This article about the decline of eBooks matches my experience. A few years ago I was all-in on eBooks, but last year I started buying real books instead: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/27/how-ebooks-lost-their-shine-kindles-look-clunky-unhip-
"You can’t turn down a corner, tuck a flap in a chapter, crack a spine […] You can’t remember something potent and find it again with reference to where it appeared on a right- or left-hand page. You often can’t remember much at all."
@nick I don't read every book on my shelf but at least I can flip through and get the gist of it, or loan it to a friend. :D
Incidentally my e-ink reader of choice was a BN Nook which I rooted and installed Android 1.5 on, mostly just for my own amusement but also so I could run the Kindle app instead. It also ran Flappy Bird, which is kind of amazing for an e-ink screen.
It was a weird clunky e-ink reader but it worked fairly well; believe it or not I read the whole Song of Ice and Fire series on that baby: http://a.co/acw1soU
Sorry, not Flappy Bird: Angry Birds. Damn there are a lot of bird games
@nolan I still prefer ebooks on the basis of weight, tbh. I carry enough heavy stuff around all day without wanting to add my leisure reading to it.
@nolan good article, particularly agreed with the point about children's books. They just don't work on Kindle /eBook format and so kids are still growing up with the real thing (thankfully imo).
@nolan Interesting article. For me, personally, I read books on my Kindle (and occasionally on my iPhone). My 9-year old son, however, reads only physical books. And when I read to him at night, I read from physical books too. He enjoys "real" books. I, on the other hand, never got into reading books until I started using a Kindle.
@nolan 🍍
There are also more and more people taking up the habit to take handwritten notes...
It seems that after all, physicality and memory may be more interactive than we thought a while back...
toot ! 🐘
#Mastodon #physical_books
#feel_and_touch #memory
#discussion
#Matodon #puku #sitelen #lipu #pilin #sona #toki
@nolan the data they cite is woefully incomplete and self-selected, however. Apart from all the emotive arguments, ebook sales don't seem like they are declining at all if you look at the whole market.
What is declining, if you look at the wider picture, is the share of that market taken up by traditional publishers. The most complete data on this is from Author Earnings, and even that is an estimate: http://authorearnings.com/report/dbw2017/
@nickbarreto @nolan It's strange how almost nobody outside of digital publishing is aware of how much of the 'ebooks are declining' story is a mirage created by the anti-competitive maneuverings of a cartel that had to settle their way out of an anti-trust lawsuit in an era where anti-trust action is all but extinct.
@nolan @nickbarreto And by 'strange' I mean an "utterly predictable consequence of the modern news business's penchant to base non-core stories on what they get fed by PR."
Arts and culture (and some tech and foreign news) are considered 'human interest' which aren't held to the same (low) standard as, say, politics. A good story will always trump facts for the 'human interest' category. And new tech losing to old tech hits a lot of 'good story' buttons.
@nickbarreto @baldur Well, that's disappointing. I guess I shouldn't be surprised though since the Guardian also never retracted their Signal/WhatsApp story. Think it's worthwhile to delete the toot?
@nickbarreto @nolan Nick beat me to it 😄
@nolan @nickbarreto Not for my sake. The article being misleading doesn't invalidate your personal experience and people who are curios will click the toot and see the discussion and realise that it's one of those "it's complicated" things.
@baldur @nickbarreto Thanks! I'm just really cautious about spreading "fake news" to Mastodon. It doesn't belong here. 😛
@nickbarreto @baldur so is e-ink real ink too? 😁
@nickbarreto @baldur @nolan Late to the party on this thread, but I read in Private Eye a few months back that the resurgence in book sales can be mainly attributed to the adult colouring in book craze. Depressing
@jdog @nolan @baldur @nickbarreto that is depressing if so...
@nolan Ditto. Started getting real books again so I had something to put on xmas/bday lists. Then I had a kid. Realized I want him to grow up with a library in the house.
@nolan Also I think some people got wise to the pricing. Like the ebook is the price of a hardcover while the paperback is on salve for $5
@nolan My two cents: ebooks are great for fiction, lousy for technical or reference.
@nolan But how do you feel about audio books?
@Maniactive I never really got into them personally. I find it faster just to read. 😕
@nolan thread resurrection
It occurred to me this morning that there are parallels with the resurgence in vinyl music sales. Seems like at least a few of us aren't ready to give up that physical interaction with such stuff.
Yes: having a book as a 3-dimensional object as been demonstrated to aid in memory formation as it essentially acts as a physical map. So there is a known benefit to physical. Ebooks haven't tried to catch up on that, largely because the fad for minimalism in UI design makes it impossible to add features/UI chrome necessary for implicit memory formation and in many cases helpful features have been removed (e.g. Kindle's progress bar).
But...
@nolan @quirst No: sales of ebooks haven't actually dropped, just shifted away from bigger publishers to a mix of self-publishers and Kindle Unlimited. That Guardian article is misleading since it only covers sales by big publishers. So clearly, most readers aren't actually letting the self-destructive antics of ebook reading systems drive them away.
OTOH a lot of the recent growth with big publ comes from a focus on physicality at the expense of reading (colouring books & colletibles) 🤷
@quirst @nolan On the yes side again: ebook growth basically stopped once it had taken over the product sectors where memory formation and visual design has the least role to play (genre fiction) and seems less capable of making in-roads towards sectors where those features are hard requirements (big parts of non-fiction, textbooks, children's books, etc.)
Basically, ebooks are a totally messed up sector. Which is why some of us are trying to reboot it via the W3C as web publications.
@nolan I consider eBooks the most wonderful things when I'm moving. So easy to move.
Then I look at my cubic-yard+ of paper books I have to move to the next office and weep.
@nolan my ebook and book experience is the same: I pay $12 for a bunch of words that just collect dust on my shelf #shame