Comment by ashark | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ashark | Hacker News Reader

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> The only shortcoming of e-reading, in my opinion, is the inability to display the books you've read and the books you want to read somewhere in your home or office. You can tell so much about a person by their library. I've been testing some solutions to this problem.

1. Can't re-sell, 2. tend to be significantly more expensive to begin with (no used market), 3. annotations, footnotes and such tend to be much worse, 4. often have severe formatting/editing issues (see: all the 1-star reviews for many books on Amazon, which are often full of "book's fine, but don't get the kindle version, it's terrible"), 5. lending can be tricky 6. two-pages-at-a-time and page-flipping is a really stellar interface that e-readers don't even come close to beating, 7. relatedly, use of spatial memory help with real books in a way they don't in ebooks, 8. on that line of though, shelved books aren't just for showing off: they can aid memory, and their arrangement can even help with finding related content and with learning (my literature is arranged chronologically for those reasons—I learn and reinforce some information just by existing in the same room as my books, basically), 9. can only have one book active per device. Switching is a PITA.

Ebooks' main selling points AFAIK are 1. space (admittedly a huge advantage!), and 2. full text search (OK, but not that great—there's such a thing as an index in most books for which this is seriously important, which will usually be better than full-text search). They're worse in just about every other way (though, again, the space thing is really nice)

> 1. Can't re-sell, 2. tend to be significantly more expensive to begin with (no used market)

Huge loss to society. We've lost a lot of things that we loved over the millenia, and we're still around. But I regret the eventual extinction of used (and new) bookstores. So many hours, sniffing those books and listening to the bell ring when the door opens ...

My coffee cup is sitting on a purpose-built book shelf housing a set of The Great Books, both bought used at the dearly departed Shorey's Books in downtown Seattle, decades ago.

There is no serendipity at Amazon.

> There is no serendipity at Amazon.

Perfectly said (and perfectly sad.)

When I moved in 2006, I gave away my set of Encyclopedia Britannica to a neighbor. 1957 edition with the dedicated bookcase purchased at a yard sale for $15 in 1989, just because 'Wow' and its own bookcase and some things don't go out of date. There's no Kindle edition of the '57 Britannica and if there was, it would not be $15 to me and free to my neighbor.

These days, my culled books go to a local charity's thrift shop or to Habitat's ReStore or to my public library for its book sale or to someone I know. Not the bitbucket.

They won't take encyclopedias. I've tried. (I have two sets.)

The inability to loan a book and to curate a library are the biggest issues which brought me back to physical books after 3 years of being a devoted eReader. My Kindle gathers dust until a trip comes up and I read few things of meaningful value on it because of the aforementioned issues.

I do think much of this could be addressed by software and legal/copyright, lending & reselling being the most straightforward albeit they would likely lock you to a single DRM-heavy system.

My pipedream is to be able to separate the price of the IP from the method of delivery so that I could say buy a physical book for $10 and for $5 get a digital copy, and vice-versa spend $10 on a digital copy and $5 for a physical print.

Have you seen Kindle MatchBook? https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/ep-landing-page

Or Shelfie? http://www.shelfie.com/

Shelfie has been acquired by Rakuten Kobo

April 05, 2017 – Rakuten Kobo Inc., one of the world’s most innovative eReading companies, today announced it has acquired Shelfie, a service that was built to enable customers to get free or discounted eBook versions of books in their print libraries, and get recommendations based on print books they already own. The deal includes technology assets, IP, and the infrastructure on which the ecosystem runs; it also includes hiring Shelfie’s skilled team, which specializes in the application of big data and machine learning for book discovery.

Shelfie ceased operations this January. Kobo worked with Shelfie to offer its customers the opportunity to transfer their eBook libraries to Kobo’s platform, ensuring they would continue to have access to their digital books. Over the coming months, Kobo will work to integrate the Shelfie platform into its Android and iOS apps, enabling readers to add their print libraries to their reading history to generate ever more tailored eBook recommendations, as well as the option to get digital versions of print titles they already own.

I hadn't seen MatchBook before, thanks for the referral. Only got about a 10% match rate on books I purchased as physical copies through Amazon and only one direction (physical -> digital) but that's better than nothing. I hope they're investing in building up this service.

The main selling points of e-reading for me are the ones I listed previously:

1. I can get a new book immediately instead of visiting the book store or waiting for Amazon.

2. I can effortlessly take highlights and notes and then access those annotations through the cloud. I can't stand trying to write in the tiny margins of physical books and even if I did, I'd rarely reference my own notes because it's so much more laborious.

3. I can read at night without needing the light on (i.e., while in bed with my sleeping spouse). This is my main reading time. More generally, the form factor is better while lying down (and to the point above, I can still take notes).

> 1. I can get a new book immediately instead of visiting the book store or waiting for Amazon.

OK, yeah, missed that.

> 2. I can effortlessly take highlights and notes and then access those annotations through the cloud. I can't stand trying to write in the tiny margins of physical books and even if I did, I'd rarely reference my own notes because it's so much more laborious.

The cloud part's the only thing that's much different than having a little notebook, which I find so much easier to work with (aside from anywhere-the-Internet-is availability) that I wouldn't really count this as a win for ebooks, but if you find it easier, then it must be so for some.

> 3. I can read at night without needing the light on (i.e., while in bed with my sleeping spouse). This is my main reading time. More generally, the form factor is better while lying down (and to the point above, I can still take notes).

They make tiny clip-on lights for books that are little different. E-readers are nice for holding up, though I've discovered the hard way that the touchscreen e-ink devices, at least, are more annoying to use in bed than the real thing (brush a blanket or move your thumb a bit while shifting around->page turns)

Additionally...

1. Some books have horrible formats. In the physical books, shitty formatted texts are not printed (hopefully) and fixed. 2. Too many filetypes and some books tend to be only in a particular format, hence creating a separation. Though this is easily remedied by using converters, it loses formatting sometimes.

I still prefer EBook reader for the convenience. However, a physical book is great. I find it better but I do not have a good reason as to why.

> an index

Fiction books never have indices.

> They're worse in just about every other way

An awful lot of books go in the trash simply because it is uneconomic to store them, ship them, or even sell them. If your interests run to more than a few hundred books, this becomes the crushing reality.

Spot on.

Print is better, in many ways.

So are ebooks, but just in different ways. It's a good thing we have the technology to make both.

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