I mean, books deteriorate, a file can be copied and backed up. There’s no doubt DRM-Free Ebooks are superior, right? Is there anything I’m missing?
Kids see you reading an e-book, they don’t know what you’re doing, they just see you staring at s phone.
Kids see you reading a physical book, they see you’re reading, and what you’re reading. It helps foster a love of reading in them.
If the question is one DRM-free ebook vs. one physical book, I’d say the physical book. If the question is 100 vs. 100, or 1000 vs. 1000, ebooks all the way.
I’m really not concerned with a physical book deteriorating in my lifetime because I’m not going to leave it out to be weathered or bend the spine until it falls apart. Space is a bigger issue. Right now if I like an ebook I’ll buy the physical copy to display it at home like art.
I despise reading a book on a screen. Ebooks are inferior to physical books from a typical usage standpoint.
i still prefer the feel of a book, but the ability to have thousands of books on one device, being able to tap a word and get a definition without having to open another “book,” negation of lighting requirements, highlighting, multiple bookmarks, customizable font/size-- if it’s not an art book or graphic novel, i’ll deal with reading the e-ink screen
100% Particularly with new phone sized ereaders. I carry my whole library in my pocket whenever I leave home, plus the ability to grab a copy of whatever on the fly. If I have a backpack that day I might throw a physical copy in, but I’ll have my ebooks no matter what.
E-ink readers are superior to both paper and LED tablets.
Books don’t require power or any complicated electronics to be of use.
Mostly an advantage in some apocalypse or stranded on a deserted island scenario.
Certainly not for public libraries
How so?
They cost far more (whereas physical books are heavily discounted for libraries), they have licensing terms (limited circ or time period), and there’s the issue of hosting perpetual access materials. Physical books are just cheap, durable, and most importantly yours to do whatever you want with them (donate them, sell them, make crafts with them, etc.).
Oh, right. A conventional public library can’t just pirate all of their content, I suppose.
Haha typically no
Depends? You can also copy a book exactly (i.e. word for word, not photocopying), and digital media also deteriorates.
Digital media deteriorates faster in cold storage than a physical book, but is easier to copy.
Properly stored: CDs die anywhere between 10 and 30 years. Some flash drives last 10. Magnetic storage 10-20 years. Books hunders of years.
I’d say physical books are safer against deterioration because it can handle a few generations of “forgetting about it” while a digital copy needs regular backup maintenance.
It’s really easy now to scan an entire book with your phone. There are apps (eg Scanner Pro) that can take pictures of two pages at once and split them into individual pdf pages.
I done this with several books over the years. I place my phone on a tripod, point it down on a well lit book, and start scanning. A 300 page book might take about an hour to scan.
No. In fact, I’d say hardly ever.
We have books that are thousands of years old. Without explicitly copying and translating formats, media, etc., I wouldn’t count on any digital format to survive more than a century - and probably be undecipherable at the end of it anyway. Some scholars have suggested that we’re in the midst of what will be a digital dark age because of this very reason.
Let’s also consider the sort of degradation that can creep in. I’ve got a 110 year old document I’m deciphering at the moment, and there are parts of letters where the ink has faded or the paper has torn. I can usually make out from the remaining bits what the letter should be. You’ve probably done this on old letters: "Is that an ‘a’ or an ‘o’? On the other hand, if I have a lower-case f in UTF-32, its binary representation is “00000000000000000000000001100110.” If I have minor data corruption, one or more of those bits will flip (1–>0 or 0–>1). Since it could be anywhere in the sequence, I could end up with something totally unrelated to an ‘f’ either in character shape or alphabetic proximity.
Then there’s the reading, indexing, and searching abilities in a physical book - no “add a bookmark” feature compares to sticking a finger on the page you want to flip back to, or comparing a few pages side-by-side. Physical bookmarks, stickies, or earmarking (noooo!) are all ways that people reference books which don’t translate well.
Visually, lit displays are harder on our eyes than paper books in good ambient light.
e-books of course have some advantages, especially for technical material. Being able to hit “ctrl-f” and search for a single word or phrase is incredibly valuable. Constant updates of product documentation means not having to throw away books whenever a new version of the item/software is released. Linking to references (e.g. dictionary lookup) is much more convenient than going to get another book out.
But for just sitting down and reading, the tactile experience of a real book rules over everything else in my opinion. Sitting in a coffee shop with a book in hand is a profoundly human experience. Walking through the endless aisles of books at a library is both inspiring and humbling.
So in short, yeah - there is HUGE doubt that e-books are superior.
In terms of preservation, digital media is surely superior if you use it right (i.e. using long-lasting storage media, backups and error detection).
But, some people prefer physical books just for the experience. Also physical books don’t need electricity.
Also, a DRM-free ebook may still miss some layout or images compared to a printed copy, depending on the format and how good it’s made.
All in all, I still prefer e-books.
Can’t prop open a door with an e-book.
Not with that attitude
Ebooks are superior for the task of reading. The ability to check out books (or steal them) from home is a big deal.
If nostalgia, being seen reading, or collecting books is your jam, rock on reader. But don’t look down on me because I value the built in dictionary and changing the font.
the ereader i have doesn’t handle images well at all. if you’re reading a book with a photo or map or anything that isn’t coded text, then it sucks. my current book has some text that was scanned as images-- i have to zoom in and drag the screen to read it, and the refresh/“frame rate” for e-ink is inherently terrible. a tablet would solve this, if i didn’t care about privacy
‘Better’ is a subjective judgement - for me the answer is absolutely not, I’ll always prefer a real physical book.
For others the answer will be yes, and for yet others it’ll be maybe or sometimes.
There’s no objectively true answer to the question though.
Not of you like the smell of books. So no, not always.
Depends on the file format.
It depends on your needs. The typography and image quality is much superior for print than ebooks usually. That being said, I still get ebooks for large reference books so I can search them and copy/paste, eg programming related books. I also read foreign language ebooks so I can lookup the meaning of any word I don’t know with my phone’s dictionaries, or translate a phrase or sentence.
