"E-reading isn't reading"

I embraced the ebook/ereader with gusto, buying a Kindle and downloading several books and more all the time. And within seconds I was able to buy a collection of books that I had spent years looking for, Gregory MacDonald's Fletch books. I hit garage sales, used bookstores, libraries, etc all looking for these 12 books, and like I said, I ended up getting them all within seconds. Does that stop me from buying physical books. Yes and no. I'm much more picky about WHAT physical books I buy, but when I find a treasure, it warms my heart. Yesterday I was scouring a goodwill store and came across a 1979 copy of The Complete Plays of Neil Simon Vol 2. This put me on an Amazon and ebay quest to find volumes 1, 3, 4. But it also inspired me to go online and download on my kindle, the works of O'Neill, Shaw, Aristophines, Gilbert and Sullivan, Ibsen, and Wilde.

As a student, I love my Kindle. If I can have my text books on one device, I can tote it around campus a lot easier and with less stress on my back (non traditional student with aging shoulders and knees )

I'm also the kind of reader that is reading several things at once, so the ability to read a few chapters of a friends WIP and then flip over to Elmore Leonard, then to Ken Follett is just easier on the Kindle.

But I remember having this same discussion with a friend, who was offering the same arguments as davidh219 until he bought his own tablet and started utilizing the Kindle app. He saw the light I had similar discussions with people when I was studying radio communications about "digital music" and the use of computers in broadcasting. There were 18-25 year old kids arguing that records were the supieror format, and how they would never convert to or use a computer in radio. Less then 20 years later, those that are still in radio, are all using computers, hardly a one uses a CD anymore and rave about how much easier it is. We loved the rush of trying to time up music to meet the top of the hour, but now, the computer does it for us and it's easier for them to focus on the content of the show.

If, at all possible (I understand that some books as mentioned above are designed for a Pbook, like art books), we can focus on the writing and not on the delivery system, we'll find our work so much easier.

Ron Charles of the Washington Post has an interesting piece up about reviewing on a Kindle -- it rings true for me, in that we both use books in the same way.

Usually, I flip through the galley and my endnotes, looking for major points to emphasize and striking quotations to include. A simple but crude system of CAPS, arrows and underlining draws my eye to themes I thought were important. And, what’s more, I have a spatial sense of the book’s architecture in my mind.

Not here.

On the Kindle, each screen shot floats in space, isolated from the previous or subsequent ones, an effect that left my memory of the book weirdly nebulous.

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Bloo - I just gotta say though, I don't like this "see the light" kind of argument. It suggests that ebooks ARE superior and the only people saying that they prefer physical books are the people who have never given ebooks a chance. That simply isn't true.

When I first got my Kobo I thought it was awesome, I took it everywhere with me, read several of the books that had come with it. But as time passed I realised I didn't enjoy the act of reading on the Kobo. I stopped taking it with me places. I stopped reading entirely, thinking (as the reluctant reader I am) I was going through a "Meh, don't like books right now" phase. But then I picked up a physical book and started reading it and was reminded of why I liked reading physical books so much. You see I liked that I could have books at my fingertips with my ereader, I liked the technology and playing with the reader itself. But when it came to reading I didn't like how slowly it turned the pages nor how few words I got on a page. I read really fast and it wouldn't keep up with me, and I didn't like that. I also didn't like that I couldn't physically sense where I was in a book (despite the percentage thingy) nor that I couldn't flip back easily to some earlier spot to double check things.

Now this doesn't mean that others don't mind what I took issue with. In fact my father LOVES the slower pace of the flipping of the pages precisely because he reads slowly and it suits his reading style. But come on, do we really need to go around sighing with superiority at those poor fools stuck in the dark ages who will finally see the light when they actually give new technology a chance? I think I'm pretty darn tech savvy actually.

Like I said before, you might not share the opinions of others who don't read how you do, but it doesn't make your way better, nor does it mean that those who don't share your opinions are luddites and stubborn.

muravyets said:

From this may I take it you disagree with the points about books as objects and about artists/authors exploiting a medium's capabilities for message delivery which were made by me and Filigree?

Also that you disagree with Marshall McLuhan's ideas on media and communications (not hard to do, since his ideas are nearly unintelligible anyway, I guess)?

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To some extent, yes. But in some ways, no. I am not a McLuhan fan, at all. I never have been. I'll take Kenneth Burke over McLuhan any day. And Richard Lanham over either.

I'm a medievalist, with extensive background in paleography, codicology and archival best practices for digital and non-digital books and ephemera. I can read cunieform. I've held hundreds of tablets, and preserved them for posterity and for those who can't hold them.

I've also handled, photographed and scanned a number of one of a kind manuscripts, and limited incunabula.

These experiences have changed me.

We scan these artifacts in order to preserve them, to protect them from over handling, and to reveal data that isn't readily apparent to the naked eye. Wide distribution of these digital files means many people have access to important works.

Is it the same experience to view the digital facsimile of codex sinaiticus as it is to hold a section in your hands? No. It's not. But neither is it the same experience to read a first edition printed book with holograph annotations from the author as it is to read a Penguin paperback. Nor is Jane's experience reading the same book that I read, even if she reads the same copy, going to be the same experience as I have.

I love them all, all the kinds of books.

The codex book is a fully debugged high-end technology with a great UI. The torah that was meticulously copied and triple checked against the master, that is then carried with love and respect to the front of the temple to be carefully opened and read, is also a carefully created UI. But it's a UI for a different purpose and user. It's not better, it's different.

I think that rather than the medium is the message, I'm more interested in the UI, the purpose, and the reader. For me, there's a strong connection between the five parts of rhetoric and UI design, use and function.

Yesterday I purchased the digital facsimile of the Book of Kells for my retina iPad. I've previously purchased the digital facsimile for CD-ROM and DVD.

I have the "low end" print facsimile that was 800.00 when it was released in a limited edition, and the consumer coffee table book from Françoise Henry that, while attractive and useful, is not a facsimile.

The iPad facsimile replaces, quite literally the other digital facsimiles for ease of use and quality of image.

None of them are identical in use or experience to the three volumes of vellum. But their existence serves to help preserve the artifact. For me, it is less about the book as talisman than it is about the preservation of a unique and human-created artifact.

That said, we don't have the complete Book of Kells. It's missing several pages, it doesn't appear to have been finished, the pages have been trimmed, the binding and original cover are long gone, and as a text of the NT it's wretched, riddled with errors, some quite egregious (including a page copied twice, with errors introduced in both versions). It is a book valued more for the ornamentation and art with which the text is presented, than the text itself. That is, the art that might be considered secondary, is for this book, primary.

But I don't know that the medium (digital) is the message at all. The facsimile has pages, you can page through the facsimile, you can see verso and recto.

I don't really see much difference between a mass market paperback of a novel and a well-made ebook. The container differs, not the book.

I do see a difference between Richardson's own printed copy of Clarissa, which he printed and then annotated himself, and the Penguin paperback edition. But that's because Richard's annotations change the book, the contents. I don't go into squee mode because Richardson used and created the book as artifact, it's the changes, the added data, that make it interesting to me.

I don't care for the smell of the book, whether it's musty or the odor of formaldehyde used in the glue and sometimes, the ink. The average consumer hardcover purchased today, quite frankly, doesn't really qualify as an art object to me. I know it does to some, and I can understand it.

But I also know that King's 1962 hardcover isn't going to hold up even sitting on a shelf, unread. It won't last 30 years without the binding glue drying and shrinking, and gatherings loosening and possibly falling out, and the ink will start to eat through the yellowing pages at about the twenty year mark, if it isn't stored in archival conditions.

Medievalist said:

Yesterday I purchased the digital facsimile of the Book of Kells for my retina iPad.

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So did I, dammit!

(And thank you for the head's up)

Toothpaste said:

Bloo - I just gotta say though, I don't like this "see the light" kind of argument. It suggests that ebooks ARE superior and the only people saying that they prefer physical books are the people who have never given ebooks a chance. That simply isn't true.

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Mam I knew that was going to come back and bite me in the ass. I put a winky ( ) there hopefully to indicate that I was being facetious. To me, the most important thing, is the CONTENT of the book not the delivery method.

Bloo- I saw the winky, and would have respected the winky, had it not been for the long paragraph following it about how everyone you've known who took issue with new technology once upon a time now loves it. It certainly implied that eventually with enough time everyone would ultimately see ebooks as superior. That it wasn't a to each his own, but a in time even the ones unwilling to embrace superior technology come around.

WillSauger said:

My grandfather made the same argument when my kindle arrived. And the old man is senile.

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LET'S GET HIM!

Yeah, I see some people getting a little defensive about comments (made in jest). Not getting that. To me, it's about a reader's preference. You don't want to read an ebook, then by all means, don't. Nobody's going to call the police here.

Same with folks who love their digital books.

Isn't this kind of like telling someone how they should eat their toast? Butter or not. Jelly? Plain? Why would anyone get upset over that? And why would some web-article writer with a bloated sense of self-importance go so far as to call ebook reading "not legit?" I guess that's why I answered with an "eyeroll" and a comment about not having the time to care.

This isn't middle school for the love of all.

I read in my own time, in private, me and the book. Someone stepping in and trying to correct me when I'm enjoying myself, lost in a tale, can politely go find something sharp and stick in their eye. Repeatedly.

The same people who think they're "better" or "more sophisticated" because of this choice. Yeaaaah. Neat.

It's silly.

Personal Prose said:

Let's throw more kindle into the fire. What about audio books?

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Those are performance art.

willietheshakes said:

Ron Charles of the Washington Post has an interesting piece up about reviewing on a Kindle -- it rings true for me, in that we both use books in the same way.

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Toothpaste said:

...

When I first got my Kobo I thought it was awesome, I took it everywhere with me, read several of the books that had come with it. But as time passed I realised I didn't enjoy the act of reading on the Kobo. I stopped taking it with me places. I stopped reading entirely, thinking (as the reluctant reader I am) I was going through a "Meh, don't like books right now" phase. But then I picked up a physical book and started reading it and was reminded of why I liked reading physical books so much. You see I liked that I could have books at my fingertips with my ereader, I liked the technology and playing with the reader itself. But when it came to reading I didn't like how slowly it turned the pages nor how few words I got on a page. I read really fast and it wouldn't keep up with me, and I didn't like that. I also didn't like that I couldn't physically sense where I was in a book (despite the percentage thingy) nor that I couldn't flip back easily to some earlier spot to double check things.

Now this doesn't mean that others don't mind what I took issue with. ...

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(excerpted but taken in its entirety by reference)

I just want to +1 with both of these. I also find it more comfortable and pleasant to have that physical spatial relationship to the text I'm reading. Others don't need that. Some of us do.

Medievalist said:

To some extent, yes. But in some ways, no. I am not a McLuhan fan, at all. I never have been. I'll take Kenneth Burke over McLuhan any day. And Richard Lanham over either.

...

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(I'm also including the entirety of this post by reference, and responding to it in its entirety.)

I see the sense of your argument, although it does not change my stance. I still think that, as an artist/author, the medium does affect the delivery of my message, and as a reader, the medium affects my reception of the message.

However, I'm having a hard time reconciling a couple of points within your argument:

You seem to be saying that physical books do have a functional and aesthetic presence that adds to the experience of reading them, as well as to the meta-context of the history of which they are artifacts. That is why we preserve originals and don't just make copies, and why we make new physical books with artistry and craft.

However, at the same time, you seem to be saying that the form and/or medium do not matter, that only the content matters, that no physical form is immutable and therefore it's not necessary to be wedded to one form over another, and that mass production of cheap books renders the question essentially moot anyway, since cheap books are as ephemeral, at least, as e-books.

Those ideas seem to contradict each other to the extent one says form matters and the other says form doesn't matter.

ETA: PS: I do not disagree that cheap mass production makes books that are not more worthy than e-books. In fact, a good argument could be made that mass production of print books is worse for the environment than e-books. That is why my ideal would be e-books with an option to purchase PoD physical copies, preferably with a price range of styles, from cheap perfect-bound paperbacks to highly crafted cloth- or leather-bound hardbacks.

muravyets said:

However, at the same time, you seem to be saying that the form and/or medium do not matter, that only the content matters.

Those ideas seem to contradict each other to the extent one says form matters and the other says form doesn't matter.

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I am saying that the real book is the data, the text, but in some cases, other kinds of information are also in the container. It may be a book that is primarily or exclusively images.

I'm saying that we may prefer one container over another. And that one person may prefer one container for one purpose over another container.

The book is Austen's Emma. It may be Austen's text in an 18 century octavio with buckram binding, a 21st century limited edition archive quality hard cover, or an inexpensive paperback, a book club edition, or an ebook in any one of several file formats.

To me, the text is more important than the container.

I am even more interested in the provenance of the text than I am the container. A poorly produced ebook or cheap paperback that uses Austen's text is more valued by me than a beautifully bound hardcover that's an abridged version of Austen's text.

I'll take the Riverside Shakespeare with dog-eared pages, or the Arden digital Shakespeare's Works over The Globe Illustrated Shakespeaer which is a piece of poorly made crap as a book, and as an edition of Shakespeare, doesn't have much to do with what Shakespeare wrote. But if you read reviews, you'll see people talk about what a handsome book The Illustrated Globe Shakespeare is, and how pretty the "leatherette" binding is and how nice it looks on their coffee table.

But you'll have to look a bit to find readers noting that The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare was edited by poltroons, that Cordelia lives at the end of King Lear, or that the text is barely readable because it's set so poorly.

I love books as containers, but the text (or sometimes the image) is more important to me than the container, almost all the time. The public domain Emily Dickinson is Emily Dickinson edited, not the poems as Emily wrote them. Punctuation, meter, and even lines were changed by her editor at will.

Coleridge's edition of Shakespeare is not what Shakespeare wrote, and what Coleridge did to Donne is a shanda.

This is the same argument going on in the comic book industry right now. There's a LOT of companies doing at least some of their line in digital. Many of us prefer the feel of a comic book in our hands, but for books? I wish i owned an ereader, i would certainly read a lot more.

muravyets said:

ETA: PS: I do not disagree that cheap mass production makes books that are not more worthy than e-books. In fact, a good argument could be made that mass production of print books is worse for the environment than e-books. That is why my ideal would be e-books with an option to purchase PoD physical copies, preferably with a price range of styles, from cheap perfect-bound paperbacks to highly crafted cloth- or leather-bound hardbacks.

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I think that we may well see this happen in our lifetime, at least with works in the canon, or OP mass market fiction.

It used to be that you'd buy the pages from the printer, then take them to your favorite binder, or have the printer act as a go-between, and have the binding that suited your personal taste and budget.

I think that may very well become a service offered by bookstores, on or offline.

I wonder how many digital copies he's sold of the book this piece is excerpted from. The book is available on Kindle.

Adelaide said:

I wonder how many digital copies he's sold of the book this piece is excerpted from. The book is available on Kindle.

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So. What?

Did you read the excerpt? Where did it say ANYTHING AT ALL about never reading things on a Kindle?

(Also, your implied point and the supposed irony it carries is about two days and a hundred posts late. Did you read the thread?)

But with my Kindle I can read 50 Shades of Gray without embarrassing myself in public. Wait this is my wife's Kindle!

Toothpaste said:

Bloo- I saw the winky, and would have respected the winky, had it not been for the long paragraph following it about how everyone you've known who took issue with new technology once upon a time now loves it. It certainly implied that eventually with enough time everyone would ultimately see ebooks as superior. That it wasn't a to each his own, but a in time even the ones unwilling to embrace superior technology come around.

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Maybe I'm taking this personally and I shouldn't but THAT'S what you should have addressed and not my "see the light" comment, which was clearly meant in jest. And I can only speak from experience. And my experience has been, resistance to new tech first followed by an acceptance. I'm not saying that books are going away or that they will die. And I certainly didn't mean to indicate that ereading was superior. What I was trying to point out was just what I have experienced.

And did you see the part where I said I still buy books, I just bought a book a real honest to god book, this weekend? One is not superior to the other, but it's all about the content inside. Are The Beatles a better band on vinyl then on mp3? Mozart? Beethoven? Is the music somehow more "pure" or "honest"?

To me writing is about THE MESSAGE within NOT how we read. After having literally thousands of books sitting in a garage because I don't have room for them or the ability to move them right now, the Kindle is a better choice FOR ME, it also satiates my need for immediacy. If there is a book I want to read, I don't have to drive 2 hours to my storage unit, or wait 2 days (or more) for Amazon to deliver it, or god forbid my bookstore doesn't carry what I'm looking for. I can have it in literally seconds. That's a plus FOR ME and I think it is for a lot of people too.

I do think more and more people will switch over to ereaders of some kind. We, as an American society, like our gadgets too much, but I don't think this is the death knell for traditionally published books. But I see books becoming more valued objects then they are currently. But again, for me it's all about the message contained in the books and encouraging people to read them, anyway they can, weather it be through ereader, ipad, iphone, computer screen (BTW I hate using my PC Kindle app and use it only for text books, app on one side, Word doc on the other), or a regularly published book.

Bloo said:

I embraced the ebook/ereader with gusto, buying a Kindle and downloading several books and more all the time. And within seconds I was able to buy a collection of books that I had spent years looking for, Gregory MacDonald's Fletch books. I hit garage sales, used bookstores, libraries, etc all looking for these 12 books, and like I said, I ended up getting them all within seconds.

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Apologies for the derail, but you might have tried AbeBooks. I searched there for the author's name and the keyword "Fletch" and it found me 45 different books. If I'd used specific titles I bet it would have found more.

Derail over. As you were.

Can't be bothered to read the whole thread. Has anyone done the jokey 'e-writing isn't writing' reversal, and wondered whether this dude handed his article in on vellum, in longhand etc? If not, please imagine I had done that post and it was really funny.

Bloo said:

Maybe I'm taking this personally and I shouldn't but THAT'S what you should have addressed and not my "see the light" comment, which was clearly meant in jest. And I can only speak from experience. And my experience has been, resistance to new tech first followed by an acceptance. I'm not saying that books are going away or that they will die. And I certainly didn't mean to indicate that ereading was superior. What I was trying to point out was just what I have experienced.

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But . . . but . . . your joke basically said the same thing as your paragraph, even if you meant your actual meaning to be more nuanced as you discuss above. I'm sorry I took your words to heart, as both joke and paragraph seemed to support each other. And I am happy to see that I was wrong in my interpretation.

Bloo said:

Are The Beatles a better band on vinyl then on mp3? Mozart? Beethoven? Is the music somehow more "pure" or "honest"?

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Depends on the bitrate.

And no one serious rips to mp3 anymore.

elindsen said:

People always seem to be against technology. There was this stink that it isn't music when it's on an MP3 in my neck of the woods. Then people started claiming it wasn't dancing on things like Wii and Kinect.

Just ignore the ignorance.

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Disliking MP3s isn't being against technology. It's being against highly compressed files. If you are an audiophile with state-of-the-art amplifiers and speakers, you would want your music in a high quality, full-range format.

Comparing someone who is against standard MP3s with someone who just dislikes anything new is apples to oranges.


I love new technology. I just prefer paper books and vinyl records

Melanie Dawn said:

This is the same argument going on in the comic book industry right now. There's a LOT of companies doing at least some of their line in digital. Many of us prefer the feel of a comic book in our hands, but for books? I wish i owned an ereader, i would certainly read a lot more.

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As a comic book collector, I loath the idea of comics going digital. Except... I collect Silver Age comics. So that won't change. I guess as a reader, digital comics would be cool because they are so much more detailed on a computer screen or iPad and you can zoom in to really see the finer details of the art.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Disliking MP3s isn't being against technology. It's being against highly compressed files. If you are an audiophile with state-of-the-art amplifiers and speakers, you would want your music in a high quality, full-range format.

Comparing someone who is against standard MP3s with someone who just dislikes anything new is apples to oranges.

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Yup. That's what lossless is for.

Personally, I'm okay with reasonably high bitrate AAC.

The 128 kbps mp3's I ripped in the late 90's are sounding pretty shitty.

Shadow_Ferret said:

As a comic book collector, I loath the idea of comics going digital. Except... I collect Silver Age comics. So that won't change. I guess as a reader, digital comics would be cool because they are so much more detailed on a computer screen or iPad and you can zoom in to really see the finer details of the art.

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For me, comics on an iPad are - apart from the fact that you can't really see whole spreads at a time - superior to comics in print in every way I can think of.