The Glade 4.0

The main reasons I have an e-reader are:

My wife and I are book hoarders, we have 6 bookshelves double-stacked and are simply out of space for more.

I can take not 3 or 4 books on a trip, but hundreds.

It is unfortunate that I can't make my trips to half-price books and bring home cartloads for cheap, but that's why I have piles of books everywhere in the first place.

I thought I would hate the kindle, I couldn't imagine reading on a screen as opposed to a real book, and I was a holdout. However, right now, when I have the baby sleeping in the crook of one arm, I can read my kindle and turn pages, all with one hand and without disturbing the sleeping child. As well, I can read in bed without the sound of paper turning pages disturbing my sleeping wife.

I won't ever get rid of my huge collections of series I put together over the years, but there are definite advantages to electronic (not least of which is I can load the kindle reader on my laptop/phone and have access to my books where ever I am as well).

I own some 25,000 or so books ...

I've read 98-99% of them I imagine.

I still don't own an e-reader.

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Unfortunately, some of us do not have the storage space to keep our own warehouse libraries on site, and must rely on either the actual library or electronic methods.

My roommate for awhile had enough books that our entire kitchen was books (I'm not kidding, there was a bookshelf in front of the stove. We didn't use it a single time while we lived there). However, I have outgrown the need to place a bookshelf in front of my stove.

Also, please post some pics! I for one would love to see the campus of castle DOOM!

I tend to prefer physical books, and despite using Taly's filthy pirate whore proclivities to secure .pdf copies of gaming books, I would often still purchase the physical copies of the ones I intended to make the most use of.

Since acquiring an iPad, which has an e-reader functionality freely available for it, I've found that I enjoy the convenience. I can't rightly say that I find it superior to a printed book, but the fact that it feels like reading a book makes it vastly superior to using my laptop for the same purpose. When gaming, if I find myself needing a book I didn't anticipate, and therefore did not bring along, I still have it available on the tablet. That's a huge point in favor of the e-reader over the printed text.

I have not yet attempted to read novels on the tablet. Then again, I haven't read a novel in something like three years.

I used the e-reader function of my tablet this past semester to load all of my lab manuals. This saved me about $1 every week from not having to go print them out. Was it as good as or better than reading a printed page? Well, I'm not sure. All I can definitively say was that the e-reader experience was inferior to print text by no more than $1.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I don't even want to think about how many books I have. I have a library in my home.

However, I do want an e-reader for my sailboat. There is limited space to put books there.

One of the most important things is no one but me should be able to mess with my e-books once I purchased them. That leaves the Kindle out.

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Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!

I like e reading. Do stanza on my iPhone. Also get my textbooks on here too If I could get everything I wanted for my reader I'd quit paperbacks. Still need my collective hardcovers though.

I don't think it's a "you have to choose a side" situation either.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

What would be really nice for the not having to choose a side end would be if you could get both the print and digital editions of a book bundled together. A hard copy for my library, but easy to take a bunch of books with me when I'm traveling.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I think that this is likely the best thing for print distributors (and perhaps, longer term, publishers) to ensure their continued relevance long-term. Some smaller RPG publishers are already doing this with .pdf (as is the norm for indy RPG digital formats), and if B&N or Amazon introduced this with their e-book stores, it'd be a pretty big coup in the Nook/Kindle competition for market share.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

What would be awesome is if they expanded it to include past purchases...

Scan the barcode/ISBN on the back of your book, and get a discount on the e-book of the same title. Not likely to happen, though.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

This brings in another issue that I believe will scare publishers/distributors off. Doing this allows multiple discounts for the same physical copy. Whether it's borrowing a friend's book and scanning it, or buying a book used (that may already have been used to get a discount on an ebook, which was not sold to the secondhand market as well), or borrowing from the library...

Whereas, requiring a receipt or granting the ebook at point of sale resolves this scary issue easily.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Some already do it.

When Taamar picked up Cryoburn in hardcover last October, it came with a CD-ROM containing digital versions of every book in the Vorkosigan Saga.

There's also a free library at WebScription.net, which vendors ebooks for Ace, Baen, Bantam Spectra, Del Rey and Tor.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Nice! More free reading material is always a good thing.

Also, amazon is planning to add library lending to the Kindle.

You can already do e-lending from many libraries in ... other ... formats. Kindle is just playing catch-up.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

So what? They're still getting the money for the e-version. Instead of passing one book around 6 friends ($30). They're getting the sale for the original hardcopy, ($30) and 5 more digital editions (say $10.). That's an extra 50 bucks from the sale of one book that they weren't getting before. Not to mention that they didn't have to pay a cent for the e-version beyond bandwidth to download. No printing, no paper, no nothing. Its all gravy, and the sooner the publishing industry understands this, the better it will be for all of us that love books.

Check out the book from the library, like it and buy the e-version for 10 bucks. That's reasonable for something new... or say 5 bucks for a mass market paperback book. Since I've got my kindle, I've bought more books in the past few months than I did all last year. In addition to the free downloads offered by some publishers, and throw in torrents of books that for some stupid reason *aren't* available in kindle format (I'm looking at YOU Black Library >.>)... I've been reading something new almost every day(an exaggeration, but still).

That brings me to another point. I would have *bought* those warhammer books if they were available electronically. Since they weren't, I had to use my search-fu for a less than lawful purpose. I still get what I want, but instead of the publisher getting my money, they get nothing. Now, if you were a publisher... wouldn't you rather have some money instead of none? I know what my answer is.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Imagine how much more money J.K. Rowling would be making if she'd authorize the Harry Potter novels in e-format.

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Exactly. They're so afraid of piracy (that's already happening and really can't be stopped) that they can't see that opening a new, legal revenue stream is a good thing to do.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Blame Taly. If she wasn't such a filthy pirate whore, publishers could release their content on pdf.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

That doesn't follow. Piracy is already happening. Releasing the content on pdf will allow publishers to make money from it.

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Holy shitsnacks!

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Go back to zero, take a pill, and get well ~ Lemmy Kilmister

Gaiman's awesome. He gets it.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Ok, fondled a Nook Touch at the local B&N. Really really like it. Probably picking one up next paycheck.

*sigh* I'm such a gadget whore.

Yes. Yes you are. Gimme a review. You're basically keeping the rest of us from buying crappy gadgets, respect.

Gotta wait 'til Wednesday (see the $1k extra moving charge in the general forum) but yeah. Pretty sure that's gonna happen.

Don't you already have a kindle and an iPad?

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Holy shitsnacks!

...

Yes. Yes I do.

*cough*

Gadget.

Whore.