I fully understand people’s resistance to ebooks beyond the logistics (DRM, device-locked, geographic restrictions, price) and their attachment to paper books, and the first part of this argument is valid…but the second? Smudges? Really?
I fully understand people’s resistance to ebooks beyond the logistics (DRM, device-locked, geographic restrictions, price) and their attachment to paper books, and the first part of this argument is valid…but the second? Smudges? Really?
Yeah, his personal OCD issue isn’t really a reason to stop all the people who are using and enjoying e-readers. Also, if you’re really enjoying a book, you’re barely aware of the environment or the texture/glossiness of your page anyway.
“Barely aware of the environment” – Exactly! These days I can pretty much tell who is complaining about ebooks without actually having fairly tried them if they try to suggest or imply that ebooks cannot be as immersive as pbooks.
I think of the last two fiction books I adored, really adored, stay-up-past-midnight-to-finish adored, and one was paper and one was digital and nothing – certainly not smudges – could have detracted from my enjoyment of and focus on the CONTENT of those two books whatever form I was reading them in.
[That's not to say people may not have problems reading in ebook form at first while they adjust, or permanent problems arising from various eye or wrist strains or whatever.]
…”there’s a sense of achievement that comes from tracking the progress of your bookmark or dog-ear down the width of the spine. You don’t get this sense of progress from e-readers.” On the contrary, I’ve got used to looking at the percentage “progress” bar at the bottom of my Kindle so get the “same sense of achievement”. The one thing I don’t like is the difficulty of flicking back through to something I’ve read before – checking on something a character says, for example. Somehow years of reading (paper) books gives me an inate sense of where this is in the text unlike on the Kindle. Otherwise I’m happy with my ebooks and absolutely think I can read an ebook as fast as a paper book (despite the stats the Heckler quotes).
I was so taken by smudges that I forgot his third argument: your rebuttal is right on point. The progress bar in Kindle or the % of book in Stanza (I can’t speak to other ereaders) both serve the same function if you want to track your progress or see how far you’ve got to go.
And yes, the one thing I too have trouble with is flicking back – I’d never noticed how easily I can roughly identify the position of the scene I need in an pbook until I had to do it with an ebook. Maybe it too will develop with years of use.
I wasn’t sure about those stats myself; I can read an ebook as fast as a pbook. I wonder about the sample selection and size for that study/survey.
Also: ‘dog-ear’???? Where’s the respect for the paper book, my friend?