I had someone ask me one time if the white parts in amongst the sea of yellow were the important parts in my textbooks. If nothing else, it proved to me I’d been there before, even if I couldn’t precisely remember it.

My entire house is a to-be-read-pile. I went a little off the deep end about ten years ago, while working for a world-class b*tch, and buying entire backlists of many, many authors was one of the forms it took. My husband recently stated that he thought I should take my week of leave at Thanksgiving and sort through my books, since the shelves are sagging again. Sigh. They may have to join their friends in the plastic tubs in the basement, but those books were bought for a reason, and it may be that I won’t be able to get to them until I retire, but I’d like to think I’ll read them eventually. However, I do have to acknowledge that my husband knows me too well, and he lives in the house, too.

Unfortunately, new books keep coming out that I feel the same way about. I love my Kindle because there are currently 118 books sitting on it, and they’re all in my purse, not in a bag in the reading area, waiting for a space on a shelf to open up for them. I love “regular” books, but I’m coming to love my ebooks as well, largely for portability and access. And I hate the fact that Amazon has figured out that I’m an impulse buyer if given half a chance. I felt somewhat guilty (not much) lying in bed shopping for books while my husband was beside me sleeping, blissfully ignorant.

In an effort to make amends, I do urge everyone interested in the issue to click on an read the entire article briefly quoted above. It is a very nuanced and (on the whole) positive assessment of e-books, and very thoughtful about the different ways that people (especially) scholars interact with books.

And yes, I do very much fear that “paper books are going to disappear in [my] lifetime”, although I don’t directly blame the advent of digital books for that. I think that any number of very poor decisions by the publishing industry — including their shortsighted attitude towards ebooks — will lead eventually to traditional publishing becoming economically unsustainable.

While individualized “print on demand” and luxury hardcopies will probably always be available (after all, it’s still possible to get illuminated manuscripts if you’re willing to pay for it!) I think that that the gatekeeping and editing functions of publishers will be lost, at least for a while. In fact, in many ways they are already in steep decline, and I don’t see epublishers stepping up to take that role.

Right now, I don’t believe that the pricing and technological capabilities of current e-readers are capable of reproducing the more tactile and image-intensive capabilities of paper books (e.g. detailed illustrations, note-taking, the ability to easily flip from main text to appendices, etc.) Some of these are also among the more expensive features of paper books, and are subsidized by the type of sales most susceptible to e-readers (e.g., popular fiction) and the price of such hard copy books may be driven up as a result to be essentially unavailable.

This may be an acceptable trade-off in terms of greater availability of greater amounts of texts, for cheaper prices. It was certainly a trade-off we were willing to accept in the switch from, say, manuscript to printed books. But I think it is valuable to consider seriously what may be lost along the way, without dismissing it as merely clinging to the past.

I can't even begin to understand why paper book readers feel threatened by e-books. Do you honestly think paper books are going to disappear in your lifetime? What's wrong with a little choice?

Er, did you miss the part where *I* said I had an e-reader and use it? I don’t feel “threatened” by e-books. I feel insulted when people dismiss legitimate concerns about them as “romanticizing” paper books.

I think choice is *great.* I wish that every book was available in every format: hardback, paperback, large print, audio [cassette, CD, digital, etc.], Braille, e-book (every format, without DRM), whatever. But when students are required to purchase their textbooks in digital form (which was, I believe, the subject of the original complaint), where is the “choice”?

Life was better when women stayed home to look after their families. Life was better when schools taught the basics. Life was better when blah blah blah.

doesn’t really do your case any good, either.

And yes, I have been told in all seriousness by younger, more freshly-degreed librarians, all enthused with the Brave New World of e-libraries and Library 2.0, that old fuddy-duddies like me who believed that the collection should still contain dead trees and that not all patron interactions were best conducted via keyboard should just go ahead and quit (and, presumably, starve, lose our homes, and die without health insurance) because we were just “deadwood” who were cluttering up the profession by not handing over our jobs to the “new generation.”

Especially when the specific topic under discussion was the clunkiness of the annotation and bookmarking functions of e-readers, rhapsodizing about their greater storage capacities and portabilities is irrelevant.

So I find such generalized “just get over it already” arguments as yours to be condescending and insulting.

Or maybe just die, so I stop cluttering up your way cool planet with my outdated ways.

I think your skills for the dramatic need to be used in local theatre or some other similar outlet. Seriously.

I did, afterall say that I thought there was room enough for both paper and electronic formats, did I not?

It’s this kind of over reaction that drove my comment in the first place.

And why would “Bishop” be on the do not use list? Does it have a salacious meaning that I don't know?

I'm guessing that Bishop just means Bishop and is an interesting way of saying they don't want any Catholics in their Christian fiction.
Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Or maybe just die, so I stop cluttering up your way cool planet with my outdated ways.

Seriously??

…

I can’t even begin to understand why paper book readers feel threatened by e-books. Do you honestly think paper books are going to disappear in your lifetime? What’s wrong with a little choice?

I'm pretty tired of all the people out there who are “romanticizing” paper books. It's just a case of life-was-better-when-ism.

Life was better when we all used scrolls instead of those new-fangled codices?

Because that, when it comes down to it, is my problem with e-books (and I do have an e-reader and occasionally use it.) It just doesn’t suit my reading style. I like to jump around. I like to re-read bits. I like to peek at the end. I like to skip long sections of anatomically impossible sexual gymnastics. And I don’t like to have to punch a button, guess at a page number, poke at a tiny keyboard, punch more buttons, guess another number… to do so.

Oh, I guess that’s just because I’m Ooooollld, not a cool and acceptable member of “a whole new generation.” That makes my opinions illegitimate. I should “just move on already.” Or maybe just die, so I stop cluttering up your way cool planet with my outdated ways.

To a whole new generation the ebook is just a book. Not something to not feel connected to, to not love and cherish, to not covet and re-read.

Here’s something that’s comforting to me about my ebooks- they’re always with me. I take my books everywhere I go. My entire library. At my fingertips. All the time.

Enough about how ebooks are less than paper books, there will always be a place for both. Just move on already.

Note taking on ebooks would really help with editing as well as enhancing the reading experience. I love proofing my books on my Sony eReader since I catch more errors that way, but it makes correcting any mistakes found a bit tricky and time consuming to relocate in the actual text on the computer screen. Yes, with PDF the page numbers are basically the same, but it’s still not that easy to find which line you were on when it comes time to fix those errors.

The S&S thing is interesting. When I am doing research there are times I just want a chapter or two. Amazon “Look inside” and Google have become great shortcuts to make sure that a book actually discusses what I need before I order it or hit the library.

And why would “Bishop” be on the do not use list? Does it have a salacious meaning that I don’t know?

(and why don't e-books utilize hypertext for footnotes, endnotes, and annotations?)

Yeah! That would be so very much less intrusive.

I write in my textbooks AND take notes (and then never refer back to any of it). In Komarr (by Lois McMaster Bujold), Miles scans through the electronic library of an engineer whose death (among other things) he’s investigating, and comments to himself on the handwriting of the marginalia. In the e-book, from the extensive library that took up a shelf on the wall. When I read it (WAY before I’d ever heard of e-books, ’cause I’m a late bloomer like that), I thought, Cool!

You know, if textbook publishers were on the ball, they could have live on-line communities of students using the same textbook, note-taking, discussing, potentially interacting with authors and teachers. Erk! Something just broke in my brain…

Hero and heroine sleeping in the same house without a third party, even if they’re not sleeping together or in the same room

Not the worst in terms of omg-I-think-this-publisher-is-crazy-and-possibly-sociopathic, but still – I just read “A Very Special Delivery” by Linda Goodnight (one of the 16 books Harlequin is giving away for their anniversary) and I was truly baffled by the ridiculous plot that required me to believe a Christian woman would ask a half-frozen Christian man and his Christian baby to go out in a snowstorm to sleep in an unused (eg, not warmed) RV rather than offering them the spare bedroom in her house…It all makes sense now! The book was over the top and overly in your face in other ways too. Dear Author has reviewed some Steeple Hill books here that sounded pretty good – I still can’t understand why Harlequin picked this one to represent the line.

I don’t know. That’s a good question. I can tell you that destroying them really hurts.

I was like Jane and never marked up my textbooks. I think my mom instilled too much reverence for books in me, for me to mark or dog-ear them.

I dislike it when people mark up library books because I find the marks distract me in the middle of my reading and make the reading process very frustrating. It seems inconsiderate and until now, it's honestly never occurred to me that some readers enjoy other people's marks.

I fall into both the mark up textbooks and the don’t dog-ear camps. To me, textbooks are learning tools and you do whatever it takes to get the material into your head. “Books” are a completely different animal and should be as pristine as possible. :D

Actually, I think the worst part is the ‘only non-Christians are allowed to curse’ bit. That literally made my hair stand on end.