eReading and eBooks

[Anthony Williams]

With Amazon having recently released their Kindle in the UK (although it's already sold out!), and combined with the ongoing popularity of the Sony eReader and the Apple iPad, the publishing industry is talking about eReaders and eBooks more than ever.

So, I ask the people of Planet Skaro... would you ever invest in an eReader of any description? Which do you think is the best on the market? What are the advantages and disadvantages of eBooks in comparison to "in print" books?


Personally, I don't own any form of eReader, but my other half has a Kindle. And it's bloody fantastic - you can do all sorts of things on it like underline, make annotations etc. You can download out-of-copyright books for free from websites like Project Gutenberg. It's been strongly hinted that I may be getting a Kindle of my own later this year, and I am thoroughly looking forward to having one!

Ant x

[SiHart]

I'm irrationally against them. I proably can't explain adequately why. It's not just because they could potentially threaten my livelihood, it's more that books are such maginificent things that I just can't imagine them reduced to words on a screen. I have no doubt the Kindle is a thing of wonder, it's just one step too far technology wise for me. Books are evocative and wonderful and tangible in a way that a grey piece of plastic never will be for me.

There are alos issues that have yet to be adequately resolved about cpoyright of e-books and who owns what. Making out of print stuff available is potentially exciting, but I have major reservations about the way it's been done so far. But that's another issue.

So no, I won't be rushing out tojoin the Kindle revolution until they are the only way to read new novels. I suspect they never will be in my lifetime.

Si xx

[Anthony Williams]

I used to have the same viewpoint as you, Si! I was very irrationally against them...

I'd had a play with the Sony eReader, which was the only one that we sold when I worked for Waterstone's, but I found it very cumbersome and not at all user-friendly!

But when my fiancée brought her Kindle with her last time she was visiting, I had a play around with that, and read The Picture of Dorian Grey on it. I thought that it was wonderful - the eInk means that it uses little power, whilst I found that I could do things that I'd never dream of doing with a physical book - as I mentioned before annotations, underlinings, references are all stored in a new file.

I'm definitely looking forward to owning one of my own, and if I have one by the time of the next PS meet, I'll bring it along so you can have a play, Si!

Ant x

[Lissa]

Hopefully my Kindle will arrive on Saturday. I don't hold with a romantic idea that books are somehow wonderful objects. Nice books are nice, beautiful books are beautiful but most books are just a means to an end. A paperback is just a way to keep words in the right order while you read them. Obviously books can have sentimental value but anything can have sentimental value.

Record collections and CD racks are fine but an MP3 player that lets you carry the whole lot with you is also good. MP3 needed Apple to create the breakthrough device and the store to support it - Amazon are now doing the same for ebooks. There have been ereaders for years but they always felt like marginal bits of kit - a few thousand books to buy at inflated prices, not unlike literary Laserdiscs.

Whether ebooks are a good thing going forward or not, the Kindle is the best use of the technology we've seen so far and if this doesn't catch on then maybe ebooks never will.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I'm kind of half and half. I would love to have a Kindle - esp over an iPad, as I've heard great things about the inkness.

But I would still buy books ... it would just change the way I used books. As Si says, with your favourite books you kind of develop a personal relationship with. Me particularly I love hardback books.

When it comes to reference books, there is no substitute. I'm looking through an artbook on Vincent van Gough at home. I've looked up all the pictures online of course, but there's something special about reading the book - the smell, the gloss. I have reference books on a bizarre set of things - magic (I'm Pagan), astronomy, Mars, Janes ship/aircraft guides for the Second World War, submarine history, film history. It's lovely to have these things to dip into.

Novels though I have a much more disposable attitude towards. I tend to read once, and not really reread. So I'd love to have them on Kindle, and read and disguard. I'd love the idea of a kindle, cos it'd be useful to carry on the train with me each morning.

Interesting to hear about Ant saying

whilst I found that I could do things that I'd never dream of doing with a physical book - as I mentioned before annotations, underlinings, references are all stored in a new file.

It's taken a lot of willpower for me recently to start doing that to books. You get the feeling it's sacrelidge to do that.

But with a textbook, you have to make it your own - they're about teaching you, and the notes you add to them valuable to your learnings. I have a textbook on Sonar imaging, and the margin notes are more important than the book itself ...

[Anthony Williams]

I'm very glad to read that Lissa's gone and bought what I believe to be the best. I really hope you like it as much as I like the Kindle!

But I would still buy books ... it would just change the way I used books. As Si says, with your favourite books you kind of develop a personal relationship with. Me particularly I love hardback books.

Oh, I won't stop buying physical books... there's a timeless quality to them, and I'll continue making sure that I have my favourite books ready for when the great eco disaster comes and we have no power anymore

It's taken a lot of willpower for me recently to start doing that to books. You get the feeling it's sacrelidge to do that.

It's slightly different with textbooks, but with other books... I just can't do it!

Ant x

[WhiteCrowNZ]

It'll make book signings a thing of the past!

[SiHart]

It's an interesting debate and it is going to be very interesting to see where we head in the future. Perhaps like the audiophile debate, there will always be a place for whatever works for you and you'll be able to get what works for you. Maybe in a couple of generations as people get used to the technology it'll change faster. Who knows.

There are some things books do better at the moment- Mike mentioned reference books and there's picture books for kids and the like where the colours and pictures are important and need to be seen at a certain size which would make for an a reader that was an unweidly size (though i suppose the books are unweidly too, so that's blown my argument!).
Oh I don't know, maybe I'm just a traditionalist because I don't know anything else.

I'm definitely looking forward to owning one of my own, and if I have one by the time of the next PS meet, I'll bring it along so you can have a play, Si!

I'd definitely be interested to see it in action. And be proved wrong... or right!

Si xx

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Back in 1997 the USS Seawolf class of submarines were designed with all their internal documentation on CD-ROM, saving weight of about 16-20 tones per ship.

Thats where electronic books come into their own - having a whole encyclodia and beyond on one hard disk.

As Si said, it used to be books were the only way to access information ... and (god forbid) microfiche (hate it). We're now living in a very information rich environment. But just because there's say a wikipedia book doesn't mean we're not going to read books on subjects.

An interesting example at the moment is art for me. I've been reading up about art and art history with some books I got from the library. And the author talks about certain pieces of work, and artists and their impact. Next to the book I have my netbook, and I Google up the artist and certain works, so I can examine decent colour pictures to better appreciate what he's saying. Course it means I'm going through the book at a snails pace, but I'm absorbing it better.

[Anthony Williams]

One joy of the Kindle is the Free 3G version, on which you can access the internet anywhere. With the advent of Wikipedia, you essentially own a version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Ant x

[SiHart]

ha! "For though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate" suddenly seems very prescient!

Si xx

[WhiteCrowNZ]

One joy of the Kindle is the Free 3G version, on which you can access the internet anywhere. With the advent of Wikipedia, you essentially own a version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Ant x

Thats kind of how I feel about my Nokia smartphone ...

Only it also makes phone calls, videos, plays music, allows me to chat online.

Actually Ant I'm suspecting you're only into Kindle cos you're trying to undermine your old employer. What a brilliant and evil sinister plan ...

[Jeff]

I just saw there is an article up today on this subject:

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home...ily-love_money

[Darren]

I've only just started to buy albums on Mp3.

I really hate the idea of e-Books & readers.

[Dino]

There's a publisher called "Philistine Press" that publish online for free your poems and novels. No idea if they are Kindle friendly?
But I haven't gone in for it. (I've done it myself anyway on in my Facebook notes?)
No idea if they have anything to do with the main topic! But I'm at least 5 years behind modern tech! So I'll be in a better position to back either Kindle or I-pads.

[Captain Tancredi]

I'll probably be suggesting to my folks (in the next few weeks) that a Kindle might be a good thing to get me for Christmas. And I'll no doubt end up with a Sony reader from Waterstones, because that's the way they do things.

But I can't see that I would ever buy one for myself- I'm currently reading a copy of Fielding's Joseph Andrews which, the date inside the cover tells me, I bought in 1991 and haven't touched since. I have far too many unread physical books to read first!

[Lissa]

I've had it for a few days now (full review here).

Pros

• The e-ink is really clear on the screen and is totally different to reading it off a computer, iPhone or anything like that.

• Getting content on there is really easy - just email it to the Kindle and Amazon will automatically convert it to the right format and send it on in a couple of minutes.

• It's just the right size - big enough to replicate the page of a book, small enough and light enough to hold in one hand for long periods.

• The page controls are very well placed so you can hold and move with one hand.

• The progress bar and % display are a nice touch.

• It comes with the Oxford Dictionary of English and you can get a near-instant definition of any word in the text you're reading by putting the cursor next to it.

Cons

• It is clunky to navigate, even more so after 2 years of using iOS. It takes a few seconds to get from anywhere to anywhere and knowing how to do it doesn't seem to make it any faster.

• Space is wasted on a full QWERTY keyboard (presumably so you can search the Amazon book store on your Kindle) which could've been used for more functional keys.

• The Kindle store is still showing its roots as a US shop and a frustrating number of British books aren't available.

Overall I think it's great. It's brilliant for storing and reading books, it's adequate at navigating between books and organising what you've got on there.

[Andrew Curnow]

I have to admit that although I've always been kind of against the idea of e-books as a sort of 'emotional' thing, and although I'm not normally that bothered about tech stuff... despite that, I find myself quite drawn to getting a Kindle. I even like the name (is there a reason it's called the Kindle, by the way - is it an homage to the character of Hindle in Kinda?).

[Anthony Williams]

full review here

Lissa, I quite possibly love you for this review. You've summed up both everything I love and hate about the Kindle!

Ant x

[SiHart]

I feel a little less apprehensive about it after reading that review... I tell you what, that's huge progress for me!

Si xx

[Jeff]

I remember initially reading some speculation before teh iPad was was released that it could replace Kindle because it works as an e-reader plus a whole lot more.

Just wondering what the consensus is on that now...

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I really like the idea of the Kindle. Mainly cos of the eInk system, which makes it less like looking at a TV screen and the extended life of it.

Alas they're really expensive in NZ at the moment. And the only one available (we have no Amazon) gets a poor write up.

[Rob McCow]

Stephen Fry continues his campaign to occasionally say how good e-readers and I-Phones are:

Stephen Fry's latest memoir has been published simultaneously in hardback, as an eBook and an iPhone app.

The Fry Chronicles follows the life of the comic, known for his love of technology, from his time at university to his first steps into the world of stage and screen.

Publisher Louise Moore described the move as "innovative and groundbreaking".

She said: "I can't think of a better author to launch this kind of new publishing - Stephen himself represents everything that we hold dear and value in Britain, yet at the same time has an extraordinary knowledge and love of cutting-edge technology."

The app, which can be used on an iPhone, iPad or iPod, allows readers to skip through the book using colour coded categories to focus on different people and subjects.

The eBook includes eight videos featuring Fry discussing events in the book and photographs.

Fry is promoting the book with a show tonight at the Royal Festival Hall, in central London, which is being broadcast to more than 55 cinemas across the country.

The hardback is priced at £20, the eBook is £12.99 and the app -dubbed myFry - is £7.99.

I'd describe it as "inevitable and predictable", but it is a development.

[Lissa]

The Kindle version of Fry's book is only £6.30 which is exactly the sort of thing they need to do to get people to buy electronic books. The new Stephen Hawking is less than £6, Terry Pratchet's latest is £6.29 and Tony Blair's autobio is £6.99. It appears that the American $9.99 best seller is coming to the UK without us being too badly ripped off.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Lissa - question for you as the only resident Kindle owner. Can you upload other books to your Kindle? I've heard it doesn't support PDFs for instance.

There is a lower grader eBook out here called the Kobo, but one of it's strengths seems to be supporting pdfs ... which would be useful for me cos i could keep work documentation on it for reviewing.