Saturday, December 8, 2012

Books on paper: for when nothing else works

I have come to see paper books as a sort of emergency solution. There are big drawbacks to them, they are very expensive and takes many months to make, you can't change the font size, they are big and heavy, bringing more than a couple is very impractical, they are vulnerable and don't wear or age well, you can't look up words in them or connect to online encyclopaedias, they have to be transported several times to reach the reader...

But: if a person does not have the money or the skills, or for some reason the desire to own an ereading device, a paper book is still a way you can get this valuable content to him, so hurrah for them!

2 comments:

Den S. said...

I've decided to stop "buying" books for my Nook (or Kindle if I had one) because it's more like leasing.
Now acquiring books from Gutenberg or Smashwords or even the Harry Potter site is different.
There, you truly own the books. They can be edited, shared, copied etc. And they never disappear without warning.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yes, that's ideal.
(Only 80% of the books I want are not available without DRM.)

I'm amazed Rowling went that way.
Are they watermarked? (Have your name in them.)