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>I’m still not into the prospect of purchasing books on the e-reader – it’s something I’ll probably avoid Agree with most of what the author (including a prefe

>I’m still not into the prospect of purchasing books on the e-reader – it’s something I’ll probably avoid Agree with most of what the author (including a preference for physical books) says but this. I must have spent close to USD 2k on various e-books (I use Amazon because of legacy reasons .. availability of e-readers in India around 2013 etc ) and the joy these purchases have given me can't compare with what I might have gotten with Overdrive etc. YMMV but I like to be able to go back and refer a passage I read 5 years ago.

frosted-flakes 5y ago
Also, I've come to realize that physical books are heavy and take up more space than they're worth, for me. I have probably about 50 books that I value most (mostly novels), but the rest I own as e-books or audio books. I used to have more. It's one thing if you have a permanent home with space for a large library, but when I've had to move my books, and try to fit them into small living quarters, I decided to pare them back a little and keep only what I value most. I haven't regretted it.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
i am a pirate and i extensively use a borrowed overdrive. i still buy kindle from olx because i can get them on the cheap, much more than amazon itself.
- Otek 5y ago
  Ebooks are so cheap these days, that it's a shame to pirate them.
  - xur17 5y ago
    I realize it's irrational given the price of ebooks, but the lack of "ownership" of the books makes me a lot less interested in buying them.
    - dageshi 5y ago
      Personally I very rarely re-read books so the concept of owning them just doesn't really matter to me. If my ebook collection suddenly disappeared I wouldn't particularly care, I already got the value out of them I was going to get. As for physical books, I'm trying to get rid of 200 or so I bought pre ebooks and damn it's a pain.
      - neonnoodle 5y ago
        I love lending books to friends without the expectation or need to get them back, and ebooks often make this impossible. I also love perusing used book stores, another sad casualty of digital formats.
    - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
      i tried once to find paperbacks of my favourite books i have heard over the years, like louise penny or henning mankell series in thrift book stores mainly in Delhi (sunday market) but havent been there in a couple of years because of the pandemic but i would like cheap paperbacks on the shelves but not all the books i have heard over the years.
    - Otek 5y ago
      It depends on where you buy the book. Many stores will just send you a mobi or epub file so you can archive that yourself. If you buy through amazon, you are tied to that store unfortunately, but the situation is similar to games. It is very rare now to buy a game that is not part of some account.
      - xur17 5y ago
        > Many stores will just send you a mobi or epub file so you can archive that yourself. Do you know what stores offer that? Last time I looked around it was mostly small shops with very minimal book offerings.
        Otek 5y ago
        I can name two (never used any of them, I'm going full Amazon) ebooks.com but you have to look if the book you like has an unencrypted epub versions smashwords.com
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    i borrow from overdrive. i wrote that. i pirate stuff not on overdrive because buying from amazon ties me to their devices and they give me a "license" to read on their devices only. i want mp3 of ebooks. i pay for an ebook and get a epub file. is that too hard?
    - Otek 5y ago
      So don't use Amazon. ebooks.com sells epub files. Was that too hard to find?
    - missblit 5y ago
      > buying from amazon ties me to their devices and they give me a "license" to read on their devices only This isn't strictly true since you can also read Amazon ebooks on 3rd party android devices that have the Kindle application installed. It's true in the more general sense that the Amazon ebooks have DRM that limit interoperability.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    cheap? amazon india at least has ebooks priced equal to or more than paperbacks which makes no rational sense other than that amazon is price gouging. for a physical paper back, i was told that the author is lucky to get 5% of the sales price. Would it be hard to price an ebook lets say 10%, 20% of the paperback with 100% of the proceeds going to author. or does that price canibalize the paperback industry so they price match it to keep the demand of paperbacks alive. ?
    - Otek 5y ago
      Printing a book is cheap. Very cheap. Most of the cost is prepress, proper typesetting, proofreading. There is no reason why ebooks should be noticeably cheaper than paper books, because the costs are not where people expect them to be.
  - BeetleB 5y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by "cheap". A lot of nonfiction is $15-50. Also, when I buy physical books, I often buy used ones. At local used book stores, I can often get them for $5 or less.
    - Otek 5y ago
      I mean, while the prices of paper books and ebooks don't differ much after release, the discounts on ebooks, are often much higher than on paper books. I've seen great books for a dollar more than once.
      - BeetleB 5y ago
        That's true, with some big disclaimers: 1. You won't see those discounts in certain categories (e.g. full length Stephen King novels). Whereas with physical books, you can expect to find cheap used ones no matter the author (unless it's a rare book or something). 2. You have to time purchases to the discount availability. With used physical books - as long as the book is popular enough - you can get that discount at any time.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    "Cheap" is very relative depending on where one lives.
jacurtis 5y ago
My favorite part about ebooks, and specifically Kindle/Amazon is that you can flip through your highlights. I will highlight parts of a book I really enjoyed and sometimes write personal notes about them as I read. I enjoy going back and spending 15-30 minutes going through my highlights and notes on books I previously read and re-reading sections around highlights. It brings back a surprising amount of memories and emotions from the book that get lost over time. Now Amazon lets you read these with read.amazon.com and offers some export features. The export features are still not perfect, but are better than they were. I also like the sheer number of books I can keep on my Kindle and they don't take up physical space in my home. I don't want hundreds of books stacked up that i read once. So instead I find that I read on Kindle first. Then if I REALLY enjoy the book, I will purchase a physical copy for my bookshelf. So my bookshelf becomes a physical embodiment of my curated favorites. I also have an obsession with old books, so I enjoy hunting down cool copies at used bookstores to get the right one for my bookshelf. Here is the tool I use to get highlights and notes off my Kindle and onto Notion, which allows multi-device syncing and web-access to my notes and private storage. https://github.com/paperboi/kindle2notion https://github.com/paperboi/kindle2notion

frosted-flakes 5y ago

Also, I've come to realize that physical books are heavy and take up more space than they're worth, for me. I have probably about 50 books that I value most (mostly novels), but the rest I own as e-books or audio books. I used to have more. It's one thing if you have a permanent home with space for a large library, but when I've had to move my books, and try to fit them into small living quarters, I decided to pare them back a little and keep only what I value most. I haven't regretted it.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

i am a pirate and i extensively use a borrowed overdrive. i still buy kindle from olx because i can get them on the cheap, much more than amazon itself.

Otek 5y ago
Ebooks are so cheap these days, that it's a shame to pirate them.
- xur17 5y ago
  I realize it's irrational given the price of ebooks, but the lack of "ownership" of the books makes me a lot less interested in buying them.
  - dageshi 5y ago
    Personally I very rarely re-read books so the concept of owning them just doesn't really matter to me. If my ebook collection suddenly disappeared I wouldn't particularly care, I already got the value out of them I was going to get. As for physical books, I'm trying to get rid of 200 or so I bought pre ebooks and damn it's a pain.
    - neonnoodle 5y ago
      I love lending books to friends without the expectation or need to get them back, and ebooks often make this impossible. I also love perusing used book stores, another sad casualty of digital formats.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    i tried once to find paperbacks of my favourite books i have heard over the years, like louise penny or henning mankell series in thrift book stores mainly in Delhi (sunday market) but havent been there in a couple of years because of the pandemic but i would like cheap paperbacks on the shelves but not all the books i have heard over the years.
  - Otek 5y ago
    It depends on where you buy the book. Many stores will just send you a mobi or epub file so you can archive that yourself. If you buy through amazon, you are tied to that store unfortunately, but the situation is similar to games. It is very rare now to buy a game that is not part of some account.
    - xur17 5y ago
      > Many stores will just send you a mobi or epub file so you can archive that yourself. Do you know what stores offer that? Last time I looked around it was mostly small shops with very minimal book offerings.
      - Otek 5y ago
        I can name two (never used any of them, I'm going full Amazon) ebooks.com but you have to look if the book you like has an unencrypted epub versions smashwords.com
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  i borrow from overdrive. i wrote that. i pirate stuff not on overdrive because buying from amazon ties me to their devices and they give me a "license" to read on their devices only. i want mp3 of ebooks. i pay for an ebook and get a epub file. is that too hard?
  - Otek 5y ago
    So don't use Amazon. ebooks.com sells epub files. Was that too hard to find?
  - missblit 5y ago
    > buying from amazon ties me to their devices and they give me a "license" to read on their devices only This isn't strictly true since you can also read Amazon ebooks on 3rd party android devices that have the Kindle application installed. It's true in the more general sense that the Amazon ebooks have DRM that limit interoperability.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  cheap? amazon india at least has ebooks priced equal to or more than paperbacks which makes no rational sense other than that amazon is price gouging. for a physical paper back, i was told that the author is lucky to get 5% of the sales price. Would it be hard to price an ebook lets say 10%, 20% of the paperback with 100% of the proceeds going to author. or does that price canibalize the paperback industry so they price match it to keep the demand of paperbacks alive. ?
  - Otek 5y ago
    Printing a book is cheap. Very cheap. Most of the cost is prepress, proper typesetting, proofreading. There is no reason why ebooks should be noticeably cheaper than paper books, because the costs are not where people expect them to be.
- BeetleB 5y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "cheap". A lot of nonfiction is $15-50. Also, when I buy physical books, I often buy used ones. At local used book stores, I can often get them for $5 or less.
  - Otek 5y ago
    I mean, while the prices of paper books and ebooks don't differ much after release, the discounts on ebooks, are often much higher than on paper books. I've seen great books for a dollar more than once.
    - BeetleB 5y ago
      That's true, with some big disclaimers: 1. You won't see those discounts in certain categories (e.g. full length Stephen King novels). Whereas with physical books, you can expect to find cheap used ones no matter the author (unless it's a rare book or something). 2. You have to time purchases to the discount availability. With used physical books - as long as the book is popular enough - you can get that discount at any time.
- int_19h 5y ago
  "Cheap" is very relative depending on where one lives.

jacurtis 5y ago

My favorite part about ebooks, and specifically Kindle/Amazon is that you can flip through your highlights. I will highlight parts of a book I really enjoyed and sometimes write personal notes about them as I read. I enjoy going back and spending 15-30 minutes going through my highlights and notes on books I previously read and re-reading sections around highlights. It brings back a surprising amount of memories and emotions from the book that get lost over time. Now Amazon lets you read these with read.amazon.com and offers some export features. The export features are still not perfect, but are better than they were. I also like the sheer number of books I can keep on my Kindle and they don't take up physical space in my home. I don't want hundreds of books stacked up that i read once. So instead I find that I read on Kindle first. Then if I REALLY enjoy the book, I will purchase a physical copy for my bookshelf. So my bookshelf becomes a physical embodiment of my curated favorites. I also have an obsession with old books, so I enjoy hunting down cool copies at used bookstores to get the right one for my bookshelf. Here is the tool I use to get highlights and notes off my Kindle and onto Notion, which allows multi-device syncing and web-access to my notes and private storage. https://github.com/paperboi/kindle2notion https://github.com/paperboi/kindle2notion