Reading on paper or screen

[ButteMT61]

Well, IMHO, that's why magazines thus far have been a bit of a bust. They either try too hard to add all the new tech to the point of having little actual writing, or they just copy it over from the print version with nothing. It happens when technology is new. It takes a while to settle.
As for the coupon thing - that's technically very easy to do. Anyone fighting it on that point would be in a losing battle. Apple have done an incredible job of offering plentiful, affordable and difficult to distribute content for the music and film industries (as well as e-books, or iBooks) It can be done, and I hope it is. I don't even mind paying a tiny fee for both - that goes for books, music, movies or whatever...

 

[ButteMT61]

Even though this is about a movie - "My Afternoons With Margueritte" it fits with this thread. If you see it, you'll know why. It certainly makes some good points for the printed book - but it's not the intent of the film, per se.

 

[TidiousTed]

Those were the days: Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin, at his book vending machine called the Penguincubator. Which was installed outside a shop in London 1937.

 

[LoveMyHats2]

A book is a book, with pages of paper, a binding holding the ideas, information and expressions within for a reader to view, by an author. I find it very chilling to think at some point in time, that a book would only be something viewed on an electronic gizmo.

My vote, paper, not electronic...

 

[Edward]

The important thing is that people still read, IMO. I do love books, but I'd much rather see them abandoned for eReaders than abandoned altogether. [huh]

 

[LizzieMaine]

Here's a question for e-reader users: do you read on screen the same way you read a book? To me, a book -- the tangible artifact of a book -- invites contemplation. You read a chapter, you go back and reread a page that's particularly significant, you sit with the book in your lap thinking about what you read, etc. Do you do this with a gadget, or do you just flick quickly thru the page images on the screen?

 

[ButteMT61]

Here's a question for e-reader users: do you read on screen the same way you read a book? To me, a book -- the tangible artifact of a book -- invites contemplation. You read a chapter, you go back and reread a page that's particularly significant, you sit with the book in your lap thinking about what you read, etc. Do you do this with a gadget, or do you just flick quickly thru the page images on the screen?

I do that MORE now on my iPad. E-bookmarks are easier and don't fall out
I read MORE now. I enjoy it, but still buy books. I love books. It's not a one or the other thing IMHO. It's situational...

 

[Bluebird Marsha]

Here's a question for e-reader users: do you read on screen the same way you read a book? To me, a book -- the tangible artifact of a book -- invites contemplation. You read a chapter, you go back and reread a page that's particularly significant, you sit with the book in your lap thinking about what you read, etc. Do you do this with a gadget, or do you just flick quickly thru the page images on the screen?

Situational is a good word, so I'll steal it here. The same book that I would "savor", I would read slowly and "page back" in an ebook to read a passage repeatedly. If I'm in a skimming mood, I'll read through quickly. If anything, I read on my Nook slower than I do a paper book. I do read very fast-unless it's a very technical subject. I tend to see the entire page at once, and read it that way-probably about a paragraph at a time. Ereader pages are "shorter" than a typical book page, so I spend more time hitting the page forward button. It seems slower than paging through a paper book.

I don't know if anyone here is familiar with the Espresso Book Machine, but it may be something that becomes more popular. Essentially it has access to a database of e-books, which it can use to quickly print off and bind a copy of a book as needed. About 7 minutes on average. Nothing fancy, but it works.

 

[TidiousTed]

 

[Edward]

Here's a question for e-reader users: do you read on screen the same way you read a book? To me, a book -- the tangible artifact of a book -- invites contemplation. You read a chapter, you go back and reread a page that's particularly significant, you sit with the book in your lap thinking about what you read, etc. Do you do this with a gadget, or do you just flick quickly thru the page images on the screen?

For me, it makes no difference... providing, of course, the electronic device is capable of the same. Actually, most of the eReaders I've seen allow options such as highlighting and annotating text, ad my Kindle remembers what page I left off on, and will go straight to that. The only real difference for me is the physical convenience of multiple books in the Kindle. That said, while I have declined to own one for other reasons, while I can sit with a Kindle as long as I can a print book, I wouldn't want to read for hours on end from an iPad, due to the backlit screen and eyestrain. I would consider that perhaps the biggest difference from print vs (some) technological devices.

 

[3PcSuit]

I'd like to chime in on this, albeit dated, thread. I guess this is an advantage, or disadvantage of digital media, their "all or nothing" nature. This thread will either not work at all 10 years hence, or someone will stumble upon it and think no differently of it than a thread (if this place is still around) written the same day.


I think there are huge advantages and disadvantages to both printed and electronic media.


A big problem with physical media (I heard microfilm mentioned, this suffers too) is that it is physically vulnerable. You can tear a page out of a book (although in the movies this can be an advantage like with a phone number from a phone directory, I think I've only taken advantage of this property once in real life, tearing a test chart out of a book).

Water is the enemy, errant readers with pens, pencils, dirty hands, blood chemicals, God knows what else. If you've ever had a flood, you will know the perils of physical material.


Digital on the other hand, either works perfectly or doesn't work at all. There are cases where you get something that loads incorrectly, like, wish I could find it, some Navy schematic program where they were reading blueprints for ships and new computers made a line appear as dotted, completely altering the meaning of the blueprint and possibly endangering lives.

You're not actually reading text, you're reading an interpretation of a file. Computers may make this easy, but the higher-tech things become, the harder they fall. You need the sun to read a book, look at a piece of microfilm (well, and a magnifier). You need hundreds of thousands of gates to read a digital file on a SIMM card.


I really have mixed feelings on this. I like paper, but anyone who posts on here who says they hate digital text, umm, you realize what the Fedora Lounge is, right?

I confess to reading a tonne of Google Books, but I would feel like a hypocrite buying a Kindle. At the same time, I have a smart phone and got really into Palm Pilots. I tried really hard to make the latter as efficient as writing with pen and paper. Then again, never had a notebook crash! Never lost notes unless I lost the notebook. Before you talk about loss, consider the desirability of a $1 notebook to a new electronic device for someone to want to return or take one versus the other.


I like the printed page, film, vinyl albums, but I use a lot of this stuff too. I love newsprint (when it's in registration).

What it comes tdown to, for me, is the DAMAGE we are doing to people's industries, jobs,l by basically throwing the ENTIRETY of printed media UNDER THE BUS! The electronics companies get plenty of our money, should they really get all of it?

SHould it be like in Star Trek, where Captain Picard has to scrounge up books because they aren't made anymore, or where books stores are all out of business?


I consider throwing caution to the wind and throwing anything that is not digital to the curb, even looking down our noses at it, to be a crime and an attack on people's livelihoods. It's like crossing a picket line, it's throwing a blind eye to the IMPACT of discarding an entire 2,000 year history.

Let's see, first it was throwing off the typewriter (to a certain extent understandable, unless you're typing addresses on envelopes - at the same time, I never wasted 1/1000 the time I do to distraction on a typewriter, the efficiency of a single purpose still must appeal to many writers using these machines). But now they want us to cast aside letters altogether (at the cost of card companies, the Post Office, and the cost of shipping anything else now. Kind of hard to e-mail a 10-lb / `4.5kg package when the post off ice is all disgruntled 8-% of their workforce got laid off), cast aside film and prints (cya later 1 Hour Photo, Kodak, Fuji, various assorted printing material companies), telephone landlines (ever try to make a 911 call with VOIP? - I wouldn't chance it), movies (IDK why anyone would bother seeing a digital movie, including myself, that is 10% better than the one you can probably pirate), newspapers (see Yahoo! News lately? Hard to get good articles when all the papers that PAY PEOPLE are shuttered, so they now use blog entries as "news" with budgets for editors being painfully obvious from the grammar and layout of this "journalism"), and now we want to shutter libraries, printers, book stores (tough break Borders! F-in sucks to be you!), and publishers.

The problem with digital media is that it is expected tobe free, and if not it's ripped off. Surprisingly, books have held on the longest. They really require the least storage space and tech to digitize. Probably due to its already incredibly cheap costs (not to mention basically free second-hand books), people just didn't bother to rip it off, now we are too cheap to shell out 5-6 bucks for a 500-page novel! Consider the hourly cost you're paying here.

Problem is, margins just aren't there with digital media. The "hidden costs" - salaries, editors, printers, wages, benefits, just aren't going to be sustainable. But plenty of money to keep a Chinese factory going cranking the damned kindles out.

It's great to augment one's life with the latest gadgetry, but hearken back to Palm Pilots for a moment, they eventually turned out to be a fad, a false start. Maybe the latest generation of smart phones won't be, but eventually something will replace them, and probably in half the time between Pilots and iPhones.

When it all comes down to it, this notion of efficiency, of "saving the environment" from toxic chemicals, cutting down tress, are we really doing that filling up landfills at three year technology lifecycle intervals?



The level of communication digital media usher in is certainly remarkable and praiseworthy, but the neglect that it has brought to other avenues far more riche and nuanced at this point in history is a crime. I don't consider that melodramatic in the least bit.

Depriving important industries that sustain a level of quality of their footing is of no benefit to society, only to the coffers of the tech companies. I feel the same wway as the girl in the article with the book whacking the Kindle. If you have one, fine, but if you try to shove it down my throat and start burning MY books, films, "dinosaur" implements, don't expect a whack with a book, expect a lead pipe in my case.

 

[Steve]

Print will never die. CDs took over the music industry, but people still want records, and can get them.

The message will always trump the medium. Is a tactile book more powerful to look at then a tablet or a reader? Of course. But I can tolerate the growing popularity of digital books as long as writers can still write from the heart and get their thoughts and stories to the audience.

 

[AmateisGal]

But I can tolerate the growing popularity of digital books as long as writers can still write from the heart and get their thoughts and stories to the audience.

Exactly.

 

[3PcSuit]

I think you miss my point: Is there going to be any MONEY to actually pay a writer? Sure, the likes of Tom Clancy, bestseller authors will probably always have employment.

What about the paperback writers just trying to get a start, eek out a living, pay the rent?



It's hard to be a good writer when it's just a "hobby" and you have to work 80 hours a week at a McJob to actually pay the bills.

 

[Antje]

I think an e reader is easy because of the fact that it doesn't take so many space.
On the other hand I still go to the library every now and then so I'm not buying books, so I don't really need an e reader at all

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think you miss my point: Is there going to be any MONEY to actually pay a writer? Sure, the likes of Tom Clancy, bestseller authors will probably always have employment.

What about the paperback writers just trying to get a start, eek out a living, pay the rent?



It's hard to be a good writer when it's just a "hobby" and you have to work 80 hours a week at a McJob to actually pay the bills.

This is the most cogent post in the whole thread, and it doesn't just apply to books but to any kind of writing -- journalism, entertainment, music, you name it. If people can't make a living at it, if "all media must be free", then there won't *be* any writing worth reading. People can go on all they want about writing "for the love of it," but love won't keep food on the table or oil in the furnace. Imagine a world where the only writing one can get -- the only news reporting, the only fiction, the only history -- is at the level of Wikipedia, and you'll imagine a world I'd rather die than live in.

 

[Philip Adams]

This is the most cogent post in the whole thread, and it doesn't just apply to books but to any kind of writing -- journalism, entertainment, music, you name it. If people can't make a living at it, if "all media must be free", then there won't *be* any writing worth reading. People can go on all they want about writing "for the love of it," but love won't keep food on the table or oil in the furnace. Imagine a world where the only writing one can get -- the only news reporting, the only fiction, the only history -- is at the level of Wikipedia, and you'll imagine a world I'd rather die than live in.

Interesting thoughts Lizzie.

What you're saying is very true. If there's not enough money in writing (or any of 'the arts' for that matter) to keep food on the table, we'll revert to the way things were a few hundred years ago when the only way to survive was to have a wealthy patron. Even that wasn't a guarantee - look at Mozart or Antonio Vivaldi.

That said, I'm sure we'll find in decades to come that some of the offspring of today's mega-rich will turn their hands to writing or the arts. After all they won't have to work for a living. A lot of them are being sent to the best schools so I'm optimistic that something decent in the way of artisitic output will appear. However such output may be sparse and we may have to wait a long time before the current fad of celebrity children perpetually falling out of nightclubs and needing to appear in magazines wears off.

 

[Mystic]

Print for me.......

 

[AmateisGal]

It's hard to be a good writer when it's just a "hobby" and you have to work 80 hours a week at a McJob to actually pay the bills.

As someone who works full-time and writes, I have to slightly disagree here. If you love to write, you find the time to write - and you take the time to learn your craft and become a good writer.
Maybe the difference here is semantics - I don't view my writing as a "hobby." I am a writer. It's who I am, how I see the world, how I communicate. And thus, I devote myself to the craft in between my day job and my responsibilities as a wife and mother.

Nearly everyone who started out and made it - musicians, artists, writers - didn't have the luxury of devoting themselves 24-7 to their craft. They had to work a job, sometimes two or three, to pay the bills, yet they continued to dedicate themselves to learning their craft. If you want it bad enough, you'll find the time to do it.

This is not to say that it's easy and that you'll make enough money doing what you love to pay all the bills. Even now, only the big time writers like Stephen King and Nora Roberts don't have to work another job to make ends meet. Most midlist authors still have to work, or have a spouse that has a good enough job that they don't have to.

I know that when (not if!) my novels start getting published, I won't be able to live on that income alone. It's not feasible today. Is that tragic and very sad? Yes indeed. Writers are not paid enough. Period. But if you want to be a good writer and want to write, then that shouldn't stop you from doing it anyway.

 

[Touchofevil]

I own a Kindle, a Kindlefire, and an iPad, as well as hundreds of paperback books. I enjoy all of them. I originally was against the whole e-reader movement, but obviously have changed my opinion.
I have discivered that through my Kindle it is much easier to find some of the hard-hard-to-find authors I enjoy and at a much friendlier cost.