[qrendel]

My personal experience, from having been an e-book aficionado who eventually went back to almost entirely paper (cheap used hardcover when I can find it):

Ebook advantages:

- Cheap, no commitment, try before you buy

- Easy to transport, take 30+ books on vacation with no increase in weight

Dead-tree advantages:

- Higher retention of material (various cues for memory related to the physicality and layout of the book versus an indistinguisable smorgasbord of ebook pages)

- Greater tendency to actually read, since they sit around your house/living room taunting you, rather than being forgotten in some obscure folder of your device

[jhbadger]

Ebooks also have the killer feature that you can increase the font size. Maybe to people in their 20s and 30s that doesn't seem like a big deal, but trust me, as you get older that's a big deal.

[SiVal]

I'm with you on this. I need reading glasses for paper books but not for ebooks. Large-print paper editions are rarely available for the books I want to read, but every ebook is large-print and exactly the degree of largeness I want. With a paper book, larger print requires a larger book. With an ebook, a thousand large-print books fit in the space of a single, regular-print trade paperback.

That's not to say that I don't still love books on paper. I'm not going to drop my iPad Pro in the sand beside my beach chair to go play in the surf. Nobody will steal my paperback, the sand won't hurt it, I can see it clearly in bright sunlight, and I can run it however long I feel like reading it without ever thinking about the battery charge. I also like traveling with a lightweight paperback. For the cost of remembering my reading glasses, I can forget any worries about saving battery, toting a charger everywhere, finding places to plug in, theft, fragility, accidentally leaving it or the charger somewhere.... Nice.

I just wish more of the books I wanted to read were available as lightweight paperbacks with comfortable-sized print....

[dazc]

True. I've had reading glasses for the past couple of years now and, aside from ingredients/cooking directions on food packets, I can manage just fine without them.

[oneeyedpigeon]

Your first dead tree advantage is fascinating. What might help - in part, definitely not totally - would be a compromise between the naff skeuomorphism of yesterday and the minimalist 'flat' design of today. You need a visual (obviously, not as good as visual and tactile) representation of your location within the book that doesn't get in your way: challenging.

[mstolpm]

Off topic: I understand your arguments, but every time I read something like "mostly cheap used hardcover", as an author myself I have to ask: You are aware that the creative behind the work you read does not get a dime from you?

[aethertron]

I'll argue they do, although indirectly. Because the first sale, at whatever price it was, confers not only the right of the purchaser to read it, but also to resell it later (or lend it, or gift it).

[veddox]

I wondered at that statement too, but for a different reason. For me, a book is an investment for life, so I don't mind spending some money on it if it's worthing buying. (If I only want to read it once, I can usually get it through some library.) I would only consider second-hand books for something like a really expensive text book that I'm going to need repeatedly, but only for a limited period of time (e.g. for a thesis).

[qrendel]

When I said "cheap," I meant in price. I'm averse to low-quality books, and would rather pay a few dollars more or hold out longer for a copy with clean pages and little wear. Especially highlighting is usually an immediate deal-breaker. Finding a fairly nice copy typically isn't a problem, though - low-price hardcover is often a more difficult request to meet.

[Turing_Machine]

Do you also think that Ford and GM should get more money when someone sells a used car, or that builders should get more money every time a house gets sold?

[veddox]

The difference is that with a house and a car, you pay for the physical object. With a book, you pay for the ideas contained therein - a subtle but (IMO) important difference.

Which isn't to say used-book sales should be illegal, but that if you can afford it, why not support the person behind the ideas you're profiting from?

[Turing_Machine]

"With a book, you pay for the ideas contained therein - a subtle but (IMO) important difference."

Not according to the law, you aren't.

Also, there are plenty of ideas involved in building cars and houses. They're not just random piles of wood, metal, and plastic, any more than a book is just ink smeared on paper.

[toyg]

Don't give 'em ideas...

[qrendel]

I read a lot and don't have a ton of money. It's a tradeoff I'm willing to accept, and if I'm concerned about the author, I'd honestly rather donate to them directly than see it siphoned off by whatever deal they may have had with the publisher.

[thrkw123456789]

They do get a dime. When I buy a new hardcover book I remember that the book will have a resale value and account for that in what I am prepared to pay.