4 ms·

At some point you just have to move to Ebooks. It's way cheaper (usually ~6x cheaper) and it's much more convenient, as you always have your entire library wit

At some point you just have to move to Ebooks. It's way cheaper (usually ~6x cheaper) and it's much more convenient, as you always have your entire library with you. Sometimes even in duplicate, i.e. on more than one device at the same time, in the same place. I was very reluctant to make the move at first, as I love everything about physical books -- their feel, the way they smell, the cover art -- but I was accumulating too many, and finding space was becoming a hassle. The adjustment period was short, and now I'd rather have my reader over a physical book. The only exceptions I'd make are for reference books that don't have good electronic versions on account of graphics or tables that don't render properly.

mananaysiempre 6mo ago
> At some point you just have to move to Ebooks. When I can get a godsdamned file and view it on whatever I want with whatever program I want, sure. But I usually can’t.
- jwrallie 6mo ago
  People should never buy an ebook which they cannot make a copy that is readable anywhere, extra steps required or not. There are so many disadvantages to even list.
  - Justin4Cerid 6mo ago
    an ebook that's yours to download is one thing, an ebook that you lose access to once your subscription ends is another. vendors love locking you into a platform and having you "buy" content that's never really yours.
- carlosjobim 6mo ago
  Can you do that with a physical book?
  - mananaysiempre 6mo ago
    Mu? With a book I’m not bound to a technologically complex device I can’t repair, let alone to somebody’s willingness to maintain a remotely accessible database somewhere on another continent. At worst, I can mount a camera above my desk on a microphone arm and fire up ScanTailor. Even if it’s amazingly tedious work.
asenchi 6mo ago
Never. It never makes sense to me, why would I want to carry around another computer to read? Why can’t I unplug and enjoy my book? I tried it, it sucked and management was even worse.
- peab 6mo ago
  Agreed. A bookshelf is great, and bookmarks are great. Cognitive load of using a tablet to load and flip through pages? Not so great
oliyoung 6mo ago
> At some point you just have to move to Ebooks. This is a parallel story for me to vinyl / streaming for music There are some books and albums I want as physical artefacts, their aesthetic and tactile presence in my world means something more than just the content, you're right, the smell, the art, their feel Then there are some that are _just_ content, they get streamed and bought as ebooks for just convienence and consumption
- carlosjobim 6mo ago
  That's just fetishizing a mass produced object. Books have never been about the physical object, they have always been about what is written. It's like guys buying fancy cars and motorbikes to polish them in the garage, rather than riding them. And same thing frankly for vinyl collecting vs digital music files.
Brajeshwar 6mo ago
During its early days (2009), an investor showed me a white Kindle reading a book. This was India, long before Amazon was even introduced to our country. I decided to get mine a few years later. I decided to move bag and baggage to ebooks. After some time, I got one for my daughter too. Then the Kindle Oasis was, to me, one of the best ways to read books. But I realize that I have a better and cozier feeling holding a physical book to read. As I get older, that also means I cannot deal with Paperbacks (especially in India where the quality is as bad as it gets). Buying only Hardcovers makes me choose my books wisely and feel immensely satisfied reading books. Unfortunately, with all the things happening with Amazon—Kindle, I have done away with Kindle and sold them except for a Paperwhite that I want as my gadget/device museum piece. I have too many books that I want to get back to, so I might just keep one but looks like Amazon is not making it easy to archive books. Now, I’m on a lookout for an Open Source but well designed eBook Reader, akin to the Framework computers but for ebooks. I would like to still keep the physical to ebook ratio to a good number; for every 5 ebooks, I should have at-least 2 physical ones.
- cyberpunk 6mo ago
  There’s this great feeling standing infront of a couple loaded billy bookcases trying to pick what to read that i just don’t get from looking at the directory listing on my kobo. (I can reccommend a kobo, it runs linux and with koreader you can even open a terminal emulator on it, ssh into it etc). I like and use both, but yeah the feeling just isn’t the same reading on a screen vs a nice folio society hardcover.
  - so-cal-schemer 6mo ago
    Agreed. I grew up having a lot of books around, mostly non-fiction, mostly from library book sales, garage sales, and used bookstores. There is a magnetic pull to a large well sorted bookcase. Pair it with a comfortable chair free of distractions. The best entertainment to my mind.
lamasery 6mo ago
> It's way cheaper (usually ~6x cheaper) I have hundreds of books. All but... I dunno, fewer than a hundred, were purchased used. Tens of the ones purchased new, were cheap Dover Thrift editions (they're so cheap that if you're paying shipping on used, you can often pay barely-more and just buy new). Ebooks only improve my costs if I pirate.
b00ty4breakfast 6mo ago
I have plenty of ebooks, and the main advantage there, for me, is the info density. But there are still advantages to paper books. For one thing, I can't have my paper books revoked after purchase, something that happened to me more than once on amazon before I wised up and started downloading my books to my PC (before they went and made that impossible). I don't shop at amazon much for anything these days but it could happen anywhere with DRM. (which is another advantage; I don't have to waste time stripping the DRM off of paper books). For another thing, I don't need to worry about charging a paper book and I don't need to have a battery pack and cables to read a book if the power is out or I'm somewhere without electricity. That's probably not a concern for most of the folks on HN but I personally prefer having a reduced infrastructural dependence for certain activities. Reading on a screen also destroys my attention span. Again, that's not necessarily a common concern for most people but if I'm reading anything heavier than Raymond Chandler, I feel like my brain turns to oatmeal on an e-reader or a computer screen.
runarberg 6mo ago
If I squint my eyes I can maybe picture my self reading parts of 5 different books in a single day. A fiction novel (1), a Japanese textbook (2), a Japanese vocab book (3), a coffee table book I just happen to need a particular trivia from (4), and a mushroom hunting book (5). Usually I know exactly which book I need for a given occasion: Sitting on a bus for a while = take my fiction; waiting in a ferry line = take my Japanese textbook; going mushroom hunting = mushroom book obv. I don’t think I’ve ever been at a place where I did bring a book but wished I had brought a different book. And as such I have a hard time seeing the value in being able to access my entire library wherever I want.
CodesInChaos 6mo ago
Where do you find e-books that are several times cheaper than paperback? Sometimes they're half the price, but often they aren't cheaper at all. And that assumes you find a DRM free copy at all.
- buu709 6mo ago
  Ebooks go on sale a lot. You can often get them for less than $3.00, but it takes effort to track what you like and keep an eye out for sales. The trade off wasn't worth it for me years ago and I paid full price for what I wanted to read... lately there are very few books I pay full price for.
- cestith 6mo ago
  Often I can get a used paperback or sometimes even a used hardcover book cheaper than the ebook.

mananaysiempre 6mo ago

> At some point you just have to move to Ebooks. When I can get a godsdamned file and view it on whatever I want with whatever program I want, sure. But I usually can’t.

jwrallie 6mo ago
People should never buy an ebook which they cannot make a copy that is readable anywhere, extra steps required or not. There are so many disadvantages to even list.
- Justin4Cerid 6mo ago
  an ebook that's yours to download is one thing, an ebook that you lose access to once your subscription ends is another. vendors love locking you into a platform and having you "buy" content that's never really yours.
carlosjobim 6mo ago
Can you do that with a physical book?
- mananaysiempre 6mo ago
  Mu? With a book I’m not bound to a technologically complex device I can’t repair, let alone to somebody’s willingness to maintain a remotely accessible database somewhere on another continent. At worst, I can mount a camera above my desk on a microphone arm and fire up ScanTailor. Even if it’s amazingly tedious work.

asenchi 6mo ago

Never. It never makes sense to me, why would I want to carry around another computer to read? Why can’t I unplug and enjoy my book? I tried it, it sucked and management was even worse.

peab 6mo ago
Agreed. A bookshelf is great, and bookmarks are great. Cognitive load of using a tablet to load and flip through pages? Not so great

oliyoung 6mo ago

> At some point you just have to move to Ebooks. This is a parallel story for me to vinyl / streaming for music There are some books and albums I want as physical artefacts, their aesthetic and tactile presence in my world means something more than just the content, you're right, the smell, the art, their feel Then there are some that are _just_ content, they get streamed and bought as ebooks for just convienence and consumption

carlosjobim 6mo ago
That's just fetishizing a mass produced object. Books have never been about the physical object, they have always been about what is written. It's like guys buying fancy cars and motorbikes to polish them in the garage, rather than riding them. And same thing frankly for vinyl collecting vs digital music files.

Brajeshwar 6mo ago

During its early days (2009), an investor showed me a white Kindle reading a book. This was India, long before Amazon was even introduced to our country. I decided to get mine a few years later. I decided to move bag and baggage to ebooks. After some time, I got one for my daughter too. Then the Kindle Oasis was, to me, one of the best ways to read books. But I realize that I have a better and cozier feeling holding a physical book to read. As I get older, that also means I cannot deal with Paperbacks (especially in India where the quality is as bad as it gets). Buying only Hardcovers makes me choose my books wisely and feel immensely satisfied reading books. Unfortunately, with all the things happening with Amazon—Kindle, I have done away with Kindle and sold them except for a Paperwhite that I want as my gadget/device museum piece. I have too many books that I want to get back to, so I might just keep one but looks like Amazon is not making it easy to archive books. Now, I’m on a lookout for an Open Source but well designed eBook Reader, akin to the Framework computers but for ebooks. I would like to still keep the physical to ebook ratio to a good number; for every 5 ebooks, I should have at-least 2 physical ones.

cyberpunk 6mo ago
There’s this great feeling standing infront of a couple loaded billy bookcases trying to pick what to read that i just don’t get from looking at the directory listing on my kobo. (I can reccommend a kobo, it runs linux and with koreader you can even open a terminal emulator on it, ssh into it etc). I like and use both, but yeah the feeling just isn’t the same reading on a screen vs a nice folio society hardcover.
- so-cal-schemer 6mo ago
  Agreed. I grew up having a lot of books around, mostly non-fiction, mostly from library book sales, garage sales, and used bookstores. There is a magnetic pull to a large well sorted bookcase. Pair it with a comfortable chair free of distractions. The best entertainment to my mind.

lamasery 6mo ago

> It's way cheaper (usually ~6x cheaper) I have hundreds of books. All but... I dunno, fewer than a hundred, were purchased used. Tens of the ones purchased new, were cheap Dover Thrift editions (they're so cheap that if you're paying shipping on used, you can often pay barely-more and just buy new). Ebooks only improve my costs if I pirate.

b00ty4breakfast 6mo ago

I have plenty of ebooks, and the main advantage there, for me, is the info density. But there are still advantages to paper books. For one thing, I can't have my paper books revoked after purchase, something that happened to me more than once on amazon before I wised up and started downloading my books to my PC (before they went and made that impossible). I don't shop at amazon much for anything these days but it could happen anywhere with DRM. (which is another advantage; I don't have to waste time stripping the DRM off of paper books). For another thing, I don't need to worry about charging a paper book and I don't need to have a battery pack and cables to read a book if the power is out or I'm somewhere without electricity. That's probably not a concern for most of the folks on HN but I personally prefer having a reduced infrastructural dependence for certain activities. Reading on a screen also destroys my attention span. Again, that's not necessarily a common concern for most people but if I'm reading anything heavier than Raymond Chandler, I feel like my brain turns to oatmeal on an e-reader or a computer screen.

runarberg 6mo ago

If I squint my eyes I can maybe picture my self reading parts of 5 different books in a single day. A fiction novel (1), a Japanese textbook (2), a Japanese vocab book (3), a coffee table book I just happen to need a particular trivia from (4), and a mushroom hunting book (5). Usually I know exactly which book I need for a given occasion: Sitting on a bus for a while = take my fiction; waiting in a ferry line = take my Japanese textbook; going mushroom hunting = mushroom book obv. I don’t think I’ve ever been at a place where I did bring a book but wished I had brought a different book. And as such I have a hard time seeing the value in being able to access my entire library wherever I want.

CodesInChaos 6mo ago

Where do you find e-books that are several times cheaper than paperback? Sometimes they're half the price, but often they aren't cheaper at all. And that assumes you find a DRM free copy at all.

buu709 6mo ago
Ebooks go on sale a lot. You can often get them for less than $3.00, but it takes effort to track what you like and keep an eye out for sales. The trade off wasn't worth it for me years ago and I paid full price for what I wanted to read... lately there are very few books I pay full price for.
cestith 6mo ago
Often I can get a used paperback or sometimes even a used hardcover book cheaper than the ebook.