62% of 16-24s prefer books as physical products
voxburner.com
voxburner.com
It's a shame that so few companies are exploring the synergies of paper and digital. I keep trying the livescribe, but the company can't write decent software to save their lives. I want to be able to print a document from my ipad onto dot paper, and have my markup automagically show up in the pdf copy. It can't be hard.
[1] In school, I found the low tech approach of carrying around heavy case books to be the most effective. My pop psychology explanation for this is that computers don't take advantage of our spatial memory. I can go back and visualize myself highlighting something in specific physical book, but on a screen it all just blends together in my memory.
>computers don't take advantage of our spatial memory. I can go back and visualize
I still remember the page of my linear algebra textbook that related rowspace, nullspace, transpose. It seemed terribly confusing at the time so I was staring more than reading. I remember the layout on the page, the red lines. I don't recall the exact formula, so it's not magic, but the memory is so unusually sticky I can't help but agree.
>It's a shame that so few companies are exploring the synergies of paper and digital.
If there's a (cheap) way to use a whiteboard and not resort to A) writing down the novel bits, B) taking a picture, I am all ears. Putting the tech in the board is probably too expensive.. perhaps a marker attachment would be more realistic. Once it's digitized, OCR / vector drawings can be tried & improved. I like the idea of the Evernote/Moleskine duo, but I just don't use moleskines like that.
Random tidbit: in the Mad Men-styled issue of TIME (2012?), there was a very good full-page ad on the real benefits of reading/using paper. Might have it somewhere.
There are so many applications out there trying to come up with new digital ways to record / access information, but almost all of them discard the spatial organization tools we have in physical workflows.
When you are trying to use information in your head (the most important stop in a workflow), you often need to build a lot of organizational structures in order to make the information maximally accessible from memory. Spatial "shuffling" is one of the quickest ways set up informal organizational structure. It makes use of our brains' good memory for spatial locations, compared to our brains' memory for abstract concepts.
In order to use spatial shuffling to organize information, you need to be able to place things freely, and have them stay there. Digital applications so infrequently offer this ability - they do not allow informal organization or spatial organization.
In an application, pieces of information are usually laid out according to a well-defined sorting algorithm. Layout-by-algorithm breaks both your ability to place a piece of information freely, and your ability to find a piece of information by location (because a new piece of information could shift the whole layout according to the sorting algorithm).
So basically, this is another example of things that are great but don't scale.
I regularly print out large amount of code across dozens of files to mane sense of someone else's mess.
† Heck, even just stepping through the code in a debugger often helps me make sense of spaghetti faster than anything else, though obviously not by itself.
What I really want is to be able to write on and mark up paper and have it automatically digitized and indexed for sorting and retrieval.
> 45% of those surveyed don’t own a device that can read ebooks – this includes both e-readers and smartphones.
So almost half of those polled don't actually have steady access to ebooks. I wonder how the statistics change for a sample who have ready access to both.
> Twenty-somethings are the leading smartphone users in the U.S., with a full 81% of Americans aged 25 to 34 using the devices. Teens aren’t far behind, with almost 70% of those aged 13 to 17 already using a smartphone.
via http://www.webpronews.com/u-s-smartphone-penetration-hits-64...
(And, to be honest, I never use my smartphone to read e-books.)
How many of the people who say they prefer a physical book have read a complete book using a modern e-reader? How many of them have learned about a book, gone to their e-reader, bought it, and started reading, all within 5 minutes, while sitting in their pajamas, at 11pm? How many have purchased enough e-books that they feel they are carrying a small library in their bag, even though it still only weighs less than a pound.
There are compelling reasons to like an e-reader even if you still really prefer a physical book.
I do own a Kindle, though, but my point is that I think many people don't consider their smartphone a "reading device".
I'd say this is the key variable in the set.
Another example:
>"The only reason I haven’t bought an e-reader is because I love the feeling of holding a book in hand and seeing the creases in the spine when I'm done. It’s like a little trophy."
I was the exact same way -- right down to the explanation as to why I didn't want an ereader. I just loved everything about physical books. The texture, the smell, and, embarrassingly, the vanity of having an apartment filled with books. And then my work bought me an iPad. Everything changed almost immediately.
I absolutely love being able to have an army of books with me at all times. As a guy whose still a student, 95% of my time is spent with technical books. It is absolutely amazing to have everything at my fingertips at all times. I can pull up whatever I feel like studying at any point throughout the day. Few minutes of downtime at work? Maybe I'll read a chapter in my Patterns book. If I'm not feeling that, I just swipe over to Programming in Scala and have some fun. Also, being able to search a book is worth its weight in gold.
That said, there are a few draw backs which irk me. Though, I think these can really be solved with better software.
Firstly, referencing two places in the book at once. How many times have you been reading a textbook and kept your finger in one section while reading another so that you can quickly hop back and forth? Impossible to do quickly with readers. You got to create bookmarks, with each "flip" open the bookmarks, find the one you need, and finally select it to view the page. With physical, all you need to do is flip to where your finger is and presto! Done. The digital equivalent requires multiple taps and a good bit of waiting.
The other drawback is DRM. After a fiasco with Amazon (which I otherwise love), It became clear to me that DRM books are not worth owning. I purchase almost exclusively from O'Reilly due to the fact that they offer a plain old, DRM free PDF. I give them money, then give me the product -- not a licence to use the product under their terms, the actual product for me to do with as I wish. Currently, it's very tough to find all the books I want to read as DRM-free pdfs. I'm doing my best to vote with my wallet, so that means there are many books that I simply don't buy anymore because I like actually owning the things that I purchase.
Other than those caveats, eBooks have completely replaced physical ones for me. The article is kind of pointless given that so few of the people sampled have any actual reference point.
I'm a great believer in ebooks. However, this is one feature I don't want. It's a distraction, it pulls me away from my book and I end up on a Wikipedia binge instead of finishing what I set out to do. It's not good for my attention span.
If it's distracting, there can just be an option in the reader to disable it. Problem solved.
Unfortunately I haven't encountered any ebooks that handle annotations in a pleasant way that takes advantage of the technology. The few I've seen that had annotations just had hyperlinks to a different page in the ebook, which makes you lose the context. With ebooks, endnotes like these seem absurd to me; the annotation should be viewable inline on the original page.
The blog article doesn't mention it, but I've found that the footnotes have to be in the same XHTML file as the reference for this to work in iBooks. Also, iBooks for OSX doesn't display these popup footnotes yet.
If it's going to be a constant reference, I would prefer a searchable ebook as it is a lot easier to carry many of them on my Nook too and from work.
If it is a book I am reading to increase my knowledge of a subject but not one I expect to be a constant reference back too, like a study guide or the like, I prefer a print book.
The rumored larger iPad, if it ever sees the light of day, would probably be aimed at this kind of use.
Then again, I'm not sure what UI modern eBook readers have for setting and going to bookmarks.
Something about associating a piece of information with a physical location on a real object makes everything "snap" together better in my head ("Oh, I remember this concept, it was about a third of the way through Dummit & Foote. Yep, it's all coming back now.").
I can still pick up my calculus textbook from a class I took 5 years ago and open more or less in the right section of what I'm looking for. I've associated that object, it's weight, feel, and size, with the information it contains.
I can't say the same about any of the dozens of pdf's I have on my tablet. I'd probably have trouble opening the right file, let alone where inside that file the information is!
If it matters or is long-term knowledge, I always get the book. (Even if given the insane pricing of textbooks, I wish this didn't have to be the case...)
My kindle weighs less than a pound making reading large books a snap I haven't purchased a paper book since I got the kindle and I'm always pairing down my collection, yet still moving my paper books to a new apartment is an incredibly heavy task A few people have pointed out that "eReaders can hold thousands of books" is silly, until your on a vacation and you finish your current book
I guess I lack the sentimentality of proudly displaying a full bookshelf of my "trophies" with their creased spines. No one seems to lament the sentimentality of the passing of the VHS...
Nowadays I don't have books on shelves at all, whatsoever, under any circumstances. The books I have to buy because they are not available in a digital format tend to be really good and I end up giving them away, for them to not need to be returned. I really do not see a long term future for printed books, there is no need for them, except in museum-libraries.
What would be cool is if you could buy books for people in a digital format on a 'sale or return basis'. They would get the book from you, then, if they actually read past the first few pages, your account get charged. In this way you could give out books to people for birthdays, Christmas and so on without them feeling obliged to read through whatever it is that you have sent them. Equally you could be more generous with gifting as there would be a fair likelihood that some of the books gifted would not be read.
In addition, I ride public transit to and from work every day, and having high end electronics does make you a target for thieves. Smartphone theft is very common, and flaunting a $50-200 ereader makes you stand out from the crowd. And, if someone yanks my bag, I'm out a $10 book instead of a $200 tablet and whatever personal information happens to be on it.
Then there's everything else the article mentions, including liking books with cracked spines filling the "trophy cases" (bookshelves) in my reading room.
All this adds up, and as a result I haven't bought an ebook in 2 years, and can't think of ever going back.
This is one argument I never understand. Why would you care if you can carry thousands of books at once? I rarely read more than one at a time.
I don't use ebooks. Physical books are still more attractive. You can abuse them without worrying about damaging them. And most importantly, when you have finished reading a spectacular book, you can give it to a friend to read.
Because you don't always know what you'll want to read next, especially while traveling.
Additionally, most eBook users don't just read books on their devices, but also newspapers, magazines, blogs, and articles from services like Instapaper and Pocket. (And for what it's worth, you can lend most eBooks.)
Like others, I do often find myself flipping between books on a trip depending upon my mood and level of energy: serious lit, brain candy, non-fiction, etc. It's nice to have the choice on a device (tablet) that I would tend to carry with me in any case. I also like having an illuminated screen. The lighting is often terrible in hotels and other locations.
That said--if I didn't travel a lot--I'd probably be relatively ambivalent about e-books. I like the de-cluttering aspect but I'm probably not going to re-read most books anyway and I find e-books generally a suboptimal format for things like cookbooks that I do keep around.
But 2-3 is a far more typical use case, and even at that scale, the carry weight matters. Plus people are carrying phones (and increasingly, tablets) around these days, in any case. So that's where the value proposition kicks in.
Second, even if you only read one book at a time (like yourself, and me as well), an ereader like the Nook or Kindle is still significantly more compact than even a trade paperback. A 700+ page hardcover? Forget it, it's not even a contest.
First, it shows your children you can be entertained without an electronic device. My oldest son is three and already an expert on the iPad and iPhone. It worries me how much he wants to use the device, and telling him he can't use it and the whole family is taking a timeout from electronics is important to his growth. He can draw while I read a book, for example.
Second, buying physical books at a bookstore is a great bonding experience. I love taking my little guys to the local Half Price Books which always has a great dedicated kids section.
These reasons aren't only for parents, of course, but as a parent I find having physical books present is important.
> taking a timeout from electronics is important to his growth
My 5 year old daughter has been able to self-regulate her ipad use, she's had an ipad since she was 3. We only limit videos: when and how many videos she can watch because she won't stop watching them unless we intervene.
As to buying physical books being a great bonding experience, I agree, but I think it's also beside the point.
Given that there's overwhelming evidence that screen time is completely worthless for language aquisition in children, as one example, not worrying about screen time demonstrates ignorance around different modes of learning and interaction.
I agree that physical books are best for children, and I certainly give physical copies to my younger brothers, but the reasons for the parent to read physical books seem specious.
When I buy a vinyl record nowadays, I often get a download-code for the mp3-version. Book publishers should do the same. Buy a printed book, get the digital for free.
Or just buy the digital, at a lower price.
But hey, I'm not holding my breath for that to happen soon.
Nice, but it should be free.
They are also only doing it for books you bought in the past. They should be doing it like AutoRip for CDs where you get the ebook for free or small cost when buy the paper version. Bundles with ebook would make a lot of sense for hardback books. Get the ebook immediately and the paper version to get on the shelf.
But it doesn't seem to have much support from the big publishers, who aren't exactly known for their customer friendliness.
I don't like LCD/LED screens for reading books, especially at night when my eyes are tired. Even e-ink is inferior to good ol' paper books, with their crappy contrast, crappy resolution, and ugly fonts that make every book look like just another blog using the same WordPress theme. E-books have a long way to go before they can match the beauty, natural feeling, and personality of a physical book. After all, physical books have been around for centuries. They are a mature technology.
Do you know how much time a good publisher spends trying to find the perfect paper, color, layout, and typography for a book? Do you ever notice the small paragraph at the end of a book where the typographer explains his or her choice of typeface and gives you a brief history of it? The cover is not the only part of a book that needs a designer. I sorely miss that touch of humanity when I read an e-book.
Another commenter says that novels are suitable for digital delivery. I disagree. An e-book might give me the same content, but it certainly doesn't give me the same experience, and a work of literature is really about the experience as a whole, not just the literal content.
Digital magazines seem to not work as well because they are different formats and they try to either maintain their existing format and business model or they are basically websites. I have yet to see the digital magazine format really be awesome. Also, one could argue that a monthly curated collection of photos and articles doesn't make much sense when they could be delivered instantly for minimal cost.
Novels feel like they are way better in digital format. A 300-1000 page novel as a paperback is an ok reading experience, but on a e-ink device, you get an improved experience due to the easier storage, retrieval, lightness, etc. of the e-ink Kindle type devices. Even on a Kindle Fire or iPad, the ebook reading experience of reading a novel is pretty great.
The Bible as an ebook in standard epub or kindle format kind of sucks because it is often referenced in particular book/chapter/verse and it's a big enough book that navigation doesn't work super well on a kindle type device, but Bible apps are fantastic because they make it easy and fast to navigate, get multiple translations, etc. Same content, different formats/presentation.
Programming or bigger reference type books I don't think work as well in epub or kindle format yet, because you need something more like a full size iPad to really be close to the original format and a smaller kindle or kindle fire sized device loses enough formatting that it doesn't work as well. If those books were redone to be something formatted for specific device size, it could work really well potentially, but then the cost structure changes a lot from the traditional publishing model of do a book in one format and sell it in lots of places. Instead, you have something closer to video games where you might have the same game ported to various platforms specifically with varying formats/fidelity.
Comic books feel hit or miss on tablets because again it really depends on the format. Full size iPad is a lot closer to the original comic book size and format than something like a Kindle Fire or iPad Mini. To get around this you can zoom into panels and that can be decent, but that feels like a mixed bag.
I think books in various forms going digital is going to be really a work of figuring out what the right formats are and how to translate the books into those formats at a reasonable cost. Some formats are cheap and easy to go digital right away and provide a great experience, some formats are going to take a lot more work.
How much people like digital books is going to depend largely on the experience of reading them. If publishers can create a great experience, people will like that. If the experience sucks, people won't buy.
One reason Amazon is so successful is they have understood from the beginning that ebooks have to be better than physical books for people to care. It took a while, but they really made it work for novels on the kindle.
I think an approach similar to responsive design might help, but it's really going to come down to making great products for each device/format/platform.
[1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/Sony-Digital-Paper-Has-13-3-I...
Mantano Reader has S-pen support for annotating pages free hand. Annotation creates a copy of the page that is separate from the document which isn't ideal (I'd prefer a layer on the document), but works. It also has multi-color text highlighting and bookmarks for some other options to move around and keep notes.
I find the size and weight of the Galaxy Note 8.0 preferable to larger tablets, much better than a dense technical books, and easier to carry around than printed journal articles. I sometimes have to zoom in to read documents with 2 or 3 column layouts, but Mantano Reader handles that pretty fluidly.
The battery life has been more than satisfactory so far. On a busy day I'll use it to take notes or brainstorm in the morning, my girlfriend will draw on it in the evening, and I can still usually get a few hours reading at night.
It's not perfect and may not be suitable for everyone, but for me it was enough to get over that chasm between technology and the traditional way.
I also like being able to flip back and forth in the book, and to make notes. I didn't realize just how much I flip arbitrarily from one part of a book to another until I got a Kindle.
The real direction I suspect Amazon wants to go is this:
* Print book: $12
* Print and ebook: $12
* ebook only: $8
The middle option may be where we're headed, since ebooks and print books right now do pretty different things, and each has well-known advantages and disadvantages.
So now I'm back to buying the physical book, if I need to travel and want the books with me, the night before I leave, I just go online and purchase them, then load them on my ipad. I do the same thing with magazines (Amazon's newstand will usually give you access to the digital and physical copies of the magazine).
I've come to realize that ebooks in their current form will complement but not replace physical books, until they find a better way to imitate the ui physical version much better than they do now
Completely anecdotal evidence here, but as someone who works at a university and sees a lot of people age 16-24, noses in their tablets/smartphones/laptops, I have serious doubts about the accuracy of this number.
First of all, "a device that can read ebooks" could be anything from a desktop PC to a smartphone. I find it highly unlikely that in 2013, 45% of people ages 16-24 don't own ANY devices like this. Even if that number is accurate, it's misleading, as many teenagers perhaps don't OWN a device, but have access to a shared PC or the like.
Second, I'm curious about how the survey was conducted. Did they just ask a random sample of people in this group if they have a device that reads ebooks? How many of those people own a capable device and are simply unaware of it, I wonder?
I think this depends on how much you read. If reading books is just a past-time, maybe those responses make sense? But if you're a heavy reader, there's just no competition.
- The physical feeling of a book is nice until you need to carry it around. Or more than one, if you're reading more than one book at a time. I'll take my nexus 7 over a mid-sized paperback (or 4) any day of the week.
- Bookstores in my home town were filled with "Network Marketing" people who just walked around there all day with paper planners, trying to get people into their pyramid schemes.
- E-readers are getting better at note-taking. And you can search your notes, and search the text. I wish there was better math support, obviously, but I also don't get constrained by how much margin space there is in the book.
Still, my daughter's getting a bunch of paper Dr. Suess (&etc) books for some time :-)
The great thing is, there's absolutely no reason not to do both. Usually at any time I'm reading two or three physical books and two or three e-books.
"How will your software help your users get laid"
If you want to make claims like this, perform a proper scientific study. Document your steps thoroughly, verify your questions aren't leading, use a control group, then publish somewhere appropriate (preferably an open access journal) and let other sociologists attempt to replicate your results.
I can't tell if that was done here because they want hundreds of pounds to find out.
It also seems odd to me that they treat 16-24 as one group. 24 year olds are adults who hopefully have college degrees, jobs, perhaps have a long commute, and nontrivial income. 16 year olds are most commonly living with parents and unemployed. It's not hard to imagine these differences being a factor in digital media habits.
I'm reading The Wheel of Time series right now, entirely on paperback, and I'm constantly aware of how it is physically more annoying to read. I have to constantly switch positions depending on lighting, or which side of the page I am on.
While reading on my kindle, I get to sit still in a comfortable position and not worry about flopping around to catch the light differently on a each side of the book.
They go to the library once or twice a year, possibly order a few books online - but that's it. Don't get me wrong, I love physical books, but ebooks are the only way I can keep up with the amount I read - which is usually one book every few weeks, possibly 30 books a year or more.
For anyone looking for a good ereader, I would highly recommend Readmill (https://readmill.com/).
This was one of the reasons I've seriously contemplated getting a ebook.
Then I found the ireward card(http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/irewards/)... Now I save more than a kindle's price every year.
Okay, maybe I solved a wrong problem.
Anecdote: My wife prefers physical books and she completely reads at least one book every 3 days.
Ebooks are also very expensive, often as expensive as a phyisical copy and until the publishers start to bundle every printed book with it's digital copy I don't see myself spending more money on them.
1. As much as the reading on an electronic device is "convenient," there is also the problem that the same electronic device can be used to check your email, read hacker news, and do other procrastination activity. This availability of "other things to do" has a terrible effect on the attention span of the reader.
2. Also, I don't like phrasing the debate print VS. eBook. A book is an informational product, distilled knowledge organized by an author for his/her readers. The information is the product, not its physical(or digital) manifestations. As far as I'm concerned it should be print AND eBook, so that the readers can enjoy the same material as they find more convenient. This is the approach I follow with my math textbook (http://minireference.com/#book_details): people who purchase the printed version get the PDF for free.
Okay, three things. This article reminded me of a previous study on digital books at the UC system of schools: http://www.roughtype.com/?p=2922 TL;DR students are not ready to switch to fully digital.
Sure, maybe an e-reader is superior for those 14-day treks, but the vast majority of people don't make those kinds of trips anymore considering that most of the world is reachable within a day at most.
For book readership:
"22% who told us they had not read a book in the previous 12 months"
"72% of Americans age 16 and older read at least one book in the past year in print; 16% read at least one e-book; 11% listened to at least one audiobook."
That's a surprisingly high number for audiobooks, didn't know it was that big a market.
"Among those who had read a book in the past 12 months:
8% said they had read 1 book
17% had read 2-3 books
16% had read 4-5 books
19% had read 6-10 books
18% had read 11-20 books
22% had read more than 20 books"
Actually, I think that study is more interesting that the submitted article :) (less catchy headline and less processed data)
"In June 2010, 95% of the book readers “yesterday” were reading print books and 4% were reading e-books.
By December 2011 in our survey, 84% of the “yesterday” readers were reading print books and 15% were reading e-books.
The shift toward e-book reading on a typical day is being driven by those who are college educated, those living in higher-income households, and those ages 30-49.
Those groups disproportionately report they were reading e-books yesterday."
The physical books I still want to own just as decoration for living space and a conversation starter. But to carry around a fat book - no thanks, thats what e-ink readers are for.
The ebook market is not mature yet, most ereaders are too small and offer shitty support for various formats and are too restricted.
The interface on the ereaders can also be improved a lot, for example the Aura HD is showing the book cover when it is sleeping - there should be a setting to let the last read page be shown instead. Flipping pages offers no animation - some people would like that. Fast flipping through a book is also not supported, it is still faster to flip through a physical book than one on ereader. But these are all technical issues that can be solved.
More and more though, I've been buying print books simply because, in my own experience, the last couple of books I've purchased have BARELY been cheaper in ebook format than in print. I don't have any data to support me, but I can't help but feel like over the last few years, the gap between prices of ebooks and print books has closed, and with it, one of the big selling points (for me at least) for ebooks.
I'm curious to see if this is actually the case, or just my own personal experience.
How long before iPads come with hundreds of 600dpi screens, each double sided, flexible, 0.1mm thick, and stacked in a hinged pile to form a truly digital book?
† 1464 pages, weighs more than 11 Kindle Paperwhites in hardcover
I particularly like 'The top-rated reasons for preferring physical to digital products were: ... "I am not restricted to a particular device" (20%)'. A good concept to be aware of, but physical books are by definition restricted to a single device.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/25/young-adult-rea...
wrt the survey details in the OP
>Voxburner sourced 1,420 respondents and surveyed them between 25 September and 18 October 2013. Follow-up interviews were conducted and the report includes comment from marketing professionals.
>It is available for download only at £495.
If I take a book into the bathtub, and drop it, the book may very well be salvageable. At worst, I'm out the price of the book.
If I take an e-book into the bathtub, and drop it, I've likely just hosed a very expensive e-reader or tablet.
Has anyone designed an e-reader which properly handles the "reading in the bathtub" use case?
All of these devices also have e-reader apps.
I'll just add to this that Amazon got me to buy a kindle @ a $9 price point.
However, books with many illustrations, photos, or even novels, do seem to feel better in their physical form.
One thing I think holds some ebook formats back is the insistence on replicating the physical experience. I do not need page turn animations or things broken up into slices.
Though, once some startup figures it out, it will seem obvious at the time.
Nostalgia is great, but so is our environment.
Plus, when the dystopian future arrives, I'll have plenty of kindling with my growing collection of books. Plus entertainment after all the ereaders grow dark.
if not, why not?