What are your thoughts on books and their value over the years?

Today's kids and their offspring don't and won't read bound books. They'll be reading off of electronic gadgets like Kindle.

Libraries as we know them will cease to exist.

Just seeing what your thoughts are on this.

I hate the Kindle.

My reasons:

1. You never really 'own' the books. you cannot back them up to anything. You must RELY on your Amazon account for the rest of your life to have access to your books.

2. Amazon can, and has, removed books from people's libraries and credited them the cost when a publisher has had an agreement issue.

3. You can only download Kindle books X amount of times (the number X is up to the publisher). After that, you must buy it again.

4. The Kindle will eventually break.

5. The Kindle's book are more expensive than most used books which you can own permanently.

6. You cannot share/borrow Kindle books.

7. You cannot have two books open at once (for example I used two translations side by side for comparison when I read War and PEace).

8. Not all books worth having will be Kindlei-zed.

9. No way to write in the margins.

10. Once a book is published, it ceases to use energy for the rest of its life. The Kindle will have to be constantly recharged (no matter how little electricity it consumes). I have books from the mid 1700's that haven't used a watt in almost 300 years.

11. The Kindle is not biodegradable.

The idea that people actually read all of the books they buy in Kindle is a joke. For example my boss has about 30 books in his iPad he picked up that 'he'll get around to reading one day."

The problem isn;t that kids don't read bound books; they don;t read ANY books. That's how kids can be in college in remedial reading.

Having said all that. Of course people will gravitate to ebooks, from the seller side, its pure profit, from the consumer side, you have the perception you are getting more for less. LEss space maybe, but that's about all. People are not really concerned about most of the issues I raised, but there are a substantial number who are.

My 2 cents.

My 3 cents.....I love the Kindle. I am a book collector and have hundreds of volumes in my library. That said they take up a great deal of room, they retain little if any value over the years unless signed first editions, and they are difficult to get rid of. Traveling they are bulky to carry.

I do not believe the Kindle is designed to amass a collection. I buy the book, read it and unless I plan to read it again, delete it.
And when I am traveling any place I can get wi- fi I can buy another book to read.

The ability to buy and load a few games such as Scrabble is also a big plus when on the road.

If you buy the leatrher case, as I did, the light that comes built in is a great feature.

Biodegradable concern? That must be an attempt at humor.

I was given mine for Xmas and it was one of the best gifts I have ever received.

best of both worlds type device.
I had a Sony reader(POS) for a while. It required the book to reside on my PC before I could load it to the device. I have about 250 books in epub format. Mostly old spy stuff not yet available as an "electronic" books.

Yes they are "bent" copies. Yes i paid to buy the book the first time. Yes I do have a few of them in paper. yes I sometimes reread them.

The Sony turned out to be a POS, returned it to Borders after a week because it died.

I'll never buy Gun Digest or the Lyman reloading guide as a kindle book and there's NO way I'll ever pay more than $8 to "rent" an electronic book.

The new Kindle that's wi/fi only sounds interesting. I wonder if you could "disable" the wifi permanently. I wonder how Calibre handles Mobi conversions.

BIll, I think your use is typical. Buy it, read it, toss it, forget it. It's just not how I want to spend my money. I buy lots of books but almost never on impulse. If I want to read a 'throw-away' book I get it from the library and pay nothing. If it turns out that book was worthwhile, i'll go to half-price books and get it for a few bucks. In either case, I am still ahead of the Kindle. IF I decide I do not want any of my 3000 or so books, if I sell each one for a quarter at a used book store, again, I am still ahead of the Kindle.

As far as traveling, I usually ship my stuff anywhere I go and always take books. I have never had a book stolen or lost or broken while I was on a trip.

The biodegradable was tongue-in-cheek yes, but my point is that when it dies, and it will, you have another piece of junk that is utterly worthless that you have to get rid of. I don't know about you, but I am conscious of what I buy in regards to what I have to throw away. Call me crazy but that;s how I roll.



Cheers

I buy paperback thrillers by the yard for 25 cents to $1 each at thrift stores, read four or five a month and throw them away.

Have no idea how the electronic readers will affect the industry, but I suspect there will come a time when an author does not need a publisher to market his work -- and that's good. Shakari on this forum already is riding the wave of the future with his downloadable book on how to become a PH. I have a friend in South Africa who is self-publishing his guns and ammo book in both hard copy and digital versions, and it won't be long before others try it, also.

As do others who post here, I have several thousands of books, and many of them are highly collectible and rare. What Kindle and the others will do to collections of traditional books is still to be seen.

My guess is that one day only a relatively few collectors will want real books taking up space. There already is a trend toward smaller homes.

Nonetheless, both BaxterB and BillintheWild make good points. I intend to buy a Kindle, play with it, and see how it sorts out. I don't want to be left behind when ebooks eventually dominate the book market, which I am convinced will be the case.

Bill Quimby

I got a Kindle for Christmas, and I like it very much. Not everything I want to read is available, but what offsets this for me is that so much is available free, or next to it. Right now I'm reading Henry Stanley's book about finding Livingstone. Free. It will also be easy to take on safari next month.
I worry about the "cloud" replacing books. There is comfort in a zillion hard copies being hard to redact. It is a subtle threat to liberty.

I agree with you Marty. Imagine a day when the ONLY version of Huckleberry Finn that is available for sale is the bastardized one... A very sad thought. Why burn books when you can just change them?

Funny you should mention that. Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn were virtually free, and re-reading them is on my to do list. Sad to say, I've never gotten around to "Moby Dick." That was virtually free as well.
I just don't like where this is going long term. Sanitized for your protection?

Before you read Moby Dick, read In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. Then, after Moby Dick, read Endurance, the story about Shackleton.

Some good reading there...

You are right, the sanitization of books for future readers is a scary thing. Especially when it comes to the history books.

I asked Col Boddington about this "wave of the future". He can't figure out how to inscribe them.

Kindle for junk, real books for things you will cherish...?

Rich

I gotta have the books. Kindle doesn't impress me a bit.

But...on the other hand my Mother, an avid reader, suffers from macular degeneration, she had had to give up reading. But with a kindle she can enlarge the font enough to see and she is now able to read again. For her the kindle is a miracle.


.

I love real books. I like the feel and the smell of them and I take great pride in owning them but do feel there's a place and a market for ebooks, whether they be Kindle or other make....... AS WELL.

I'm sure that they'll come a time when hard copy books do become a thing of the past but hopefully not in my lifetime.

As for the traditional printing houses, I tend to think they'll fade from the scene a lot earlier than the books themselves. (IMO) Technology is now overtaking them and print on demand companies are taking over and that is simply because technology now means the author and the buyer can both get a much better deal from them.

I am in the both camp--e-book for travel and light stuff. there is no replacing my Kiplings or Keiths when i sit in a chair with a scotch and a cigar.

SSR

quote:

I love real books. I like the feel and the smell of them and I take great pride in owning them

I'm one of those that wont buy a kindle until I cant get/read what I want in a regular book.

We've got my book on ordinary ebook and Kindle and are currently preparing a hard copy version..... and I'll be interested to see which version sells best.

Purely out of sentiment, I'd like to think it'll be the hard copy!

Put me down in the Pro Kindle camp. I was a skeptic. I enjoy reading books and was concerned about the availability of titles, readability, etc. on the Kindle. I still enjoy regular books but I also thoroughly enjoy my Kindle. It is light, easy to read, the battery charge lasts a looooong time and there are plenty of available titles. I have also found -- for reasons I cannot explain -- that I can actually read the Kindle faster than a regular book. For traveling, nothing beats the Kindle. My fossil of a father also loves to read. He told me not to buy him a Kindle. I did anyway. He has been forced to concede that he is a converted skeptic too.

For me, both regular books and Kindle both deserve space on the shelf.

[Steve, your book may hold the record for being the most expense ebook sold for Kindle. I would love to read it, but will have to wait for the price to come down a tad. ]

I tried to give them another shot last week and just did not enjoy the experience. I don' know what it is about that form factor that just does not work for me (besides all the other reasons). On the other hand I got another dozen books at half-price for 12 bucks. A damn good deal!!


**And no, my book isn;t slated to be Kindle-ized any time soon, you'll have to do with the 'old' version... :-)

Mike,

Nowhere near the record I'm glad to say.... some Kindles are over US$200 a pop. I'd truly love to be able to make it less expensive but the problem is, no matter how you market a book, every bugger want's their cut and in some/most cases, that cut is helluva big.

If you go with e-book companies such as Kindle, you don't have things like transaction, marketing and affiliate charges to worry about but their cut (assuming a book of any reasonably large content size) is usually huge..... 75%+ isn't that unusual and the author isn't allowed to offer the book for less anywhere else either...... so basically, they have you over a barrel.

If you go the other ebook route(s), you have to pay the transaction, marketing and affiliate charges yourself and that in turn takes a large slice of the profits. - Frankly, knowing what we know now, I'm not even sure we'd go to Kindle at all if we had the choice again because of the size of their slice of the pie but it's done now and there's no point in removing it..... we'll just have to hope they make a lot of sales to make it worthwhile for us.

With the e-versions, (Kindle or otherwise) we can't even email it to people ourselves because it's too large and has to be compressed and sent by a specialist company OR hosted on the net and downloaded..... but again, either option costs money.

With the hard copy, you have the choice of going to one of the specialist printing houses who (from my research) want to take an even larger slice of the pie. I'm not suggesting they're rip off merchants, because they're not. It's just that their own marketing costs are so astronomicallly high.

The other alternative is to go to a print on demand company who are more reasonably priced but then of course, you still have to pay their print, transaction, marketing and affiliate costs and although they're cheaper than the other alternatives, they're still not cheap AND you also have to do some of your own marketing....... Which obviously doesn't come free.

With hard copy, you have to decide on things like size, build quality (hard or soft back and dustcover or not etc) and of course colour or B&W images...... and the costs build faster than you could ever believe.

We're going with good quality hard back with dustcover because I feel it's going to be a book that'll be read repeatedly and also used for reference but we're also more or less forced to go with B&W images because even just one colour image in the book more than trebles the price. - I reckon the hard copy will simply have to be priced at something in the region of US$55 or so but colour (which I'd have loved to have had) would see the price over US$150 and I just can't see people paying that sort of price.

In an ideal world, I'd like to be able to sell the ebook for about US$15 and the hard copy for about US$25 but so far, we haven't been able to find any way of getting even close to that figure...... I will keep looking though!

Baxter,

That book of yours looks very interesting and I've sent you a PM.

I travel alot so my Kindle is the best way to have a whole of literature in the smallest size. But my hunting library is definitely hard back and for reading at home.

Just found this thread. There are a vast number of books whose copyright has expired. These should be available free via Gutenberg shouldn't they? I do not have a Kindle or any e-reader. Still waiting to see how this all shakes out.
Peter.

I don't use a Kindle, it's hard for me to hold one and work it while I'm driving.

OTOH, hard books are a pain in the ass to store and take care of. I'm a book person and find that 95% of them are NEVER opened after the initial perusal.

Like several others in this thread, I've thrown more paperbacks away after reading than the typical People magazine reader could imagine.

$27. and the Bryson books will be passed around to at least 3 people.

I guess you can add me to the fuddy-duddy list. I like the feel of books, and the sight of them on one of my book case shelves. I treasure good books, they are like old friends to me.

It seems to me that Kindle is for fluff books, and I do not waste my time on them.

Rich

I was at a party on Saturday with some of my doc friends, all of whom (4 of them) had previously bought Kindles and 6 months ago swore they'd never buy another 'real' book. To a person they have stopped using their Kindles and were planning on getting rid of them, after the several months, they all went back to 'real' books. I too like the looks of my book son the shelves and grabbing one and re-visiting something.

It may be the wave of the future but I don't want it.I love having a true Library in my home that includes not just what I want to read today but also all the first editions,signed copies,rare volumes,etc.I agree with you Bill in the extent of going through several paperbacks monthly,(only difference is I don't throw them away,I take them to the V.A. hospital).Point being is that we want to save something of value (sorry),+ that is not achieved with an electronic unfeeling device.Guess I'm over the deep end when I continue to believe that good books have souls or something applicable.

If one spends his or her life sitting around the house surrounded by a large and most welcome book collection (and I have one) then the Kindle may not be the choice.

But if you wander about a great deal there is no way to compare carrying a packet of books versus the Kindle. Good books are great and comforting, but for pure easy reading enjoyment the Kindle is tops. Easy to carry, easy to read in all light conditions, or no light for that matter,
and when one book is finished the next one on your list is obtainable immediately.

And when hunting in a foreign country trying to find a book you would like to read in English can be impossible. With the Kindle all you need is Wi Fi.

There is a place for "real" books, but I have found that that place is not a good one while I am traveling. I also read frequently when out for lunch and the Kindle makes it so much easier
than flipping pages.

I am looking forward to my next trip to Argentina with my little Kindle in my carry on bag instead of an assortment of books packed in my luggage.

Point well taken my friend;I must confess though that even the habits started as a child + continued through adulthood concerning carrying numerous volumes through hunting trips + various sojourns I never found it a hardship.I do understand the obvious advantages in the use that you speak of in application but we all know where that leads;thus my objection.

9. No way to write in the margins.
When I saw that I had to laugh. I went to a Catholic school with real nuns. To this day (I will be 60 in a week), I can not write in a book. The fear of Sister Geronimo and her yard stick of death is still with me. You simply did not write in a school book.

quote:

9. No way to write in the margins.
When I saw that I had to laugh. I went to a Catholic school with real nuns. To this day (I will be 60 in a week), I can not write in a book. The fear of Sister Geronimo and her yard stick of death is still with me. You simply did not write in a school book.

Ha! I suppose I am lucky to have missed the Sisters. If writing in books were a sin, no number of Hail Mary's or Our Father's could help me.

Now, talking in class and being rude is another thing. I had one Mrs. Fannie Wanzer and her implacable diamond ring that she would twist around on her finger and smack the back of your head if you talked out of turn. Had she had the same hatred for writing in books, I may have turned out different.

quote:

Kindle vs book collection

I don't have a kindle, but I do enjoy reading e-books on my laptop. The Project Gutenberg has more than 36,000 free e-books available for download. I doubt you could find most of them if you spent a lifetime hunting through second-hand bookstores.

I also like reading actual books. One disadvantage is that some books never came out in hardcover, and paperbacks eventually will fall apart.

I wish the books I like to read over and over were available in e-book format, so that I wouldn't put such wear and tear on my actual books.

China- true paperbacks will fall away (hardbounds too without care). My wife has the odd habit of folding back the binding to read. DRIVES ME UP THE WALL!!!Some things some hold sacred.

I won't sit in front of the fireplace this winter with a scotch in one hand and a kindle in the other. For me there is no substitute for the real thing, at least for the classics. However, my wife got a kindle for mother's day. It is perfect for her, no more of the dime store pulp she reads cluttering up the house.

FWIW, My book (How To Become A Professional Hunter In Africa) is available in e-book, Kindle and hard copy formats and I'm glad to say the hard copy sells about twice as many and the other versions combined.

It'll never be a best seller and I didn't ever expect it to be. I wrote the book for the next generation of guys who want to get into the business but lack the knowledge of how to and for ordinary hunters who want a deeper understanding of African hunting, how the business works and why safaris are so expensive and where their money goes.

Despite that, it's selling better than I expected and I get a fair number of emails from readers saying how much they enjoyed it.