Hacker News Reader

Comment by incompleteness | Hacker News Reader

Archive.org already has lending queues for ebooks!

I sincerely hope I haven't made you feel the way I felt when my gramdmother told me I had, in fact, not invented scrambled eggs.

IMO if buying ebooks were super easy many people would do it, I know Steam and the PS Store had that effect on me.

View on HN

Years ago, Tim O'Reilly made the observation that time was really the limiting factor in how many books people read (or something along those lines). That's certainly the case with me. Spending (typically) $10 for a book that will take me 8 hours or more to read is a great value for my time--and that's not even counting libraries or out of copyright works--and I'm not sure how acquiring most books could be much easier than it is.

Books could be universally free and maybe I'd browse a bit more but I wouldn't really read more.

I think it depends on the situation. I read a lot more (for myself, not for classes) in college when I had access for free to all those books. The cost of books impedes humans. Luckily there are libraries all over, but they’re not nearly as extensive.

That may be specifically true for you and Tim O’Reilly (and even billions of other people) but it isn’t generally true

In my case, I have a fair bit of time for reading, and I read very quickly. I am forever waiting in a queue for ebooks via my library, and a lot of the books I'd like to read aren't available that way. If I were to buy all the books I read, I'd be broke.

I thought for sure you were the inventor of the scrabbled egg.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com