Ebooks vs. Books and Other Fallacies Part 2

In the first part we covered the history of books and publishing. In this second piece we will address the fallacies and preferences that people tout about ebooks versus books. The final piece will cover the good of ereaders and how books and ebooks will coexist.

Fallacies

The first argument I heard against books was that they are hurting bookstores and libraries. Libraries have been around for a long time and many are now offering ebooks to borrow as well as other streaming services. Libraries are keeping up with the changing book industry and thriving. Bookstores have been going out of business long before ebooks came in the picture. If anything, ebook readers are book buyers which is good news for bookstores. Bookstores are also producing their own ereaders and selling ebooks on their websites like the Nook from Barnes and Noble. Ebooks are cheaper to store and don’t take up expensive prime retail space in the stores.

“I prefer real books.” So do people prefer the paper and binding along with the ink, or what was written? Personally, I prefer what is written. I read a lot, I read ebooks on my Kindle and iPad and I read hardcover and paperback books that I buy all the time. Reading ebooks does not mean you don’t read “real” books, or the derogatory term dead tree books, it means you are ok with the latest change in the technology of the book. Ereaders are making millions of books available to billions of people who could not afford them before.

“I like writing in my books.” As a book lover, I have finally started to write in my books, I treasured them for many years and did not want to ruin the ones that I bought. I tend to do more underlining when I read which is very easy with an ereader like a Kindle. You can highlight texts quickly and look up words with the touch of a finger. When I first starting reading a lot, I had to carry a notebook and a fat dictionary with me because I didn’t understand a lot of the words in the difficult texts. Now, I rarely come across words that I don’t know, but when I do, ereaders make it easy and better to look them up. You can also write notes in ebooks that will display easily as well as being able to print them nicely organized. The Kindle Paperwhite has a built in vocabulary builder that compiles a list of the words you look up so that you can study them easily, similar to what I used to do with a notebook, when I was working on expanding my vocabulary.

“Free ebooks aren’t very good, you have to pay for the good ones.” I would say the opposite is actually true. The free ebooks are the classics that have been available for years, and before ereaders. Dead author books are some of my favorites. That being said, when I first bought my Kindle I would download any free books I could find. I quickly realized that many of them were not worth downloading. I started being picky about the free books I downloaded to read. The classics, epics, and anything published before 1923 are in the public domain, which means the authors are either dead or do not own the copyright anymore and can be sold by anyone who decides to print them, or made available for free online. You can also download free ebooks from your local library’s website. See my post on Overdrive for more.

Project Gutenberg is a nonprofit that works to digitized, proofread, and format books into ebooks and make them available for free. Many of their titles are available in the major ebook stores, and can also be had by direct download from their site. Some of the best literature that has ever been written is available for free to download, so you don’t have to pay for the good books, they are all free.

“Ebooks have bad formatting and are badly written.” True! You might have to put up with bad formatting with ebooks at times. Many of the major bestsellers in the last few years did not have the best writing. Have you tried reading The Hunger Games? Everything that is published as a real book does not necessarily have good writing. Many of the people that publish ebooks are indie authors but there are some major authors joining the ebook market like Stephen King. Authors are switching to ebook publishing because their books will be widely available to readers and they get better royalty contracts from publishers like Amazon. 70% royalties are unheard of in the present “real” book publishing industry. Most authors make pennies from each book sold while the publishers make the majority of the profits. I’m sure Amazon is not doing this out of the kindness of their own heart but to disrupt the present market, in the meantime authors are profiting and ebooks are here to stay.

The quality of ebooks depends on the quality of the writer and the production team, same as traditional books. Terrible books are published by publishers because they will make a profit. We have book reviewers that read and review books for the readers to find and read. We need the same for ebooks. Websites like mine review ebooks and make recommendations and we need more of that. Most books that are published by traditional publishers are now also published as ebooks. The quality of ebooks will rise much like the quality of the novel did in the 18^th century.

The bad formatting and bad writing is part of the stigma associated with self-publishing, and has been around for quite some time now. The stigma has transferred to ebook self-publishing, and comments about the quality of ebooks are addressing this fallacy.

The latest bash on ebooks came in the form of a study published in Sweden that says that people who read ebooks retain less information that those who read paper books. There are serious issues with this preliminary study that had non experienced ebook readers reading for retention. The authors themselves address that the findings might be different with experienced ebook readers. The blanket statement is a subjective fact since all readers are at different levels. I am an English literature graduate student and I never have problems recollecting majors themes or plot points from either ebooks or paper books, but I also have more experience than most with books and ebooks. While this may affect some readers, the blanket statement has been adopted by the “real book” lovers as another reason why they won’t read ebooks and why we shouldn’t either. The people that don’t read ebooks did not read ebooks before and they don’t read ebooks now; why they care if we read ebooks is beyond me.

The readers resisting change justify their reasons and it comes down to this, they prefer paper books. That is fine! I am not going to bash paper books every chance I get because I might feel threatened. Read what you choose and so will I and millions of others.

The last fallacy I will address for now is that “a real bookshelf filled with real books is more impressive than a Kindle Fire loaded with books.” If you buy books to impress others with your book collection, you are doing it wrong. I have been buying books since I was a little kid, I own thousands of books in all formats, I have read many of them, and I have a Kindle collection with hundreds of books that I am working my way through. I do not show off my books, or my Kindle. I buy, borrow, and download free books to my Kindle to read, not to show off.

Thanks for reading and check back soon for the final installment of ebooks versus books and other fallacies.

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