I would prefer anybody who wanted to tell me a story to weave it into an elaborate tapestry that I could hang in my castle, but apparently that is 'ostentatious' and no longer an option.

I like eBooks for things that are 'easy' for me to read. They're easily portable (the second-to-last time I had to move I had to give away like 100 pounds of book). They're available instantly if I finish a book at 4 AM and want to read everything an author has ever written. They remember where I stopped the last time I was reading it.

Paper is better for technical books, or things I have to read a few times, or things I have to annotate or grade. As a fast reader, I never got into comic books because paying a few dollars for something I can read in three minutes just didn't make sense. Also I remember decades ago, before widespread cell phone usage, getting stuck in an airport for eighteen hours and just having to buy more books because I kept finishing them and then I had to board my flight carrying three giant terrible novels?
posted by Comrade_robot at 6:40 AM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

While I'm at it, a special Fuck You Award to Cambridge University Press, who sold me an expensive electronic edition of The Art of Electronics without any notice that I would only be able to read it on my slow eink reader or my tiny phone screen but not my laptop, which would have been the only reasonable way to read it other than paper.

Oh shit-yeah. As I mentioned above, I'm pro-codex, and flipping around for reference is a huge part of that. For The Art of Electronics, that's the default reading-style, surely?

Maybe there's a good technique for that that I just don't know but, even reading fiction, sometimes I want to flip back to a section I've read before to check something. With a paper book, I tend to know roughly where that thing is, even to the "top of the page on the right" (or whatever) level. With an ebook I've probably messed with the font size (+1 to ebooks, as my eyes degrade and I haven't seen an optometrist since the plague), and the thing could be anywhere.
posted by pompomtom at 6:41 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I love eBooks, and I love reading on my Kobo. I was an early adopter and bought the first, clunky, slow version that came out. Right now I have an 8-year old Aura HD, and Kobo still supports it and updates it. With every update, it gets better and easier to use. One of the best changes was that you now can easily flick back and forth with a quick-view of the pages you can quickly flip through.

Our house is jam-packed full of print books, but my preference is now eBooks, unless it is something like a graphic novel. I love being able to download books of Project Gutenberg and borrowing eBooks from the library. I love having a library of books available in my hand, the backlight, the ability to change font size (old eyes!), the built-in dictionary, bookmarking system, and everything.

I guess I am now really used to reading on the Kobo. I don't find the experience any lesser than a paper book. Once I'm reading, I am just in the book and reading.

My kids prefer eBooks, and the ability to use the OpenDyslexic font on the kobo has converted my youngest son, who has dyslexia, from only reading graphic novels to a novel-reader. My mom is a voracious reader, but has serious mobility problems. Having an eBook means she can easily get access to books at home.

I still read paper books and magazines and get the newspaper delivered to the door every day, but my paper book reading is now mostly limited to antique and out-of-print books, or ones not available as an eBook, or that have a lot of graphics. Or when publishers want more for the electronic book than a hard copy. That just makes me cranky.
posted by fimbulvetr at 6:43 AM on September 16, 2021 [5 favorites]

If you are a person of similar convictions who has gone over to e-books, please advise me on what platform/device you use that makes this palatable.

I have not-dissimilar convictions, and would suggest a reader that has an e-ink screen, doesn't come with a pile of extra apps, and can interface with Overdrive for library ebooks. I haven't personally used it, but the Kobo Nia looks like it would work.

If your local library doesn't do Overdrive, I think the Oakland Public Library system is letting anyone, anywhere sign up for a digital/online account now. Not that I think highly of Overdrive, but they seem to be the only game in town and at least they're not as big a monopoly as Amazon...

(I have an Onyx Boox ereader, which is really an Android tablet with e-ink screen. It has a pile of apps and the option of installing lots more so I CAN browse the web or check my email or whatever, but... I'm reading a book. If I want to do one of those computer-y things, I'll go use the computer. It has a color screen and a faster refresh rate. I mostly use the Boox for books and music. Plus it's a decent map viewer for bike trips that can run for days on a single charge. Of course, it doesn't always play nice with the Overdrive Libby app, so I strip the DRM from all my borrowed library ebooks and use the built-in reader, which has much better UX anyway.)

My experience has been that I am far more apt to finish a book than I am an ebook.

Me too! It's broken me of the near-compulsion to finish every book I start, even if I'm not enjoying it, so I count it as a positive.
posted by sibilatorix at 6:48 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Physical books are superior to ebooks in every important aspect, except that I actually read ebooks, and only think about reading physical books.

Another thing I love about ebooks is that it has let me take the big shelf full of important impressive literary and philosophical books that I never read, and transfer them to my Kndle library, where I can not read them there. Not having physical stuff to clutter up my life is great, I am an anti-bibliophile in that respect. There is no book I love so much that I want to keep a physical copy of it around my house.
posted by skewed at 6:48 AM on September 16, 2021 [5 favorites]

Apropos of nothing in particular, I love a good argument over whether we like ebooks or paper, because it isn't especially serious and, on an individual level, isn't going to change anything. It's nice to have a strongly held but basically inconsequential opinion.

Obviously, the ebook format needs to be improved to accommodate textbooks, footnotes, etc, and we need better ways to flip back and forth between sections - this is a problem with any serious reading, not just non-fiction. I find it much better to have a paper book for book discussion since it's easer to mark things.

But anyway. I personally prefer paper books because then I really own the book - the publisher isn't going to come to my house to yank it out of my hands for some trumped up reason, I'm not going to have forced updates that invalidate any references to the text, no big corporation can tell how fast and how much I read, etc. And of course I can still read the book even if the power goes out, plus if I drop it on the floor or even spill water on it it won't break. And of course I can lend it to someone. And then it's nice to have an old copy - most of my books are post WWII, but I have a couple of thirties copies of things, and in any case it's nice to look at an edition from, eg, 1965.

Also, a lot of old stuff doesn't even become ebooks. I'm fairly good at finding old PDFs and scans and so on, but let's say that you wrote an interesting but not wildly successful queer novel in 1982 which was published by a small press - that's not online anywhere. It still may turn up at a used bookstore to be collected by me. A lot of stuff disappears from the literary record if it was published before ebooks and wasn't famous, and yet a lot of that stuff is interesting and important in its niche.
posted by Frowner at 6:53 AM on September 16, 2021 [8 favorites]

Life has made me pare down physical books. First we had another child so there went the spare room (library) and we downsized and rearranged. Then later in life, we got a divorce. So there went at least half the books. Then later I moved to a house closer to the city and work and less than half the size..so now I have only the books the SO and I love, many are out of print and have no digital version. My SO now listens to books because reading is not an option for him. I am older, I need larger print and I have always hated those giant hard back books. (Old shoulder injury makes them hard to hold) I love my Kindle paperwhite. I always have several books available. It travels with me (I miss you travel) It is handy for doc appts where I have to wait, It weighs little and if I am not in the mood for a given book, poof there is another. I get many from the libraries I have access to. I get some lower cost books I want by watching sales. If I feel a strong draw and need to share, I will just buy a physical copy or a digital copy for someone. Times change, I have changed. But I recognize that others have their own preferences and I support that too.
posted by ReiFlinx at 6:56 AM on September 16, 2021

I got a Kindle Paperwhite last winter after being on the fence for a couple years. At this point in my pandemic life I’d say my reading breakdown is:

50% fanfiction sent to the Kindle (much nicer reading experience for long fics than on my ancient iPad, especially when reading outdoors)
30% random hard copy books picked up from neighborhood Little Free Libraries
10% hard copy library books (mostly cookbooks)
10% ebooks from the library (mostly things with many holds, which I can get much more quickly in electronic format)

I didn’t expect the Kindle to replace the iPad, so that’s been a pleasant surprise. Shout out to my physical book-buying Minneapolis neighbors, though. I’ve got a half-dozen Little Free Libraries in a 4 block radius, and I’ve enjoyed reading their numerous book donations and read stuff I never would have thought to request from the library. Also, extra shout out to my mysterious neighbor who apparently works at Target corporate and donates the pre-print novels she gets from publishers begging to be included in future “Target book of the month” end caps.
posted by Maarika at 6:56 AM on September 16, 2021

There really isn't a debate. I read books. I don't have an eReader and don't want one more thing to charge. I have never engaged in any kind of fight about this.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:01 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Fortunately, there's no need to choose! You can get whichever suits you better!

[touches earpiece]

oh, I'm being told that due to catastrophic supply chain problems print books are being heavily delayed. Time to get comfortable with ebooks, I guess!

My main problem with ebooks is the cost to buy in relation to their zero cost of production, and the authors not seeing much of the action.

I get a bigger percentage royalty on ebooks. Granted the price per unit is lower, but at my current sales I make (or would make, if I had earned out, which I haven't) about 50 cents more on a Kindle copy. The main difference is that I get a percentage of cash price, not list price, which means if there's a special to get the ebook for $1.99 or whatever that's less money for me.
posted by babelfish at 7:05 AM on September 16, 2021 [5 favorites]

I am sorry this tends to be a This vs. That framing, but as the new comments ticker jumps higher it's clear we are all suckers for the topic.

I'm with Team Keep Reading. From what I can see in my circles, a handful of people maintain voracious reading appetites (print and digital) but mostly people don't read anymore.. Yes, they read more than ever, but at a very shallow level and distributed across everything from text messaging to the first sentences of an article, etc.

I don't get my books digitally, but I will say my mother really took to her Kobo reader up until she could no longer manage the controls. One of the best gifts we got her in later life.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:07 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Seems to me from reading the linked articles that a lot of the "downsides" of eBooks is assuming that you have to use Kindles and the Amazon technosystem.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:13 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm also not entirely convinced hand annotation is actually a real thing people do. It's something I see in films from the '30s but have never encountered in real life

I totally do it. My favorite books are marked up all to hell.
posted by thivaia at 7:41 AM on September 16, 2021

I love both? Physical books are for reading at home, the Kindle is for reading while out and about. It has also been a life changer for airplanes, rather than having to pack a sack full of books so I don’t run out.
posted by corb at 8:04 AM on September 16, 2021

I would prefer paper books any day, but I am now living in a non-english speaking country and I can't browse bookshops like I used to. An ebook reader has allowed me to keep reading at my usual rate. After years of managing to read on my phone/tablet, I finally got myself a Kindle paper white and it's been great. I now have a system: for long awaited books by favourite authors (John Crowley) I always get the paper version, and books I just want to read go on the ebook pile. But as someone mentioned above, it sucks that lending ebooks is such a pain.
posted by dhruva at 8:05 AM on September 16, 2021

Chalk me up as a non-partisan on this one. I have shelves full of dead trees and an e-reader on my nightstand at all times. The determining factor of what I read where tends to be "where did I find the book on sale," followed by "what did I find at a local bookstore because I like bookstores and want them to survive."

I confess to some confusion at comments on the certain limitations of ebooks. It's been a minute since I read an ebook with footnotes, but my recollection is that, at least on my e-reader, clicking the footnote does just pop up a window with the footnote that you close when you're done. This should be determined by the reader software rather than the book; an ebook is basically just a package of HTML files.

Publishers also sometimes (not nearly often enough, but sometimes) embed the page numbers from a corresponding print edition in the ebook. It's particularly useful with textbooks, but also handy should you need to cite something in scholarly work.

When doing academic research, I have come to strongly prefer ebooks and PDFs for annotation purposes. I load them up on my iPad, which makes highlighting and note-taking incredibly easy, and I can then export my notes and annotations for use in other software (e.g. I put them in Obsidian so I can cross-reference them in my notes and outlines). Stuff I've read in paper requires laborious retyping to get my notes into a useful form, so at this point the only work stuff I tend to read on paper are books I get from the library that I don't need long-term and don't have an available digital version.

If you are a person of similar convictions who has gone over to e-books, please advise me on what platform/device you use that makes this palatable. I haven't tried e-readers in a few years and am open to the idea that I might hate the newer stuff less.

Obviously I don't know what e-readers you've tried, but in my view they've gotten to the point of being just flat-out excellent. I've had several over the years and currently use a Kobo Libra H2O (so named because it's waterproof). I like the asymmetric design and physical buttons. The Kobo store and overall ecosystem works well; having Overdrive built-in for library borrowing is awesome. I don't think it has the Kindle feature of being able to just email random documents to a special address so they show up on your device, but then, I never used that feature when I had a Kindle.

Calibre is also of great importance for how I use ebooks. As a rule, I strip the DRM off anything I buy and convert even non-DRM ebooks to a plain EPUB (Kobo, like Kindle, sells books in a proprietary format even if they are not DRM-protected). There are Calibre plugins that make doing so trivial. I've also been experimenting with setting up a Calibre web server on my home network so I can pull up anything in my collection via wireless. It's easy enough to do without that for stuff I actually bought on the Kobo store, but I've got loads of ebooks from my Kindle days, from other storefronts, etc.
posted by sinfony at 8:09 AM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

MetaFilter: it isn't especially serious and, on an individual level, isn't going to change anything.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:11 AM on September 16, 2021 [6 favorites]

I hate false binaries.

I gobble up paper books, I gobble up ebooks. I love my Kobo -- I'm on my third generation, my old Glo having finally crapped out. Ebooks have a great advantage for reading fanfic (AO3 has seamless downloads), classics from Project Gutenberg/Faded Page/similar sites, translated webnovels from China and Japan, and library books from Overdrive. Ereaders have the advantage of portability and reading in the dark. I pretty much use it strictly for prose fiction and poetry, though. For graphic novels, comics, and manga, paper is much easier (not computer/tablet much any more), and ditto anything where I'm likely to flip between sections a lot, like reference materials, tutorials, and academic history.

Different medium/tool for different jobs.
posted by Quasirandom at 8:55 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Last I checked, footnotes are still a giant pain in the ass in the Kindle app on my iPhone/iPad. Tap a tiny little target (especially annoying if the little number is inside the giant third-of-the-screen-wide hotspots to turn the page), jump to a completely different place in the file, possibly lose your place if you accidentally do the wrong thing when navigating back to where you were. Compare to "see footnote, look at bottom of page".

Might be better if you splurge for a dedicated reader, I've never felt like doing that.

I had a period where I was doing most of my reading on the Kindle app and then I decided I didn't want to give any more money to Amazon and I just... have not switched to another app. I've been buying paper books again for the most part. In theory I could, like, download all those files to my computer and fuck around with translating them to a format I could dump into iBooks or whatever but I just have not felt like bothering.

Lately I've been really enjoying the ability to write marginal comments in books, too.
posted by egypturnash at 8:56 AM on September 16, 2021

Writing in books (with a pencil!) is okay. Even using ink to correct typos is okay. Just don't do that student-with-a-highlighter thing. Please.

I'm an Old, and although I've played with eReaders at the store, I've no interest in adding yet another device to my repertoire. Being a reader, however, I'm always into at least one (or maybe more) books at any time. All my life, I've been carrying around the current book. Sometimes, though, it's not there, for whatever reason; and that's when I whip out my cell phone, to read a few more pages of some classic I downloaded from Project Gutenberg or wherever. Scrolling through a whole book can be problematic, I suppose; but I'm rarely in that situation.
posted by Rash at 9:00 AM on September 16, 2021

I prefer ebooks, but I hate how poorly written some of them are compared to the print editions. I've had to stop reading certain ebooks because there were several misspellings per page and it was super distracting.

Imagine publishing a book without having read it.
posted by ryanrs at 9:03 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I live with nearly 4000 books. And almost all of them are out and readily available. And where did they come from? 50 years of mostly browsing in bookstores. And when I discover an author or a subject I will then pursue that purposefully. But the initial encounter is almost always by chance. Same thing in libraries. I scan the new books, I wander in the stacks, and sometimes something will pop out at me and a new pursuit begins. And, yes, I read these books. Some many times over. And when reading a new book that references a book I have, it’s great to be able to get up, walk over and pull out that book and see what the first book was talking about. Thanks to books, I have met with and talked to a lot of my favorite writers. The vast majority of my interests, passions were developed through chance encounters. Browsing in bookstores and libraries. Some idiot algorithm on Amazon, et. al. doesn’t present anything to me that is even 1% close to the experience of walking into a space full of books, or music, or art. For those who like ebooks, fine. I’m just afraid that with the decline of bookstores and the profit driven move to production free digital copies, those physical objects called books will disappear. Except for whatever I have already gathered. Somebody once said “books are your friends,” in my case, that’s true.
posted by njohnson23 at 9:04 AM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

I’m just afraid that with the decline of bookstores and the profit driven move to production free digital copies, those physical objects called books will disappear.

We’ve had escalators for a century now. People still build stairs.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:14 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

jump to a completely different place in the file, possibly lose your place if you accidentally do the wrong thing when navigating back to where you were

Same with endnotes in paper copies, to be fair.

For a while I could find a setting in most ebook software that would put a permanent narrow progress-bar at the bottom of the screen, which was close enough to physical memory to satisfy my sense of "where" I was in a book. Right now all three I have near me have switched to a much bigger location display that only shows when I tap the screen and includes page-m-of-N , and probably chapter number and maybe chapter title. More information, but much more interruption. I wonder what caused the change and I regret losing the smaller subtler option.
posted by clew at 9:17 AM on September 16, 2021

I recall seeing something online, can't find it now, but it was an example of teachers in the 1800s complaining about students using these newfangled slates in the classroom, which was somehow vastly inferior to rote memorizing, and was going to lead to the inevitable downfall of civilization. The cries of "I don't like the new way, the old way was better!!" never end.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:29 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Kindle and Kobo both technically do popup/modal footnotes now but execution is inconsistent and depends heavily on the markup used in the ebook file.

But forget how you read books. What about when you read a book?
posted by bixfrankonis at 9:38 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

For the distractable, the kindle e-ink browser is PAINFUL enough to just not use. But I generally keep my kindle's connectivity turned off. I turn it on when I want to download a book NOW or when I'm charging it so it can sync itself with recent purchases/borrows.

For books with lists of characters, glossaries, or maps in the front: a lot current authors now put those things on their websites. I tend to keep them open in a tab on my phone, so if I need to look at the map, I have it to hand. (This does not help the distractable, I know.) I read Paul Kingsnorth's "The Wake" with the glossary tab open in my phone for a couple weeks. For slightly older books, if they're genre books or if they're classics, you can usually find that sort of material online, where a fan site will have posted scans of all the maps from the older fantasy series you're reading, or you can find a dramatis personae list on sparknotes or even Wikipedia for your Dostoyevsky-related needs.

"I recall seeing something online, can't find it now, but it was an example of teachers in the 1800s complaining about students using these newfangled slates in the classroom, which was somehow vastly inferior to rote memorizing, and was going to lead to the inevitable downfall of civilization"

You might be thinking of Plato's Phaedrus?

And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.

posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:49 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

What about when you read a book?

♫
When you read upon a book
Makes no difference how you look
When the words come to your eyes
They know-ledg-iiiiiize...
♫
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:54 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

For books with lists of characters, glossaries, or maps in the front: a lot current authors now put those things on their websites.

When I read a book on my ereader where a map is nice to have, I print it out and keep it inside the cover of my ereader. I find it even easier than flipping around back and forth to the map in a paper book.
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:56 AM on September 16, 2021

I just want to say that I cannot imagine reading House Of Leaves in an electronic version.

"Adapting" House of Leaves to work in electronic format would actually be an interesting project. I agree that it's very much a print object; its form is actually pretty integral to its meaning at many points, and the physical experience of it--flipping the pages, turning it upside down, etc--is also entwined with the actual prose. But an electronic "adaptation" could do similar things, and deepen/change the meaning in some ways, i.e. the word house is always in blue, which is partly meant to be reminiscent of a hyperlink. What if it was a hyperlink every time? What would it mean for an ebook House of Leaves to be bigger on the inside?

Could make for an interesting coding/multimedia project! I feel that we haven't yet taken full advantage of how ebooks can change the experience of a book, beyond the already-stated very helpful accessibility features.
posted by yasaman at 10:01 AM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

I love paper books, but I generally prefer reading on an eInk reader these days. Got a higher-end Kobo this year for Christmas and I love it. It's not perfect, but I prefer it to the Kindle by a wide margin.

There's a lot of ways ebooks could/should surpass print books but the industry (meaning the ebook manufacturers as well as publishers) has constrained them in a lot of ways to try to replicate old models, lock readers into a single ecosystem (looking at you, Amazon, Apple) and so forth.

What would be super cool is if you could just plug your phone into an eInk screen and read ebooks, saved pages, and other materials on eInk and just unplug the phone when you're not reading. Technologically there's no reason at this point most people couldn't use their smartphone as a fully functioning PC for like 95% of applications - they're powerful enough - it's just designed so that you "need" a separate device for eInk reading, tablet, and PC...

What I'm saying is - if you removed the constraints of the interests of Amazon, Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins and trying to replicate the concept of "book" on an electronic device, you could have a vastly better experience. But ebooks are shadows of what they could/should be for a lot of reasons...
posted by jzb at 10:02 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Kindle books used to have "X-Ray" where you could click on a character's name and see all the places they'd been mentioned including when they were introduced.

The first time I read Shogun I had to stop at about page 300 and go back through the book from the beginning, writing down little notes for each character to help me keep them straight.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 10:11 AM on September 16, 2021

I sometimes have to read a book upside down to slow myself into actually paying attention to the text. When I read on tablet they don't allow that.

Also, the page refresh of e-ink screens is dreadful.
posted by scruss at 10:29 AM on September 16, 2021

Reading in bed in the middle of the night? Next to SO? Kindle on my iPhone is the only way. Dark mode FTW.
posted by Splunge at 10:32 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I haven't really used a modern e-reader device, but back when Palm Pilots were still a thing I got really into reading ebooks in one of the better ebook apps they had for those devices.

What I liked most about this was being able to read in bed and in the dark without having to hold a book up. I could prop the Palm Pilot next to me and lay down on my side, and then using the auto-timeout sleep function and automatic page turning set to an appropriate speed I could read until I fell asleep and not have to worry about turning off the lights or turning off the device. I could just conk out at any point and it would turn itself off and I didn't have to wrestle with keeping a book open or turning pages.
posted by loquacious at 10:38 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

It's also problematic for me that, for instance, when I want to support a musician I like and I refuse to buy CDs/vinyl, I can buy a shirt and they will get more money from that anyway.

Bandcamp takes a 15% revenue cut plus 30 cent credit card fee out of what you pay for digital downloads -- but they waive the 15% on Bandcamp Fridays (first Friday of each month during the pandemic, so far). So when I hear something I like and want to support the artist, I'll generally stick it in my wishlist and catch up on a Bandcamp Friday.

You can also typically choose to pay more than the asking price for downloads if you like (especially if it's free).
posted by Foosnark at 10:38 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Reading in bed in the middle of the night? Next to SO?

Yep. Ms. Fimbulvetr goes to bed early, while I am a night owl. My backlit Kobo has been a boon as I can stay up reading in bed as late as I want without any complaints.
posted by fimbulvetr at 10:44 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Kindle still has x-ray, it's just not available on every book.
posted by signal at 10:53 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

I do use Bandcamp sometimes, even for things I could stream, as a way of supporting a specific release. But my understanding is that artists usually make more from shirts. And I like shirts. I can wear them instead of file them.

Maybe what publishing needs is merch. I would probably wear an Annihilation Trilogy shirt, no lie.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:57 AM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

House of Leaves?

Leaves are pages in a book. Almost all books are bigger on the inside than the outside. Some are cosmically large.

As to taking a book like House of Leaves and doing it in another medium, it’s not the same thing. A book is a physical and a visual medium. Turning a page can be used for very dramatic effect. Looking at two pages side by side can be used. The way the text is shown and placed on the page can be used more than just reading. Keith A. Smith in his book, “Structure of the Visual Book,” demonstrates a lot of different techniques in the design of a book.

As to technology, this is not horse buggies versus sports cars, a book is a visual medium, ebooks are another and different visual medium. I have a few books that are over 200 years old. They work just as well as the new book I bought last Monday. Will you be able to read your ebook in 20 years? I doubt that…
posted by njohnson23 at 11:24 AM on September 16, 2021

My main problem with ebooks is the cost to buy in relation to their zero cost of production, and the authors not seeing much of the action.

No beef at all, but I'm jumping back in to tap my "the cost of production of physical copies is an absolutely insignificant part of the cost of producing almost all mainstream books" sign.
posted by ominous_paws at 11:24 AM on September 16, 2021 [5 favorites]

No, really in the beginning was the oral tradition of sharing, alteration, and modifying the story to the audience. So I like my books to be in most traditional of formats - the spoken word- now manifested in the modern form of an audio book.
posted by mfoight at 11:29 AM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm not 100% sold on this newfangled 'written words' technology the kids today are so excited about.

Socrates agrees with me:

Well, then, those who think they can leave written instructions for an art, as well as those who accept them, thinking that writing can yield results that are clear or certain, must be quite naive and truly ignorant of [Thamos’] prophetic judgment: otherwise, how could they possibly think that words that have been written down can do more than remind those who already know what the writing is about?
posted by signal at 11:36 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Will you be able to read your ebook in 20 years?

I can still read ebooks I first read as ebooks more than 20 years ago.
posted by clew at 11:37 AM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Will you be able to read your ebook in 20 years?
I can still read ebooks I first read as ebooks more than 20 years ago.

If I have it in an open format (ePub with no DRM - and that's the way all of my ebooks end-up), this is basically ... HTML - it is future-proof.

I have a better chance of my ebook library being there in 20-years (barring an EMP strike) than physical books - I have already lost thousands due to moves, storage in locations which flooded (soggy and moldy)... I just keep copying my eBook library to bigger/better storage devices.
posted by rozcakj at 12:00 PM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Will you be able to read your ebook in 20 years?

Going to echo the shit out of clew and rozcakj here. I was in library school over a decade ago and I remember thinking this argument was old then. (Not to say I don't still enjoy having this argument; I just think the pearl-clutching over losing digital works is usually hyperbolic.) We've had digital versions of texts for decades. In some cases it is way, way easier to find an out-of-print text in a digital format than in any physical format.

And libgen is a godsend. And if you feel guilt about getting books this way, you'd be surprised how many authors have patreon accounts. Send them $20, which is WAY more than they make off the sale of a single copy of their work. (And if they don't have a patreon account, just ping them and tell them to get one.)
posted by nushustu at 12:11 PM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm a devoted ebook reader, for anything that isn't heavily illustrated or dependent on layout.

I prefer the convenience of instant availability. The ease of storage. The ability to change the font size. The built-in lighting.

I don't use the library much because availability always seems to be a problem. When I'm ready to read a book, I don't want to be told I have to wait on hold for X number of weeks. I'm happy to spend the money on my own ebook. And I reread a lot, so having my own copy on hand is important.

And while it's true you don't have to recharge a paper book...I have such excellent battery life on my Kindle, and it recharges so fast, that the battery just isn't that big a deal. Though I do a lot of reading on the Kindle app on my iPad, if I really want to avoid distractions, the Kindle device is always right there, and very few distractions are available.
posted by lhauser at 12:24 PM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

I bought my first PDA (a Handspring Visor!) about two weeks after I found out that you could read books on it. Those were the days of Peanut Press and Fictionwise, and .pdb and similar files, etc. I was SO DELIGHTED that I could carry half a dozen books with me on vacation without filling up my suitcase with physical books.

Since then, I've read ebooks almost exclusively. My current main device is an iPod Touch. Like SoberHighland, I mostly read in bed with the light off, with the background turned dark and the text sorta white. (Side note: I still miss the feature of the Handspring readers where you could adjust the background color and the text color separately. OTOH, you didn't get as many font choices as we do now.)

I also have a Kobo Libra, a Kindle Voyage, and an iPad. I have Kindle, Kobo, and iBook apps. I read books on all of them. But my Ipod Touch and my iPad probably get the most use, followed by the Kobo Libra. The Libra has page-turn buttons and a sensor that means you can turn from one side to the other and it accomodatingly flips the text for you.

Most of the other folks in my book clubs read paper. That's fine. I like paper for arty things and craft books. But the only paper novel I've read in many years was one for a book club that DIDN'T HAVE AN E-BOOK VERSION, OMG.

But read what makes you happy, is my philosophy.
posted by Archer25 at 12:24 PM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

If I could afford enough gold, I would get a wedding ring for my Kobo e-reader.
posted by PhineasGage at 12:31 PM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

And while it's true you don't have to recharge a paper book...

Last year, a storm came through my town and knocked the power out for about five days. Fortunately, my place of work got power back the next day. At home, I had no lights, no wi-fi, no cell service. So what did I spend those nights doing? Reading books on my cell phone - because if you don't have electric lighting, paper books become a lot less usable after the sun goes down.

It made me feel weirdly smug about all those times I'd been told ebooks wouldn't do me any good when the power went out.
posted by Jeanne at 12:48 PM on September 16, 2021 [6 favorites]

Pro tip (kindle): keep it in airplane mode ALL the time.

I load books via usb/calibre so have turned on wifi once or twice. Saves battery significantly, easily several months between charges. Minimizes amazon annoyances.
posted by sammyo at 12:49 PM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

Both are great but I enjoy reading on a physical book more. If I'm in a situation where I'm tight for space I'll go for the ebook. I don't buy many books anyway, mostly I just borrow from the library, but if I was in the habit of buying books regularly then I'd prefer ebooks because I only have so much space for books. That being said there is a little free library nearby so that's another way I could deal with extra books.

My comic book shelf is almost full now so I've got to figure out a way to build some extensions to it or just some new shelving in general.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:51 PM on September 16, 2021

I took off a semester from Architecture school to travel around Europe for 3 weeks in '92. We, being poor third worlders, were on a very strict budget, like each dollar accounted for, argued over, etc. I read fast, especially with long train rides (we did the while Eurail thing, from Narvik to Istanbul and lots of places in between), so a regular sized pocket book wouldn't least me a full day. I had to ration my books, read a bit, stop, read some more tomorrow, as I couldn't bring enough books from home because of the weight and I couldn't afford to buy as many books as I would have normally consumed, even taking into account second hand books, as most of the countries were not English speaking and had limited English books available.
I would have murdered somebody for a Kindle. For an old iPad. Hell, for a pre-smart phone Nokia with an e-reader app.

Archer25: "I bought my first PDA (a Handspring Visor!) … Since then, I've read ebooks almost exclusively. "

Hard same.
posted by signal at 12:55 PM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

The Right to Read
by Richard Stallman
posted by gkr at 12:59 PM on September 16, 2021

I have a few books that are over 200 years old. They work just as well as the new book I bought last Monday.

Most books don't really deserve to last 200 years, and most of the books that are printed won't last that long anyways as they are cheap mass-produced junk. Goodness knows I have too many yellowing and crumbling books printed on cheap paper sitting around my house.

I would bet that if you averaged out the number of times all the physical books printed are each read, it would average out to less than one time each, once you take into account all the books that are printed and then never read or never finished.

Unless civilization collapses, digital books are likely to last a very long time. If it does collapse, we have much bigger problems to worry about than trying to save every pulp novel and young adult fiction book ever written. But I guess at least you can burn paper books to keep warm!
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:12 PM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

But on subject of the longevity of ebooks, Project Gutenberg is 50 years old this year!

So I can say that there have always been (well, just barely) ebooks as long as I've been alive.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:25 PM on September 16, 2021 [7 favorites]

Unless civilization collapses, digital books are likely to last a very long time.

Streams of encrypted data will last a very long time, certainly, which you may or may not be able to decrypt into something you may or may not be able to read on a device that is sold, at whatever time in the present or future when you read this sentence, at a price point you can afford.

For all their downsides, books are not typically sold as scrambled cipher. Nearly anyone literate may pick up a book and read it. This is not automatically so for digital data.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:36 PM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

One of my favorite things about the Kindle is that if I’m reading in public no one tries to strike up a convo with me about the particular book I’m reading. I mean, yah, someone can still decide to barge in with a braying “Whatcha reading?” But that lack of an author or title seems to slow that sort of thing down.

I don’t have to hear about how my fellow dentist’s office patient or potential jury pool member’s cousin’s wife read that and just hated the part where … oh did I ruin the story?
posted by hilaryjade at 2:50 PM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Look, I like my e-reader, I don't like that it's a Kindle and that Amazon have the global monopoly (sure there are alternatives, but are there really?), I like having physical books, I like having space and not having to pack and lug big boxes of books whenever we move, I like to support local independent bookshops (which I can't easily do any more since Folio in the Brisbane CBD closed down a couple of months ago, which is a very significant loss), I like the convenience of getting a free sample of something digitally delivered when I'm on the bus ride home, I don't like my Kindle not showing the front page of the book I am on and instead showing some weird close up of pencil shavings or pepper grinders or whatever the fuck when it is asleep, I don't like hardcovers and don't think they should exist except for reference books or collections or folios which (let's be honest) you're not going to be taking to the beach or probably ever taking down from the shelf at all (looking at you, Everyman edition of Orwell's Essays), I like browsing second-hand bookstores for which there is no digital equivalent, it's all a land of contrasts.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:03 PM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

(sure there are alternatives, but are there really?)

Yes: Kobo, which is an ongoing company that literally just released two new ereader models. I was going to say another bonus is that Kobo shows the book cover when it’s off, but the latest Kindle firmware does that too now.
posted by bixfrankonis at 3:09 PM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm also not entirely convinced hand annotation is actually a real thing people do.

Yeah, it's kind of the Clive James set claiming to do that. "Marginalia" makes for a fun chapter in books about books (and coincidentally is an upcoming chapter in my current [physical, hardcover, I know] read, The Bookseller's Tale by Martin Latham, which is quite delightful), and is a useful plot device in something like Eco's The Name of the Rose (murderous marginalia!), but hell if I've ever seen anybody do it. I know it happens, though, because it infuriates me when I am in a second-hand book store and pick up something I am interested in and some imbecile has scratched their dog-shit observations on the pages.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:14 PM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Obviously this is one of those situations where the thing that works for you is the best option, and bah to all of the thinkpieces.

I love checking out ebooks from the library. Where I live I can get a library card from approximately every library system within a couple hour drive, and I have cards for 4 libraries that I use regularly. Sometimes I have to wait, but I'm not really that picky, and Libby will email me when the book is available.

I hate how hard it is to get ebooks from different regions. I'd be willing to pay Amazon.co.jp for ebooks if it wasn't still nearly impossible to get them on the same Kindle as my books from Amazon.com (and the libraries). I like being able to use the dictionary function, and it is significantly easier than looking things up in a paper book on my phone (or my ancient little electronic dictionary, where I still have to know how to pronounce the word to look it up). But noooooooo, selling Japanese (or German or Italian or Scots Gaelic) ebooks in the US Kindle store would be against some mystical publisher territory agreements.
posted by that girl at 3:16 PM on September 16, 2021

Yes: Kobo

Yeah, I know. The Kobos I looked at when I was in the market for a new ereader (after my Sony eBook bit the dust) were pretty lacklustre compared to the Kindles at the time, which is why I settled on the latter. I probably should get a Kobo. Hopefully I accidentally sit on my Kindle soon.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:17 PM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Also, sorry: my last comment after the fact reads to me as snotty; that escaped me at the time of posting.
posted by bixfrankonis at 3:27 PM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

My dad sold books online for 20+ years after he retired. His sales had leveled off to maybe two books per week for quite a while...then the pandemic hit and sales went to roughly 10-15 books per week (used, mostly vintage). I'll reiterate what many have said: nothing competes with the sensory appeal of an old book: the smell, the feel, thinking about the process and history of a volume published in 1896 and its subsequent history...I'll never understand people who don't appreciate that.
posted by Token Meme at 3:52 PM on September 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: Bah to all of the thinkpieces.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:55 PM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

That Atlantic article Ebooks Are an Abomination is click-bait-y. Yes, it is reading when you read on a screen. A friend reads audiobooks frequently, and experiences it as reading. Ebooks are kind of expensive, esp. when you realize they bypass most booksellers, and we've discussed the library/ebooks issue. I have a house full of books, can't resist picking up more, and enjoy the company of physical books. During pandemic, which is to say, currently, library hours are reduced, and I read way more ebooks. I'll need to find a book club if all this (gestures vaguely) is over. Fussing about format is just fussing, I worry more about how video games of all sorts, tv, streaming media, etc., have affected interest in books. If you're reading, I approve.

Digital books will last? hahahaha, nobody posts messages about what to do with Grandma's ebooks.
posted by theora55 at 4:13 PM on September 16, 2021

Today I learned that I could get the "special offers" removed from my Kindle for free and have it show the cover of whatever I'm reading when it's off, which were the only two gripes I had with it.
posted by signal at 4:18 PM on September 16, 2021

I'm surprised literally no one has mentioned the B&N Nook devices. I have one, the e-ink Glowlight. I've had it about 5 years. It's fine. I read War & Peace on it, loaded from Project Gutenberg. The battery life is great, as are most e-ink devices. It's not a Kindle & I hate Amazon. I am constantly cycling in new ePubs I've downloaded from PG, manually over a USB cable cuz my WiFi SSID has an emoji in it and the Nook refuses to see it. It's fine.

I am missing something as to why these are as unpopular as they apparently are, but maybe someone here can clue me in.
posted by glonous keming at 4:25 PM on September 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I hate the feeling of the paper in most books... hate touching it. So I read a lot more ebooks than paper ones because of that. I love physical books but touching the pages just makes me cringe most of the time.
posted by one4themoment at 4:45 PM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

I definitely, noticeably comprehend ebooks better than paper books. Two major reasons: one, physical books are harder to hold which means I'm constantly putting them down because my wrists or hands hurt or are just fatigued. Two, I can set the font to a frankly ridiculous size. I used to think I didn't "count" as vision-impaired until I started reading ebooks and realized I good portion of the reason I would get distracted, wander off, or just not want to read is because it's hard to focus on all that tiny font. Yes, large print books exist, but they're bigger and heavier and rarely at my library for the things I want to read. And unfortunately my vision can't be corrected without surgery, which I have neither the time, energy, money, or mental health for, so.

Unfortunately ebook wait times at my library are astronomically longer than the wait for physical books, so I read a lot of stuff as physical books that I would much prefer to read as ebooks. It takes me much longer to get through a physical book, and I spend a lot of time going, "Ugh, I don't want to pick that up" even if I'm really enjoying the story. If I'm reading a physical book, I always make sure I also have an ebook of something else that I can swap to when I want to read but don't feel well enough to read a physical book.

I do 90% of my reading on a Kindle Paperwhite, though, which is significantly different from reading on any other screen. I've noticed that basically any study of "e-readers" compares physical books to e.g. a Kindle Fire or other non-e-ink screen, which is functionally useless for determining whether physical books are superior to something like the Paperwhite.
posted by brook horse at 4:52 PM on September 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

Yeah there is no reason that the two have to be a fight to the death. I read almost exclusively ebooks, but the kind of books I read -- fiction and popular non-fiction that mostly doesn't need diagrams etc -- work just fine for the linearity of ebook readers; the backlighting makes it easier to read than most paper books; the size is easier to carry in a small purse and I can have essentially infinity books ready at once; it's waterproof. It has minuses too, of course -- books that use foot/endnotes are a huge pain; it's much harder for me to have multiple books on the go using it (I'm not sure why); it's a very LIFO system for me so books that have been on the ereader for a while get forgotten about unless something sparks my memory.

Other people have different preferences or weight them differently.
posted by jeather at 6:08 PM on September 16, 2021

I asked an author friend and she said she is paid 4:1 hardcovers vs. e-books/paperbacks. So yeah: buy the print version. And buy it it in hardcover, apparently.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:53 PM on September 16, 2021

I'm another who remembers where on the page I read something, so a codex (preferably in easily flippable paperback) is still superior for me.

That said, I mostly get ebooks because I'm not made of money.

Fixed-layout epubs don't really replace the ability to design a page (or rather the double-page spread) as a whole

Comic readers do this increasingly well. Sure, it's a static image and not searchable, but a lot are smart enough to let you see a whole spread and/or zoom in and traverse the image with each "next page" tap.

The downside is that a graphic novel can take more space than a TV episode.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 7:59 PM on September 16, 2021

Reading a beautiful physical book is such a joy! But any reading of a good book is a pleasure. 95 % of my reading is now on my ipad so I can use my very limited hand strength for things like eating, drawing, writing, petting the cat, etc. It took some time to adjust, but the cat says it was worth it and so do I.
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 8:41 PM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

Only mildly on-topic, but my new favourite thing is using Microsoft Natural Voices to read ebooks aloud....There's a web demo here

Thank you, that's so fun. I just tried Jabberwocky with the Ana English (US) font, and it's delightful.
posted by xigxag at 12:22 AM on September 17, 2021

Yeah, so long as you download your ebooks and use Calibre or similar to crack the kindle/kobo/etc. drm and convert them to .epub or .pdf, and keep them backed up somewhere safe, there's no reason to think they won't be readable so long as we still have computers to read them on.

Maybe someday Amazon will die or just decide not to support Kindle anymore, in which case you won't be able to download your kindle books anymore, and maybe we'll run out of devices that can read the kindle format. But if we get to a point where nothing can read .epub anymore, that means we're back to hitting each other with sticks and rocks, and we'll have more pressing concerns.
posted by rifflesby at 2:00 AM on September 17, 2021 [4 favorites]

that means we're back to hitting each other with sticks and rocks, and we'll have more pressing concerns

Heh... in much of the post-apocalytpic/zombie fiction I read, a common key point is that the sum total of knowledge is still available in paper books. 50-100 years from now? Maybe not so much - therefore, if we suffer a civilization-ending event, it will be much harder to reboot.

Hmmm... this might explain the fermi paradox... So many collapses, but few reboots...
posted by rozcakj at 6:07 AM on September 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

At least with e-books we can try shutting it down and starting it up again.
posted by flabdablet at 6:26 AM on September 17, 2021

My author friend also mentioned that if you really like an author, pre-ordering their hardcover is the very best thing to do, because it shows the publisher there's interest in the book and they will be more likely to invest time/energy into it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:03 AM on September 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

I have a few books that are over 200 years old. They work just as well as the new book I bought last Monday.

Yes but would you bring them on the plane, bus, subway to read? To quote a smug physical book reader "I doubt that."
posted by evilDoug at 9:01 AM on September 17, 2021

I understand the love of paper books, and still buy them occasionally, but ebooks just seem more practical. They don't take up space, they're always there when you want to read them (a modern reader holds an absurdly large library of content), you don't need external lighting, they're waterproof, etc.

As a result of having an e-reader, I've had some really significant experiences of being able to read a particular book in a particular time and place that wouldn't have been possible with paper books. I read Bloodlands while taking a train across Eastern Europe. I read 1491 while on a beach in the Yucatan. Total mindfuckery. In neither case was I in a position to visit a bookstore, but the Kindle worked well enough.

That said, I agree that they are very much a new technology compared to the very mature technology of paper-book publishing. It doesn't surprise me that they haven't hit the break-even point for lots of people.

I have some books that I cherish and I agree they probably wouldn't be the same if they weren't printed objects; several are 19th century engineering books, filled with detailed engravings and beautifully typeset text, and I don't believe for a second that even the latest-and-greatest e-ink displays are up to the task of replicating that yet. (Modern e-ink tops out at what, a measly 300 dpi? I would guess you'd need at least 1200 to get some of the detail in a good copperplate engraving, and maybe more than that. They are fundamentally analog products.) Modern coffee-table photography books, such as those produced by Kehrer Verlag or Aperture, also offer something that you can't really get from a screen. (Although I think maybe with a really eye-wateringly expensive Retina-displayed device, maybe you could get close. But my old iPad certainly ain't cutting it.)

But I'd be lying if I said that most of what I read is exactly pushing the boundaries of the printed codex as a medium, in some way that the e-reader can't compete with. Most of my reading, measured word by word, is midlist genre fiction, and most of it gets read while in transit. I wish I had a life that was more amenable to just sitting around in warm bay-window nooks and reading novels plucked at random from expansive shelves (preferably in my gigantic home which is nonetheless located in a walkable urban area, and also filled with a multitude of domestic animals who don't ever crap or vomit on the carpet—I mean, if we're dreaming, why not go for it?). But that... is not the life that I lead.

And for my actual life, where most of my reading is done on trains, or on planes, or sometimes in the office bathroom while taking a passive-aggressively long shit-break on company time, the e-reader has its advantages.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:39 AM on September 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

Frankly, everybody in this thread is wrong. If it's not written in blood on vellum, I ain't readin' it.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:19 PM on September 17, 2021 [4 favorites]

njohnson23: " They work just as well as the new book I bought last Monday. Will you be able to read your ebook in 20 years? I doubt that…"

Except that I'm not reading my ebook in 20 years. I'm reading it today, on a backlit screen, choosing the text size, with hundreds of book at my disposal, and many hundreds of thousands more a few clicks away, which is saying a lot in Chile were English language books are sparse and expensive, and today I'm able to pull out my phone and read a bit of the same book I'm reading in bed every night because the line at the post office is a bit longer than I thought and have it open to the position I was reading in last night and later advance the copy on my kindle to the position I reach at said post office and today if there's a word I don't know I click on it and it defines it and if I forget who Edmund is I click on his name and it pops up the text were they introduced him and today I can buy and send new books to my son in approximately 30 seconds and today I can also download samples from anywhere at any time to see if I want to buy a new book.
I'm not an archivist. I'm not that interested in what happens to my books in 20 years.
posted by signal at 3:50 PM on September 17, 2021 [8 favorites]

scruss: "I sometimes have to read a book upside down to slow myself into actually paying attention to the text. When I read on tablet they don't allow that."

iPads have an alignment lock toggle in the Control Center; that would help here, and with a hypothetical House of Leaves.

Separately, making a fast and cheap book scanner isn't too hard! (Uh, I hope.) The Mefite, fake, posted directions on Projects ages ago. I'm building one, from a different design, to scan some computer books and magazines from the 80s and 90s.
posted by Pronoiac at 6:14 PM on September 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

"That physical book will last you 20 years!" No it won't. I have so many books that are old favorites which I have owned for years and which have vanished into the ethers of moving houses and storage boxes and random piles of crap. I keep having to shamefacedly check them out from the library while grumbling about the fact that I know it's at home somewhere (it may not actually be at home somewhere). A grand total of two books on my shelf are older than 10 years. Anything else I had back then has slowly disappeared. But maybe it's different for people who aren't poor and chronically messy, idk. Obviously the same thing can happen digitally with ebooks, but at least until the distribution platform goes out of business I have the option of knocking on their door and asking them to issue me another copy.

I also get like 90% of my books from the library so I'm not going to have that book more than three weeks anyway.
posted by brook horse at 6:36 PM on September 17, 2021 [3 favorites]

Hmm, it doesn't look like House of Leaves is available for checkout from The Internet Archive's OpenLibrary; maybe I'll donate a copy to help fix that...
posted by Pronoiac at 6:37 PM on September 17, 2021

Separately, making a fast and cheap book scanner isn't too hard! (Uh, I hope.)

Holy moly. This... Okay, let me explain why this comment, at this particular moment, struck me so hard.

So a week ago, I was at my mom's. While I was there, I was helping fix this and that, some stuff she hadn't been able to do, and she mentioned things falling over in the shed. "When are you going to take care of all that?" she asked me. With dread--a real sickness of heart--I approached the shed.

Just about twenty years ago, when I had gone back to live with my parents, they were very upset about the state of my books. Without adequate shelf-space for them, I had them lining the walls of a walk-in closet. It wasn't an ideal space--for some reason, the closet had a window, and so the books were at risk of sun-fading (as were my clothes...what a dumb place for a window). And I never could find anything--they weren't in order or anything like that, just stacked and stacked and stacked. They insisted something must be done. So I bought a shed for them.

I tried really hard to do the right thing. I asked the guy at the shed store what would be best for book storage. Ventilation? No ventilation? Ventilation, definitely, you wanted the air to even out. What about bugs? Nah, you don't have to worry about bugs. I don't know, I was young, dumb, and constantly sleepy from my meds, it made sense at the time. I maxed out a credit card and had a shed delivered, and dutifully stacked box after box of books into this thing.

I mean, I tried. I put in Damp-Rid for the moisture, I put in mothballs and bug traps. But even back then, I knew I'd made a horrible, horrible mistake. You can't store books outside. I ended up trying to forget about them. When are you going to do something about all those books? remained the constant refrain, neglecting the fact that I had done something about them...I'd essentially set them up for destruction, without meaning to. Thousands and thousands of books, that might as well have been sitting in the bottom of the ocean.

I haven't opened the door of the shed for maybe a decade. Not that no one has--my mom uses it for storage as well. But I couldn't look. It just made me too depressed. So last week, I open the door, and sure enough, two large stacks of boxes had fallen, the long-dead tape no longer able to hold them closed, flaps open, books exposed. My heart sank and sank, staring at them. You should get rid of those, I was reminded, as though it were a novel idea rather than something I've been hearing for decades.

Of course I can't, really. How do you get rid of thousands of destroyed books, in another city, another state? Should I take a few days off, hire one of those big portable dumpsters, throw all the books away? I dunno, it doesn't make any more sense to do it now, than to do it later...it's not like the shed will be any more useful without the books.

So I stood there and thought, I wish there was at least a way to recover them. Not like, a scanner--I wouldn't want to stand there pressing all those books against the glass all day. So I started looking at book scanners--which are prohibitively expensive. And now--this! This link! And I shouldn't get my hopes up--I'm terrible at building things, and again, what do I expect to do, lug a scanner to another state and spend...days...weeks?...months?! scanning? But if nothing else, it would take my mind off their sad fate, at least for a little while, until something else comes to distract me.
posted by mittens at 5:55 AM on September 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

It can be heartbreaking to lose your library. It happened to me about 20 years when I went away for a year and stored my books in the nice, dry, finished basement of a brand new house. A huge storm blew though and all the sewers on the street backed up. Only the boxes of books at the very top of the stacks that did not collapse survived, and I lost thousands of books. I tried to do something to recover and salvage what I could, but in the end almost all of them ended up in the dumpster. Sometimes I still sometimes search my shelves for something (it happened yesterday!), only to remember it was one of the “drowned”.

Anyways, long story short mittens, just accept they are gone and put them in the dumpster. It will be a weight off your shoulders. It was for me when I finally gave in and chucked them. Very few books are not replaceable, and if you haven’t looked at them in that long then they are a burden you don’t need.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:24 AM on September 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

Count me among the people who switched to e-books and rarely go back. Having my books accessible wherever I am, and the ability to use the search function and the copy-and-paste function, are now part of my book-enjoying experience. I miss them terribly when I have to use paper books, whose only redeemable feature is that they don't need batteries.

Something that made me rethink the value of books as physical objects was when I had to deal with the books I inherited from my father. He loved books, a little too much perhaps, and he had filled his home with thousands and thousands of them, about 0.8 ton of books of all kinds, a tsunami of paperbacks, hardbacks, novels, art books, history books, political essays, dictionaries, in several languages, overflowing from shelves and cupboards, all "used" books but otherwise in good shape. I spent several weekends sorting these books, since I could only keep a few of them. These were regular good books, not what one could qualify as disposable trash, so there were lots of high-brow literature, essays by knowledgable people, nice-looking art books. Good books.

And still, in the end, all I had was a crumbling cityscape of paper. Essays or history books were outdated and useless except for scholars interested in historiography (note that I sometimes buy used books like that, I'm well aware of their value for doing historical research). Novels were either true classics - in which case keeping an old-but-not-really-old edition did not make sense - or now completely forgotten, no matter how much famous the author was in their time. Often, the name of an author rang a bell, and looked them up on Wikipedia, and that person had been very, very famous for a few decades, wrote well-received books about That Important Topic, won prizes, and then what? Nobody reads them anymore because That Important Topic was no longer important, or because their ideas or writing style no longer mattered. The world had moved on, and filtered out authors and books. Sic transit etc. They were cultural jetsam. Again, these were not bad books, but their usefulness and value as physical objects was limited if not null (as was their monetary value: as far as the market is concerned, old books are just paper unless it's a somehow special edition, signed copy etc.). Their sheer number diluted whatever sentimental value they could have. Eventually, I kept a few books and gave the rest to a social-minded NGO that specializes in book recycling/reselling.
posted by elgilito at 7:52 AM on September 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm surprised literally no one has mentioned the B&N Nook devices....

I am missing something as to why these are as unpopular as they apparently are, but maybe someone here can clue me in.

I'm not sure why the Nook is always left out of discussions. There's an image problem I don't understand. I often see people online saying vague things like "I heard they were not great" but never really hear that many people who have one complaining. I like mine, and I have several generations of them. I don't do Amazon though, and Kobo was harder to use in the U.S. when I first got mine, or at least it seemed so.

I was pretty skeptical. I love books and have way too many in my house, it's more embarrassing than bragging. But I probably do 90% of my reading on the Nook for the last few years. The main reason being that I read at night and the backlight means I don't have to have a strong lamp on. Changing fonts, and more importantly sizes, is a big one too. Dictionary look up means I've learned (temporarily) the actual meaning of words I had always guessed at (with various levels of success, it turns out). The software keeps getting better. Power is not a problem, I'm actually irritated right now that the battery is getting old and only lasts a week.

This is all dependent on the e-ink for me though. I find reading e-ink is actually easier than print, where regular screens are tiring. If e-ink goes away I won't be reading books on a tablet or a phone.

Shopping is a problem. I just don't connect with the online browsing in the same way I don't connect with online browsing for movies on streaming services (Actually the opposite way, but a disconnect still). I have many, many far more interesting books in my house than I do on my Nook. It's literally 100 times faster for me to browse through shelves of books and pick out something interesting compared to electronic browsing.

I don't really understand why it has to be one or the other for some people though.
posted by bongo_x at 2:57 PM on September 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

I have a lot of books in the built-in Books app on my iPhone. I think that app's been nicely done. I really like the swipe gesture for turning pages, and the animation that accompanies it. I like that the pagination is calculated based on the size of the page I'm looking at, so that if I'm on page 37 of 253 and turn the page, now I'm on page 38. I like the size of the margins. I like that I have the title at the top of the page. Basically, I like that it feels as if I'm reading a tiny little printed book.

Conversely, the Kindle app feels like reading a badly-formatted PDF. The margins are too small, and there's no option to change them. The page colour is a glaring white instead of the gentler off-white of paper, and I can fix that by choosing the yellowish background option - but I can't control the font colour, so then I'm struggling with the contrast. There's no book title up top; and to cap it all, I don't know what page I'm on! I'm on "Location 15 of 3664" and when I turn the page, now I'm on "Location 29". Tap the book to access the settings, and *now* I can see that I'm on Page 2 of 192... but that's based on the pagination in some unstated edition of the printed book, I think, because the page count doesn't change when I adjust the font size. For me, literally the only thing they've got right about the experience is the page-turn gesture. I've got several books that were only available on Kindle, and I just can't read them. It's so frustrating.

So while I love the idea of an e-ink e-reader, a real Kindle would presumably have all the same layout horrors as the app, AND I'd have to push a button to turn a page... and I have the impression that e-ink doesn't support page-turn animations, so instead the page blinks, which I would find jarring and uncomfortable. Plus, most of the books I've bought from Apple are of course DRM'ed.

But it does strain my eyes to do too much reading on the phone, and that's frustrating. It's probably partly my fault: the phone is small relative to a book and I'm a fast reader, so I have the font size very small in order to get enough words on the page to be satisfying. I'd ideally like something the size of an old-school A-format paperback, for ease of holding and the ability to choose a non-squinty font size; but the phones are all too small, and the iPads are all too big, even the Mini. Feh.

Anyway, so I have thousands upon thousands of paper books, and even with the ability to read books on my phone, I carry on buying them. Books read on the phone don't feel quite as real to me, maybe because not enough senses have been brought to bear (all iPhone books are physically the size of an iPhone; they all smell like an iPhone; their pages turn silently; their cover illustration is the size of a postage stamp, or seen only fleetingly), so if I really enjoy something I read on the phone, I get a paperback too if I can. My use cases for the phone are: out-of-print books that I can't easily get hold of, but that happen to have electronic editions; books I would once have borrowed from the library rather than buying (in those times when going to the library was something I could easily do); electronic editions of books I own or once owned but can't lay my hands on right now; and books someone just recommended on Twitter (or here) that I fancy reading, but there's no sign that they're coming out in paperback in the UK at all.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 9:52 AM on September 21, 2021

Just to confirm your supposition, no, I've never seen page-turn animations on my e-ink readers. Most recent models, the blink is minimal, but older ones it was sometimes a bit distracting. For turning pages, however, with my Kobo, I don't push a button -- it's a touch-screen, and I use the same tap-or-swipe motions that I use with my iPhone's Books app. (Actually, there's more customization available for where to tap, so I don't have to always catch just the right edge of the screen, but can doot in the middle.) My Kobo also hooks into Overdrive, so I can read library books there as well as on my phone.
posted by Quasirandom at 1:40 PM on September 21, 2021 [1 favorite]

ManyLeggedCreature, for whatever it’s worth, Kobo doesn’t use “real” page numbers, it just does what your Apple Books app does. Also, it has margin adjustability (in addition to line spacing adjustability). And if you use one of the built-in fonts you can even adjust the default font weight, which would help with contrast if you use the warmer light.
posted by bixfrankonis at 2:53 PM on September 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

I can't remember the source, but in some 19th c novel someone was admiring the ?dowager's? ?mother-in-law's? lovely, historical, rural library, and she sighed and said Yes, and we have to burn an entire seasoned oak tree every spring to keep it from mildewing.

You might live somewhere that doesn't have this problem, but I don't. They need climate-moderated storage, or something microbial will get them. Putatively airtight plastic boxes with dessicant in help for a while but not decades.
posted by clew at 5:09 PM on September 25, 2021

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