Paradise Found » E-books

E-books

September 30, 2006 at 6:47 am · Filed under My Musings, publishing

I just discovered that Tools of the Ancient Greeks is available as an e-book. I don’t get e-books. I mean long, full text sized e-books, not the short 15 page jobbers that I can read and glean information from quickly. When I read a book, I want to be able to stick it in a bag and hit the road, and bookmark the pages with a real bookmark, not the click of a mouse. But, as I was looking at this site (where the Bible and the Book of Mormon – books I’d think people would definitely want in print form – are in the number one and two spots respectively) it occurred to me that there is one thing that e-books would be good for.

Publishers don’t have the resources to print most books in a large print format. It would be too expensive to do. But by creating a document in large print, they’d be able to offer this service to sight impaired people without the expense of an entire print run.

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Meg said,

September 30, 2006 @ 9:11 am

I take e-books and put them on my pda and then I can ‘hit the road’.

So, in a package that fits in my hand I have (currently) A Tramp Abroad, Atlas Shrugged, Awakening, Oliver Twist, and Inheritance.

It’s a wonderful way to read novels and doesn’t clutter up my shelf space!

imperfectgenius said,

September 30, 2006 @ 10:02 am

I’m with you, I love the feel and texture of an actual book. I love turning the pages and holding it in my hands. It would be very, very hard for me to trade that multi-sensory approach to reading for an electronic version.

But I think that ebooks have become so popular because they’re very portable and the content of a dozen books can easily fit into a card sized device. I’ve downloaded a couple ebooks to keep on my laptop for the kids and they’ve come in handy when the kids get restless. I usually have the laptop with me but don’t always remember to leave the house with a small library collection, lol.

CamianAcademy said,

October 1, 2006 @ 3:37 am

I can see both sides, but I still prefer real, hold in my hands, paper books. That’s one thing that made me very sad for the new state of the art high school that, of all things, Microsoft built in Philadelphia. Their library is all electronic. There’s just something about curling up with a good book. Plus I would imagine that after a while I would get a massive headache because of reading a screen for so long. I just don’t think I could read an e-book for nearly as long as I can sit and read a paper book.

On the other hand, ebooks can be quite convenient particularly if you are carrying around a PDA anyway. Right now I’m reading Who Murdered Chaucer? and it’s a pretty hefty book and would be a bit annoying to lug around. An ebook doesn’t have that problem. I also know several people who have a chapter or two of the Bible or Book of Mormon e-mailed to them daily and so find it easier to keep up with their scripture study because they feel almost accountable to the machine sending the passages each day.

paradisefound said,

October 3, 2006 @ 12:40 pm

I do like the idea of a light, portable tome. But my 40 year old eyes have a hard enough time reading a computer screen; I can’t imagine reading a book on a PDA! It’s interesting to hear how other people use ebooks, though.

As an aside, my library has just started a service that allows users to download audio books to a computer or (I assume) ipod - for free. That’s a service that I will use!

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