I made a thing.

[caveman-joe.livejournal.com]

I'll just leave this here.
checkvist.com/checklists/22140-well-what-is-wrong-with-ebooks

Comments

Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing. That is brilliantly articulated. I have linked to it over on my LJ.

Re: Wow!

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I find a lot of it more a matter of opinion than anything else... and some of it downright wrong, like the "For something that costs nothing to produce" part.

Re: Wow!

[caveman-joe.livejournal.com]

Altered slightly - thanks for the feedback. :)

Re: Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I don't agree with the whole thing, and indeed, that was one of the points where I disagree. The cost advantage that ebooks have over paper books is that they don't require paper, printing, trucks to transport them, etc. There's no manufacturing overhead, but there is the compositional overhead -- the writer has to take the time to create the book, and hopefully someone is going to edit it and do a professional layout.

Really, though, price is one thing that makes make ignore most ebooks. I simply won't pay more than a tiny amount for a nonphysical property, unless it's something I love so much that I want to support the person behind it. I resent how high paper book prices have gotten, and how little of that the author gets; ebooks are barely cheaper, and the author isn't getting a whole lot more. That's very off-putting for me.

For some people, I think, ebooks are already a good match for what they're doing. But there are still a lot of drawbacks that are discouraging droves of other people from getting involved. I'm interested in attracting more people, and I'd like to have a more useful ebook option myself, so complaints are very revealing right now.

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

Entertaining!