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5 Reasons Books Are Better Than E-Books
- 08/17/10
- 40
I am often asked about my reading habits and, in particular, whether I now prefer to read e-books or plain, old-fashioned “real” books (of the printed variety). For a time I went back-and-forth on this question, sometimes preferirng to read on a device and sometimes preferring to read a book. But at this point my mind is largely made up. Today I want to share 5 ways in which books are better than e-books, 5 ways in which I’ll transition from paper to pixels only with a lot of kicking and screaming.
Now this may mark me as a Ludditte and I may eventually look silly. I’m sure there were people who said, “I’ll never give up cassettes in favor of CDs” but, of course, they had no choice; eventually cassettes disappeared and everyone had to migrate to digital music. And it is likely that eventually the same will be true with books. It won’t be anytime soon, but the day will come. But for now, here are my reasons for loving real books so much more.
1. I Can Truly Own a Book
Mortimer Adler points out that there are two ways of owning a book. “The first is the property right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture. But this act of purchase is only the prelude to possession. Full ownership comes only when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it.” E-books allow you to have some kind of a property right, though this is still a very different kind of property right from owning a book (it’s more like owning insurance than owning furniture). In one case the ownership is virtual and even revocable. In the other case the ownership is physical and irrevocable. You can own an e-book, but it is a lesser form of ownership than owning a book (as Kindle users discovered when one day their copies of 1984 suddenly disappeared). Owning the rights to read the contents of a digital file is far, far different than owning the book that sits on the desk beside me.
The second type of ownership is where I find e-books even more underwhelming. Adler says that full ownership comes only as you make the book a part of yourself and this is done by interacting and engaging with it. You will know a book that is truly owned because it will be “dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use, marked and scribbled in from front to back.” If I look at your e-book copy of The Holiness of God I will not know whether you have read it once or 1,000 times. If you look at my physical copy, you will know immediately. You will know because of the bent pages, the highlighted sections, the notes, the scribbles, the circles. The spine is loose, the pages are dog-eared. It shows all the marks of age and use. You will know that i have read the book, you will know what it has meant to me, you will know that it has impacted my life. Very little of this can be communicated in an e-book. If I am left with a lesser kind of ownership, won’t I then also be left with a lesser kind of ownership of the book’s contents, of its ideas?
E-readers are beginning to allow some interactivity, but it is of a very different order. Taking a note in an e-book or making a highlight in it is independent of the book; all of that information is stored apart from the book in a file or a database. Send the book to another person and you’ll find that all of the notes and highlights are gone. They belong to you or your device, not to your book.
There remains a vast difference between owning a physical book and owning an e-book. My brain may some day adapt (evolve?) to the point where I can believe that a file on an iPad is in some way equal to a physical book sitting on my bookshelf, but for the time being, I just cannot equate the two. And perhaps the time will come when I can interact better with an e-book than with a physical book. But until that day, I cannot give up those books. I cannot give up the way I can own them.
A quick story before I move on: Some time ago I was at a library where I saw a book written by an old, old author. That book had been owned by two great theologians, first by one and then by another (who had purchased much of that first man’s library). Contained in the book were notes and remarks by those theologians, one remarking on the work itself and the other reflecting both on the work and on the other theologian’s notations. It was fascinating to see how different people had experienced that book, how it had become interactive in its own way. That is not easily reproduced in an e-book format.
2. I Can Loan a Book
One of the most disappointing aspects of e-books is that they cannot be loaned out. Most have some kind of digital rights management which ties a book to a particular owner. When I buy a Kindle book, I may have a copy of that book on up to 5 of my devices, but they must be devices tied to my Amazon account. I cannot loan my book to you; I cannot even loan it to my wife if she has a Kindle of her own. Of course that’s not strictly true—I can loan you my book by loaning you my reading device, but that’s like giving you access to one of my books by loaning you my entire library, book cases and all.
Even if an e-book does not have any kind of digital rights management, “loaning” you my e-book is a very different thing. I would be making you a copy of a file and allowing you to open it on your device. In this case I am not really loaning it at all; I am duplicating it. This is far different from having me loan you a printed book in which you can see what I have read, you can see how I have interacted with the book, and you can know that I am loaning you something that belongs to me. By handing you my book I am saying “You can experience this book and learn about my experience of this book.” There is a level of trust, a level of intimacy and shared experience in loaning books that cannot be duplicated with electronic books.
3. A Book Offers an Experience
Books are a tactile experience. An e-book reduces books to merely words; a printed book maintains that a book is far more than words—it is an experience and an object. Books can be touched, they can be held, they can be smelled (particularly if they are old!). A book includes a cover, a binding, a slip cover, the texture of words or images impressed upon that cover, the pages, the deckled edges, the weight of the paper, the feel of turning a page. All of these elements combine to make a book what it is. They tell you a lot about the book, about its value, its uniqueness, its importance.
As devices go, a book is unique—there is nothing else quite like it. An e-book reduces a book to just its words, it strips out any sort of tactile experience, and makes turning a page that same experience as playing a video game or shuffling music. It makes a book a whole lot less than it ought to be.
4. A Book Is a Single-Tasking Device
A book is inherently opposed to multi-tasking. There is very little that can be done while reading a book (apart from the act of reading itself) and the book never seeks to distract its reader. The book is a single-function device, a technology crafted and honed in order to provide the best possible reading experience. If we wanted to create a technology that would do reading well and do nothing else, I don’t know that we could do better than the book.
The e-book on the other hand, tends toward distraction. The devices we use to read our e-books are rarely single-function or, perhaps more correctly, are tending away from single-function. They are created to do many things well, which means that the focus is not only on the reading experience but on gaming, browsing, searching. The iPad has reading as just one of many functions and a relatively minor one at that. Meanwhile e-books tend to be interactive, to have built-in dictionary searches, hyperlinks and other ways of drawing attention away from the text at-hand. In all these things the devices and the books tend to distract, to offer far more than just the reading experience. They beep, they buzz, they disengage in a thousand ways.
5. I Can Buy a Used Book
I don’t ever anticipate searching quiet side streets in old towns hoping to find used e-book stores. That’s because there is no such thing as a used e-book. E-books are never used, even when they have been read. They are still just files, as unblemished after ten years as they were the day they were duplicated. They will never go down in price, they will never suddenly appear as hidden treasures, dug out of a box in an old, rundown book store. They can never be loaned out and they can never be resold. They are forever new, forever fresh, forever unused and unstained. There will be no rare first editions, no beautiful special editions to be searched for decades from now. The used book will become a vestige of the past.
To Be Fair…
As I look over this list I think of the ways that music has changed in a digital era. Albums are no longer albums. Because songs can be purchased as singles through iTunes and Amazon, we now have albums that are simply a collection of singles. People buy the songs that most appeal to them and leave the rest. And so music has changed so that artists now have to regard their albums as a collection of singles, not an experience that moves from song 1 to song 12, sometimes swelling and sometimes settling back. Music is different today than it was in an era of compact discs—it has been forever transformed by the changed medium. I think we would do well to consider how books will change as they become electronic. What are the ideologies carried by the digital media and how will these begin to transform books? And how will that in turn shape us? These are things worth thinking about.
But the news is not all bad and I want to be fair. I cannot deny that e-books have some clear advantages over their printed counterparts. Stay tuned tomorrow to read 5 ways in which e-books are better than printed books.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
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Comments (40)
The not being able to loan them is a huge frustration for me. I love audiobooks and buy quite a few. So many times I have gotten to the end of an audiobook and wished I could share it with someone. Sometimes I end up buying the print version as well to have something to share.
Another frustration is when reading ebooks for academic research is how to cite them. I am required to include page numbers in the citations in my essays but because ebooks tend not have have the same page numbering, that’s a problem.
While I generally agree with these points, I think that #1 is a somewhat superficial and overly literal reading of Adler’s point. Granted, you can’t dog-ear and mark it up, but you can “make it part of you” in Adler’s sense just as much by reading and rereading and note-taking and “living” with it. While Adler was not talking about less than physically handling it, he was talking about more — and much of the “more” is still accessible via e-reader.
I do agree with these points. I would hate for e-books to become the be-all and end-all of books. OTOH, I see certain benefits that they offer. I would like to be able to pick up my e-reader (if I could afford one) while running out of the house, knowing that I’d have a significant chunk of my library at my fingertips. I’d like to be able to have it at my bedside, so I could pick up and read “whatever” as my mood or need directs. I would never want my physical books and my library to go away for all the reasons Tim lists and more, but I can see the advantages of both-and.
The concept of first editions, even signed first editions, is another aspect of “real” books that e-books lack.
On the other hand:
1. Some people have lost entire libraries because of a fire, a flood, or other such event. Owning a book digitally means you are more likely to keep your library intact (though, of course, there are some instances where a site goes down, but most companies have taken precautions to keep this from happening).
2. Your library is extremely portable. I don’t own a kindle, but I do some reading on my laptop and I could potentially have thousands of books as well as Bible research tools and commentaries that are extremely searchable. If I’m traveling, or at Starbuck’s, or even riding on the bus, I can pull out my electronic device and read to my hearts content.
3. I think e-books CAN have a tactile quality to them. Especially with the ipad/pod medium. You can pinch, flick, and tap to make the text bigger or smaller. You can modify the resolution to reduce eye strain, etc.
4. You can’t loan an e-book but you can certainly share it socially in ways you could never share a real book. You can highlight a sentence and tweet it to thousands of people with a link to Amazon and instead of letting one person borrow a book, perhaps 10 people will buy the book for themselves!
Anyway, I don’t want to anticipate tomorrow’s post, but these are just a few things I thought about in response to the above thoughts for reading books vs. reading e-books. Having said all of that, I will never get rid of my current library. It would cost me thousands of dollars to convert these books into electronic versions and I still enjoy reading from a real book. I live in the generation that will probably always have a blended library of books and e-books. My children, however, may become much more electronic with their reading habits (which may be good or bad).
Thanks for your post. I don’t disagree with anything you wrote, just wanted to offer a few thoughts about my own reading habits. I’m looking forward to your post tomorrow.
I’m much more prone to skim electronic media than I am printed media, and frankly, even if not distracted, I find it more difficult to concentrate on electronic media. Too many of the technological advances that have become available undermine my attention span.
I appreciate that you also brought up the subject of music on media. I appreciate the portability of music via of MP3 players, but in my younger days I could learn and appreciate music a whole lot more on vinyl, even if I had to trouble myself to get up and turn the record over.
The flipside (pun hardly accidental) of this is that portable audio has made it much more feasible to listen to sermons and conference presentations, and has facilitated a sounder knowledge of doctrine and theology (as well as other subjects). It has opened a world of ideas and concepts to me that has allowed me to make much more purposeful use of time in my car than listening to whatever may be on the radio.
Tim - these are all the same reasons that I love to continue to buy physical, hard-copy books. I’m leaning toward ebooks for the ones that I’m not sold on having a physical copy on, but I still think the price point on ebooks in general is too high personally. Looking forward to seeing tomorrow’s post.
I wonder how similar or different the reasons would be that an author might use when it comes to writing a book on paper or digitally.
I just returned my kindle to amazon last week. My main reason for doing so was somewhat close to Reason #5. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s post.
You won’t find e-books on the super bargain shelf at the local Christian bookstore. I’ll gladly spend $1 or $3 on a book I think I might read someday, to have it in my library in case I need to read something on that topic at some point. I won’t spend $8-plus for an e-copy of something I may or may not get around to reading.
On the point of giving a book away, I’ll also buy extra copies of a book I’ve enjoyed off the bargain table when it gets there, and give them to friends. I don’t have to worry about whether they have an e-reader or what brand, since a paper book is platform-agnostic.
a “real” book has something that can never be explained..it is the smell and feel…an e-book can not deliver…;-)
I have a confession to make. We are a family of book hoarders. We may be making a cross country move in the next year or so, and our library will significantly increase our moving costs. But these books are our friends, and we feel compelled to keep them with us. I love seeing my children go back to an old friend of a book to reread it, even though it’s several years below their reading level. I love the smell of books and the sound of pages turning. And when my book falls on my chest as I drift off at night, it makes a soft thud (not wounding me as a Kindle might). I might consider using an electronic reader for work-related or technical reading (and that’s a big might), but I hope that would never replace the experience of reading real paper and binding books. If the day ever comes when our children’s experience is limited to electronic readers, I believe our culture will have lost something very important.
I think that the loaning issue will eventually go away. Something that most people don’t seem to realize is that once something is digital, it is everywhere. Amazon and Kindle and iTunes and all those sorts of folks can try and maintain the current publishing paradigm but it won’t work long term. The future will be more like blogs and YouTube, or something else. Self published and “publisher” free.
That’s already pretty much true on the web. I can download an save almost anything I see on the internet. I can point someone else to it and they can see it or download it. That’s the future.
The idea of writers, song writers and performers making huge sums of money for their work is a recent, and I believe, short lived fad. YMMV.
1468 AD Frankfurt, Germany posted on a community bulletin door.
“Printed Books just aren’t the same as scrolls written with quill pens, you don’t get to see the humanity of the person writing it. You don’t get to see scratched out mistakes. Plus, I love how I can just keep rolling and rolling and rolling the scroll out. No turning of pages to break up the thought process!”
The fact that there are pros and cons of each means that we are likely to use a mixture of both for a good long time. Some, less valuable books may be bought in electronic form, then there are those that you will want in print.
Oh and enjoy this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cd7Bsp3dDo&feature=related
I love the feel of the pages of a printed book in my hands, but my house is only so big. My wife also kill me if buy any more books.
I can think of two more reasons. The first comes from your “A La Carte” section today; “Popular Highlights” at Amazon where they are combining hilights from all Kindle customers to identify passages most hilighted. I don’t want a Big Brother monitoring my reading habits or things for which I take note, no matter how benign the monitoring institution might currently be. This provides a far too useful (& far too easy) method for identifying groups of people who share particular ideologies to suit me. I guess I’m not trusting of human institutions or how they might use this type of information in the future. Better to not allow for it in the first place is my thinking.
And second, I spend far too much time looking at computer screens as it is; 7+ hours each day at work, plus an hour or so at home checking e-mails/blogs. The very last thing I want to do is stare at another screen to enjoy reading a book! I can say that the enjoyment I have in reading a (physical) book is accentuated by the fact that it is not in front of an electronic monitor of some kind. It is a most welcome respite. (I know many pooh-pooh issues of eye strain but I am sure that comes into play for me as well, what with the number of hours I am in front of a screen.)
I’ve been reviewing e-book readers and drawing up what I like and don’t like about each one. Much more to write than can be included in a comment, but here are a few key responses to your answers:
The Kindle is only one of the e-readers out there, and in my opinion—one of the worst. It’s basically a glorified storefront for Amazon. This reader is a terrible subject on which to judge ebooks as a medium…but most people are using it as the benchmark due to the marketing around it.
Some stores (like Barnes and Noble) do allow you to lend e-books for a limited amount of time.
There is a huge selection of public domain and free (non-DRM) e-books available. You could read nothing but free ebooks for years. As this catches on it will eliminate a good chunk of the hassle of DRM.
I’ve found that in general I read much, much faster on an ebook…if for no other reason than the logistics of not dealing with page turns. This makes it better for reading, but perhaps less so for studying. An e-book Bible would be terrible for study without some substantial bookmarking and other markup tools.
In regards to your very last paragraph about how music has changed…My dad has a high-end stereo that only plays vinyl (with amps and a turntable, nothing digital). If you get a good record, you close your eyes and you can pick out where each musician is/was standing in the room when they recorded. You can hear someone cough from behind you, and you can hear the saxophone player softly laugh out over to the left. It’s breathtaking and quite frankly, listening to CD’s will *never* give you that experience, no matter how good your system.
I think that is directly related to how I view books. I bought my mom a nook for Christmas and she loves it. I think it is convenient, and if there was ever a fire, her library would be saved but mine wouldn’t in all likelihood.
But I will gladly pay more in the long run (hardcovers, more bookshelves, a bigger house to fit them all, etc) to settle down into my comfy chair, turn off my electronics and lose myself in pages that still make my fingertips black with ink.
The comments of Brian Roden and Larry Geiger remind me of the demise of local Christian bookstores, and put me in a mood to reflect on 5 reasons local brick-and-mortar stores are better than e-stores. Alas, the Amazons are upon us, and they do many things well, but;1) I can own a local Christian bookstore as my own little community haven of Christian activity and connectivity (sometimes across denominational or particular church boundaries).2) I can loan out the place, suggesting it to others looking for some respite of day-in and day-out Christian refreshment, education, and ministerial help.3) It is often an experience quite beyond virtual encounters.4) If there are multi-tasking distractions, they’re usually worthy ones, like church without as many added responsibilities or cautious posturings.5) Oh, there are used e-stores for sure, with ancient finds and rare gems, but I’m always left holding a sqeakless mouse without the pitter-patter of tiny feet, soft fur, or tickling whiskers. I had a virtual pet once, and it’s simply not the same.
No, Christian stores and Christian publishers are on their way out. I guess it’s not all bad, but what’s to be gained for a community of Christian wi-fiers sitting in a car-wash or coffee house texting at a terminal to their friend across the room? It’s nice to be able to stand in Japan from Atlanta, but XXOO somehow just doesn’t feel the same, and here’s to the good ol’ days when I could hug a friend and give him a helpful tome.
Tim, stop dog-earing the pages of your books! Get yourself a few hundred cardboard bookmarks from Ligonier (like my husband brought home) and use those instead! (Of course one can still never find one when one needs it. )
I’m with you on the benefits of a real, physical book, even though I’ve never owned an e-book device. I remember though that accessibility to books in any form (including papyrus scrolls) have always been God’s blessing to his people. Having the luxury of writing in and dog-earing pages is only a recent thing. As long as books are available to us in one form or another I guess we can be thankful.
I see a correlation between real book vs. digital books and traditional college classes vs. online. I am currently a completely online student and I would much rather prefer traditional classes. I have reasons for staying an online student: I have a deadline with VA benefits, I moved out of state to a place where commuting would not work, and I want to get a BA degree from this school. The way my classes work online is to read the lectures, read the books, then read discussion questions, and then respond to them. I’m interacting with people, but never seeing or hearing them. It doesn’t really feel like I’m a college student. I often feel when reading anything on my computer that I’m peering through a window, kind of like looking at baked goods through the glass and never being able to actually eat one.
I love the tactile feel of a book in my hands. I scanned the comments so far to see if anyone mentioned Samuel T. Cogley. Who remembers him? One of my favorite Star Trek episodes (the original) as a kid was the episode titled “Court Martial.” An old-fashioned lawyer comes on board to defend Capt James T. Kirk after a tragic accident. Cogley brings a stack of books and lectures Kirk on the merits of being able to feel the pages in your hands!
Now I have to go and find that episode, preferrably on VHS and not on Youtube.
#6: The existence of public libraries. Access to literacy, knowledge, and education in tangible form is the right of every person, whether or not he can afford to buy a book or pay for broadband. And who’s going to say a Google search is anywhere near as stimulating as browsing the wall-to-wall shelves?
“…the very outside of a book had a charm to me. It was a kind of sacrament - an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace; as indeed, what on God’s earth is not?” - George MacDonald
My wife also kill me if buy any more books.
That’s a good reason to throw out some old books!
Tim,
While I think you raise some good points, you’re just waxing a lot of nostalgia here. Seriously, you don’t want to be THAT guy that lamments about how all the 8-tracks are gone - particularly when everyone else is happily playing CDs.
Join us in the digial age. ;o)
Tim,
I’m totally with you on all 5 points. Just to add to it, I’m really loathe to give up public and school libraries, Barnes & Noble or Borders … and old bookstores are so therapeutic. I’m also proud of my bookshelf and I would like to watch it grow forever.
Also, I think I’ll be very sad and disappointed if the Bible ever goes out of hard-copy print.
Looking forward to tomorrow’s post as well!
I don’t think the death of albums is all that bad a thing. As a child of the 80s, I am very familiar with even the best albums only having a few good songs on them, and the rest being filler to complete an album. Now, if you want to sell all those songs, they had better be good.
The kindle doesn’t smash the bug on the wall quite as expeditiously as an old paperback. (This observation was related to me earlier today, when this topic was discussed independent of this forum.)
I definitely have more trouble actually reading electronic media (rather than skimming). I also don’t retain as much; I think it has to do with the unisensoryness (is that a word?) of a screen, no matter how much you can flick it. If studies have shown better retention of using pencil to take notes over pen (it seems the more drag, the more is retained), how much more so turning pages & holding a book, smelling it and hearing it rustle!?
in reply to Brad; except there really isnt anything better about an 8 track: not the quality, not the linter notes, not the length, not the durability, not the ability to start at any point rather than wherever you left off, not the ability to listen to one song again & again…. a CD or mp3 player really just does everything older music players did, just better. It even allows you to still experience an album as if it were an old tape (start to finish) if you so desire. Books DO offer lots that ebooks don’t, and e-books can’t give you the original book experience.
I agree 100%. The only difference in my MO is that I never loan out books. Firstly, I rarely get them back. Secondly, I believe it is robbing the author of income. If my friend is poor and cannot afford to buy a book I think would be of benefit..I buy one for him. Easy.
Kindles for kindling, eh?
I’d just like to add, before someone makes a comment along the lines of “you’re just old!” that I’m 20 and a hard-copy die-hard, and I know teens who feel the same way.
The only reason I would consider an ebook reader is because as a history student, I’ve become increasingly curious about books that are long out of print. It’s wonderful to hold and smell and read a novel that’s over a hundred years old—not so wonderful to have it in my bag while waiting for the bus on a rainy day, hoping the bag is really, really waterproof. I worry less about my laptop and would probably worry less about a Sony Reader loaded with PDFs of very old books.
It also crossed my mind that the immaterial, searchable characteristics of digital formats might somehow cheapen the content of the book, bringing it down to the level of the often ephemeral content we’re so used to having at our fingertips online.
I laughed about the comment, “my wife will kill me if I buy any more books”! As I sit here, there are probably 8 boxes of books on my bedroom floor. My husband is trying to select which books in those boxes get to live on the remaining shelves in our bedroom (which must double for his study right now), and which must go back out to the dungeon which is our storage room.
When he wants to buy a new book (but honestly, is it ever just one book?) and asks me about it (because I happen to be standing there or maybe I’m the one with the debit card), I’ve been known to say, “Okay, but you have to actually read it.”
There are some guys out there — and you know who you are — who might just secretly buy lots of new theology books for your Kindle in hopes that your wife might never find out. Yet another sin perpetrated by technology! ;-)
#7: Real books offer a wider selection. If you can’t find it on Amazon, there’s always ABE or Bookfinder. I checked the first 20 books that I read so far this year, and only 12 of them were available on Kindle.
If you love old books a nook is a must. You can find pretty much any book published before 1920 for free on Google books in Epub format. I have had mine for a mouth and have downloaded 600 books for free. Reading it is also a great experience. It’s just like owning a small paper back book that contains any book you desire to read. The only down side is it does not have a folder system to organize all those books and it does not seem to work with PDFs very well. Also for books published after 1920 I will probably get from Alibris.
Many reasons why I like Books i.e. Real Books made of paper and ink. First I don’t need a battery to read it. As long as there is sunlight or a street light it’ll do! I still remember a Cruden’s Concordance a Brother gifted me in 1990, it’s now broken into three pieces because of extensive usage; but I still carry it with me with pride because of the vintage and the brother it reminds me of.Sometimes when I quote from a certain book, I may not remember which page the quote is on, but I kinda know which part and which corner of the page, and it gives me great delight when I discover what I’m looking for. A search engine does not provide this thrill. Finally the God I worship loves Books, real books; you read of the Lambs Book of Life etc; and I don’t think it’s an e-book with a search engine!
The reason about books not getting old and worn out, reminded me of a similar feel i had about digital photos. I longed for the feelings that photos in old albums conveyed. The feeling of being old, the stuck pages, the history that it carried. And then suddenly when when day i was going through my old photos along a timeline and passed through my old college photos to the new. it suddenly stuck me that i was recognising the images as old based on their quality. The images aged because of the change in clarity of the images. They aged because of the improvements in technology. The feel remains, Though the medium might have changed. :)… I believe the same will happen with e-books. They will age in their own unique way. And we will read and interpret their age in a different way.
In reference to point 3, I don’t understand why some people think the tactile experience is a meaningful part of the reading experience. Personally, I think the lack of tactile experience in an ebook is a strength, not a weakness.
“An e-book reduces a book to just its words.” That seems like a great thing to me. For me personally, the experience of reading a book IS in just the words, and it seems to me that the author of the book would probably agree.
Really, why should I care about how the book smells, how heavy the book feels in my hands, or what the paper feels like as I turn it? All I care about is the story itself.
You missed one. One I find very important, and it is the biggest reason why I do not buy e-books.
Much like how electronic files can be deleted without your approval, they can also be modified. Amazon could’ve just as easily went into everyone’s Kindles and replaced the copy of 1984 with a copy of 1984 where we discover the computer was the greatest thing we’ve ever had.
You will not know it’s changed unless if you read it. If you go read it, you will not be able to prove it should’ve been something different.
A physical book’s contents cannot be modified. It’s there with all its mistakes and typos, and anything that is sacred.
I actually find the replacement of ebook files an important feature. I have found that both ebook and regular paper books have a large number of errors and typos. This allows for fixing it. It took a little while get policy that works, but Amazon sends you an email and says “this book has a mistake” then gives you the option of sticking with your current file, or getting the new file with the corrections.
I’ve heard these sentiments frequently and want to take the opportunity to respond to such a succinct summary of the talking points against e-books. I apologize in advance if my words offend.
1) I think you mistake Adler’s meaning. The notes in the margins, the dog-eared pages, the dilapidated binding are all symptoms, indicators if you will, that a reader owns the book. The ownership comes from the work the reader does as he or she intellectually responds to the contents of the book and is, therefore, located in the mind of the reader and not bound up in the format of the book (though, this is not to say that format has no influence over message). If your point is, as the latter half of part one seems to indicate, that ownership comes via the marking of an object, you have severely underestimated the value of a book.
2) This is a legitimate concern under the current mores of our society. The problem of lending has two solutions: one can be fixed through more technology — build in a sharing mechanism, much like the nook — the other requires a change in our moral code — digital copying is not theft in that it does not deprive the owner (the original purchaser) of the object, but rather the seller of potential revenue. The latter solution is not ideal — new monetization models will have to emerge to incentivize the creation of literature — but it is the direction in which the music industry is heading. If the book industry follows a similar path, the idea of lending of books digitally allows for more nuanced control of the amount of intimacy that you share. You could share your full markups, just your highlights, etc.
3) This is pure nostalgia. My question to you would be: do you drive a car with a manual or automatic transmission?
“Stick-shifts are a tactile experience. An automatic reduces driving to merely pressing a “go” button. A manual transmission vehicle maintains that a car is more than just personal conveyance — it is an experience… An automatic strips out the tactile experience and makes driving a car the same as playing a video game. It makes a car a whole lot less than it ought to be.”
4) This is a Luddite argument. And an easy fix. Enable “quiet-reading mode.” If the reader cannot read a book without getting distracted because the device used to read it is capable of playing videogames, the reader would not be able to read a paper book without distraction either.
5) Nostalgia again. Although, I guess you could consider ebooks in the public domain as “used.” What you’ll miss is the experience of hunting for old books, an experience you can still have for the rest of your life (even if books stop being printed). Children who grow up with ebooks will not understand this pastime any more than we understand how to set moveable type or how to drive a stick-shift (well some still do, but fewer as years pass).
On some of the comments:Nick: Owning an ebook reader does not preclude your purchasing of used paper books.
Doug: That service is opt-in. If you are concerned about being connected to the internet, disable the wifi/data connection and you have a stand-alone device that does not share what you read with others. The screen issue is why Amazon’s kindle is even selling next to the iPad. E-ink does not induce eye-strain like a computer screen.
Delphine: It’s as simple as backing up your files on your computer if you are that concerned about longevity in the face of corporate malfeasance. I’m hopeful that the mp3’s trajectory away from DRM will serve as a guide for ebooks.