Who knew there was a "read an ebook week"? It's apparently March 2-8 and in preparation a blog called Epublishers Weekly has posted a list of 30 reasons to read an ebook.
Link: 30 Benefits of Ebooks (via lifehacker).
Because I'm feeling snarky I'll play devil's advocate and tell you what's wrong with the list, or at least the first 10 items for now.
I should say up front that I'm not totally opposed to ebooks. I think with the right design they'll work, especially for travelling. I'll probably even buy one as soon as they're cheap enough, are free of DRM (and don't make me pay twice to own both a paper and an electronic copy), and are pleasant enough to use.
The first item on the list:
1. Ebooks promote reading. People are spending more time in front of screens and less time in front of printed books.
How many of those people have the attention span when at a computer to read more than a few pages at a time without stopping?
2. Ebooks are good for the environment. Ebooks save trees. Ebooks eliminate the need for filling up landfills with old books. Ebooks save transportation costs and the pollution associated with shipping books across the country and the world.
Ebook readers aren't without environmental costs. And is there really a "need" to fill up landfills with old books? (Recycling? Hello?)
3. Ebooks preserve books. (The library of Alexandria was burned and the collection ruined. Richard Burton's wife, after his death and against his wishes, destroyed a book he had been working on for ten years. The original manuscript of Carlyle's The French Revolution was lost when a friend's servant tossed it into the fire.) Ebooks are ageless: they do not burn, mildew, crumble, rot, or fall apart. Ebooks ensure that literature will endure.
Last week I went to a course taught by design guru Edward Tufte. Among the interesting artifacts he showed: a 400+ year-old first edition of Galileo's book, and a copy of the first English translation of Euclid. These were not falling apart -- far from it. He was walking around with them and flipping the pages. How likely is your favorite ebook format to last 400 years? Ebooks are far from "ageless". The idea that paper books fall apart quickly is a myth.
Furthermore, ebooks do not necessarily "preserve" books. This has been discussed recently with respect to Google's book scans. OCR and plain text don't save drawings and formatting. That same Galileo book had hand drawings in line with the text -- easy to do 400 years ago but a pain to preserve with today's software and electronic formats.
Fires happen and books get lost, but so does data, and when data goes it's usually massive and instantaneous -- there's no fire extinguisher.
4. Ebooks, faster to produce than paper books, allow readers to read books about current issues and events.
Book printing and distribution can happen very fast (think of the 911 report and other recent current events books that were rushed out). Ideally publishers would post e-book versions in advance of print versions for early buyers, just as software is sometimes available for download before CDs are shipped.
5. Ebooks are easily updateable, for correcting errors and adding information.
True, but I'd rather have those corrections available as addenda on the web or as carefully planned second editions than have them made in real time to the book. Am I supposed to revisit the book every time the author changes a word?
6. Ebooks are searchable. Quickly you can find anything inside the book. Ebooks are globally searchable: you can find information in many ebooks.
True, if searching is what you want to do (this is mostly irrelevant for fiction, for example). A good index can be easier to use than a search interface.
7. Ebooks are portable. You can carry an entire library on one DVD.
Can't argue there. Portability is the main, and possibly only, thing ebooks have going for them.
8. Ebooks (in the form of digital audio books) free you to do other activities while you are listening.
It depends on the activity and it's debatable whether you retain the information as well as when reading. It's a different experience -- you can't easily back up to reread a sentence on an audio book, and you can't search or browse it later.
9. Ebooks can be printable: and thereby give a reader most or all of the advantages of a paper-based book.
A stack of papers is less appealing than a bound book. Sure you could take it to Kinkos to bind it, but that'll cost you more than buying a printed version in the first place. Book printing kiosks might work but the quality will probably be low. Furthermore, this argument is kind of silly -- I could just as easily say "you can scan in your printed book and make it an ebook; therefore a printed book has all the advantages of an ebook!"
10. Ebooks defy time: they can be delivered almost instantly. Ebooks are transported to you faster than overnight shipping: in minutes or in seconds.
It's good to learn patience.
DRM probably poses the biggest threat, since this technology could actually render ebooks unreadable by future generations. If the book is inextricably tied to a specific reader device when the device fails or becomes obsolete the information is lost. It probably is only a matter of time though before someone invents a practical alternative to paper books.
Posted by: Bob Mottram | Saturday, February 09, 2008 at 03:12 PM
I find two great disadvantages to ebooks:
1- I find that staring at a screen is more tiring than reading a paper copy.
2- An ebook is harder to carry around.
Perhaps most people travel by car and don't mind carrying their laptop with them. For the rest of us, books are lighter, smaller and can actually be held with one hand while squeezing into the bus with 50 other people.
Posted by: Eli | Monday, February 11, 2008 at 07:40 AM
Are you going to bring an eBook down to the beach for a day? How will it fair with the salt/sand/water?
Can you loan a eBook to a friend or coworker as easily?
What kind of power requirements does a book have? I can read a book anywhere there is light and I don't have to worry about batteries going dead and recharging.
If you spill your coffee on a book, it's still readable.
Posted by: Mark Sicignano | Saturday, March 22, 2008 at 10:06 AM
Read an E-Book Week 2009 runs from March 8-14th. Our website is at http://www.ebookweek.com
For those who question how "green" e-books are they can check out the environmental page.
Posted by: Rita Toews | Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 11:45 AM