Brewster KahleNov 22, 2022

"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
Show threadsabertooth salmon
@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
Nov 22, 2022 at 11:08pmMetatext
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.