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Comment by jbeales | Hacker News Reader

When an ebook costs over 90% of the price of a hardcover, am I going to buy the ebook, which I can't lend, resell, or give away, or the ebook, which can only be read by me? The answer is simple, I'm going to buy whatever the cheapest physical book is.

In Canada, with a Kobo, buying from Chapters/Indigo, the trade paperback is often cheaper than the ebook. This is my situation, and it means that the only time I buy an ebook is if I'm extremely motivated to read a book right now and I can't get it digitally from the library. If I had a situation where I was travelling and extremely space-constrained I might pay the premium for an ebook, but that hasn't happened to me yet.

All that doesn't mean I don't read ebooks, but that I don't buy them. The ebooks I read come from the library, (I'm a member of two libraries with great ebook selections), or are classics from Project Gutenberg or similar.

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I suppose it depends on your priorities. For me, the value of instant delivery, searchability, zero physical space consumed, and near infinite portability far outweigh the value of lending, reselling or giving away. Maybe I'm selfish, but if I have to choose between something that works really well for me while I have it, and something that is easier to pass on to someone else, I'm going to go with the former. Having both would be better, but if I'm forced to pick one, it's an easy decision...

I agreed with this point of view, having my entire library searchable & available while travelling was the selling point for me... until I received an email from Amazon saying my version of Kindle For Mac will stop working on September 15. And I can't run the new version, because the Macs I'm running Kindle on can't be upgraded beyond Mac OS X 10.7.

I have plenty of other devices so I'm not (yet) locked out of my library, and those Macs can be converted to Windows 10 (which does run the latest Kindle software)... but it reminded me it isn't a forever library. I need to make non-DRM'd archive copies of all my digital books if I want to be able to use them for more than 4 to 5 years.

You could probably use the kindle cloud reader for them, https://read.amazon.com/ probably not as good an experience but it's an option at least while you figure out what path you want

> 4 to 5 years

well, it seems you can't even read them now.

Zero physical space can be pretty important - I get that - but yeah, priorities.

Also, it drives me mad that families have to have some weird hacky system to share ebooks - either have all ereaders use the same Amazon/Kobo/Whatever account, thus messing up any recommendations, or DRM stripping, which is a pain.

The times I really want to read a book now the instant delivery is great, but I think there have only been 3 times in the something like 4 years that we've had an ereader in the house that I've wanted a book that badly and the ebook hasn't been available at a library.

Edit: I do wish physical books were searchable, and had a built-in dictionary.

Add to that the adjustable font sizes. I suppose I could have one set of glasses for computer work and another set for reading, but the adjustable font works just fine for me. And it sure is easier to lie in bed with a Kindle than a thousand page novel. I do wish it were easier to flip back and forth a few pages.

for me it is the opposite. i like to pay more for the physical book because i don't want a delay of over 1s while flipping pages.

That sounds like you've chosen poor hardware. I've not had this problem in five years (with the three different devices I use for ebooks, one being an e-ink reader)

so you seems to have a magical eink reader. most eink take 0.5s to clear and 0.5s to draw a full screen in most usable resolutions.

It's not really fast, but it's not a second, either. Just ran a quick test on a kindle paperwhite, repeatedly paging after I saw the page refreshed. 20 pages in under 14 seconds, and there was definitely lag time between the page being refreshed and my finger tapping again.

That said, the page turn lag bugs me, too. It's better on tablets/phone.

If your kindle takes more than about 200 ms to page turn, return it - you have a broken one.

(Unless maybe you're talking about one from 5 years or more ago?)

Sure but turning 200 pages looking for a specific illustration or caption in 2-3 seconds is something I very often do with physical books and is pretty useful for reference works.

Ok, that's fair.

i'd second that and add that having a physical book also makes annotating things a lot easier, at least than with my kobo. If I'm going to spend any significant time with a book, i prefer it being a physical copy.

To add to the downsides you have mentioned, we practically don't really own them. I mean, almost.

I don't buy as many physical books as I used to; mostly fiction, and mostly used.

I buy a fair number of ebooks, mostly technical, and mostly from O'Reilly. I love that they're DRM-free; in my case I take the PDF version, but they have other formats.

Pakt has a very low-intrusiveness form of "DRM." They print your name on every page of the pdf that you buy, but it's otherwise unrestricted.

I don't think Pakt or O'Reilly is going to come after you for sharing an ebook with a family member, and I've given a few copies of O'Reilly books to colleagues, to evangelize both O'Reilly and the tech in question.

Similarly Springer ebooks have your name as a watermark at the bottom of the page, but no "real" DRM.

It's a pretty reasonable compromise.

This. I categorize fiction anyway as "volatile" so I'm not too concerned when the book goes out of my reach (as long as I can read it once). Oreilly, Packt and Pragmatic's books in digital forms have little downsides, and the considerable upside that ever growing pile of physical books is no longer a stress factor (however minor) in a relationship :)

I will not rent anything that can be copied losslessly. (Among other things, this is the major reason I don't have netflix.) And I consider anything that can be (legally) taken from me without my consent, or that I cannot legally reencode, to be rented.

"Buying" an ebook currently is effectively renting it. If/when that changes, if/when I can actually buy an ebook, I will start buying ebooks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

And now you know (one of the reasons) why I don't own property.

Yeah, "renting for life" doesn't bode well for passing a first edition ebook on to your children ;)

The points you raised are all representative of the current sad stateof the eBook industry where a single platform dominates.

Readers like yourself should be free to buy , own and lend eBooks like you would a hardcover book.

These believes lie at the core of Bookfusion. We are constantly adding new free books on a daily basis and will be launching our Publishers & Authors platform in Q4 to sell books through our stores.

Currently readers have access to over 40,000 + free books - https://bookfusion.com/books

We have also started to create curated lists. Most recently free machine learning eBooks here https://bookfusion.com/books?list=Free+Machine+Learning+Book...

As an avid reader we would appreciate it if you give us some feedback by signing up and using BookFusion. I will through in a complimentary Starbucks gift card for your time

Feel free to send me an email at dc@bookfusion.com DISCLOSURE: Founder at BookFusion

I want my books, especially the technical/expensive ones, to figure out in my bookshelve.

"People will read a book either because they like the book or to brag about it." - Bertrand Russel

ps. That said, I've bought few eBooks (for Kindle and iPad), the last one is for MiniTest suit (ruby/rails). Didn't read it yet though.

Before anyone suggests Calibre to rip the DRM: that's not legal and Calibre is a barking dog of awful software.

I'm a bit surprised there hasn't been something better - although creating a tool to bypass DRM is probably not a good idea.

Unless things have changed a lot in the last couple years, Calibre doesn't do anything with stripping DRM and actually tries to stay away from it. It's possible that there are plug-ins to do it, but if the Calibre devs curate the plug-ins I wouldn't expect to find those either.

Calibre is an ebook library manager. It's clunky in some ways, but I'm not sure what better options exist.

DeDRM Tools is a great software package which comes with a Calibre plugin that automatically removes the DRM of the ebooks you add (in addition to standalone DRM removing apps):

https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/dedrm-tools-6...

It's a great tool, but the problem with DRM to me is not the technical difficulty of removing it, it's the validation of a business model predicated on denying ownership of the books by the users.

It's like buying an iphone and then jailbreaking it: I'm all for it, but it does not change the reality that you have just financed apple practices to the tune of hundreds of dollars. For ebooks the sums are much smaller, and clearly compromising if there is no alternative more acceptable, but the problem remains.

What's wrong with Calibre? Works fine for me. Sure the UI is a little much, but once you figure out a routine, it just works. It could be better, but right now it does pretty much anything I could want to do with eBooks.

And, sorry, I think your argument about legal | not legal is bunk. If someone has bought an eBook, they help themselves to a pirated copy -- in some ways, that's best of both worlds. It would be quite nice if one could just buy a non-DRM from the get-go, but whatever.

It's a pretty huge piece of software, megabyte-wise. I've installed & uninstalled it a few times. The ebooks I own are scattered around my hard drive, so it would be smart to put them into some sort of library, but it hasn't happened yet.

The only ebooks that I buy are the very cheap ones (free to $3). Anything more than that and I will buy the printed book, because in my opinion e-readers are still not as easy to read as a real book.

You can lend eBooks, in fact, in some ways it is easier. Buy an extra Kindle, put all your books on it, and make it your "loaner" copy.

Not that complicated. And you get to loan hundreds of books at once.

Then I have to buy an extra Kindle while not getting a discount for buying the ebook, and I can only lend to one person at a time, and anyone I lend to has to be trustworthy not to make purchases on my account.

No, you do not have to trust the other person to not make purchases. You can simply set up the parental controls.

I understand why people are downvoting my original comment -- it is very easy to dislike Amazon, for many reasons -- but the fact remains that you can lend eBooks.

You just have to put them on a physical device first.

And you're allowed to put each eBook on up to 5 devices. That means you could, theoretically lend up to 5 copies at a time. Not just one.

I didn't realize that parental controls could restrict purchasing, but it makes sense.

It's true that you can lend ebooks, there are just a lot more hoops to jump through ;) I can't lend my ebooks, because I don't have a spare device, but that can be changed if I want. If I'm going to pay just as much for the paper book, though, I might as well buy that and skip the extra device management.

I absolutely hate that this comment is downvoted. This works, costs as much as a regular hard cover to setup -- $27, as someone pointed out. As the author pointed out - parental controls prevent any access or misuse. Hell, you can just not put your account on it, invite your friend to use his own amazon account and lend a book to him. Still, works just like a book. This fixes the only gotcha Kindle sharing has - you can only share with other Kindlers.

Just because it's not one's opinion, does not make a comment downvote-worthy.

That is not by design and there are numerous "gotchas" with that, like this third party using that Kindle to buy content on your account, changing your bookmarks, and so on.

It might work for "family sharing" (although Amazon actually supports that already), but for sharing with third parties it is risky in my opinion.

"Parental controls" prevent the third party from buying stuff. Not that complicated.

The only downside, as far as I see it, is that you're risking the $60 it costs to buy a Kindle.

Or $27, because this is all you really need for a loaner: https://glyde.com/buy/used-Amazon-Kindle-Keyboard-Graphite-W...

I've never done this (probably b/c it just feels weird to loan devices, while loaning books seems perfectly normal).

But you could be right, declining prices of gadgets and aggressive restrictions like DMCA, and in 20 years it might be the opposite, just far easier to trade devices rather than licenses.

" you're risking the $60 it costs to buy a Kindle."

That's not all that much more than a single (non-mass market) book nowadays. Most technical books are in the $30+ range. Textbooks can cost hundreds.

except that I can get the ebook instantly and it takes up zero extra space. It's still easier.

Chances are better that if it is out of my price range then (unless it's something I really really want) I'll just say screw it and not bother.

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