ianbuchanan wrote: ↑07 Sep 2018, 11:24
alangner wrote: ↑27 Aug 2018, 19:16
ianbuchanan wrote: ↑27 Aug 2018, 15:58
Thanks for such detail! Sounds like you and your family have had a pretty good experience with digital reading for years now! Currently, I am in the same boat you were in just a few years ago, I greatly prefer print books to digital, couldn't really explain why, but there's just something about them. I frequent my local library to get my books for free, which I just absolutely love, while not optimally convenient at times. I have been and certainly will continue to consider digital reading, as I am becoming more and more aware of the certain benefits it provides.
Just out of curiosity, all things equal (time to get the book, price, etc.), would you prefer print books or digital e-books? I'm interested to find out where people stand on this in today's day in age.
That's a hard question. I'm inclined to say print. I really love print books. Digital books are convenient and easy to store, plus I can read them with the lights out, but I just love print books. Also, it seems to me that print books are better edited than digital books. I rarely, if ever, find an error in a printed book. However, I find multiple errors in every single digital book I read.
Currently, I'm on the fourth book in a series. The first three books only had a few errors in them. This one has tons of errors. It's like whoever was editing got lazy or something. It really disgruntles me to find errors in books. One or two is understandable. Humans are fallible and I can realistically see missing just a couple things. More than that is just unacceptable. It's disrespectful to the reader and readers are what keep authors in business.
So, taking all that into account...I'd have to say print books are and will always be my preference.
I totally understand what you are saying, there is just something, which is somewhat indescribable, about print books that make them my go-to choice over digital. And very interesting point you bring up about errors...I almost never see any errors in the print books I read. Of course there are some, but they're usually limited to one per book, at a maximum. Do you know why digital books tend to have more errors? Do they not go through the same standards of editing as a print book?
I just finished the print copy of
Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger and found some doozy errors in it (repelling instead of rappelling), which was extremely surprising to me. That said, in a 342-page book, I found less than 5 errors. And yet, when reviewing for OBC, you have to make note of the first 10 errors. That bespeaks an error problem.
Honestly, I think it's because a lot of digital books are self-published. Slap some words down on paper, format it for Kindle, and throw it up on the KDP site. Done. Abracadabra, you're an "author". Doesn't matter if you can't tell the difference between there, their, and they're - you're still an "author". And since the author is the one who made the mistake, and then the author is the one proofreading it (if they even do proofreading), how would they catch their own mistake if they didn't even know it was a mistake to begin with? Not knowing it was a mistake is an epic failure on the education system's part, but that's another topic altogether. haha
I did, however, come up with another reason that I prefer print books. They're actual novels. There are so many digital "books" out there that are less than 100 pages long. That's not a book. That's a short story. Too many digital books now aren't designed for character development, plot development, or an involved storyline that you can immerse yourself in. Yet, that's what a book is supposed to be.
In today's world, writing is kind of like the adage from
Ratatouille that "anyone can cook". People seem to think anyone can write and it's just not so. Personally, if a digital book is less than 300 pages, I won't even consider it.