5 ms·

I would gladly pay for a higher tier (at least $50) that ships you physical copies of these books.

by yojex 10y ago

overcast 10y ago
I was just typing this. Reading PDFs sucks, especially when you want to detach yourself from the interface you're currently working on. Flipping back and forth screens, meh.
- a3poify 10y ago
  To learn properly, I feel that I prefer learning from a book rather than learning from a PDF. This is why I couldn't really use Codecademy. Too many distractions.
  - overcast 10y ago
    Yep, that's how I feel. I've gone back to physical books for just about everything, unless it's some super cheap kindle book while traveling.
- sotojuan 10y ago
  ...And for me it's the opposite! Unless it's a "concept" book like SICP or anything that isn't "this is how you code in X", I'll take tabbing from PDF to code editor over moving my head from the book to computer.
rafadc 10y ago
These bundles exist only because of the near zero cost of duplication. For so many books the tier should be even higher unfortunately.
- atwebb 10y ago
  Ondemand printing exists, maybe literally bundling the books together into a large, reader's digest-esque format.
etendue 10y ago
If you use an iPad, an app called LiquidText (http://liquidtext.net http://liquidtext.net) is great for textbooks or journal articles. It lets you pull excerpts, highlight, annotate, and also compress sections for side-by-side viewing. It's not as good as paper, but it's much better than viewing a static PDF.
- bphogan 10y ago
  Oh, that is neat. That may be exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for sharing.
glenndebacker 10y ago
Don't know of this helps, but most of them also comes in ePub format which you could read on an e-paper device.
squeaky-clean 10y ago
Likewise. Several of these are on my current wishlist of tech books to get, and I've heard good things about several others. But reading tech books digitally kind of sucks. They're not fun to read on my eInk Kindle, on my iPad, or my computer screen.
bphogan 10y ago
I love that there are many people on here clamoring for physical copies. But over the years, I've noticed (for the books I have written and edited), print copies sharply declined and ebook copies sharply went up. It's to the point where I don't even know why we bother doing paper anymore. I prefer digital because I can send out updated copies of the books to readers for free, which I can't do on paper. And programming stuff changes so frequently. So I guess I'm saying if you want print books, you should make that known by buying physical copies of books. Cos if the trends I see continues, I can't imagine it'll be practical to do print tech books too far into the future.
- marvindanig 10y ago
  > I love that there are many people on here clamoring for physical copies. It's hilarious that people in tech clamor for physical books, even at the cost of trees, environment, poor accessibility, poor maintainability, poor upgradability and poor portability. I suspect it is because of the sucky "format-hell" of ebooks and sub-par reading experience. And the fact that ebooks are still not a first class citizen of the web I agree that these trends will continue. And that's exactly what publishers would want. To be able to make more money!
  - russelluresti 10y ago
    There are a couple of studies out there that show that reading from a physical book (as opposed to an e-book) actually leads to learning the material better. So, when it comes to books like these, I wouldn't be surprised if people wanted physical copies.
    - yomly 10y ago
      Seems like we are trained to scan tablets and monitors differently[0] but that eink is similar to paper[1][2]. Personally I find the tactile experience of reading a hard-copy helps me focus and generally enjoy the physical experience of interacting with a book. And who ever said that people in tech were concerned about the environment?[3] [0]http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/9/paper-or-tablet-reading-recall-and-comprehension http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/9/paper-or-tablet-readi... [1]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3873942/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3873942/ [2]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251509359_Comparing_reading_processes_on_e-ink_displays_and_print https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251509359_Comparing... [3]http://i.imgur.com/Ad6WrGj.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Ad6WrGj.jpg
marvindanig 10y ago
It is hilarious but publishers also want the same thing.
jlgaddis 10y ago
I buy physical books exclusively and I buy a lot of them (well, it's a lot to me anyways; probably 40 thus far in 2016). I've bought a handful of e-books, mostly just to help support people I know who wrote the books, as usually they were on topics I wasn't really interested in. For my own "use", I've bought one e-book that I can recall and I only bought that one because I had recently bought the (very thick) dead tree version, it was offered at a significant discount, and I was about to leave on a trip and was wanting to take the book. For a few bucks, I was able to buy the e-version, load it onto my iPad (that was going along anyways), and have one less to have to worry about packing (there's not a lot of "luxury" space available on a Harley-Davidson).

I would gladly pay for a higher tier (at least $50) that ships you physical copies of these books.

by yojex 10y ago

I would gladly pay for a higher tier (at least $50) that ships you physical copies of these books.

I was just typing this. Reading PDFs sucks, especially when you want to detach yourself from the interface you're currently working on. Flipping back and forth screens, meh.

a3poify 10y ago
To learn properly, I feel that I prefer learning from a book rather than learning from a PDF. This is why I couldn't really use Codecademy. Too many distractions.
- overcast 10y ago
  Yep, that's how I feel. I've gone back to physical books for just about everything, unless it's some super cheap kindle book while traveling.
sotojuan 10y ago
...And for me it's the opposite! Unless it's a "concept" book like SICP or anything that isn't "this is how you code in X", I'll take tabbing from PDF to code editor over moving my head from the book to computer.

rafadc 10y ago

These bundles exist only because of the near zero cost of duplication. For so many books the tier should be even higher unfortunately.

atwebb 10y ago
Ondemand printing exists, maybe literally bundling the books together into a large, reader's digest-esque format.

etendue 10y ago

If you use an iPad, an app called LiquidText (http://liquidtext.net http://liquidtext.net) is great for textbooks or journal articles. It lets you pull excerpts, highlight, annotate, and also compress sections for side-by-side viewing. It's not as good as paper, but it's much better than viewing a static PDF.

bphogan 10y ago
Oh, that is neat. That may be exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for sharing.

glenndebacker 10y ago

Don't know of this helps, but most of them also comes in ePub format which you could read on an e-paper device.

squeaky-clean 10y ago

Likewise. Several of these are on my current wishlist of tech books to get, and I've heard good things about several others. But reading tech books digitally kind of sucks. They're not fun to read on my eInk Kindle, on my iPad, or my computer screen.

bphogan 10y ago

I love that there are many people on here clamoring for physical copies. But over the years, I've noticed (for the books I have written and edited), print copies sharply declined and ebook copies sharply went up. It's to the point where I don't even know why we bother doing paper anymore. I prefer digital because I can send out updated copies of the books to readers for free, which I can't do on paper. And programming stuff changes so frequently. So I guess I'm saying if you want print books, you should make that known by buying physical copies of books. Cos if the trends I see continues, I can't imagine it'll be practical to do print tech books too far into the future.

marvindanig 10y ago
> I love that there are many people on here clamoring for physical copies. It's hilarious that people in tech clamor for physical books, even at the cost of trees, environment, poor accessibility, poor maintainability, poor upgradability and poor portability. I suspect it is because of the sucky "format-hell" of ebooks and sub-par reading experience. And the fact that ebooks are still not a first class citizen of the web I agree that these trends will continue. And that's exactly what publishers would want. To be able to make more money!
- russelluresti 10y ago
  There are a couple of studies out there that show that reading from a physical book (as opposed to an e-book) actually leads to learning the material better. So, when it comes to books like these, I wouldn't be surprised if people wanted physical copies.
  - yomly 10y ago
    Seems like we are trained to scan tablets and monitors differently[0] but that eink is similar to paper[1][2]. Personally I find the tactile experience of reading a hard-copy helps me focus and generally enjoy the physical experience of interacting with a book. And who ever said that people in tech were concerned about the environment?[3] [0]http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/9/paper-or-tablet-reading-recall-and-comprehension http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/9/paper-or-tablet-readi... [1]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3873942/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3873942/ [2]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251509359_Comparing_reading_processes_on_e-ink_displays_and_print https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251509359_Comparing... [3]http://i.imgur.com/Ad6WrGj.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Ad6WrGj.jpg

marvindanig 10y ago

It is hilarious but publishers also want the same thing.

jlgaddis 10y ago

I buy physical books exclusively and I buy a lot of them (well, it's a lot to me anyways; probably 40 thus far in 2016). I've bought a handful of e-books, mostly just to help support people I know who wrote the books, as usually they were on topics I wasn't really interested in. For my own "use", I've bought one e-book that I can recall and I only bought that one because I had recently bought the (very thick) dead tree version, it was offered at a significant discount, and I was about to leave on a trip and was wanting to take the book. For a few bucks, I was able to buy the e-version, load it onto my iPad (that was going along anyways), and have one less to have to worry about packing (there's not a lot of "luxury" space available on a Harley-Davidson).