This seems like a lot of work for not a huge payoff. I get that the feel and experience of a physical book has a certain nostalgia, but for me, I'd just leave the big monster on the shelf and grab an epub from Anna's Archive. You have already ensured the author and publisher get paid, you might as well read on an e-reader, which is in my opinion superior in nearly every way to a physical book.
Ebooks sync across devices, allow for a customized presentation, quick dictionary lookups, bookmarks, etc. The only slight edge I'll give to a physical book is the ability to easily make marginal notes in pencil -- I realize that ebooks have this feature too, it's just not as immediate or as frictionless.
The problem with ebooks is that you cannot be 100% certain that you're reading the original text. That can only be preserved in physical copies. That's why the destructive book scanning for AI is such a tragedy. There's already plenty of examples of original texts being surreptitiously revised, and it happens with videos too.
Not the same thing. The kindle ebook you "purchased" could have different text each time you open it up. A movie you stream could be different every time.
Reading your comment I wonder if the parent comment is different each time, because "does the ebook text change reading-to-reading" is not the question being discussed.
What's being discussed is "original texts being surreptitiously revised". The comment you're responding to isn't a nonsequitur.
That's not a problem with Ebooks writ large -- a zip file of a bunch of HTML documents aren't likely to randomly change on you. It's a problem of some evil vendor's "ebook ecosystem", where one day your copy of 1984 could vanish from your library. Most of the ebooks I've been reading lately are all public domain classics from Standard Ebooks.
I was shocked to discover that "How To Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie was heavily rewritten by his wife after his death. I had two copies of the book, and sure enough, one was the old version and the other the new. The new one did not withstand scrutiny.
1. Letters That Produced Miraculous Results - cut because correspondence norms had massively changed between 1936 and 1981
2. Seven Rules for Making Your Home Life Happier - cut because its 1930s-era perspectives on marriage and domestic life didn't age that well
Personally, I think some of the edits in the remaining sections are more controversial than the removal of those two sections. I think the revision lost quite a bit of Dale's charm and just felt a bit less idiosyncratic in a bad way.
Hacker News' founder Paul Graham also recommends that you read the original version[1]. I'm curious to see examples of what was changed in the revision. I read it myself a long time ago, but I don't know which one it was and wondering if I missed out on the better version.
Your comment is mentioned in a recent video that I was watching. I remembered reading the hackernews thread but oh man it felt so joyful seeing your comment on the video and I was surprised/amazed so much so that I have come here.
I wonder how you feel about it? Did you know about this video and I'd be curious to hear your response about it :-D
It made me realize that people might actually be scouring through the internet and the hackernews comments that we write along the way might even be showed by people to perhaps an even larger audience. Wow.
[0]: I Found the BANNED Chapter of "How To Win Friends and Influence People": [<a href="https://youtu.be/iGJ0W8s1ka0?t=281" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/iGJ0W8s1ka0?t=281](<a href="https://youtu.be/iGJ0W8s1ka0?t=281" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/iGJ0W8s1ka0?t=281)
Well no, you can only be 100% certain you're reading the text found in that book. Books often change over releases. It's not some sacred tome containing an ever-updating reflection of the author's ideals. It's just the draft at the time the book was printed.
Why does everyone advocating for physical always treat effective DRM as a given?
I have bought a lot of digital music in my life, and I own every bit of it as long as my copies exist, just like all the physical music I bought before (and converted to digital as soon as it was practical).
> * Nothing to charge
My e-readers last weeks of active use without charging, and I literally found a Kindle that had been lost for over a year a few weeks ago which still had over 30% charge because they take basically no power if they're not being used. Charging really is not a significant concern.
> * Don't have yet another screen to stare at
It's a very different type of screen, that doesn't have the same effect on your eyes and by its low-color low-refresh-rate nature really isn't easy to implement the sorts of attention-stealing anti-features that other screens often contain.
> * Its the definitive way to collect books (similar in the sense of vinyl for music)
Similar to vinyl, it's "definitive" to people who care more about how it looks on their shelf than actually enjoying the content. Pulling a beautiful hardcover off the shelf, setting it down, and opening it up is great of course, just like pulling a record off the shelf, sliding it out of the sleeve, placing it on the turntable, and setting the needle in place. Once you've done that however it's the same book, the same music, just a lot less convenient (and in the case of vinyl, objectively worse quality than a well-mastered high-quality digital release).
> * Going to used bookstores is awesome
No disagreement there. That said, if someone were to ever develop an ebook licensing system that allowed for arbitrary transfer and resale through third parties it would certainly be interesting to see what turned up in the "bargain bin" that way too. I'm not sure how such a thing could actually be possible and I'm not going to hold my breath for it to ever happen but the concept of resale is not inherently impossible in digital content.
> * Seeing your whole collection physically is awesome and can be a conversation starter
No argument there, my partner's game shelf takes up an entire wall in our house and has hundreds of giant colorful boxes covered in artwork. My Steam library has an order of magnitude more games in it but it's just a list on a screen that I can make show thumbnail images of what the cover would look like if it existed as a physical product.
That said, while I may not have the giant media racks we all drooled over in the '90s, the flip side of that is digital content takes up effectively zero space and weighs nothing. I drive around with my entire music library on a USB stick in my car every day and have for over a decade at this point. My e-reader has every single book I own on it with plenty of space to spare. My Steam Deck has enough space built in for dozens of modern games, and I also have a MicroSD card in it containing every single game for basically every 8/16 bit system ever produced, as well as my favorites of the 32 bit and beyond eras.
> * Graphic novels/comics are still better physical
Yeah color e-paper displays still have a LONG way to go before they can even think about the graphic novel market. That side of things is sort of like where digital music was in the era where MP3 players had storage measured in megabytes so you might not even get a full album without having to compress it to a point where you can definitely tell. It's possible to see the promise in the concept, but it's definitely not there yet (and unlike MP3 player capacity, we can't even assume the tech will get there eventually).
I had to stop reading one of my favorite authors when I was doing infant duty with my oldest. The books kept getting thicker, and I could no longer one hand them comfortably reading either end of the novel due to the book's balance. I found a kindle mostly solved my problems, and I could keep reading again one handed.
That said, it never occurred to me to just cut up my book, so I could continue to read it comfortably. I think I might have chosen to do so though, since I find the tactile nature of reading a physical book to be more memorable than digital. Where the words sit on the page, and the act of turning the page, the smell, all does something to my neurons. For my junk novels, I don't really care, but for the authors I cherish, the closer to the printed word I can get the better the experience I have, and the more memorable the writing in general.
This post isn't aimed at people that read a physical book for "nostalgia". They read a lot of books and have already decided that they prefer physical books to an ereader.
That makes no sense to me though. I always prefer physical books to any ereader, but I still stopped accumulating (new) books in my flat - they just accumulate space. I'll always love hardcopy books, but not needing them as a physical hardcopy is just better for me.
I just get rid of most books after reading, knowing that I won’t reread the great majority of them or need them as a reference. For the few that I might unexpectedly end up wanting to reread, it’s okay if I’ll have to reprocure them. That case hasn’t occurred so far.
This one. Recently I added "re-f" property to my templates for the Review base in Obsidian ie how probable a review/reread/rewatch factor that title has. And it's quite liberating to juas write zero there and remove/delete the title. Also helps with datahoarding tendecies.
I had the same problem which inevitable made me buy a bigger apartment. It's hand down the best investment I have ever done since tangible book assets give you so many different an non curated insights which you can only get from reading. You should not see books as something that take up space but rather something that free up space
>which is in my opinion superior in nearly every way to a physical book.
A physical book, you encounter in physical space. Thus has a lot more chance to get read. The ebook, one has to take a device and press some button, before the book has even a chance of getting seen...
My ebooks typically get downloaded once, and sits forever unread in some device..
A physical book, I take from a lib and gets read automatically, unless it finds its way to the underside of some furniture...
That IMHO nullifies any convience that e-books have..
We are talking about our opinions here, so there are no wrong answers. It's an interesting observation, the physical presence of a book is something I hadn't considered. Having said that, I'd wager lots of us avid readers have a daily habit, and we'd likely be working through our backlog during certain hours, even absent a convenient a physical reminder to do so.
I have the reverse. I have a tiny e-reader that fits in my pocket next to my phone. I pull that out instead of doomscrolling on the phone, so I read on trains, on the toilet, etc. It's much more convenient than carrying a dead-tree book around. So I'm way more likely to read a book as an epub.
yeah that's the chap. Mine is slightly too large for my phone though. It still fits easily in my pocket. And it means I can pull out the e-reader without pulling out my phone, reducing the temptation to "just check..."
I have had Kindles since v1. And the pattern was always the same: Read some books and then get to a boring patch in one and stop and then dont read anything for 6-24mo.
When we had my son we decided we wanted to create an environment where he was more likely to make reading a habit (over touchscreen brainrot etc).
We figured the best way to do that would be to:
1. Make sure he saw us reading for pleasure, often.
2. We read to him regularly as a habit.
3. Create spaces ideal for reading.
4. Put books everywhere.
Even before you get to point 4, it’s clear that physical books are just simply the best possible solution.
So I just bought a ton of books, hooked Openclaw up to my Goodreads and had it regularly scan the inventory of local used bookstores, bought some bookcases, and set aside time every morning and evening to read.
And you know what, I’ve never read as much or enjoyed it as much as now. And I attribute it entirely to having a beautiful wall of books next to a nice comfortable chair right in the
middle of the living room.
I see my book on my bedside table every day. It’s a book, not another device. Another nice benefit is when people come over we invariably end up standing in front of the book shelf talking about books. And then they often leave with one to borrow.
Physical books have their issues and drawbacks etc but they definitely have changed our family’s life for the better.
Not one of the things you mentioned about ebooks actually interests me. On the other hand, physical books are more comfortable to read, enjoyable to hold in your hands and flip the pages, don't ever run out of charge, and look nice when you put them on a shelf. For me, they are vastly superior to ebooks.
I say all this not to try to convince you that you're wrong (it's all a matter of taste after all), but to point out that this isn't just nostalgia. People who read physical books actually prefer them, even if their reasons aren't things you find important.
agreed! I'm actually pulled in different directions; I love the nostalgic value of physical books and enjoy possessing them as artefacts, but I vastly prefer the experience of reading an ebook, especially the page turning with one finger.
Some people might actually prefer physical books and are making an informed decision, but I suspect more simply haven't experienced e-books, or only have tried on a suboptimal device like their phone and just assume that e-books are an inferior experience. While I still have hundreds of physical books, as I age I much prefer reading on an e-ink device where I can choose the font size I prefer.
spudlyo · · focus · HN ↗
Ebooks sync across devices, allow for a customized presentation, quick dictionary lookups, bookmarks, etc. The only slight edge I'll give to a physical book is the ability to easily make marginal notes in pencil -- I realize that ebooks have this feature too, it's just not as immediate or as frictionless.
stronglikedan · · focus · HN ↗
duskwuff · · focus · HN ↗
That's equally true of print books. Misprints happen.
krupan · · focus · HN ↗
ash_091 · · focus · HN ↗
cxr · · focus · HN ↗
spudlyo · · focus · HN ↗
WalterBright · · focus · HN ↗
vintagedave · · focus · HN ↗
WalterBright · · focus · HN ↗
Parts V and VI were removed from the wife's version.
HelloMcFly · · focus · HN ↗
1. Letters That Produced Miraculous Results - cut because correspondence norms had massively changed between 1936 and 1981
2. Seven Rules for Making Your Home Life Happier - cut because its 1930s-era perspectives on marriage and domestic life didn't age that well
Personally, I think some of the edits in the remaining sections are more controversial than the removal of those two sections. I think the revision lost quite a bit of Dale's charm and just felt a bit less idiosyncratic in a bad way.
cantrevealname · · focus · HN ↗
[1] <a href="https://paulgraham.com/startupfaq.html" rel="nofollow">https://paulgraham.com/startupfaq.html
Imustaskforhelp · · focus · HN ↗
I wonder how you feel about it? Did you know about this video and I'd be curious to hear your response about it :-D
It made me realize that people might actually be scouring through the internet and the hackernews comments that we write along the way might even be showed by people to perhaps an even larger audience. Wow.
[0]: I Found the BANNED Chapter of "How To Win Friends and Influence People": [<a href="https://youtu.be/iGJ0W8s1ka0?t=281" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/iGJ0W8s1ka0?t=281](<a href="https://youtu.be/iGJ0W8s1ka0?t=281" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/iGJ0W8s1ka0?t=281)
kulahan · · focus · HN ↗
ex-aws-dude · · focus · HN ↗
* You own it forever
* Nothing to charge
* Don't have yet another screen to stare at
* Its the definitive way to collect books (similar in the sense of vinyl for music)
* Going to used bookstores is awesome
* Seeing your whole collection physically is awesome and can be a conversation starter
* Graphic novels/comics are still better physical
ThrowawayR2 · · focus · HN ↗
Not after what the submitter did.
wolrah · · focus · HN ↗
Why does everyone advocating for physical always treat effective DRM as a given?
I have bought a lot of digital music in my life, and I own every bit of it as long as my copies exist, just like all the physical music I bought before (and converted to digital as soon as it was practical).
> * Nothing to charge
My e-readers last weeks of active use without charging, and I literally found a Kindle that had been lost for over a year a few weeks ago which still had over 30% charge because they take basically no power if they're not being used. Charging really is not a significant concern.
> * Don't have yet another screen to stare at
It's a very different type of screen, that doesn't have the same effect on your eyes and by its low-color low-refresh-rate nature really isn't easy to implement the sorts of attention-stealing anti-features that other screens often contain.
> * Its the definitive way to collect books (similar in the sense of vinyl for music)
Similar to vinyl, it's "definitive" to people who care more about how it looks on their shelf than actually enjoying the content. Pulling a beautiful hardcover off the shelf, setting it down, and opening it up is great of course, just like pulling a record off the shelf, sliding it out of the sleeve, placing it on the turntable, and setting the needle in place. Once you've done that however it's the same book, the same music, just a lot less convenient (and in the case of vinyl, objectively worse quality than a well-mastered high-quality digital release).
> * Going to used bookstores is awesome
No disagreement there. That said, if someone were to ever develop an ebook licensing system that allowed for arbitrary transfer and resale through third parties it would certainly be interesting to see what turned up in the "bargain bin" that way too. I'm not sure how such a thing could actually be possible and I'm not going to hold my breath for it to ever happen but the concept of resale is not inherently impossible in digital content.
> * Seeing your whole collection physically is awesome and can be a conversation starter
No argument there, my partner's game shelf takes up an entire wall in our house and has hundreds of giant colorful boxes covered in artwork. My Steam library has an order of magnitude more games in it but it's just a list on a screen that I can make show thumbnail images of what the cover would look like if it existed as a physical product.
That said, while I may not have the giant media racks we all drooled over in the '90s, the flip side of that is digital content takes up effectively zero space and weighs nothing. I drive around with my entire music library on a USB stick in my car every day and have for over a decade at this point. My e-reader has every single book I own on it with plenty of space to spare. My Steam Deck has enough space built in for dozens of modern games, and I also have a MicroSD card in it containing every single game for basically every 8/16 bit system ever produced, as well as my favorites of the 32 bit and beyond eras.
> * Graphic novels/comics are still better physical
Yeah color e-paper displays still have a LONG way to go before they can even think about the graphic novel market. That side of things is sort of like where digital music was in the era where MP3 players had storage measured in megabytes so you might not even get a full album without having to compress it to a point where you can definitely tell. It's possible to see the promise in the concept, but it's definitely not there yet (and unlike MP3 player capacity, we can't even assume the tech will get there eventually).
milesvp · · focus · HN ↗
That said, it never occurred to me to just cut up my book, so I could continue to read it comfortably. I think I might have chosen to do so though, since I find the tactile nature of reading a physical book to be more memorable than digital. Where the words sit on the page, and the act of turning the page, the smell, all does something to my neurons. For my junk novels, I don't really care, but for the authors I cherish, the closer to the printed word I can get the better the experience I have, and the more memorable the writing in general.
NoahZuniga · · focus · HN ↗
shevy-java · · focus · HN ↗
layer8 · · focus · HN ↗
justsomehnguy · · focus · HN ↗
al_borland · · focus · HN ↗
lolakutty · · focus · HN ↗
Can't you dontate them to a library. Or take it from one in the first place..
thece0 · · focus · HN ↗
monkpit · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
lolakutty · · focus · HN ↗
A physical book, you encounter in physical space. Thus has a lot more chance to get read. The ebook, one has to take a device and press some button, before the book has even a chance of getting seen...
My ebooks typically get downloaded once, and sits forever unread in some device..
A physical book, I take from a lib and gets read automatically, unless it finds its way to the underside of some furniture...
That IMHO nullifies any convience that e-books have..
spudlyo · · focus · HN ↗
marcus_holmes · · focus · HN ↗
inemesitaffia · · focus · HN ↗
marcus_holmes · · focus · HN ↗
joeguilmette · · focus · HN ↗
I have had Kindles since v1. And the pattern was always the same: Read some books and then get to a boring patch in one and stop and then dont read anything for 6-24mo.
When we had my son we decided we wanted to create an environment where he was more likely to make reading a habit (over touchscreen brainrot etc).
We figured the best way to do that would be to:
1. Make sure he saw us reading for pleasure, often. 2. We read to him regularly as a habit. 3. Create spaces ideal for reading. 4. Put books everywhere.
Even before you get to point 4, it’s clear that physical books are just simply the best possible solution.
So I just bought a ton of books, hooked Openclaw up to my Goodreads and had it regularly scan the inventory of local used bookstores, bought some bookcases, and set aside time every morning and evening to read.
And you know what, I’ve never read as much or enjoyed it as much as now. And I attribute it entirely to having a beautiful wall of books next to a nice comfortable chair right in the middle of the living room.
I see my book on my bedside table every day. It’s a book, not another device. Another nice benefit is when people come over we invariably end up standing in front of the book shelf talking about books. And then they often leave with one to borrow.
Physical books have their issues and drawbacks etc but they definitely have changed our family’s life for the better.
ympb121 · · focus · HN ↗
Buy the paperback for larping and performative reading. Get the epub from Anna's to actually read it.
laweijfmvo · · focus · HN ↗
bigstrat2003 · · focus · HN ↗
I say all this not to try to convince you that you're wrong (it's all a matter of taste after all), but to point out that this isn't just nostalgia. People who read physical books actually prefer them, even if their reasons aren't things you find important.
zem · · focus · HN ↗
jhbadger · · focus · HN ↗
zem · · focus · HN ↗