E-readers

[The Lady Shael]

I don't really read books much anymore, but I'm trying to get back into it. I borrowed my sister's Nook on our vacation to read a little and it was actually pretty neat. So I'm thinking of getting an e-reader of some sort, but I'm not 100% convinced that it's worth it, or which one to get. The nook and kindle seem to be pretty equal in terms of reviews, and I know the Ipad isn't really made to be an e-reader, but some people still use it as one.

What are your guys' thoughts and experiences?

[Shadow]

I don't like the fact that if I buy an e-book legitimately, I can't resell it like a regular book. I also don't like the difficulty of transferring the media, giving it as a gift without being able to read it, etc. Until the whole platform is more open, I don't think I will do much with it. 

[The Lady Shael]

That's the main reason holding me back.

[Kilkenne]

The vast majority of my reading is nonfiction, and I often end up writing in my books, so no e-reader for the forseeable future for me. I also tend to write notes in the margins and otherwise abuse my nonfiction stuff. For people that read a ton of fiction I guess they're the way to go, I hear. The books are significantly cheaper, too. They're not as inexpensive as they were when the Kindle et al first came out, but they're still a few dollars less than most paperbacks. Something else to consider.

[Ruddertail]

I've little use for the whole concept - I like my books in tangible form. Cost of books isn't an issue, since I rarely buy a book without first getting it from a library and reading it - I buy what I want to keep around, what I want to read over again, what I want read by any children I might someday have.. And given that, there's another reason for me to stay away from the E-reader. Well cared for books will last hundreds of years on shelves. Today's e-readers will probably be obsolete and the "books" stored on them need format conversions or something within a decade or two.

My advice? Skip the e-reader, go the library.

[Neobaron]

Shannon has one. Uses it for school books. It's pretty useful in that regard (saving money.)

[windhound]

My stepdad's mom has a Nook, played with it a while back.  Other than the software glitches (Stupid wifi issues, refuses to lock an access point.  Google says this is a common, unsolved issue.  She goes to Starbucks down the road which for whatever reason works).  I like the idea, but it felt kinda sluggish to me.

My parents got one of my brothers a Kindle for his birthday, I guess I should have done some more reading on it.  Disappointed how locked down it is.  You can transfer non-Amazon formats to it by emailing them to the Kindle's email address, but meh...

The screens on both Kindle and Nook are very good for text, the e-ink really is impressive tech
Sony has a couple versions of e-readers out as well.

Its also crazy how much ebooks cost.  They should be nowhere near the paperback retail price because there's near zero overhead to them.  No paper, no ink, no storage, no shipping.

I don't read books much anymore, but when I do I like to buy ex-library copies off Amazon.  Cheap and usually very good bindings. 

[Neobaron]

There are costs window.

But I agree - their greed is showing.

[Gen. Volkov]

I recently got a Nook. Chose it over the Kindle because it has 2.2 million books available, while the Kindle has less than half that. While I still like and read tangible books, because the battery can never run out, I really do like the Nook. It's more convenient on a number of levels, and reading it is very little different from reading an actual book. The biggest annoyance I've had is that it's hard to flip back through the book if you need to reference something that happened earlier. There is a "Go to" function, but if you aren't sure of the exact page, it's not particularly useful. But that happens rarely, so it's not that big of an annoyance. Also, most of the books I've read so far appear to be scanned from the printed versions, because they will occasionally have words with letters in them that shouldn't be there, but look like another letter. (like h instead of a b) Or punctuation marks in the wrong places.

[Abby The Rat]

I think the only reason I would have an e-reader for two things, one I would like to get an e-book version of something I already have.. (scan barcode as proof of owner ship or something..) and build up a collection then it be lighter then carrying 10 books for a 3 week vacation or something like that.

[Ashyra Nightwing]

I like the idea of a Kindle but I think I just enjoy reading real books too much. I get all my books used so it's not that expensive for me. I just think it's nice to have books around, even if it's just as a decorative thing. I really like the e-ink stuff though, the screen is very pleasant to look at.

I like the idea of being able to torrent books. Maybe I'll get one someday but it's not a priority at the moment.

[Kilkenne]

On the topic of having books around, I've amassed enough books that when I move I literally have to own more than one book-case for them, so it's getting kind of obnoxious. I'm hoping that eventually the library available on those things will be more extensive as far as the material I need goes. I just have shelves and shelves of books written by dead people that -would- be rather convenient if I could just have them in a tablet for quick reference. I'd still probably buy the book anyhow, though, and I'd still want to write notes, but the more I think about it, I really hate packing/unpacking these books when I move on a yearly basis. Or sometimes a faster basis than that. Shouldn't be so awful once I settle down for good, I suppose.

[windhound]

If you wanted to Kilk, you could scan all your books page by page and then load it to your e-reader

Now excuse me for a sec, 'cause this is relevant and it is the biggest problem I have with ebooks - Cost.
Neo, I know there's _some_ cost. 
Gotta pay the writer, editor, publisher's cut etc. 
After that though, there's not much.  Lets say Barnes and Noble has 2 million ebooks, and each ebook is 1MB (even though they seem to average around 300KB).  One 2TB hdd could hold the entire library.  Bandwidth wise, load the Amazon mainpage twice and you've covered an ebook download. 
There's programmer and server related costs too, but for companies the size of B&N and Amazon that gets spread out real fast.

Now check this out.  I chose a random best seller and compared the cost of a paperback to the kindle version
http://www.amazon.com/State-Wonder-Ann-Patchett/dp/0062049801/ref=zg_bs_books_16
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004G8QZSS/ref=s9_al_bw_ir05?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-5&pf_rd_r=1DZ2YCCNFBF66W53RR8P&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1299971682&pf_rd_i=1286228011
The paperback is ~$1.50 more and ships for free.  If you factor out shipping the cost of the book itself is _less_ than the kindle version.

Googling, writers get paid 10 - 20% of each book sold.  Even after Amazon takes its cut the publishers are still making a killing.
This is, imho, inexcusable greed given there's near zero overhead costs to distributing an ebook.

ebook readers are neat devices, but the content is waay overpriced

[Kilkenne]

Abuse of the weight of the publishers, I think. But I'm a firm believer in the fact that prices are regularly equivalent to what the market will bear. If people will pay for it, it's still profitable.

The example I use when defending this principle is this:

Gas prices are very high right now, do you buy it? Generally people say yes.

if gas were 15 dollars per gallon, would you buy it? No, I couldn't afford to drive and would have to figure out some other way to work/go to school/etc, people living outside of cities are outta luck.

In that situation, while extreme (and we're actually nearing the break point on gas, 5 dollar/gallon gas would pretty much ruin everything, especially food costs), is a prime example of this. E-readers I now believe, are a better example so I'll use that.

Basically the publishers use their weight to lean on the e-reader people to make the books more expensive, and they ratchet them up to the point just before people stop buying them. If people stopped buying them altogether, then they'd be forced to lower the price. But people will always buy e-reader books, even if they eventually become the same price ~exactly~ as regular books, due to the convenience that the e-reader affords them. The same way that gas conveniently allows people to avoid public transportation methods.

[Gen. Volkov]

On the topic of having books around, I've amassed enough books that when I move I literally have to own more than one book-case for them, so it's getting kind of obnoxious. I'm hoping that eventually the library available on those things will be more extensive as far as the material I need goes. I just have shelves and shelves of books written by dead people that -would- be rather convenient if I could just have them in a tablet for quick reference. I'd still probably buy the book anyhow, though, and I'd still want to write notes, but the more I think about it, I really hate packing/unpacking these books when I move on a yearly basis. Or sometimes a faster basis than that. Shouldn't be so awful once I settle down for good, I suppose.

I have the same issue Kilk. I recently boxed up a bunch of old books, at least 500, that I had in my room that I knew I wasn't going to read again, and put them into storage. I still have at least 1000 books in my room. 30/70 split of non-fiction and sci-fi. This is more or less why I bought the Nook. Now I can have 1000 books stored electronically, not in piles and on shelves. When I moved away for college, it was a huge hassle to box up and move even a tiny subset of all those books.

As for the cost of the books I bought on the Nook, they are less expensive than the actual paperback, but yes, more expensive than they should be. Enough that I will probably buy them in smallish installments, like I do regular books. I'll have to buy about 100 e-books to get saving equal to the cost of the Nook. Given my reading habits, that will likely take less than a year. LOL.