4 ms·

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.

by xur17 5y ago

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
  - vmurthy 5y ago
    I've used https://pragprog.com/ https://pragprog.com/ for programming related books and they send links for mobi , epub and PDFs IIRC

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.

by 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
- vmurthy 5y ago
  I've used https://pragprog.com/ https://pragprog.com/ for programming related books and they send links for mobi , epub and PDFs IIRC