Why did the e-book meme fail so badly?

Why did the e-book meme fail so badly?

Sales are falling and revenue plummeting. This was supposed to be the next big thing

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High prices and shitty, DRM-laden apps?
>A few hundred kibibytes of text costs literally TEN DOLLARS and can't be edited if you find a typo
>Cool Reader hasn't been updated in almost a year and STILL is better than Nook

You buy one and that's it. I won't rot away or something.

I'm not totally against E-books, but reading an actual paperback just feels all around better, more natural.

Talking about e-books, not e-readers

>Why is a publisher saying that giving people the ability to easily self-publish their works (through digital means) is le stupid?

I don't know goy, you tell me.

Publishers got together and forced Amazon to raise e-book prices, so often the paperback version is considerably cheaper. Add to that the failure rate on e-readers (I've never had a Kindle last longer than three years) and it's just not economical to buy e-books unless you're in a situation where you really need a compact full library at all times, like a military deployment or something.

oh ebooks are a meme

do libraries do any ebook sharing service anymore?

I remember my library had tried it years and YEARS ago. I really didn't care for it and stuck with physicals.

>Publishers got together and forced Amazon to raise e-book prices, so often the paperback version is considerably cheaper.
This is really all there is to it. Publishers wanted the ebook to fail.

Ebooks almost never go on sale because Amazon's hands are tied on it. You can often times literally get a hardcover book cheaper than the ebook.

It's honestly just pushed me into pirating, so fuck them.

I used to buy a lot of ebooks until the situation of over-priced ebooks just became too much to bear.

But I prefer reading on an e-reader. So now the publishers get jack shit from me because they put up these ridiculous roadblocks.

This, fucking ebooks cost too much IMHO

They charge you like they shipped a 2lbs book from one coast to the next and flew it overseas after they personally sourced every ingredient in the ink, and hand cut every tree to make woodpulp for the fucking paper and proceeded to hand press every page via a woodcut. Sales would go way up if they reduced the price to a reasonable rate for what is nothing more than some CSS and plain text.

>paying for ebooks
Google "#books"

this is like when Warren Buffet said bitcoin is stupid
both are industry men who have a lot to lose if the new, better technology takes off

>nothing more than some CSS and plain text
Also, DRM stops you from editing the CSS to your personal taste.
>tfw the new version of Cool Reader removed the option to override CSS automatically, so I have to use Sigil to delete it manually

For the same price as a IRL book I'd rather have the physical book

good luck dusting, carrying and storing those books, goddamn retard. you're like those people who complain that they can't smell the book. i don't know about you fuckheads, but i like to READ books, not smell them
consider suicide

If Buffet truly felt threatened by an emerging technology he'd just shift his investments to it.
It's possible he's wrong about Bitcoin but it's just the normal sort of wrong, not some ulterior motive.

It's just not as convenient as a real book

e-books are so damn easy to dedrm. no surprise they're not making any sales.

People haven't had a single problem doing that for thousands of years, are you by any chance "special"?

How are physical books more convenient? I can't carry hundreds of them in my jacket pocket

Almost every college student only uses PDF versions of textbooks (if using text at all). Ebooks were a godsend.

>battery lasts weeks
>charges in half an hour
>matte e-ink screen can be read in direct sun light
kys

>paying for digital things
I would never understand you, millenial cucks

People have been walking and riding horses for thousands of years as well. If it was good enough for them why drive or take transit everywhere now?

t. person who doesn't even read

you only need one book at any given time.

Because they charge as much or more than a real book. Fuck that, if I am paying full price I want to own the fucking thing. No way to justify this when they remove almost all production costs. So basically fucked themselves by being greedy Jews. But just wait. Their revenge will be to just stop printing and force it. Fucking cunts.

E-books are fucking great, I love my kindle. But I haven't bought a single book for it. They are all pirated.

You want me to pay £40 for an imaginary book, go fuck yourself. If they charged £2 a book then it would be fair enough, but no, they had to try and fuck us.

Yes let me just carry a thick ass novel everywhere

lmao just pirate it

Their revenge will be to just keep printing books and let e-books die. Publishers were comfortable with their old business and didn't want to adapt, so they formed a cartel to kill e-books. It's working because Amazon caved to them and has such a monopoly on distribution that they set the standards for the market.

Why do people call others millenials when they're millenials themselves? Unless you're underaged or 40.

I could be your father, bro.
So shut the fuck up

My library still runs one, but they still treat it like physical books so you have to sit on a fucking waiting list for one of three digital licenses for a god damned text file.

Try stating your age instead of being cryptic. I'm 27.

Gen Z kiddies are old enough to post here now

yes

>bought a kindle
>it was the cheapest model with ads
>it was on sale
>jailbroke it, removed ads and have a debian chroot
>have read a few dozen books on it so far
>have paid for exactly none of them

This is just a company bitching about making a poor business decision. Ereaders and ebooks are great.

pirating e-books is what got me through college cheap

I'm 45. To me anyone born after 1981 is a millennial.

>new IP

gen-x scum

thanks for ruining the world

That is actually the textbook definition of millenials - born 1981 to 2001.

>To me anyone born after 1981 is a millennial.

That's literally the definition of millennial, you retarded old faggot.

An actual book:
-has content that can't be edited by any old retard
-doesn't disappear one day unless someone takes it, makes you give it up by force, or you give it to someone to read
-no battery anxiety, not tied to electricity sources
-can trade books by handing it to someone and get a different book
-can buy books with cash
-smells good
-qt gril at the bookstore knows the kind of books you like, recommends stuff you wouldn't have known existed otherwise

Electronic text-file viewing device:
-electricity-dependent
-big cumpanies can baleet ur virtual books remotely (as they have done before and still do)
-many public libraries getting cucc't by amazon to become distribution points for Bezos
-hard to share books with people you meet
-needs a reader made with coltan and cobalt extracted through the suffering of millions
-smells like the tears of underage chinese laborers
-really hard to recycle
-hard to buy new content without identifying yourself and building a dossier for some asshole in San Jose to sell to advertisers and spooks

>a few ounces of paper is too heavy for my emaciated toothpick arms, bony shoulders, and soft, sunken chest to bear, but a few ounces of plastic isn't
okay there

>complaining about millenials on a site made by and for millenials to talk about how great anime tiddy is
I bet you complain about anime on Sup Forums as well.

That was Boomers.
GenX just sat around getting high and whining about things without ever fixing the last gen's issues.

>without ever fixing the last gen's issues
exactly my point

>big cumpanies can baleet ur virtual books remotely (as they have done before and still do)
sure, unless you're a fucking retard who doesn't know how to strip drm from books

>can save an entire library's worth of information on a device that weighs a few ounces
>or carry a single book that weighs a pound and a have and wastes space
fuck off back to /lit/

Haha this is ridiculous.
Some 57-year old librarian had to adopt those darned internet books and just decided to use the same burocracy they used for physical books. Adorable.

I quickly said "Fuck that" once I was restricted to using Amazon Kindle software for a textbook that I bought. The desktop application is awful, and I'm not buying a fucking kindle to use a book.
This too.

Well good argument, but a car is several times, more durable and more reliable than a horse. An ebook is barely arguably better than a physical book.

should have got a nook. kindle is drm cancer

Kindles sell like hotcakes man
People love them
Ebooks is a booming business, writers who don’t have kindle versions lose tons of money
Physical media is fucking dead

this

This, OP is retarded and talking about ebook sales and not self publishing

t. luddite

>new book releases
>physical copy book $15
>digital copy and paste ebook $10
I wonder why, if shit was cheap as they were supposed to be, they would easily success
For now they're only a niche for those who needs to carry lot of books, or you know pirate and get the book for free, which also implies in "failure" since they don't sell

t. shit for brains

>a slim device smaller than any novel that can let you carry hundreds of thousands of books is a bad thing

>strip drm from books
Enjoy getting pounded by Tyrone in the showers.

Enjoy having down syndrome.

Don't forget all of the "digital nomads" pumping out hundreds of thousands of "ebooks" a dozen pages long just filled with crap they found online. Ebooks are like blogs were years ago.

Yeah don't count on it. Amazon will do what they do and open their own publishing house and put the others out of business.

I only do digital books now. The cost of moving my personal library has gotten ridiculous. It costs more to move my books than it does to move my furniture.

Lol I just realized why it's called a KOBO
KOBO
BOOK
Lmao

Thanks for that hilarious mental image.
>ywn put in your backyard a shipping container full of books to serve as your personal library

That's what I do. Now, they just make you pay $100 for the privilege of being able to do your homework to make up for the sales though.

>Some 57-year old librarian had to adopt those darned internet books and just decided to use the same burocracy they used for physical books. Adorable.
It's not the librarians fault. The publishers refuse to license ebooks to library except under this shitty scheme.

They charge the libraries retarded high prices per digital license which is why most books only have 1 or 2 copies available. You may pay $10 if you bought an ebook on amazon, but they charge libraries closer to $1000.

It's not even copy paste most of the time, guaranteed. Most people are pretty happy with the options given by word processors, there's really no reason to use a typewriter unless you're some hip novelist, and they just say they use a typewriter.

Every unique work of fiction has already been written and is available online for free. Non-fiction is better in non-ebook formats. All ebook readers are terrible

>Non-fiction is better in non-ebook formats
Probably no.
>All ebook readers are terrible
So PCs, laptops, tablets, phones and ereaders in all their formats are all bad?

He's just salty over the fact that with ebooks authors can very easily self-publish instead of going through an intermediary like him

>I'd subscribe to have 20 lbs. of nutricious-yet-repulsive bugmeat and a gallon tub of soylent delivered to my home every morning, rather than cook or eat someplace nice a few times a week

You might laugh at those stupid normalfags who have rewarding lives and don't know how to make computers work good, but that's the demographic manufacturers cater to. For every e-reader one of you buy and root, grinning about what a devilish, system-defeating genius you are, you're supporting companies that wants to be in control of what most people can and want to read.

Normies won't know how to strip DRM, let alone know what it is. Giving business to companies that promote their use will only encourage it. At a basic level, you and the tech-illiterates are both trading freedoms for convenience. It's a little cheesy to quote 1984, but hope lies with the proles, and only with the proles.

PCs, laptops, tablets and phones are all horrid for reading books.

E-readers are slightly less horrid and every now and then they get a little better, but they're still not great.

Soylent's not bad. If not for the cost and the xenoestrogens I'd eat it every meal.

Literally this is the only reason why normal books are relevant today. You wouldn't want to read your SICP in ebook format, would you?

nah

Been reading my whole life, books:
Smell good
Can show off on your shelf (but honestly you're a bit of a narcissist if you do this)


Ebooks:
Can edit yourself (so long as you get drm free stuff, which you ARE doing, right?)
ereader can carry all your books at once
can read in the dark


ereaders and ebooks are all around more convenient and cheaper (if you don't buy ebooks and honestly why the fuck would you the prices are ridiculous)

If the bare minimum of life with little value placed on the things on the higher end of the Maslow pyramid is what you like, why not just pay a doctor to put you in a coma and hook you up to life support for a while, so you can live without the hassle of enjoying life?

>can read in the dark
enjoy your eye cancer

Because no on want to pay full price for merely a license to read a DRM'd PDF.

>but honestly you're a bit of a narcissist
If you think having some books around the house is the mark of a smartass, you're an actual moron.

I can't afford to eat out at a restaurant every day, and I would prefer to do other things with my time than prepare an extravagant meal from scratch.
I really don't see how I'm somehow losing out on the exquisite texture of life by replacing corn flakes and hot dogs with a nutritious milkshake.
Except, of course, for the aforementioned isoflavones.

The reason ebooks aren't working out is because publishers don't want to actually innovate, they want to rent-seek.

In a market of values, rather than profit-at-any-cost, ebooks and ereaders would be a tenth of the price they are right now, virtually everyone would own one, and anyone would be able to freely publish a book and sell/give it away using online market services that spring up to meet the large demand for such things.

There'd be a ton of new cultural hits, virtually an explosion as anyone can self-publish through somewhat centralized services that categorizes and rates their work.

Scientific studies wouldn't be behind paywalls and journals wouldn't exist at all.

We live in a dystopian nightmare world.

this is so stupid it's probably what they actually did

>every day
At least read the passage before bubbling in the wrong answer, you idiot

>Can show off on your shelf (but honestly you're a bit of a narcissist if you do this)

E-books are nice because I can get them for free and don't have to leave my house.

Something about Soylent just seems to turn people into extremists. The post literally suggested being put into a coma as equivalent to eating a meal replacement.
I'm pointing out that most meals aren't really anything special.

And sure, okay. I can't afford to eat out every week, either. Even if I could, though, would it be a great sin against life itself to replace my non-restaurant meals with a nutritious ready-made alternative? Are canned beans and peanut butter sandwiches that important that life is not worth living without them?

That's -exactly- what they did

web.archive.org/web/20160308004942/http://news.kobo.com/blog/world-meet-kobo-1686081

You're exactly what I'm talking about. It's to show off how smart you are, not simply to hold your books.

Your intelligence will show from your actions. Trying to do it with a bookshelf makes you a pseud. My sister recently bought a bunch of philosophy literature; she hardly even reads in the first place, one of the books was orwell's animal farm, which is like 50 pages long. She still hasn't read it, let alone the rest of the books that are easily 10x as long or longer.

So why buy them if you won't even read? Because the guy she's into happens to read these books and encouraged her to get them and she wants to impress. It's a matter of appearances, not substance, and that's what a flaunted bookshelf implies and why it suggests some narcissism and egoism -not necessarily bad things in any case, but you're a fool if you deny it.

>I'm pointing out that most meals aren't really anything special.

For you, because you are a sad person who only ever eats cornflakes.

Yes, and eating Soylent instead is not a net increase in sadness. I'm glad we agree on this.

If I had anyone else in my life to eat meals with I'd put more effort into them, but as of yet there's no point.

The point is eating good food to warm your soul and not be a sad sack of shit who unironically thinks there's nothing wrong with drinking liquid cornflakes.

>said millennial cucks
>hurr why do you critique millennials when you are one

Going out to a nice restaurant and spending a bunch of money and a couple hours on good food to enjoy alone at one's table does not warm the soul, I've tried. It just exacerbates a general sense of ennui and alienation.

Good company makes a good meal; without that you're just consuming nutrients to sustain yourself. Soylent is the ultimate refinement of this latter function.

> Smells good

Shut up, you paper-sniffing faggot

> Thinks he is locked into the Desktop Application or buying a kindle device
> Never using the phone app or tablet app

Buy a fucking EPUB and use a better reader. eBooks are not limited to Kindle.

DRM is put on by the publisher, not by Amazon.

don't try and counter-argument the retarded hipster plebeian that doesn't even fucking read books