[auggierose]

An e-book is going to heavily (and negatively) impact the sales figures for the print book. So I wouldn't hold out for that. Looking at the price of the book, he wants to make money from it, so no e-book is probably the right strategy.

[cercatrova]

> An e-book is going to heavily (and negatively) impact the sales figures for the print book

What? Do you have a source on that claim?

For me, I only get ebooks for programming books because I can have the IDE side by side with the PDF, no need to continuously look at the physical book and then back into my IDE, and I can copy paste code examples.

[auggierose]

I prefer ebooks too. If I am really interested in the book, I buy the print version of the book though, if I cannot find an ebook version of high quality (that excludes many epubs, as formulas are typeset horribly in all of them; so a high-quality ebook is usually in PDF format). I am toying with the idea of sending these print books to somebody who (destructively?) scans them for me as PDFs.

For reading, I prefer my iPad Pro, although when looking at multiple books at the same time, I also put them up on one of my monitors.

[jjtheblunt]

totally agree re user experience with ide...

[dmitriid]

> Looking at the price of the book, he wants to make money from it

The price of a printed book includes:

- the price of materials

- the price of printing

- the price of transportation

- the price of storage

- the margins and profits of all of the above

- the margins and the profit of the store

And then, and only then, the author making money, if any.

How is e-book going to impact the author's profit, exactly?

[konkordat]

Manufacturing of a book is really cheap. It's just a little part of overall cost. Nowadays it may cost more becauase of higher prices of paper. Everything else is managed by amazon for their cut. Stop shilling. The author is just greedy.

[e12e]

> An e-book is going to heavily (and negatively) impact the sales figures for the print book.

Well, if the price is the same, that hardly matters? Or are you implying unpaid/illicit downloads will be worse with a legal digital version as opposed to an illicitly scanned copy?

After buying an e-reader I can't defend buying print books from an environmental standpoint - it may be a sunk cost/resources fallacy - but with all the infrastructure for digital production, distribution and reading in place - print copies are a strict waste of resources.

[gunapologist99]

You can read a print book without wasting electricity every time you open it and the toxic materials used to produce a e-reader.

Reading print is still a much more enjoyable experience (except in the tub -- a waterproof Kindle is still great and lightweight for that!), especially with the slow speed of e-ink screens.

I can't defend ebooks compared to the reading, sharing, and the later selling at a used book store my cast-off print books.

I've even gotten O'Reilly books from a decade ago at used book stores that are great to read and look great on my shelf, and I love finding some old novel by some forgotten author instead of whatever the latest Amazon bestseller is.

And I don't have to worry about the Orwellian deletion of my books from my e-reader: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...

[konart]

>You can read a print book without wasting electricity

You don't 'waste' electricity, you waste your money. And in many places electricity is (much) cheaper than (good) paper.

>toxic materials used to produce a e-reader.

Surely you realise that different chemicals are used during paper production too? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_sulfide and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hydroxide for example. And this depends on paper type too.

>Reading print is still a much more enjoyable experience

And this is entirely subjective.

>I can't defend ebooks compared to the reading, sharing, and the later selling

While I 100% agree with selling option, sharing is at least as easy with epub. Unless we are talking about a book from Amazon or something. In most cases you can just send a file over your preferred messenger.

[Volundr]

I'm dubious the environmental difference is that much. 1 e-reader vs how many thousands of books? It's seems to me the e-reader is a one and done cost, but each book comes with it's own trees cut down for the paper, shipping, etc.

As for the deletion I'm with you. That's why I always buy DRM free, or promptly crack anything I buy.

[DennisP]

Nevertheless, many people like ebooks, for a variety of reasons. And I'll put the marginal environmental cost of another book on my reader, against the cost of producing and shipping a physical book, and then turning on a lamp to read it at night anyway.

[pjmlp]

There is the mass murder question of trees for books that never get sold and are eventually thrown into a dump, alongside the chemicals used in the publishing process.

[e12e]

> You can read a print book without wasting electricity every time you open it

This is generally true for ebooks as well, as I only have electric heating. Both probably require more electricity for lighting anyway.

> and the toxic materials used to produce a e-reader.

I assume an ebook reader uses more resources to produce than a book, but 1) I already have a reader, and 2) I have for example e-books I inherited from my dad - that's approximately a thousand books. Even just moving them into my apartment would require non-trivial resources.

> Reading print is still a much more enjoyable experience

I don't really agree. Especially not for technical books.

> I can't defend ebooks compared to the reading, sharing, and the later selling at a used book store my cast-off print books.

Agree that the Kindle/Amazon drm/marketplace is pretty bad. Not all books have draconic drm, though - and in such cases it's much easier to share a book with a friend that has moved over seas for example.

> I've even gotten O'Reilly books from a decade ago at used book stores that are great to read and look great on my shelf,

Sure, but in the event this is a problem - it's also a drm problem, not a problem inherent to ebooks.

As for books about "programing language x version y, with best practices as of year z" - I fully expect them to be mostly outdated after 5 to 10 years - maybe replaced by a new version.

> and I love finding some old novel by some forgotten author instead of whatever the latest Amazon bestseller is.

I've never discovered books from the AZ bestseller lists, but I've bought a few classics.

There are always going to be books that are hard to get - like the excellent:

Howard McCord book: "The Man Who Walked to The Moon" which was self-published if I'm not mistaken. I found it in a thrift store in Berlin. As it happens, it's now available for the Kindle:

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Walked-Moon-Novella/dp/092970...

> And I don't have to worry about the Orwellian deletion of my books from my e-reader

Again - a market/drm problem (and a real one for sure).

I really do hope we will see more diversity in ebook sales, sharing, re-sale and lending.

[fprotthetarball]

I have no problem paying the same price for an eBook as print. If there is some reason a physical product must be involved, bundle both. I'll keep the eBook and donate the physical book to a library.