NickNov 22, 2022
Brewster Kahle

"Why eBooks Wear Out Faster Than Everyday Paper Books"

You’ll be reading that paperback decades from now

article. Why we need libraries to *buy* books not rent them.

https://www.lifewire.com/why-ebooks-wear-out-faster-than-everyday-paper-books-6831842

Why eBooks Wear Out Faster Than Everyday Paper Books

A paper book can sit on the shelf for decades, and anyone can pull it out and start reading. Digital books are way, way harder to maintain.

Lifewire
Nov 22, 2022 at 4:46pmWeb
Show threadxmlns="Dan"Nov 22, 2022
@brewsterkahle I sincerely believe that the people in the year 2200 will have a better understanding of the daily life of an ancient Roman than they will of the average person today. "The Internet never forgets" was true for a few years tops but now it's deluged in junk that stuff is lost all the time.
Show threadLes Beaux EbooksNov 22, 2022
@brewsterkahle Trueish, though I'd argue that 1 open industry standard format (epub) + abolishing DRM would go a long way to resolving the main problems, and that paper isn't indestructible either (especially low-quality. The number of old paperbacks whose pages have literally crumbled after not so many years, and / or come unglued...). I still want to be able to borrow ebooks though for reasons like accessibility/reading comfort so I think the two offers should be considered complementary.
Show threadLes Beaux EbooksNov 22, 2022
@brewsterkahle On the other hand ebooks can be better for individual readers, who may not need / want / have room for entire life-long archives of every single book they've ever read, or a good outlet for one-time reads. And for people like me who read a lot (the border is generally given as over 20 books per year) ebooks can be more ecological than paper, which is worth taking into account I think.
Show threadKansas GrantNov 22, 2022
@brewsterkahle But what if I read e-books on my phone that I replace every two years when the battery goes bad? ;-)
Show threadDen AntaresNov 22, 2022
@brewsterkahle I get the problems with Amazon, but I've never had any of those issues with normal epubs.
Show threadPeteNov 22, 2022

@brewsterkahle
I would say the biggest problem libraries have with ebooks are not "digital rot," but the onerous licensing terms forced on them by publishers, including embargoes, expiring licenses, increased license costs, and lending limits.

NPR's Planet Money did a decent summary earlier this month:

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/09/1135639385/libraries-publishers-ebooks-e-books-macmillan-protest-amazon-bezos

The E-Book Wars

In 2019, a group of librarians (quietly) stormed the offices of a major publisher, Macmillan, to protest a controversial policy on e-books. On this show, how a tiny change - a book on a screen - threw an industry into war with itself.<br/><br/>Subscribe to Planet Money+ in <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/290783428">Apple Podcasts</a> or at <a href="http://plus.npr.org/planetmoney">plus.npr.org/planetmoney</a>a

NPR
Show threadLouis MamakosNov 22, 2022

@forpeterssake @brewsterkahle In the early e-book reader days, Sony had some products and their own book store. And I bought some books. And Sony decided it wasn't such a great idea to be in the e-book business and shut down their store.

And then Sony convinced me to strip the DRM from my books so I could read them on other devices. And now I will not purchase any ebooks in other than ePub format where I can strip the DRM and not have them become useless in the future.

Show threadPeteNov 22, 2022

@lmamakos @brewsterkahle Yep, I went through the same process! I maintain my own DRM-free ebook library now, some of which are in older formats, but I have never once had trouble converting them and reading them as long as they were DRM-free. As others have said, the problem is not ebooks so much as DRM.

(For the record, I still love a physical book sometimes. Plenty of love for both.)

Show threadDan Miller VFXNov 22, 2022
@brewsterkahle I mostly use ebooks precisely for things which are likely to go out of date, like software guides or programming language guides, stuff like that.
Show threadsabertooth salmonNov 22, 2022
@brewsterkahle hmm while the article made a few good points there’s others I don’t agree with. For one thing physical books DO require maintenance or they degrade, storage, dusting, protection from the elements or animals. The article mentions dropping a book in the bath, most devices these days are reasonably waterproof and can take a brief dunking like that just fine, but a paper book is potentially ruined with mold if it gets wet. DRM is a huge issue
Show threadsabertooth salmonNov 22, 2022
@brewsterkahle but for me at least it can be avoided by buying books directly from the publisher, as the publishers I tend to buy from usually sell their books DRM-free on their own websites. Normally I don’t bother since I’m happily (yes, happily) locked into the Kindle ecosystem, however with kindle you can upload pdfs & drm-free ebooks to your kindle library very easily.
Show threadsabertooth salmonNov 22, 2022
@brewsterkahle I’ve been buying ebooks for almost 20 years and I’ve never lost one due to a device failure. I did lose a bunch switching from Nook to Kindle after B&N made its DRM even more restrictive than Amazon’s (required an internet connection to read their book, not ok) which did suck honestly, but that has only happened to me once, whereas with physical books I’ve had similar loses due to moves several times in the same time period
Show threadsabertooth salmonNov 22, 2022
@brewsterkahle will I have a huge collection of books to hand down to my descendants like my great grandma did? No, but honestly most of her collection probably went to the dump when Goodwill couldn’t sell it.
Show threadMark McElroyNov 23, 2022
@brewsterkahle Apart from the influence of greed, I can't believe that printed books, #AudioBooks, and #ebooks must still be purchased separately. I would very much like to pay one price that gives me access to a book in all formats (none of which should be gummed up with DRM).
Show threadInfoSecSherpaDec 1, 2022

Some great takeaways from this article. See if you can find any correlation to your own SOC Manuals, Playbooks, or Security Awareness Training Material. Are you optimizing the right medium for your message?
https://www.lifewire.com/why-ebooks-wear-out-faster-than-everyday-paper-books-6831842

h/t @brewsterkahle

Why eBooks Wear Out Faster Than Everyday Paper Books

A paper book can sit on the shelf for decades, and anyone can pull it out and start reading. Digital books are way, way harder to maintain.

Lifewire