11 ms·

I hope this isn't the trend going forward. I don't get the traditionalist love of paperback books most of the time. Like the sort of people who go on and on abo

by TheGRS 11y ago

I hope this isn't the trend going forward. I don't get the traditionalist love of paperback books most of the time. Like the sort of people who go on and on about exploring book stores or the smell of new paper. I love my Kindle and I really hope to be able to use it as my primary reading source, its just so convenient, light, portable and unobtrusive (especially with that newer back-light option). But the price of new ebooks turns me off for sure, I wouldn't buy a new novel for $20+, in ebook, hardcover, paperback or ever really. $10 is the sweet spot for novels and I think Amazon was driving that well for awhile. I'll stick to older novels that are < $10. Let me also state that paper really does have its merits, at least for now until some smart tablet engineers can solve some problems with the format. I love a comic book as paperback, but that is because I don't think tablets or even color e-ink has quite gotten there yet. I also think technical reference books (like programming guides) are best served in paper. Again, I don't think its easy to flip through pages on a tablet or kindle, but maybe that will be solved some day too.

Nav_Panel 11y ago
I hold fairly different opinions, though I agree that digital reading sources can make sense for completely new books read for pleasure. As a longtime physical product, paper has a lot of benefits. My dad can give me a book he read in college, just grab it off the shelf. I can go buy books extremely cheaply secondhand, sometimes free. I can't imagine paying $10 for an ebook when I can go to a used bookstore and pay $3, and then I own it forever. Additionally, once I own it I can share it, give it away, write in the margins, dog-ear pages, leave post-it notes, etc. I also can't imagine a world where 20 years later I can trivially give my old Kindle eBooks to my children. On the other hand, I much prefer having searchable digital technical reference books. I find the flipping and index/table-of-contents referencing to be very "immersion-breaking" when I'm programming. For example, it's much quicker and easier to Ctrl+F for "XCHG" than it is to dig through the intimidating multi-thousand page Intel x86 Instruction Reference. When I was taking an OS course, I had to do this all the time, and I much preferred the pdf reference over the physical one.
- derefr 11y ago
  > My dad can give me a book he read in college, just grab it off the shelf. I can go buy books extremely cheaply secondhand, sometimes free. I can't imagine paying $10 for an ebook when I can go to a used bookstore and pay $3, and then I own it forever. Additionally, once I own it I can share it, give it away, write in the margins, dog-ear pages, leave post-it notes, etc. I also can't imagine a world where 20 years later I can trivially give my old Kindle eBooks to my children. That's a problem with the current incarnation of ebooks as a set of cloud stores. Imagine e-books held—along with all the annotations made to them on your device—in something like a blockchain. Someone pushes you three bucks, and you push them a (license to a) book. Now the license, and the annotations, are in their account, accessible to all their devices.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    Why do people keep bringing up blockchains whenever they want to talk about generic digital ownership transfers where they don't really provide any benefit... It's the new "cloud", I swear.
    - derefr 11y ago
      It's not on a whim; I've actually thought for a while now that "non-partisan IP license store" is the perfect use-case for a blockchain—one much more fitting a blockchain's particular system of incentives than the exchange of monetary tokens. An account for holding IP licenses is, at minimum, just a bag of arbitrary tokens (UUIDs, say) signed by IP owners. To make them useful, the tokens might be, say, SHAs of files they are considered licenses to. The files themselves don't have to be attached to the system anywhere; in fact, the files don't even have to be available from the IP owners. Holding such a token effectively says "I, the IP owner, promise not to sue you for having a copy of this file on your hard drive." All the files themselves could be available on BitTorrent or whatever else—the tokens might-as-well-be scrips to participate in decriminalized piracy, much as doctor's notes allow one to participate in decriminalized marijuana consumption. But you can imagine an ecosystem of clients (or maybe OS-level features) that can collate licenses to IP-holder CDNs to get those files, maybe transmitting a zero-knowledge proof of the possession of the license to the CDN server in exchange for the file; and will remove shell-level access to the file when the license is removed from the store. (The file could be retained in an OS-protected cache and such in case the user regains a license to it; it just has to be made inaccessible to the user.) Now, consider the current products and services that a complete implementation of this sort of system would displace: any App Store (Apple's) or Game Store (e.g. Steam), any Music or Video store, potentially most streaming services, etc. A proper implementation would make "having content available to access" just an OS-built-in transparent side-effect of having the proper licenses. Tons and tons of middle-men would be put out. So, imagine building this thing in any way that's even slightly centralized. Imagine, just as a slight step away from a blockchain, that this was a Ripple/Stellar type thing: a set of ledgers extended such that each ledger account can hold a bag of bitstrings, rather than a bag of {currency_code, amount} pairs. Wouldn't it be in this service's interest to gain adoption by partnering with these IP middle-men? They'd say "let's get Valve to make it so that people's Steam games are listed in here, and then people can just move the licenses around using our wallet app! Win-win!" The potential partners, afraid of being displaced and commoditized, would go along, but at the same time, try to take control of the system. They would want the technology provider to allow them to impose business restrictions on how and when users could transfer things, or even charge a cost payable to the partner for doing so. The result wouldn't be a distributed zero-trust ledger of IP licenses at all; it'd just be a meta-store interface, with each store able to enforce its own policies on its licenses. Now, you could posit that there's some perfect organization (maybe the FSF? GNU Taler is a thing) that wouldn't fall for these tricks, even as its network absolutely fails to gain traction because nobody wants to be displaced by it. But it's much easier to just solve the problem by not having an organization running the network at all, so that there's "nobody there" to decide to partner with the IP owners or the current middle-men. Take the decision away; turn off the incentive structure. Just make it a blockchain. (The other convenient thing about such a structure being a blockchain, though, is the scaling story. A company like Stellar builds out a network and then has to pay to run its network until people start to join and peer with it and overwhelm the seed nodes; if Stellar were to run out of runway at any point, it would almost certainly be at the start, the costs of maintaining the seed network draining them dry before adoption picks up. A completely distributed ledger is initially run by idealist hobbyists, who will continue to run it without charging it rent each month until such a time as the system gains popularity enough to comprise commercially-run nodes as well. It's like parents taking care of their kids for free; it lets the network grow up until it's ready to support itself.) --- ...now, all that being said, yes, you can eliminate the "blockchain" part of this if you flip the problem on its head. If instead of the representation of ownership being the computed ledger account holder of a given token, the tokens themselves are self-describing documents that are signed and re-signed by each party as the token changes hands—then you can store these tokens anywhere: put them in a DHT, stick them in your OS's keychain store, wherever. People can just carry one to another computer via Sneakernet if they like. This quickly gets into problems with verifying that a license hasn't since been moved or revoked, though, which starts to look like an "ask the IP holder if it still wants you to be holding its license" sort of problem—like CA revocation is today. In fact, the whole system in that case would look like the current infrastructure for code-signing—and that's a problem, because that sort of system privileges IP owners (who can run CRL servers) at the expense of consumers (who can't or won't), making the whole thing just turn back into trusting the IP owner to say who currently owns a thing, and getting the IP owner to perform license transfers on your behalf, and all the rent-extracting problems that those two things generate. With a blockchain, everybody is up-to-date on who currently owns that thing. You don't have to think about key revocations or expiries; you don't have to worry about stale grants; each machine just computes current ownership after every new block, and if something is now gone from your account, all your devices know it (or know that they're offline and can't trust their database of ownership assertions.) But, if you have a system for broadcasting those self-describing documents—something that where everybody will be able to synchronize with it and then receive timely updates from it (Usenet, maybe?)—then yes, you get the same properties as a blockchain. But you've also just effectively recreated a blockchain. (And while you're recreating a blockchain, you might want that "proof-of-work" thing in there, too, so that people can't flood your newsgroup-ledger with pointless messages.)
fahimulhaq 11y ago
Just curious. What are the missing features in technical/programming ebooks in your opinion?
- douche 11y ago
  The biggest one for me is that it is hard to read them on the typical < 6" e-reader or phone. Most of them are type-set for big, larger-than letter paperback formats. That means you need to have a second monitor to read them and look at code at the same time. I thought about getting a Kindle DX when they were making them. Although even then, my copy of Code Complete is as big as a 19" monitor, when it is open and laid flat.
  - fahimulhaq 11y ago
    I agree. I also thought of getting a Kindle DX but then settled for iPad (though I don't use it much now, I have to admit). The iPad feels heavier when you are trying to read for longer periods (and I can't really hold it with 1 hand all the time). Kindle is smaller/lighter so it works out great for fiction books but not for technical books. Paper books are also heavy and you can't carry them everywhere so I mostly read the technical eBooks on my computer.
- TheGRS 11y ago
  My experience with technical books in ebook form has been pretty lack-luster so far. I personally like to have my screen dedicated to the IDE and to have the book over on some other screen. This is so I don't lose context in what I'm working on and so I can easily work through examples without putting the text away. Most of the time I only have the one laptop screen however, so if I'm reading an ebook on the same computer, I need to switch from IDE to some other program to read and then back. This also drives me to copy/paste examples, which for me doesn't help me learn well. Reading a technical ebook on my kindle has its own set of problems. Examples are usually written for the paperback book (which are usually very wide), so the kindle will squish examples and put them across multiple kindle pages. I haven't tried using an ebook with a large tablet yet, so maybe that is the sweet spot. But my last issue is something I haven't seen a good solution for yet. Often I just want to flip to a section of the book for reference and I simply don't have a good feel for how to do this with an ebook right now. Flipping on an ebook usually requires going to a chapter you know holds the content and then paging one-by-one until you find what you are looking for. Ctrl+F may or may not be useful (I usually find its not). Paper books are simply quicker for flipping through the pages while scanning the content.
LordKano 11y ago
After a long day of working in the garden, on my car or on a home improvement project, I like to relax in a hot bath with a good book. I'm not comfortable doing that with my Kindle. I may not be the average book consumer but I buy a lot of books.
- derefr 11y ago
  That's a problem with the device more than anything. The ultimate e-book reader form-factor (that all the device manufacturers are gunning to eventually get to, with research into flexible e-ink et al) will look like nothing more than a laminated sheet of paper, and would be pretty much just as safe to get wet.
  - LordKano 11y ago
    It may well be a limitation of today's technology but it's still a real limitation. It's why reading ebooks on my laptop while I'm in the tub hasn't become my method.
  - sltkr 11y ago
    FYI, Kobo already sells a waterproof e-reader today for ~$160.
  - delecti 11y ago
    I actually find your hypothetical device very unappealing. I've tried several kindle models somewhat extensively, and eventually opted for a thicker model (2015 Paperwhite) because the thinner one (Kindle Voyage) was much less comfortable to hold. I think that the ergonomics of a piece of paper would be even less pleasant for long periods of reading. I think we're just wired to handle stuff in our hands, whatever that stuff happens to be.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      The Paperwhite is really nice. After I got an iPad, my 2nd gen Kindle (that I spent way too much money on) ended up on the shelf collecting dust. A year or so back, I decided to get a Paperwhite on a whim and quickly decided that it's much nicer for reading text than the iPad. The weight, screen, and battery life just make it a better experience.
derefr 11y ago
> I also think technical reference books (like programming guides) are best served in paper. The iBooks extended format (the one with hierarchical pages and pop-out asides and embedded media and so forth) is amazing for reference books. I wish Apple had any desire to open it up and get other device manufacturers displaying it; it'd be the perfect replacement for the PDF manuals that ship with most things, while actually enhancing accessibility.
bduerst 11y ago
The marketplace is getting worse for e-books, not better. Amazon has been pushing the "Kindle Unlimited" subscription model and changed how authors get paid for those consumers, which favors shorter stories. Authors have taken to breaking out a book's chapters and releasing them individually [1] to capitalize on this model. Conversely, this gives them more shelf space in Amazon's recommendations, and because they are the same book, it lowers the signal to noise ratio in the marketplace for finding something relevant to read. [1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013RJDCPU/ref=series_rw_dp_sw http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013RJDCPU/ref=series_rw_dp...
- Someone1234 11y ago
  One could argue, if one was so inclined, that releasing smaller cheaper books is better for the consumer. Right now, you'll spend $4-11 on a book. A lot of people know within two or three chapters if they like the book, and will make a decision on finishing it. If you're buying books in parts, that allows the reader to try the book at a smaller financial risk. For example you can find out if you'll like the book or not for $1 rather than $6. Even the example you linked, it would have cost me $5 previously to try the author/book out, but now only costs me $1. That's a win for me (PS - and I might try out that book as it sounds pretty interesting as a SciFi topic). > Conversely, this gives them more shelf space in Amazon's recommendations, and because they are the same book, it lowers the signal to noise ratio in the marketplace for finding something relevant to read. But is this an inherent problem with the books/authors themselves, or Amazon's site? If Amazon grouped all of the chapters or parts into a single "volume" then it both wouldn't negatively impact recommendations or flood the genre list with duplicates.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    True, and it would be an argument if you couldn't preview the first few chapters of a kindle book already. The problem lay with Amazon, not the authors. The authors are rational actors reacting to the changes that Amazon made to their marketplace. By trying to push their subscription model, Amazon is inadvertently reducing the quality of their ebook marketplace. And man, if you're a SciFi fan, you should read Hugh Howley's Wool book too.
superuser2 11y ago
Paperwhite makes reading better than it was on paper. The screen looks just as good (pixel density makes a HUGE difference), it's a comfortable rigid rectangle that's a lot easier to hold than most paperbacks, and most importantly the backlight means I can stop wrestling with cheaply made yet expensive AAA-hogging clip-on lights.
- blumkvist 11y ago
  Except... it has no pages.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    Turning physical pages for me is at best neutral. I like to use a stand that holds the book upright-ish on my desk, which makes page-turning inconvenient. I do wish they had kept the physical page-turning buttons though, not a fan of the touchscreen.
    - epochwolf 11y ago
      The Kindle Voyage brought the buttons back.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
There needs to be a new document format for technical docs. Mobi, epub and pdf just aren't working. I would love to be able to go all digital and read technical docs on my kindle, but right now it's frustrating. Even on a tablet, it's not great.
- dublinben 11y ago
  Like DocBook? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    Looks like in order to read a "DocBook" book, one has to convert it to another format. Unless I am missing something.
- e12e 11y ago
  What's wrong with epub for technical docs? I don't really have a reader that is suitable for technical books (I'm not sure anyone has, passive, high-contrast, 300+dpi and a screen size at minimum the size of an A4 page) -- but if I did, I'm not sure I'd have any problems with docs being in epub. Or just html (not a big difference there, really). I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm not sure I understand what you think needs improvement wrt epub? (Now, how those epubs are made, that might be a different matter all together, like a lot of html renderings technical manuals leaves a lot to be desired -- old-school javadoc comes to mind).
DanBC 11y ago
I'm price concious, so a cheaper paperback will put me off from buying the ebook. I don't care if books are expensive apart from that. Children's books currently are better in print than in ebook form. The Kate Greenaway award lists some really nice books that don't work in ebook form. http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway/ http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway/ (I'm sure this is something my child will think is odd when xe reads to their child - "My Dad used to read to me from real paper books!".)
- Pamar 11y ago
  There is also the Wink newsletter for books that work better in paper: http://winkbooks.net http://winkbooks.net
marincounty 11y ago
I think you will miss book stores when they are gone? Personally, I really like going to new/used book stores. "I love a comic book as paperback, but that is because I don't think tablets or even color e-ink has quite gotten there yet." I love comic/rare books too. I like the dust covers. I like the authors signature on the title page, if I'm lucky enough to get the signature. I like finding a first edition. I like seeing the original price. I hunt for these books. I have a feeling you appreciate physical copies more than you think? As to technical material, I'm with you, I just want to know/digest the information.
- TheGRS 11y ago
  I probably shouldn't suggest this is like some black and white view of the world, since I do also love a good book store. I don't really care for a Walden's, but I love a good Mom & Pop book store with the book shelves labeled by sharpies. But I also don't conflate reading with my trips to the book store. They are separate experiences for me. I find it a little much when people talk about how much better paper books are over ebook simply because they can browse around a Powell's for hours until they smell just the right type of leather bindings. I mean that's fine and all, I enjoy that stuff too, but my Kindle allows me to actually read more things, while being so much more convenient to tote around. I don't really need to visit a book store to get a sense of the next Brandon Sanderson novel. I already know I'm going to buy that, so a Kindle makes much more sense to me there. I enjoy a trip to the book store on a lazy Sunday, where I'd like to find a new trade paperback comic or even a photography collection. Book stores don't make paper better or worse though, they are just a great experience on their own. /rant
Apofis 11y ago
The new iPad Pro should be really really good for comic book reading, as the traditional 10" iPad is a bit too small, leading you to have to scroll around as you read.
bsder 11y ago
> I don't get the traditionalist love of paperback books most of the time. For me, speed and size. I read faster than e-readers update.
elektromekatron 11y ago
I think Douglas had a point here. “Douglas said…Books are sharks,” Gaiman told a packed audience at the Royal Geographical Society in London. “I must have looked baffled because he he looked very pleased with himself. And he carried on with his metaphor. Books are sharks … because sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.” Adams told Gaiman: “‘Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books and no matter what happens books will survive.’ And he was right,” said Gaiman. http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/03/06/neil-gaiman-salutes-douglas-adams-why-books-are-sharks/ http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/03/06/neil-gaiman-sa... Though funnily enough, the one thing that has got me wanting to buy an e-ink display is for technical reference.
chipsy 11y ago
It's predicted by the market for vinyl and cassette, not by magical thinking about books - a decline, then a rebound. The actual information content is correctly priced to approach zero. The leftover value goes to people who want something premium in their collection, people buying from a local store based on their recommendations, etc. The creators no longer solely derive monetary benefit from product sales, instead using a mix of crowdfunding, performance, and derivative license deals, as well as premium product. The new world of media isn't ideal, but it offers a lot more flexibility than the old one. You'll be able to get free information, while traditionalists will retain their outlet.
snogglethorpe 11y ago
I'm all for ebooks in theory (so convenient!), but find that in practice reading on a computer/ipad/kindle/phone is almost always an unsatisfying, and in some cases almost stressful, experience. I think the hardware just has a long way to go... The kindle's the best, both for the screen, the light weight (compared to an ipad), and because I'm not stressed out about battery usage, but going back to a paper book feels like I'm emerging from a humid fog into fresh spring air...

by TheGRS 11y ago

Nav_Panel 11y ago

I hold fairly different opinions, though I agree that digital reading sources can make sense for completely new books read for pleasure. As a longtime physical product, paper has a lot of benefits. My dad can give me a book he read in college, just grab it off the shelf. I can go buy books extremely cheaply secondhand, sometimes free. I can't imagine paying $10 for an ebook when I can go to a used bookstore and pay $3, and then I own it forever. Additionally, once I own it I can share it, give it away, write in the margins, dog-ear pages, leave post-it notes, etc. I also can't imagine a world where 20 years later I can trivially give my old Kindle eBooks to my children. On the other hand, I much prefer having searchable digital technical reference books. I find the flipping and index/table-of-contents referencing to be very "immersion-breaking" when I'm programming. For example, it's much quicker and easier to Ctrl+F for "XCHG" than it is to dig through the intimidating multi-thousand page Intel x86 Instruction Reference. When I was taking an OS course, I had to do this all the time, and I much preferred the pdf reference over the physical one.

derefr 11y ago
> My dad can give me a book he read in college, just grab it off the shelf. I can go buy books extremely cheaply secondhand, sometimes free. I can't imagine paying $10 for an ebook when I can go to a used bookstore and pay $3, and then I own it forever. Additionally, once I own it I can share it, give it away, write in the margins, dog-ear pages, leave post-it notes, etc. I also can't imagine a world where 20 years later I can trivially give my old Kindle eBooks to my children. That's a problem with the current incarnation of ebooks as a set of cloud stores. Imagine e-books held—along with all the annotations made to them on your device—in something like a blockchain. Someone pushes you three bucks, and you push them a (license to a) book. Now the license, and the annotations, are in their account, accessible to all their devices.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  Why do people keep bringing up blockchains whenever they want to talk about generic digital ownership transfers where they don't really provide any benefit... It's the new "cloud", I swear.
  - derefr 11y ago
    It's not on a whim; I've actually thought for a while now that "non-partisan IP license store" is the perfect use-case for a blockchain—one much more fitting a blockchain's particular system of incentives than the exchange of monetary tokens. An account for holding IP licenses is, at minimum, just a bag of arbitrary tokens (UUIDs, say) signed by IP owners. To make them useful, the tokens might be, say, SHAs of files they are considered licenses to. The files themselves don't have to be attached to the system anywhere; in fact, the files don't even have to be available from the IP owners. Holding such a token effectively says "I, the IP owner, promise not to sue you for having a copy of this file on your hard drive." All the files themselves could be available on BitTorrent or whatever else—the tokens might-as-well-be scrips to participate in decriminalized piracy, much as doctor's notes allow one to participate in decriminalized marijuana consumption. But you can imagine an ecosystem of clients (or maybe OS-level features) that can collate licenses to IP-holder CDNs to get those files, maybe transmitting a zero-knowledge proof of the possession of the license to the CDN server in exchange for the file; and will remove shell-level access to the file when the license is removed from the store. (The file could be retained in an OS-protected cache and such in case the user regains a license to it; it just has to be made inaccessible to the user.) Now, consider the current products and services that a complete implementation of this sort of system would displace: any App Store (Apple's) or Game Store (e.g. Steam), any Music or Video store, potentially most streaming services, etc. A proper implementation would make "having content available to access" just an OS-built-in transparent side-effect of having the proper licenses. Tons and tons of middle-men would be put out. So, imagine building this thing in any way that's even slightly centralized. Imagine, just as a slight step away from a blockchain, that this was a Ripple/Stellar type thing: a set of ledgers extended such that each ledger account can hold a bag of bitstrings, rather than a bag of {currency_code, amount} pairs. Wouldn't it be in this service's interest to gain adoption by partnering with these IP middle-men? They'd say "let's get Valve to make it so that people's Steam games are listed in here, and then people can just move the licenses around using our wallet app! Win-win!" The potential partners, afraid of being displaced and commoditized, would go along, but at the same time, try to take control of the system. They would want the technology provider to allow them to impose business restrictions on how and when users could transfer things, or even charge a cost payable to the partner for doing so. The result wouldn't be a distributed zero-trust ledger of IP licenses at all; it'd just be a meta-store interface, with each store able to enforce its own policies on its licenses. Now, you could posit that there's some perfect organization (maybe the FSF? GNU Taler is a thing) that wouldn't fall for these tricks, even as its network absolutely fails to gain traction because nobody wants to be displaced by it. But it's much easier to just solve the problem by not having an organization running the network at all, so that there's "nobody there" to decide to partner with the IP owners or the current middle-men. Take the decision away; turn off the incentive structure. Just make it a blockchain. (The other convenient thing about such a structure being a blockchain, though, is the scaling story. A company like Stellar builds out a network and then has to pay to run its network until people start to join and peer with it and overwhelm the seed nodes; if Stellar were to run out of runway at any point, it would almost certainly be at the start, the costs of maintaining the seed network draining them dry before adoption picks up. A completely distributed ledger is initially run by idealist hobbyists, who will continue to run it without charging it rent each month until such a time as the system gains popularity enough to comprise commercially-run nodes as well. It's like parents taking care of their kids for free; it lets the network grow up until it's ready to support itself.) --- ...now, all that being said, yes, you can eliminate the "blockchain" part of this if you flip the problem on its head. If instead of the representation of ownership being the computed ledger account holder of a given token, the tokens themselves are self-describing documents that are signed and re-signed by each party as the token changes hands—then you can store these tokens anywhere: put them in a DHT, stick them in your OS's keychain store, wherever. People can just carry one to another computer via Sneakernet if they like. This quickly gets into problems with verifying that a license hasn't since been moved or revoked, though, which starts to look like an "ask the IP holder if it still wants you to be holding its license" sort of problem—like CA revocation is today. In fact, the whole system in that case would look like the current infrastructure for code-signing—and that's a problem, because that sort of system privileges IP owners (who can run CRL servers) at the expense of consumers (who can't or won't), making the whole thing just turn back into trusting the IP owner to say who currently owns a thing, and getting the IP owner to perform license transfers on your behalf, and all the rent-extracting problems that those two things generate. With a blockchain, everybody is up-to-date on who currently owns that thing. You don't have to think about key revocations or expiries; you don't have to worry about stale grants; each machine just computes current ownership after every new block, and if something is now gone from your account, all your devices know it (or know that they're offline and can't trust their database of ownership assertions.) But, if you have a system for broadcasting those self-describing documents—something that where everybody will be able to synchronize with it and then receive timely updates from it (Usenet, maybe?)—then yes, you get the same properties as a blockchain. But you've also just effectively recreated a blockchain. (And while you're recreating a blockchain, you might want that "proof-of-work" thing in there, too, so that people can't flood your newsgroup-ledger with pointless messages.)

fahimulhaq 11y ago

Just curious. What are the missing features in technical/programming ebooks in your opinion?

douche 11y ago
The biggest one for me is that it is hard to read them on the typical < 6" e-reader or phone. Most of them are type-set for big, larger-than letter paperback formats. That means you need to have a second monitor to read them and look at code at the same time. I thought about getting a Kindle DX when they were making them. Although even then, my copy of Code Complete is as big as a 19" monitor, when it is open and laid flat.
- fahimulhaq 11y ago
  I agree. I also thought of getting a Kindle DX but then settled for iPad (though I don't use it much now, I have to admit). The iPad feels heavier when you are trying to read for longer periods (and I can't really hold it with 1 hand all the time). Kindle is smaller/lighter so it works out great for fiction books but not for technical books. Paper books are also heavy and you can't carry them everywhere so I mostly read the technical eBooks on my computer.
TheGRS 11y ago
My experience with technical books in ebook form has been pretty lack-luster so far. I personally like to have my screen dedicated to the IDE and to have the book over on some other screen. This is so I don't lose context in what I'm working on and so I can easily work through examples without putting the text away. Most of the time I only have the one laptop screen however, so if I'm reading an ebook on the same computer, I need to switch from IDE to some other program to read and then back. This also drives me to copy/paste examples, which for me doesn't help me learn well. Reading a technical ebook on my kindle has its own set of problems. Examples are usually written for the paperback book (which are usually very wide), so the kindle will squish examples and put them across multiple kindle pages. I haven't tried using an ebook with a large tablet yet, so maybe that is the sweet spot. But my last issue is something I haven't seen a good solution for yet. Often I just want to flip to a section of the book for reference and I simply don't have a good feel for how to do this with an ebook right now. Flipping on an ebook usually requires going to a chapter you know holds the content and then paging one-by-one until you find what you are looking for. Ctrl+F may or may not be useful (I usually find its not). Paper books are simply quicker for flipping through the pages while scanning the content.

LordKano 11y ago

After a long day of working in the garden, on my car or on a home improvement project, I like to relax in a hot bath with a good book. I'm not comfortable doing that with my Kindle. I may not be the average book consumer but I buy a lot of books.

derefr 11y ago
That's a problem with the device more than anything. The ultimate e-book reader form-factor (that all the device manufacturers are gunning to eventually get to, with research into flexible e-ink et al) will look like nothing more than a laminated sheet of paper, and would be pretty much just as safe to get wet.
- LordKano 11y ago
  It may well be a limitation of today's technology but it's still a real limitation. It's why reading ebooks on my laptop while I'm in the tub hasn't become my method.
- sltkr 11y ago
  FYI, Kobo already sells a waterproof e-reader today for ~$160.
- delecti 11y ago
  I actually find your hypothetical device very unappealing. I've tried several kindle models somewhat extensively, and eventually opted for a thicker model (2015 Paperwhite) because the thinner one (Kindle Voyage) was much less comfortable to hold. I think that the ergonomics of a piece of paper would be even less pleasant for long periods of reading. I think we're just wired to handle stuff in our hands, whatever that stuff happens to be.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    The Paperwhite is really nice. After I got an iPad, my 2nd gen Kindle (that I spent way too much money on) ended up on the shelf collecting dust. A year or so back, I decided to get a Paperwhite on a whim and quickly decided that it's much nicer for reading text than the iPad. The weight, screen, and battery life just make it a better experience.

derefr 11y ago

> I also think technical reference books (like programming guides) are best served in paper. The iBooks extended format (the one with hierarchical pages and pop-out asides and embedded media and so forth) is amazing for reference books. I wish Apple had any desire to open it up and get other device manufacturers displaying it; it'd be the perfect replacement for the PDF manuals that ship with most things, while actually enhancing accessibility.

bduerst 11y ago

The marketplace is getting worse for e-books, not better. Amazon has been pushing the "Kindle Unlimited" subscription model and changed how authors get paid for those consumers, which favors shorter stories. Authors have taken to breaking out a book's chapters and releasing them individually [1] to capitalize on this model. Conversely, this gives them more shelf space in Amazon's recommendations, and because they are the same book, it lowers the signal to noise ratio in the marketplace for finding something relevant to read. [1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013RJDCPU/ref=series_rw_dp_sw http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013RJDCPU/ref=series_rw_dp...

Someone1234 11y ago
One could argue, if one was so inclined, that releasing smaller cheaper books is better for the consumer. Right now, you'll spend $4-11 on a book. A lot of people know within two or three chapters if they like the book, and will make a decision on finishing it. If you're buying books in parts, that allows the reader to try the book at a smaller financial risk. For example you can find out if you'll like the book or not for $1 rather than $6. Even the example you linked, it would have cost me $5 previously to try the author/book out, but now only costs me $1. That's a win for me (PS - and I might try out that book as it sounds pretty interesting as a SciFi topic). > Conversely, this gives them more shelf space in Amazon's recommendations, and because they are the same book, it lowers the signal to noise ratio in the marketplace for finding something relevant to read. But is this an inherent problem with the books/authors themselves, or Amazon's site? If Amazon grouped all of the chapters or parts into a single "volume" then it both wouldn't negatively impact recommendations or flood the genre list with duplicates.
- bduerst 11y ago
  True, and it would be an argument if you couldn't preview the first few chapters of a kindle book already. The problem lay with Amazon, not the authors. The authors are rational actors reacting to the changes that Amazon made to their marketplace. By trying to push their subscription model, Amazon is inadvertently reducing the quality of their ebook marketplace. And man, if you're a SciFi fan, you should read Hugh Howley's Wool book too.

superuser2 11y ago

Paperwhite makes reading better than it was on paper. The screen looks just as good (pixel density makes a HUGE difference), it's a comfortable rigid rectangle that's a lot easier to hold than most paperbacks, and most importantly the backlight means I can stop wrestling with cheaply made yet expensive AAA-hogging clip-on lights.

blumkvist 11y ago
Except... it has no pages.
- superuser2 11y ago
  Turning physical pages for me is at best neutral. I like to use a stand that holds the book upright-ish on my desk, which makes page-turning inconvenient. I do wish they had kept the physical page-turning buttons though, not a fan of the touchscreen.
  - epochwolf 11y ago
    The Kindle Voyage brought the buttons back.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

There needs to be a new document format for technical docs. Mobi, epub and pdf just aren't working. I would love to be able to go all digital and read technical docs on my kindle, but right now it's frustrating. Even on a tablet, it's not great.

dublinben 11y ago
Like DocBook? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DocBook
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Looks like in order to read a "DocBook" book, one has to convert it to another format. Unless I am missing something.
e12e 11y ago
What's wrong with epub for technical docs? I don't really have a reader that is suitable for technical books (I'm not sure anyone has, passive, high-contrast, 300+dpi and a screen size at minimum the size of an A4 page) -- but if I did, I'm not sure I'd have any problems with docs being in epub. Or just html (not a big difference there, really). I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm not sure I understand what you think needs improvement wrt epub? (Now, how those epubs are made, that might be a different matter all together, like a lot of html renderings technical manuals leaves a lot to be desired -- old-school javadoc comes to mind).

DanBC 11y ago

I'm price concious, so a cheaper paperback will put me off from buying the ebook. I don't care if books are expensive apart from that. Children's books currently are better in print than in ebook form. The Kate Greenaway award lists some really nice books that don't work in ebook form. http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway/ http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway/ (I'm sure this is something my child will think is odd when xe reads to their child - "My Dad used to read to me from real paper books!".)

Pamar 11y ago
There is also the Wink newsletter for books that work better in paper: http://winkbooks.net http://winkbooks.net

marincounty 11y ago

I think you will miss book stores when they are gone? Personally, I really like going to new/used book stores. "I love a comic book as paperback, but that is because I don't think tablets or even color e-ink has quite gotten there yet." I love comic/rare books too. I like the dust covers. I like the authors signature on the title page, if I'm lucky enough to get the signature. I like finding a first edition. I like seeing the original price. I hunt for these books. I have a feeling you appreciate physical copies more than you think? As to technical material, I'm with you, I just want to know/digest the information.

TheGRS 11y ago
I probably shouldn't suggest this is like some black and white view of the world, since I do also love a good book store. I don't really care for a Walden's, but I love a good Mom & Pop book store with the book shelves labeled by sharpies. But I also don't conflate reading with my trips to the book store. They are separate experiences for me. I find it a little much when people talk about how much better paper books are over ebook simply because they can browse around a Powell's for hours until they smell just the right type of leather bindings. I mean that's fine and all, I enjoy that stuff too, but my Kindle allows me to actually read more things, while being so much more convenient to tote around. I don't really need to visit a book store to get a sense of the next Brandon Sanderson novel. I already know I'm going to buy that, so a Kindle makes much more sense to me there. I enjoy a trip to the book store on a lazy Sunday, where I'd like to find a new trade paperback comic or even a photography collection. Book stores don't make paper better or worse though, they are just a great experience on their own. /rant

Apofis 11y ago

The new iPad Pro should be really really good for comic book reading, as the traditional 10" iPad is a bit too small, leading you to have to scroll around as you read.

bsder 11y ago

> I don't get the traditionalist love of paperback books most of the time. For me, speed and size. I read faster than e-readers update.

elektromekatron 11y ago

I think Douglas had a point here. “Douglas said…Books are sharks,” Gaiman told a packed audience at the Royal Geographical Society in London. “I must have looked baffled because he he looked very pleased with himself. And he carried on with his metaphor. Books are sharks … because sharks have been around for a very long time. There were sharks before there were dinosaurs, and the reason sharks are still in the ocean is that nothing is better at being a shark than a shark.” Adams told Gaiman: “‘Look at a book. A book is the right size to be a book. They’re solar-powered. If you drop them, they keep on being a book. You can find your place in microseconds. Books are really good at being books and no matter what happens books will survive.’ And he was right,” said Gaiman. http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/03/06/neil-gaiman-salutes-douglas-adams-why-books-are-sharks/ http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/03/06/neil-gaiman-sa... Though funnily enough, the one thing that has got me wanting to buy an e-ink display is for technical reference.

chipsy 11y ago

It's predicted by the market for vinyl and cassette, not by magical thinking about books - a decline, then a rebound. The actual information content is correctly priced to approach zero. The leftover value goes to people who want something premium in their collection, people buying from a local store based on their recommendations, etc. The creators no longer solely derive monetary benefit from product sales, instead using a mix of crowdfunding, performance, and derivative license deals, as well as premium product. The new world of media isn't ideal, but it offers a lot more flexibility than the old one. You'll be able to get free information, while traditionalists will retain their outlet.

snogglethorpe 11y ago

I'm all for ebooks in theory (so convenient!), but find that in practice reading on a computer/ipad/kindle/phone is almost always an unsatisfying, and in some cases almost stressful, experience. I think the hardware just has a long way to go... The kindle's the best, both for the screen, the light weight (compared to an ipad), and because I'm not stressed out about battery usage, but going back to a paper book feels like I'm emerging from a humid fog into fresh spring air...