e-books on the interent vs. bound books  

I've published five e-books, and just recently had them published as print. I can tell you, I'm not too thrilled about the prices for the print versions. I'm selling the e-books for $5, and the print for $20, and most of that is production costs.

Print is pricing itself out of existence. I think, also, as a writer, that I can do a lot more with e-books than print. Everything is a major production with print, but with e-books I can do it all myself. I could do a whole multi media thing, hyperlinks, etc, and do it all a lot faster. I'd also have some quality control, not like print, where everything is dicated by the printing process.

For e-books, get a reader. It's just a matter of pressing a button to turn pages, and it's a lot less of a hassle than reading off a computer.

I have thousands of books, and I love them dearly, but I promise you, replacing them with something better and easier to work with won't be the end of the world.

well,i don't think e-books will replace bound books.at least,they can't be taken anywhere.what if there is no power and we happened to want to read under the candle?lol,and i personally like bound books as well,reading on the computer hurts my eyes more,maybe our eyesight will go down faster if there are only ebooks.and bound books can be stored,we can still see it after years,but i don't know when my computer will be attacked by virus.

I think as more and more people spend time on the net, more e-books would be available for them to read. I guess one has to adjust to the times. The logic would be is that it is better that people are reading regardless of the medium used - whether e-books or traditional bound books. Since there are probably millions of people logging on the net for long period of times, having e-books would be providing many of them a better alternative than maybe just passing time playing internet games or something else less educational. For me however, I prefer reading traditional books - I guess its more comfortable for me - i can read while lying in bed, and also saves on electricity consumption :)

I don't think bound books will ever disappear. That means libraries would disappear. I think there may be a problem with programs like BookCrossing where books are shared at no cost. It is cutting back the sales of books. Ebay is probably contributing to this too as people can buy a book for $1 rather than go to the store and buy the same book brand new for $30.

As for e-books, I have never, ever read an e-book. I cannot stand staring at the computer screen for a long period of time and I certainly can't curl up on the couch with my PC, or in the bathtub. I see so many things becoming obsolete, which is hard. No more cassette tapes, no more floppy disks, soon no more VHS tapes. I hate to see hard bound (or soft bound) books go the way of those things. I love the feel of a book in my hands.

Hi,

I too have always loved reading and have a huge collection of books - some on shelves, some in piles on the floor, many of which I've read over and over again, and many of which I'm going to sell on ebay cause I know I won't read them again.

While I will probably always prefer to have my favourite books in a bound version, I do actually read a lot of ebooks - there's a whole lot of advantages to them.

The biggest being that I can download many ebooks and store lots of them on my Palm pilot - If I go away I can take as many stories as I want in one device (smaller than a real book) rather than having to lug around half a dozen hard cover or paperbacks. Then of course there's the price. I hate the thought of spending $20 odd dollars on a novel that I end up hating, at least with an ebook it only costs a small percentage of that so I'm not wasting as much money.

Then too is the fact that there's a lot of great free stories etc to be found on the internet, it's easy enough to convert them into a portable format so I can download them to my Palm etc and read them where ever I go.

I don't think ebooks will ever totally replace bound books but I think the amount and variety of ebooks will continue to grow.

I love ebooks. I have a Palm PDA and always have 4 or 5 books with me waiting to be read and probably about another 20 or 30 that I have read.

I finished a book the other night (Cross). And started a different one (2nd Chance) after about 30 pages, I realized I did not remember the predecessor (1st to Die). So I went back and started reading 1st to Die.

I can't imagine being able to do this if I did not have the ebooks. Plus, it takes up no shelf space when I buy 6 or 8 books at a time. There is no clutter at all and nothing to end up in a landfill should the time ever come, and no pollution from making the ink and making the paper and shipping etc.

I wish more books would come in ebooks. Unfortunately they don't.

I wish the Harry Potter books would come in ebooks..but alas...no such luck.

While i think e books aren't a bad idea, they help you get any book you want and relativly cheaply, i just don't think they could ever replace a real book. Sitting down reading a pile of printed A4 paper just isn't the same as curling up with a good book.

It will be a long time before bound books disappear, but i think that ebooks are a lot more environmentally responsible. there are a number of excellent portable options out there. I have Mobipocket Reader installed on my Blackberry, and I always have a few books loaded for when I'm stuck waiting somewhere (Dr's office, etc)

For actual reading, I recommend Sony's Portable Reader. It's about the size of a paperback, has adjustable font sizes, a single charge up of the battery lasts weeks. Sony has an excellent online ebook store, and if you have your own library already, and you can convert to an .rtf file (there are plenty of free programs to do this) you can load these as well.

The reader itself has a good size memory, and be expanded with SD cards.

Embrace the technology people!