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The future is bleak


cseresz

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Don't think anyone has mentioned it yet but if you read more than ~50 books on an e-reader during it's lifetime you've reduced your environmental impact, and any additional books beyond this point reduce it further.

Well, that's assuming that those were 50 books you would have read traditionally if you did not have an e-reader. The ease of finding and purchasing new books on a Kindle means I've been reading substantially more than I would have been without it.

Anyway, I'm 100 percent for e-book readers. I'm sure there were some people who were upset when we switched from stone slabs to papyrus too, but that's the way of the world.

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http://www.pwc.de/de...e-zukunft.jhtml

Die Branche profitiert von einem Anwachsen der Bevölkerungsgruppe der über 40-Jährigen, die als besonders lesefreudig gilt.

Interesting... Then I found this:

http://kindle-demogr...mographics.html

Kindle Owner Demographics: 37% Aged 55 and Older, 75% 35 and up! 40% of all Kindle users are 40-59 years of age

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  • 1 month later...

Boooooo! Just as I'm starting to make use of baenebooks.com, they decide to sign a deal with amazon and is negotiating with barnes&noble:

Prices for backlist e-books will be going up, too; instead of $6, e-books of books whose print edition is currently hardcover will be $9.99, trade paperback $8.99, and mass market paperback $6.99.

but I guess it's good for the authors...

You should also know we are increasing across the board by 25% the ebook royalty rates to the authors, so not only should they get the benefit of what we will really hope will be a significantly larger market, but a larger cut, too.
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http://www.isuppli.c...-Dinosaurs.aspx

"After spectacular growth in the last few years, the ebook reader market is on an alarmingly precipitous decline, sent reeling by more nimble tablet devices that have gained the ardent patronage of consumers, according to an IHS iSuppli Consumer Electronics special report from information and analytics provider IHS.

Shipments of ebook readers by year-end will fall to 14.9 million units, down a steep 36 percent from the 23.2 million units in 2011 that now appears to have been the peak of the ebook reader market. Another drastic 27 percent contraction will occur next year when ebook reader shipments decline to 10.9 million units. By 2016, the ebook reader space will amount to just 7.1 million units—equivalent to a loss of more than two-thirds of its peak volume in 2011."

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I wonder if it might be possible to re-invent the typical library browsing for e-books. Maybe at some point, you could have a stand with screens displaying the "covers" for various e-books. If you touch your tablet/phone/augmented reality glasses tether to one of the screens, it downloads the book almost instantaneously to your reader, and lets you look through it. If you keep it on for more than a certain period of time, it then counts as being "checked out".

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Thats pretty much what I do on Goodreads...wander around, poke at books, read the reviews, follow links, etc...it's not quite wandering through a library or a good second hand bookstore...but I haven't stopped going to the library or to second hand book stores either. Gosh, it's like I can read both on paper and on a ereader. An amazing capacity, truly. It's like a superpower.

I've never tried reading on a tablet, admittedly, but it theoretically has a few things going against it as an ereader (backlit- eye tiring, expensive - wouldn't want to be hauling it around everywhere, multifunctional - distractions, shorter battery) and I wouldn't want to see actual eink ereaders disappear just as they're getting better and better.

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  • 1 month later...

Thats pretty much what I do on Goodreads...wander around, poke at books, read the reviews, follow links, etc...it's not quite wandering through a library or a good second hand bookstore...but I haven't stopped going to the library or to second hand book stores either. Gosh, it's like I can read both on paper and on a ereader. An amazing capacity, truly. It's like a superpower.

I've never found wandering around shelves a particularly good way to find books personally. Starting at covers of books you don't know is pretty useless.

I've never tried reading on a tablet, admittedly, but it theoretically has a few things going against it as an ereader (backlit- eye tiring, expensive - wouldn't want to be hauling it around everywhere, multifunctional - distractions, shorter battery) and I wouldn't want to see actual eink ereaders disappear just as they're getting better and better.

Agreed. I don't get people who read on tablets personally.

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I've never found wandering around shelves a particularly good way to find books personally. Starting at covers of books you don't know is pretty useless.

What else are you supposed to do with that time? Do you like talk to people or something?

Anyway, it's called browsing...look at the cover, read the back, read the first page, read the last page, flip through a little, see if it smells nice, whatever. To each their own.

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NO, Sci. NO. In fact I would never find out if the book seemed awesome in the first place because ew.

One reads in one's BED, after all. :read:

ETA -- that said, I do find most things I read via browsing. Net and Locus reviews have been a reletively recent factor. But I use bookstores as an antidepressant. (I've developed a terrible habit of going to a store, browsing the physical stuff, and then getting the Nook book. *shame*)

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This

But Laura Swaffield, chairman of The Library Campaign, said that while pole-dancing was a novel approach to whipping up interest in local services, using books as table tennis bats was "just a step too far".

Imagine you were at a used bookstore and found a copy of an old book that seemed awesome but it smelled awful. Would you get the book?

No. I've actually had pretty good luck with one cent books online, but I was horrified by one recently.

Is the hypothetical awesome book printed on poorly cured human flesh?

Like in Suicide Club? 'Cause it was decently preserved in The Pillow Book, right?

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